Introduction
Harrod’s (2000), outlined college library as an structured assortment of books positioned in a college for the use of academics and pupils, but typically for pupils. It may perhaps comprise books of reference and or publications for home reading through and in the treatment of a skilled librarian, or teacher-librarian. It is variously connect with “Instructional Supplies Centre”, “Learning Centre or Media centre.”
The College library serves as a service company which supports the schools’ objectives and supplies elements for all topics and all curiosity of pupils and instructors. The college library is a supportive resource of the faculty curriculum, its provisions, products and services, and growth is directed at aiding faculty programmes (Kinnel, 1994).
Libraries frequently have as their major function buying, processing, storing and disseminating information to which university library is not an exception. The faculty library has a essential purpose to participate in in the information assistance. They supply components relevant to the curricular wants of everybody with the university group. The great importance of offering these types of resources are unable to be overemphasized if the faculty library is to be an instigator of and guidance for useful resource primarily based understanding in the school.
Also, in relation to information abilities, the library and its librarian, make obtainable materials and services in various versions to permit each pupils and the school community to use these abilities in acquiring the details they will need.
The reason and philosophy of university library services are rapidly currently being comprehended and acknowledged by college directors and lecturers. The fact necessitates that the college librarian be carefully acquainted with these uses these kinds of as direction, the looking at programme and the enrichment programme for pupils and academics. Having said that, Albert Academy library has no trained and capable librarian, who understands and performs those people applications in get to guarantee that the support provision is totally attained.
Albert Academy College Library
The Albert Academy was inaugurated on the 4th October 1904. It was right until 1975 when the Albert Academy Alumni Affiliation in their meeting imagined it wise that this sort of a respected institution will have to not go with out a library as the progress of university libraries was at its highest peak at that time. An idea to erect a library making was born with the collaboration of the alumni association and the homeowners of the university that is the United Methodist Church. The library was set up with the purpose of acquiring a put where by pupils could go and discover new strategies to additional fortify their college curriculum functions and leisure as nicely.
The library was officially opened to the full college community by His Excellency the late Dr. Siaka P. Stevens on 4th October 1976, then President of the Republic of Sierra Leone and also a member of the Albert Academy Alumni Association course of 1922. The library was named soon after him adhering to the enormous contribution he manufactured towards establishing the library for the school neighborhood. The Albert Academy Library has a mission to “Aid school curriculum activities by providing supplies of relevance in the university process and to introduce new and improved info resources to support make the school to be in line with contemporary criteria of instruction.”
The objectives of the Albert Academy university library are as follows:
I. To present pupils with library components and expert services most suitable and most meaningful in their growth and advancement
ii. To take part completely in college programmes as it strikes to meet up with the requirements of pupils, instructors, parents and other people neighborhood members
iii. to encourage and guidebook pupils in all phases of their reading through that they may possibly come across rising pleasure and fulfillment and may perhaps develop in essential judgment and appreciation
iv. To make obtainable new progress and keep pupils abreast of fashionable developments in training identify reader’s desires and keeping them well educated in purchase to make a effectively dynamic educational setting
v. To perform with the trainer in the assortment and generation of educational products that meet the aims of the curriculum, present assistance in the use of selection, analysis of education programmes and products, facilitates the place, organisation and servicing of supplies effectively and
vi. To assist pupils to become experienced end users of libraries and of printed and audio-visible materials.
Library Provision at Albert Academy Faculty Library
A big job in the information and facts support presented by modern university library is in the provision of resources applicable to the curricular demands of pupils and instructors. In latest several years, the curriculum things to do have moved to an additional level, the place the university being supportive useful resource of this movement, should endeavor to home a assortment of print and non-print resources and have obtain the place attainable to electronic sources of facts which are also aspect of the information and facts means in the library.
Specified the calls for of the contemporary university curriculum, the faculty library have to now residence a vast variety of print and non-print elements and have accessibility, where doable, to electronic resources of facts. The Albert Academy University offers printed materials, ebook, fiction and non-fiction as nicely as pamphlets, newspapers, chart, images, monographs, manuals, handbooks, textbooks and other reference textbooks the library also offers non-publications supplies which include things like audio and audio-visible resources, slides, tape-slides, video clip cassettes, and CD ROM’s. Although these are not components in the classic sense, they nonetheless represent assets for use by pupils and lecturers. Use of electronic sources enable university libraries to current pupils and instructors with a principle of a University Info Centre which is not continued to the university but is a hyperlink to an unending source of info (Herring, 1988).
Albert Academy University Library Services
The reason of setting up Albert Academy University Library is to supply products and services for both pupils and teachers in a bid to fulfill one of its main reasons, which is to aid curriculum plans by supplying products and services that are indispensably connected to the fulfillment of this purpose.
One of the principal products and services of the Albert Academy Faculty library is to act as again-up to the below resourced college programme. Even innovative international locations are unable to conveniently stock resources ranging from 5 thousand (5,000) to twenty thousand (20,000) in a little room to offer assistance to college programmes. Consequently, they see the will need for central stock of materials which can be borrowed for differing lengths of time (lending services) and also for studying and consultation expert services. This is carried out in purchase to augment the college curriculum at the Albert Academy which is inclusive of the Standard Sciences and Technologies, Social Sciences, Humanities and the Great Arts.
Albert Academy College library also gives inter-library bank loan providers requests. This is significantly valuable to senior pupils learning matters throughout subjects offered in depth. Pupils who can not pay for to order or entry these highly-priced elements reward from this sort of library services. By way of inter-library mortgage companies, materials are sourced from other universities libraries for the benefit of both pupils and lecturers.
A reference services is also presented at Albert Academy Faculty library. The College Librarians invest a sizeable proportion of their time supplying what in other libraries time period would be termed as reference provider. In giving a reference company, college Librarians execute a similar function to that of other librarians. In a reference interview in school, just about every pupil is addressed as vital as the other and supplied the Librarian’s full notice. This is achieved by personal help offered to the pupils and lecturers in acquiring unique information whether or not direct or indirect. Some of the reference resources at the Albert Academy College Library are dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, yearbooks, biographies newspapers, maps and charts, and the academic and administrative calendar of events or the procedure of the university.
Just one of the most beneficial providers furnished by Albert Academy Faculty library is that of data provision. The Albert Academy School library keeps the instructors and pupils knowledgeable about new instructional means and progress in the fields of desire to them by displaying the jackets of guides that just arrived. The Albert Academy School library makes use of Latest Recognition Solutions (CAS) to realize this target. This is performed by identifying the data desires of both instructors and pupils and assembly these requires. Linked to the CAS is the Selective Dissemination of Details (SDI) and this is far more specific with academics. This ranges from retaining particular person teachers informed about new resources in the library or about freshly published products, to alerting academics to meetings and course requires or party linked to their curricular curiosity.
Challenges of Library Provision and Providers at the Albert Academy Faculty Library
No subject what an organisation has to rely as success, is bound to face particular difficulties that stand in advance of it as worries to its success. University Libraries in Sierra Leone, especially Albert Academy Faculty Library are not without having difficulties.
To start out with the library and its resources have been dismissed by the pupils and lecturers. In spite of their all-essential nature of company provision in aid to them they do not see it as a beneficial element of their activities. This is mainly because most academics and pupils do not get ample source of textbooks and other components immediately joined to the curriculum programme and most lecturers prepare pamphlets for sale to pupils from which there educating is based mostly. This has prompted most of the pupils to intensely count on those resources as a substitute of the library means.
The University Library has a staffing obstacle. For example the Albert Academy School Library has no experienced library employees to take care of an info support for about two thousand pupils and lecturers.
In addition, the library has a challenge with area. The area presented for the library from inception is now not ample for the university. The school populace in phrases of instructors and pupils has developed somewhat significant to over two thousand (2000) pupils and team as as opposed to the house supplied for a tiny over Five hundred (500) pupils and team about 40 decades back. It has turn into challenging to access the library and its sources.
In addition, there is a funding dilemma. The Albert Academy University Library is faced with the difficultly of securing resources from the colleges authorities for an successful collection improvement. The library relies upon closely on donations and presents to stock its collection and most of these products offered in this guise are not reflective of the classes presented in the school curriculum. Often, the school administration has to distribute meager economical resources across a vast spectrum of school requires.
The establishment of the laptop laboratory with slight world-wide-web facilities independent of the faculty library has also designed a issue for the Albert Academy College Library. The lecturers and pupils would desire to stop by the Laptop or computer centre for Web providers considerably much more that viewing the library. The separation of the Internet amenities from the library services has posed a serious threat to the library provision and providers.
Also, it is pretty established that the Albert Academy Faculty Library lacks the capability to deliver for the visually impaired or handicapped. The absence of university library resources in the Braille structure helps prevent blind and the partially sighted pupils to make use of the obtainable library sources in their schools libraries.
Ultimate, the problem of preservation of library materials is not a frequent practice for the Albert Academy University. This preservation is supposed to guarantee that the supplies very last lengthy for the reason that of their regular use. It has develop into challenging to entry cash to preserve supplies that are below risk of carrying out by way of constant use.
Regardless of some gloomy predictions on the upcoming funding of education and feasible limitations on the availability of means at the Albert Academy University Library, the future of the school library looks certain. It can be argued that since of existing educational and technological trends, there has never been a greater will need for well-resourced and skillfully staffed school library than it is now. The emphasis on the individual’s-the kid’s and the adult’s-capacity to locate and use info successfully is most likely to go on in educational institutions, at get the job done and for leisure pursuits. A foreseeable future society dependent on digital data for its prosperity will have to have an facts curriculum in its educational facilities. Hence the availability of excellent school library provision and expert services in the university curriculum can not be overemphasised (Kargbo, 2000).