DEVELOPING AN ANNUAL ACADEMIC AGENDA FOR THE LIBRARY INCLUDING BENCHMARKS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES

DEVELOPING AN ANNUAL ACADEMIC AGENDA FOR THE LIBRARY INCLUDING BENCHMARKS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1  BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

In an attempt to acquire all the relevant resources as well as the unalloyed services necessary for sustaining the teaching, learning, research and public services of the host university; a library is established. This is why Madu (2004) opines that “the academic health, intellectual vitality, vibrancy and effectiveness of any university depend largely upon the state of health, performance and excellence of their libraries”. Generally, libraries irrespective of types are meant to select, order, acquire, process/organize, store and disseminate relevant information resources to their clientele. Specifically, libraries in institution of higher learning (universities, polytechnics and colleges) that are organized to meet the information needs of the student, staff and school/faculty are referred to as academic libraries (Trustees‟ Glossary, 2004). In Nigeria, the existence of such libraries dates back to the establishment of Yaba College of Technology in 1934 and University College Ibadan in 1948. Since then, it has become a tradition that every institution of higher learning must have her own library which must support the teaching, learning and research processes of such institution. Consequently, university libraries in particular are established by universities. It gears towards the facilitation of learning, teaching and research activities of the academic community. Hence, university libraries as part of the university support the curriculum and research needs of student, staff and faculty of the university (Online Library Learning Glossary, 2006). In lieu of this, university libraries are indeed the most important organ in the university system. Thus, the establishment of libraries in the universities becomes inevitable as notwithstanding the support for conventional generic functions (teaching, learning and 2 public services) the university libraries perform the following added functions as: pursuit, promotion and dissemination of knowledge, manpower development, provision of social economic modernization, provision of intra and intercontinental international understanding as well as provision of intellectual leadership. In the light of the foregoing, the prime functions of the university libraries include the following: provision of material for undergraduate instruction, term papers, and project as well as complementary reading; provision of material in support for postgraduate research; provision of expensive standard work especially in the specialized discipline; provision of material support for faculty and collaborated research; provision of material for personal self development; provision of special information on the region within which the university is located; co-operation with other academic libraries with a view to developing a network of academic libraries resources that is at the disposal of all scholars (Ifidion and Okoli, 2002: 24). Consequently, with knowledge and or information explosion, the management of information in academic libraries and indeed university libraries becomes a challenge. This is primarily due to some inherent shortcomings that are associated with manual operations in our university libraries. Such shortcomings are: inaccuracy, limited access to information, retrospective conversion of records, slow pace of operation and breakdown of service delivery. 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 an accurate result (Obeta, 2007)) and its associated technologies in our university libraries and indeed libraries in general becomes imperative. Obeta further emphasized that computers as a system that works together for information processing are composed of three major components. Such components are: Hardware: consisting of the physical and tangible components that make up the computer system as the input, output, and processing units as well as the backing storage. 3 Software: comprising of programs or set of instructions which computers will follow to perform its task, examples are the system software as operating system, language translators, utility programs and device drivers and the application software as word processing program, Statistical Programs for Social Sciences (SPSS), database programs, desktop publishing programs, library packages, e.t.c. Livesware or humanware: consisting of varying professionals in the computing industries as system operators, system analyst, programmers, Database Managers (DMs), system engineers, hackers, e.t.c p.15. But for the purpose of this research work, the interest is on computer software. Shameen (2006) defined it as; “instructions (programs) that when executed provides desired features, functions and performances” or “data structures that enables the programs to adequately manipulate information” or “documents that describe the operation and use of the programs”. As was stated earlier software are composed of two major categories, namely: system software: These are software designed to operate the computer hardware and provide the platform for running the application software……; and the application software: which are generalized set of programs designed to enable computers to be used for a particular application or task…. (Ralph, et al., 2003: 65) Notably, the growth in the use of these applications software or software packages in every areas of human endeavour are alarming. This is because they have some characteristics that sustain their usage. Such characteristics are; they are developed not manufactured, they do not “ware out” but deteriorates with changes and that most of them are custom built. As a result of this, companies, institutions, co-operate organizations, and government agencies, ministries and parastatals rely heavenly on the use of software driven interconnected computer technology to execute their daily operations timely and accurately with improved performance. And by so doing, they are said to have automated their services cum operations. Thus, automation refers to the application of computers and its associated 4 technologies to the execution of routinely manual operations of human endeavour (Obeta, 2007). In libraries and indeed university libraries in particular and other academic libraries, the use of application software in the form of library software packages or library systems has become a reality. In lieu of these, the use of software in libraries specifically takes on a dual role. Such roles as was discussed by Luis, Senso and Felix (2007) are: As a product, it delivers the computing potentials embodied by the computer hardware and networks of computers that are accessible by a local computer. In this context, software becomes an information transformer whether it resides in a cellular phone or micro computer. This means it produces, processes, modifies, displays, retrieves and transmits timely information. As a vehicle for product delivery, it acts as the basics for the control of the computers (operating system), the communication of information (networking), and the creation and of other programs (software tools and environment). This implies that it delivers the most important products of our time (that is it transforms personal data so that they can be more meaningful in the local contents)… P.70. Thus, when a software package are designed to carry out library operation and functions (as accessioning, charging in and charging out of books, library statistics compilation, bibliographic control, acquisition, cataloguing, serial control, overdue compilation, e.t.c.); it becomes a library software package (Madu, 2004). Specifically, as it is with other application software, library software package are task specific in function. This means that its capabilities are dependent on the purpose(s) for which it was designed. Moreover, these categories of application software are also operating system dependent (that is some are designed to run on WINDOWS Operating System (O.S) whereas others may be designed for UBUNTU, LINUX, UNIX or Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS) or both. In addition, there are two classes of library software as with every other application software. They are the stand alone (those designed for a single specific task) and integrated or 5 modularized (those designed for a number of task, technically called software suit) library software package. Functionally, irrespective of the platform upon which these library software packages runs, the class to which they belongs and whether they are designed in-house or contracted, the fundamental truth are that nowadays; they are used to perform virtually all library operations (selection, ordering, acquisition, organization or processing, storage and dissemination or transferring of information resources) with the justification of reduced cost and or increased performance. Interestingly, these processes of using computers and its related technologies (software) in performing library functions and or services has benefited the library world most especially the university libraries in a number of ways. The outstanding ones among the arrays of benefits accruing from the use of computer software in the 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 and retrieval of information; It also created new services as Current Awareness Services (CAS), resent accession list, access to online databanks, Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) and resource sharing; It has improved statistical records and reporting; With Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs), there is an improved access to library data-bases by the users P.25. Specifically, library oriented software packages are of varying type (s) with varying designs as well (depending on whether they are in modules or integrated). As these software are task specific and institution or organization dependent, with some of them custom-built; a good number of them abounds in the market. The examples of some of these library oriented software are: 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, to name but a few. In Nigeria, very few of these packages are in use in university libraries. Fore instance, studies have shown that virtually all federal university 6 libraries have Tin-Lib. This is because the federal government through the National University Commission (NUC) with National University Network (NUNET) acquired TinLib for all the federal University libraries in Nigeria (Oyinloye, 2004). More so, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) distributed CDS/ISIS free of charge to some university libraries in Nigeria. Other library oriented software packages in use in Nigerian university libraries are: Alice for WINDOWS, X-Lib, ResourceMate, Lib-Plus, Slam, Koha, and GLAS. Technically, these arrays of packages individually have specific attribute; but below are some of the general attribute that are expected of a reliable library oriented packages.