DEVELOPING AN ANNUAL ACADEMIC AGENDA FOR THE LIBRARY INCLUDING BENCHMARKS
INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE STUDY’S BACKGROUND
A library is established in an attempt to acquire all the relevant resources as well as the unalloyed services necessary for sustaining the host university’s teaching, learning, research, and public services. This is why, according to madu (2004), “the academic health, intellectual vitality, vibrancy, and effectiveness of any university depend largely on the state of health, performance, and excellence of their libraries.”
libraries of all types are meant to select, order, acquire, process/organize, store, and disseminate relevant information resources to their clientele. Academic libraries are libraries in institutions of higher learning (universities, polytechnics, and colleges) that are organized to meet the information needs of students, staff, and school/faculty (trustees glossary, 2004).
The existence of such libraries in nigeria dates back to the establishment of yaba college of technology in 1934 and university college ibadan in 1948. Since then, it has been a tradition that every higher learning institution must have its own library to support the teaching, learning, and research processes of such institution.
As a result, universities establish university libraries in particular. It works to support the academic community’s learning, teaching, and research activities. As a result, university libraries, as part of the university, support the curriculum and research needs of the university’s students, staff, and faculty (online library learning glossary, 2006). University libraries, on the other hand, are the most important organization in the university system.
Thus, the establishment of libraries in universities becomes inevitable because, in addition to supporting conventional generic functions (teaching, learning, and two public services), the university libraries perform the following added functions:
pursuit, promotion, and dissemination of knowledge, in light of the foregoing, the primary functions of university libraries include the following: provision of material for undergraduate instruction, term papers, and projects, as well as complementary reading; provision of material in support for postgraduate research; provision of expensive stand (ifidion and okoli, 2002: 24).
As a result of knowledge and or information explosion, information management in academic libraries and, indeed, university libraries becomes a challenge. This is primarily due to some implications associated with manual operations in our university libraries.
Inaccuracy, limited access to information, retrospective conversion of records, slow pace of operation, and service delivery breakdown are examples of shortcomings. It is against this background that the use of computers (an electronic device that accepts raw data or information as input, and through an encoded set of instruction (program); processes it (the raw data or information) to generate a meaningful and accurate result (obeta, 2007)) and its asso obeta added that computers, as a system that works together for information processing, are made up of three key components.
Components like this include: hardware: the physical and tangible components that make up the computer system, such as input, output, and processing units, as well as backing storage. 3 software: a set of instructions or programs that computers follow to perform its task, examples include the system software as operating system, language
translators, utility programs, and device drivers, and the application software as word processing program, statistical programs lives ware or humanware: comprising various computing industries professionals as system operators, system analyst, programmers, database managers (dms), system engineers, hackers, etc p.15.
But, for the purposes of this research, the interest is in computer software. Shameen (2006) defined it as “instructions (programs) that when executed provide desired features, functions, and performances” or “data structures that enable the programs to adequately manipulate information” or “documents that describe the programs’
operation and use.” as mentioned earlier, software is divided into two major categories: system software: this is software that is designed to operate the computer hardware and provide the platform for running the application software……; and the application software: this is a generalized set of programs that is designed to allow computers to be used for a particular application or task….
Ralph et al., 2003, p. 65) notably, the expansion of the use of these applications software or software packages in all aspects of human endeavor is alarming. This is due to the fact that they have some characteristics that support their use. Such characteristics are; they are developed not manufactured, they do not “ware out” but deteriorates with changes, and they are custom built for the most part.
As a result, companies, institutions, co-operative organizations, and government agencies, ministries, and parastatals rely heavily on software driven interconnected computer technology to execute their daily operations timely and accurately with improved performance.
They are said to have automated their services cum operations as a result. Therefore, automation refers to the application of computers and their associated 4 technologies to the execution of routinely manual human endeavor operations (obeta, 2007).
The use of application software in the form of library software packages or library systems in libraries and indeed university libraries in particular and other academic libraries has become a reality. In place of these, the use of software in libraries plays a dual role. Luis, senso, and felix (2007) discuss these roles: as a product, it delivers the computing potentials embodied by computer hardware and networks of computers that are accessible by a local computer.
Software, whether in a cellular phone or a micro computer, becomes an information transformer in this context. This means it generates, processes, modifies, displays, retrieves, and transmits information in real time. As a product delivery vehicle, it serves as the basics for computer control (operating system),
information communication (networking), and the creation and of other programs (software tools and environment). This means that it distributes the most important products of our time (that is, it transforms personal data so that it can be more meaningful in the local contents)…
P.70. As a result, when a software package is designed to carry out library operations and functions (such as accessioning, charging in and charging out of books, library statistics compilation, bibliographic control, acquisition, cataloguing, serial control, overdue compilation (madu, 2004).
Library software package, exactly as with other application software, is task specific in function. This means that its capabilities are based on the purpose(s) for which it was designed. Additionally, these application software categories are also operating system dependent (that is, some are designed to run on windows operating system (o.s) while
others may be designed for ubuntu, linux, unix, or microsoft disk operating system (ms-dos) library software, like every other application software, comes in two classes. They are the stand alone (those designed for a single task) and integrated or 5 modularized (those designed for a number of task, technically called software suit) library software package.
Functionally, regardless of the platform on which these library software packages run, the class to which they belong, and whether they are designed in-house or contracted, the fundamental truth is that they are nowadays used to perform virtually all library operations (selection, ordering, interestingly, these processes of using computers and related technologies (software) in performing library functions and or services have benefited the library world, specially university libraries, in a number of ways.
The outstanding benefits of using computer software in university libraries, as postulated by ifidion and okoli (2002), are: it has increased the speed of various library operations; it has improved the performance of library staffs; it has equally improved both the storage library oriented software packages, in particular, come in various types (s) and designs (depending on whether they are in modules or integrated).
As these software is task-specific and institution-organization dependent, with some of them custom-built, a good number of them are available on the market. Lib-plus, x-lib, micro-cds/isis, resource-mate, glas, ad-lib, auto-lib, fedora, klas, koha, lib-data.com, tin-lib, libero, minisis, slam, open d-lib, tapir, ringgold, alice are just a few examples of library very few of these packages are in use in university libraries in Nigeria.
Studies have shown, for example, that tin-lib is available in all federal university 6 libraries. This is due to the federal government acquiring tinlib for all federal university libraries in nigeria through the national university commission (nuc) and the national university network (nunet) (oyinloye, 2004).
Additionally, the united nations education, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) distributed free cds/isis to some university libraries in Nigeria. Alice for windows, x-lib, resource ate, lib-plus, slam, koha, and glas are other library oriented software packages in use in Nigerian university libraries.
Technically, each of these arrays of packages has its own specific attribute; however, below are some of the general attributes expected of reliable library oriented packages.
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DEVELOPING AN ANNUAL ACADEMIC AGENDA FOR THE LIBRARY INCLUDING BENCHMARKS
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