TABLE CONTENT
Title
page – – – – – – – – – – –
Certification
– – – – – – – – – – –
Approval
page – – – – – – – – – – –
Dedication
– – – – – – – – – – –
Acknowledgement
– – – – – – – – – –
Table
of contents- – – – – – – – – – –
List
of Tables- – – – – – – – – – –
Abstract- – – – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION – – – – – – –
Background
of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Statement
of the Problem- – – – – – – – –
Purpose
of Study- – – – – – – – – – –
Significance
of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Research Questions- – – – – – – – – –
Scope
of the study- – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER TWO:
LITERATURE REVIEW– – – – – –
Definition
of Concepts- – – – – – – – – –
Methods
of Special Collection Acquisition in Academic Libraries- — –
Organization
of Special Collections- – – – – – – –
Users
Services in Academic Libraries – – – – – – –
Problems
of Special Collection Management Academic Libraries – – –
Summary
of Literature Review – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER THREE:
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY– – –
Research
Design – – – – – – – – – – –
Area
of the Study – – – – – – – – – – –
Population
of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Sample
and Sampling Technique – – – – – – – –
Method
of Data Collection- – – – – – – – –
Instrument
for Data Collection- – – – – – – – –
Validation
of the Instrument – – – – – – – – –
Method
of Data Analysis – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER FOUR:
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA- –
Research
question one – – – – – – – – – –
Research
question two – – – – – – – – – –
Research
question three- – – – – – – – – –
Research
question four- – – – – – – – – –
Research question five – – – – – – – – – –
Research
question six – – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER FIVE:
Discussion, Conclusion, Recommendations .- – –
Conclusion
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Implications
of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Recommendation
– – – – – – – – – – –
Limitation
of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Summary
of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Suggestions
for Further Research- – – – – – – –
References
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Appendix- – – – – – – – – – – –
LIST OF TABLE
Table 1: Number of
staff in the Special Collections Division
Table 2: Number of users of the Special Collections Division randomly
selected.
Table 3: Types of research resources available in the Special Collections
Division.
Table 4: Methods of resources acquisition during the period of the study.
Table 5: Ways the resources are arranged or organized.
Table 6: Effect of reduced funding on the resources and services.
Table 7: Extent to users satisfaction.
Table 8: Strategies for improvement.
THESIS ABSTRACT
The
objective of this research was to investigate the management
of the Special Collection Division in
a period of reduced funding in Nnamdi Azikiwe Library, University of Nigeria,
Nsukka. Six research questions were framed to guide the study. It was a case
study. The population comprise of all the users of Special Collection Division,
the Library Staff working there and the University Librarian himself. A sample
population was made of 14 staff and 75 users of different categories.
Questionnaire and oral interview were the instrument use for data collection
while data collected was analyzed using frequency tables. The major findings of
the study were as follows. There is a lack of bibliographic tools for
processing of the resources, there is inadequate resources that are acquired
and stocked for users, users are frustrated as a result of lack of learning
resources they need and few learning resources are acquired for teaching and
learning. A number of recommendations were made that could help alleviate the
condition such as provision of more space for better organization of materials,
taking acquisition tour to fill gaps in government document from Nigeria and
paying for United Nations Documents, introduction of information technology in
the management of Special Collection, recruiting more hands to handle materials
organization and services in the division, prudent management of available
resources as well as customer-oriented services, among others.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The
quality of the management of any organization, whether it be a corporation, a
government agency or a museum has a great deal to do with ultimate success of
the group involved Mount (1984). This certainly holds true for libraries
including those devoted to special collections. There is un-doubtable general
agreement that the degree to which Special Collection Division achieve
high standard of performance in dealing with their users especially during
period of reduced funding depends chiefly upon the administrative ability of
the library managers.
Special Collection according to Love
and Feather (1998) are collection of materials, which are distinguished by
their age, rarity, provenance, subject matter, or some other definition
characteristics. They are a traditional feature of many academic libraries, and
an important resource for primary research in the humanities and the historical
social science. According to Harrods’s Librarian Glossary (1995) special
collections are a collections of books connected with local history,
celebrities, industries etc or on a certain subject or period or gathered for
some particular reason in library which is general in character. Beemer (1984)
pointed out that special collections division were formed for administrative
convenience in libraries to take care of miscellaneous non-conforming library
such as photographic collections, incunabula, and literary manuscripts,
“archive” of the institutional variety are a recent addition to the list.
Nearly all academic libraries
including Nnamdi Azikiwe Library, University
of Nigeria, Nsukka have
some part of the collection which have to be treated in a special way: a
collection of rare valuable books, important donations, or achieves etc. In
many cases these special collections are resources of national important, the
qualities unique to special collections according to Scham (1987) set this
department apart from the rest of the library and frequently from the library
administration as well. The decision according to him by libraries to replace
the term “rare books” with “special collection” has been of incalculable significance
to both libraries and their users. If “rare books” traditionally includes
mainly old, rare, unique and valuable works, the change and expansion of such
holdings offered by the term “special collection” becomes apparent immediately.
Special Collection frequently exceed
these boundaries. A distinguished scholar may donate his or her papers,
recordings, video tapes and books or a government may establish a special
collection, to include everything on the subject of its politics, history and
commerce, which would include both the oldest and most recent publications in
order to maintain and complete a library as possible. There is nothing
mysterious about the reasons for the existence of special collection. Indeed,
it would be faire to say that without them in our libraries and institutions
our society would be grievously poorer. And even now, despite our efforts great
gaps exist in our knowledge about certain societies. We learn about human
history by studying human works, neglect or destroy those works and we will
have caused those who have proceeded us to have lived in vain by having made it
impossible for them to hand down to us the fruits of their labour and
experiences.
Special Collection exist because of
the research needs of students, staff and researchers. It provides specialized
information for researchers and other categories of users. Special Collections
also preserve our human heritage, which are rare “materials” and such
collections are indispensable for scholarship. All special collections division
with undoubtedly have operating cost which, unless are remarkable we and consistently
funded, will have an effect up to the overall operation of the library.
Unfortunately, the economic problem of the country started to manifest in the
late eighties and was aggravated in the eighties to the fluctuation in grant
allocation to the universities and indeed their libraries Kolo, (1999). This
situation makes it even more imperative for proper management of existing
special collection in academic libraries.
Management according to Edoka,
(2000) refer to a special group of people whose job is to combine and utilize
the organizational resources of men, money, information items and other
resources to achieve organizational objectives. Library management according to
the Harrods’s Librarians’ Glossary (1995) entails organizing motivating staff,
securing resources and evaluating performance. According to Shafrits (1985)
management can be referred to both the people responsible for running an
organization and the running process itself, the utilization of numerous
resources to accomplish an organizational goal. On his own part Johnson (1990)
refers to management as the effective use and coordination of resources such as
capital, plants, materials and labour to achieve defined objectives with
maximum efficiency.
For the purpose of this work,
management means those people whose duty it is to effectively use the resources
of any organization, such as materials, labour and capital to achieve the
purpose of its establishment.
Special Collection Department
carryout these tasks by determining the direction of the Division, determining
the fiscal constraints of the Division, determining the type and size of staff
and how best to motivate for effective service/productivity and periodically
examining the division performance among other strategies Mount, (1984). The
management of libraries generally and in particular Special Collection has
never been an easy task even at the best of time. At a time of dwindling
resources, the management of special collection therefore, becomes a great
challenge to the library administrations. In the past, libraries and
information centers had to manually manage their information resources. The laboriousness
of such practice, the attendant delay in information processing and delivery
services and general ineffectiveness of information services at that time no
doubt motivated serious research into the better means of information
management.
Nwalo (2000), said that the
information technologies found in libraries at present can be divided into
three categories: computer storage, media and telecommunication. These three
aspects, working together have brought about great improvement in the quantity
and quality of library services to users and an amazing reduction in the
delivery time. With the emergence of the Internet, the world has been truly
reduced to a global information village. This world wide network, though
designed to serve the information needs and interests of all facets of the
society has provided a great boost to library services generally and special
collections in particular.
The availability and access of
special collections in the information technologies is a welcome development
and should be integrated with other library collections with the aim of
maximizing services to users. As result of increased pressures and demands, and
in view of the reduced funding experienced in most libraries, concerted effort
will inevitably be spent on the process of resources management in academic libraries
in future. Proper management in academic libraries collection becomes
imperative if the general objectives of any university library should be
achieved. In order to achieve optimum result, a number of strategies should be
put in place to manage special collections in the face of reduced funding.
The Nnamdi Azikiwe Library
University of Nigeria Nsukka Special Collection Division was set up to acquire,
process and service and assortment of special document of grate relevance to
the research students and the academic staff, Okorie (1998). The library was
opened in October 1960 occupying temporary two tiny rooms in the faculty of
education building. The Africana collection otherwise known as Special
Collections today, opened in a room of its own with an initial collection of
one thousand five hundred volumes of books
in September, 1964. Many of the books in the special collections were donations
from the late right honorable Dr.Nnamdi Azikiwe Obi, (1986). According to
Okorie, (1998) Nnamdi Azikiwe Library Special Collection habours a number nudocuments,
which include Africana, Achebeana, Biafrana, Government documents/Achieves and
United Nations Publications. This division is part of the general
administrative system of the librar
