Transcript LIBRARY SERVICES AND USER NEEDs WITH REFERENCE TO

LIBRARY SERVICES AND USER NEEDS
WITH REFERENCE TO ACADEMIC LIBRARIES
Dr. Subodh Gopal Nandi
University Librarian, Visva-Bharati
Central Library, Santiniketan, West Bengal
E-mail: < [email protected] >
< subodhgopal.nandi @visva-bharati.ac.in >
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The Library
• ‘Library’ is an establishment or public institution; it has
a building, room, or set of rooms; contains collection
of books and other documents; takes care of its
collection; makes arrangement to access documents
who require to use them.
• The library serves for the public or members of the
society.
• So, library has five components: a) physical space; b)
collection of materials; c) maintenance of collection; d)
user group; and e) provision of accessibility.
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Model - : Library and its basic components
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Library Clientele
• In past days treasures of knowledge remained hidden
from the masses, stored under tight security and
accessible only to privileged class people, viz. monks
and their disciple, kings and their courtiers, riches,
profound scholars, etc.
• Establishment of academic institutions opened the
door of library to large scale of people, viz. general
students, teachers, scholars and other privileged class
of people.
• Library for general public has been established only
before 150 years.
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Library Influenced by Clientele
• In any country, the development of library has
depended on the advancement of social processes
• Library developed & improved to satisfy the needs of
the users.
• Libraries are not only repositories of knowledge but
also dispensers of such knowledge.
• If libraries are ignored, the study as a whole will suffer,
because teaching and research are mostly depend
upon the qualitative and quantitative service rendered
by the libraries.
• Students, teachers and researchers much depend on
their library.
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University Education Commission, India
• The committee was constituted under the chairmanship of
Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan in 1948-49 and its report was
published in 1950.
• It reports that the library is the heart of university’s all
works, and as regards to its educational and research work,
university derives its life from library.
• Scientific research needs the library as well as its
laboratories while for humanistic research the library is
both library and the laboratory in one.
• Both for humanistic and scientific studies, a first class
library is essential in a university.
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Targeted objectives of university libraries
to serve its clientele
• To give continuing support to the teaching and learning
programme and provide impetus to educational change;
• To ensure maximum access to the widest possible range of
resources and services;
• To equip students with basic skills to obtain and use wide
range of resources and services;
• To lead them (students) towards a lifetime use of libraries
for recreation, information and continuing education.
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Users’ Need & Expectation
Library users need to search:
• the physical library catalog,
including incomplete or under
process materials, circulation
records, etc.
• holding records of local,
nearby & distant libraries.
• bibliographies of paper items,
on microform, or on-line items.
• numeric data in social,
technical, economic, and
scientific databases.
• directories and reference
works.
• images and moving images.
• the texts itself.
• full-text that remains in on-line
and not physically in library.
• use library with comfort as
corporate house provided to
its customers.
• convenient use of needed
datasets and having copy of
them.
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WWW thrown challenge to Library
• Libraries are now facing competition from Internet
and the World Wide Web.
• Students, teachers and other users of the library try
to get information through the Internet first, and
then they are coming to library for detail checking of
required information.
• If they satisfy with the first information, they may not
come to library physically.
• So libraries and the librarians need to develop plans
how to face the new competition and to remain
active to provide library services to the new
generation users.
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Library vs. WWW: The Real Situation
• People want to take advantages of online world, but not
at the expense of the physical materials.
• Web-searching is not the only solution to have the
knowledge but verification is urgent.
• People recognize the value of shared, communal spaces
where they can work by themselves.
• Libraries are currently capable of creating and
maintaining value added information.
• People wants to come to physical library that serves as
symbols of certain shared, trusted and sacred values.
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Library vs. WWW: Librarians’ Initiative
• Library supplies information to its users long before;
• To meet present users’ needs librarians have to adopt
computer technology for library operation.
• Librarians should have idea of hardware & software that
may keep current for a long period of time.
• Library and librarian should always be supported by the
higher authority, as they are trying to provide best services
for the institutional beneficiaries.
• Fund provision for upgrading software, hardware &
workstations which is require to keep the library as a
perfect system and successful organization.
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Academic libraries & their daily functioning
and extending services
• Traditional libraries mostly depends on indexing &
cataloguing.
• In new environment librarians are always attempted to
reach all its users and to serve better way to the users.
• Due to fast development of IT and its application to
libraries new styles are adopting by academic libraries for
their daily functioning.
• Academic libraries are extending services to its end users,
but It is difficult to serve library users' needs because the
sources of information are too complex, so extensive and
so varied.
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Academic Library Service Strategies
• Change becomes a way of life for library & information field
• But the core functions of libraries – providing an organized
collection of materials and providing assistance in using those
materials – remain the same, how libraries fulfill those functions is
being transformed
• Technological advances make it possible for libraries to provide
access to a wide range of materials that no single library owns
• Libraries can serve customers from around the world as early as
they serve the patorns who enter their buildings
• Improved academic library environment is beyond sole control of
librarians. It would be joint venture of librarians, library planners,
professional bodies, NGO and Government
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To Develop Academic Library Services
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In new environment due to increasing complexity
user's expertise are needed;
To improve the users’ expertise academic libraries
should accept the following:
User education.
Advice.
Simplification.
Mediation.
Delegation.
It makes the library system itself smarter, more
capable of determining what should be done next,
and thus increases the expertise of library users.
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Library Services for the users
• Librarians always attempt to reach all its users by
providing the following services:
• Assistance services
• Instruction services
• Referral services
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Assistance services
• To help users, to identify & locate needed materials.
• Many materials, bibliographic tools are complex to use, and
needs interpretation for using such tools.
• Machine-readable data bases are searched on-line; and CDROMs inside library. But using systems are different and
librarians provide required assistance.
• Library should develop an environment where users can
intuit that they are in a hub, which can expose plenty
intellectual and informational resources.
• It is in the place of convergence, where users set them
apart from other information providers
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Instruction services
• Libraries using instruction "orientation", a guided tour, to
familiarize students with layout of library building and
location of various resources and services.
• Library instructions "point-of-use", indicating use of
bibliographic tools, indexing and abstracting services;
video-tape, audio tape, and slide-tape presentations.
• It integrates students’ class educational experience and
library as gateway of information resources.
• Students interact with information resources as directed by
faculty to complete their assignments.
• Students study with peer and extend their knowledge in
self-directed ways.
• Learning in library, makes changes in students’ lives. 17
Referral services
• This service refers one user to another library, more specialized
library, librarian, or other experts.
• It is referring a library user to another more appropriate resource
centre.
• Library use and bibliographic research are complex and becoming
more so.
• So, it is necessary to know to whom or to where a referral can be
made with a reasonable chance of success.
• The development of detailed knowledge of resources is necessary
for referral to work effectively.
• A greater investment in user education will be needed to ensure
that effective use is made of library resources, including the
resources of all cooperating libraries.
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The Impact of the Model
• The model helps the librarian to develop procedure to serve
clientele to meet their demand or need. It also helps librarian:
• To attract new library clientele;
• To increase public faith through out the university
organization, so that higher authority allocate more fund for
procuring resources, tools, equipments and other
technological support for catering qualitative and higher level
library services for the clientele;
• To motivate library management group and other library staff
individually or group to strive to meet the expectations of
library clientele;
• To take risk over some uncertainty, e.g. continued supply of
fund, technological fault, permanence of hardware and
software, etc.
• To overcome the uncertainty to handle new technology,
hardware, software, connectivity, etc.
Conclusion
• A greater emphasis in user education is needed, which
ensure the effective use of Paper, Automated, and
Electronic Libraries.
• Technological advancement empowers libraries to offer
improved customer-driven service opportunities in
physical library or crossing the physical library over the
globe.
• Librarians of the academic libraries have to involve
continuously in library development processes, and to
keep pace with the changing needs of their users.
• This will help academic librarians to adopt new things to
the library, that keep service offerings fresh to the
academic community.
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Thank you all
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