Introduction
Harrod’s (2000), outlined faculty library as an organized assortment of books positioned in a faculty for the usage of academics and pupils, however normally for pupils. It could comprise books of reference and or books for home studying and within the care of knowledgeable librarian, or teacher-librarian. It’s variously name “Tutorial Supplies Centre”, “Studying Centre or Media centre.”
The College library serves as a service agency which helps the colleges’ goals and gives supplies for all topics and all curiosity of pupils and academics. The varsity library is a supportive useful resource of the college curriculum, its provisions, services, and development is directed at aiding faculty programmes (Kinnel, 1994).
Libraries usually have as their important objective buying, processing, storing and disseminating info to which faculty library shouldn’t be an exception. The varsity library has an important function to play within the info service. They supply supplies related to the curricular wants of everyone with the college group. The significance of offering such sources can’t be overemphasized if the college library is to be an instigator of and help for useful resource primarily based studying within the faculty.
Additionally, in relation to info expertise, the library and its librarian, make obtainable supplies and services in numerous varieties to permit each pupils and the college group to make use of these expertise to find the knowledge they want.
The aim and philosophy of college library service are quickly being understood and accepted by faculty directors and academics. The very fact necessitates that the college librarian be totally conversant in these functions akin to steerage, the studying programme and the enrichment programme for pupils and academics. Nonetheless, Albert Academy library has no educated and certified librarian, who understands and performs these functions as a way to make sure that the service provision is absolutely attained.
Albert Academy College Library
The Albert Academy was inaugurated on the 4th October 1904. It was till 1975 when the Albert Academy Alumni Affiliation of their assembly thought it smart that such a good establishment should not go with out a library because the development of college libraries was at its highest peak at the moment. An idea to erect a library constructing was born with the collaboration of the alumni affiliation and the homeowners of the college that’s the United Methodist Church. The library was established with the purpose of getting a spot the place pupils may go and discover new ideas to additional strengthen their faculty curriculum actions and leisure as effectively.
The library was formally opened to the whole faculty group by His Excellency the late Dr. Siaka P. Stevens on 4th October 1976, then President of the Republic of Sierra Leone and likewise a member of the Albert Academy Alumni Affiliation class of 1922. The library was named after him following the immense contribution he made in direction of establishing the library for the college group. The Albert Academy Library has a mission to “Help faculty curriculum actions by offering supplies of relevance within the faculty course of and to introduce new and improved info sources to assist make the college to be consistent with fashionable requirements of training.”
The goals of the Albert Academy faculty library are as follows:
I. To supply pupils with library supplies and services most acceptable and most significant of their development and development;
ii. To take part absolutely at school programmes because it strikes to fulfill the wants of pupils, academics, mother and father and others group members;
iii. to stimulate and information pupils in all phases of their studying that they might discover growing enjoyment and satisfaction and will grow in crucial judgment and appreciation;
iv. To make obtainable new development and hold pupils abreast of contemporary tendencies in training acknowledge reader’s wants and conserving them effectively knowledgeable as a way to create a effectively dynamic academic setting;
v. To work with the trainer within the choice and manufacturing of academic supplies that meet the goals of the curriculum, supply steerage in the usage of assortment, analysis of training programmes and supplies, facilitates the situation, organisation and upkeep of supplies effectively; and
vi. To assist pupils to develop into expert customers of libraries and of printed and audio-visual supplies.
Library Provision at Albert Academy College Library
A significant function within the info service offered by fashionable faculty library is within the provision of supplies related to the curricular wants of pupils and academics. In recent times, the curriculum actions have moved to a different stage, the place the college being supportive useful resource of this motion, should endeavor to house a wide range of print and non-print supplies and have entry the place potential to digital sources of data that are additionally a part of the knowledge sources within the library.
Given the calls for of the trendy faculty curriculum, the college library should now house all kinds of print and non-print supplies and have entry, the place potential, to digital sources of data. The Albert Academy College gives printed supplies, e book, fiction and non-fiction in addition to pamphlets, newspapers, chart, footage, monographs, manuals, handbooks, textbooks and different reference books the library additionally gives non-books supplies which embody audio and audio-visual supplies, slides, tape-slides, video cassettes, and CD ROM’s. Though these are usually not supplies within the conventional sense, they nonetheless represent sources to be used by pupils and academics. Use of digital sources assist faculty libraries to current pupils and academics with an idea of a College Data Centre which isn’t continued to the college however is a hyperlink to an endless provide of data (Herring, 1988).
Albert Academy College Library Services
The aim of building Albert Academy College Library is to supply services for each pupils and academics in a bid to satisfy one in every of its main functions, which is to help curriculum targets by offering services which might be indispensably linked to the fulfillment of this objective.
One of many principal services of the Albert Academy College library is to behave as back-up to the underneath resourced faculty programme. Even superior international locations can’t simply inventory supplies starting from 5 thousand (5,000) to twenty thousand (20,000) in a small room to supply assist to high school programmes. Subsequently, they see the necessity for central inventory of supplies which may be borrowed for differing lengths of time (lending service) and likewise for studying and session services. That is completed as a way to increase the college curriculum on the Albert Academy which is inclusive of the Fundamental Sciences and Know-how, Social Sciences, Humanities and the Fine Arts.
Albert Academy College library additionally gives inter-library mortgage services requests. That is notably precious to senior pupils finding out matters throughout topics supplied in depth. Pupils who can’t afford to buy or entry such costly supplies profit from such a library service. By way of inter-library mortgage services, supplies are sourced from different colleges libraries for the advantage of each pupils and academics.
A reference service can be offered at Albert Academy College library. The College Librarians spend a sizeable proportion of their time offering what in different libraries time period could be termed as reference service. In offering a reference service, faculty Librarians carry out the same function to that of different librarians. In a reference interview at school, every pupil is handled as vital as the opposite and given the Librarian’s full consideration. That is achieved by personal help given to the pupils and academics to find particular info whether or not direct or oblique. A few of the reference supplies on the Albert Academy College Library are dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, yearbooks, biographies newspapers, maps and charts, and the tutorial and administrative calendar of occasions or the operation of the college.
Some of the precious services offered by Albert Academy College library is that of data provision. The Albert Academy College library retains the academics and pupils knowledgeable about new academic sources and development within the fields of curiosity to them by displaying the jackets of books that simply arrived. The Albert Academy College library makes use of Present Consciousness Services (CAS) to attain this purpose. That is completed by figuring out the knowledge wants of each academics and pupils and assembly these wants. Linked to the CAS is the Selective Dissemination of Data (SDI) and that is extra explicit with academics. This ranges from conserving particular person academics knowledgeable about new sources within the library or about newly printed supplies, to alerting academics to conferences and course calls for or occasion linked to their curricular curiosity.
Challenges of Library Provision and Services on the Albert Academy College Library
It doesn’t matter what an organisation has to depend as success, is sure to face sure difficulties that stand earlier than it as challenges to its success. College Libraries in Sierra Leone, particularly Albert Academy College Library are usually not with out challenges.
To start out with the library and its sources have been ignored by the pupils and academics. Regardless of their all-important nature of service provision in help to them they don’t see it as a precious a part of their actions. It’s because most academics and pupils don’t get sufficient provide of textbooks and different supplies immediately linked to the curriculum programme and most academics put together pamphlets on the market to pupils from which there instructing is predicated. This has precipitated a lot of the pupils to closely depend upon these sources as an alternative of the library sources.
The College Library has a staffing problem. For instance the Albert Academy College Library has no skilled library workers to deal with an info service for over two thousand pupils and academics.
Moreover, the library has a problem with area. The area offered for the library from inception is not sufficient for the college. The varsity inhabitants by way of academics and pupils has grown comparatively excessive to over two thousand (2000) pupils and workers as in comparison with the area offered for a bit over 5 hundred (500) pupils and workers about 40 years in the past. It has develop into troublesome to entry the library and its sources.
As well as, there’s a funding downside. The Albert Academy College Library is confronted with the difficultly of securing funds from the colleges authorities for an efficient assortment development. The library relies upon closely on donations and items to inventory its assortment and most of those supplies given on this guise are usually not reflective of the programs supplied within the faculty curriculum. Typically, the college administration has to unfold meager monetary sources throughout a large spectrum of college wants 인천커피학원.
The institution of the pc laboratory with slight web amenities unbiased of the college library has additionally created an issue for the Albert Academy College Library. The academics and pupils would like to go to the Laptop centre for Web services rather more that visiting the library. The separation of the Web amenities from the library services has posed a severe risk to the library provision and services.
Additionally, it’s fairly confirmed that the Albert Academy College Library lacks the capability to supply for the visually impaired or handicapped. The absence of college library supplies within the Braille format prevents blind and the partially sighted pupils to make the most of the obtainable library sources of their colleges libraries.
Remaining, the problem of preservation of library supplies shouldn’t be a standard observe for the Albert Academy College. This preservation is meant to make sure that the supplies final lengthy due to their frequent use. It has develop into troublesome to entry funds to protect supplies which might be underneath risk of carrying out by way of steady use.
Regardless of some gloomy predictions on the long run funding of training and potential restrictions on the provision of sources on the Albert Academy College Library, the way forward for the college library appears assured. It may be argued that due to present academic and technological tendencies, there has by no means been a higher want for well-resourced and professionally staffed faculty library than it’s now. The emphasis on the person’s-the kid’s and the adult’s-ability to seek out and use info successfully is prone to proceed in colleges, at work and for spare time activities. A future society depending on digital info for its prosperity will want an info curriculum in its colleges. Therefore the provision of fine faculty library provision and services within the faculty curriculum can’t be overemphasised (Kargbo, 2000).