LIBRARY SKILLS

Introduction;

The academic environment is a place for teaching, learning, and research and knowledge
creation. The library is a vital facility for enhancing learning, teaching, and research, and as
the hub of all academic activities, is established for provoking intellectual excellence. The
library is an information resource that provides and enhances personal and national
development, and more so influence students’ overall academic achievement. Thus, the
effective utilization of information resources in the library is critical to students’ overall
academic achievement. The study skill(s) adopted determine to a large extent how well
students utilize information resources culminating in academic success.

A library therefore is an organized (acquired, processed, preserved) collection of books and

non-books materials available for retrieval and use by library patrons who seek for
information, read, learn and research.

Library skills are the These are techniques that enable a library user to make efficient use of
the library and reap maximum benefits from it. These skills include appreciating the role of a
university library, distinguishing the library classification system, using catalogues, doing
book previews, and writing bibliographies.

TYPES OF LIBRARIES

We have various types of libraries where people can go and read, research, reference and,
borrow books, manuals, newspapers, magazines and so on.

Libraries are categorized by the purposes they serve. The main types are summarized as
follows.

1. National Library

A national library keeps all documents of and about a nation under some legal provision
and thus represents publications of and about the whole nation.

Their main function is to ensure that all the publications of a particular country are

acquired and preserved for posterity.

Examples include;
 • British Library- London
• Library of Congress- Washington

Other functions include;

• Producing a national bibliography

• Holding and keeping up to date a large and representative collection of foreign
literature, including books about the country
• Acting as a national bibliographical information centre
• Compiling union catalogues

2. Academic Libraries

They are found in various institutions of learning but with similar aims. In institutions

of higher learning such as the universities, colleges and polytechnics, their main aim

is to support learning, teaching and research activities, In primary, and secondary

schools they form the basis for wide reading and references. The purposes,

services, equipment and other physical facilities of these libraries are determined by the
nature of the curriculum and size of the faculty and students.

The functions of an academic library in a school, college and university;

• To provide facilities for all teaching, learning, educational and research programme

of the school, college and university

• To cater for the information needs of teachers, students, researchers associated with
the institution
• It provides facilities to its users for intellectual development which is a power of
acquiring ideas through individual efforts
• It conserves knowledge
• By putting knowledge to use for res7earch purpose it makes extension of knowledge
• By providing latest knowledge to teachers in their field for effective teaching it
makes transmission of knowledge possible.
 3. Public Libraries

They serve the general public at all levels. Their aim is to provide information over the
whole range of human knowledge, promote culture and play a positive part in
encouraging an active use of leisure and recreational time. Examples of public libraries
are the Kenya National Library Services (KNLS) and the Macmillan Library.

4. Special

A special Library is a library established, supported and administered by a business firm,

private corporation, association, government agency, or other special interest group or agency
to meet the information needs of its members or staff in pursuing the goals of the
organization. Scope of collections and services is limited to the subject of interest of the host
or parent organisation. Examples include ICIPE, ILARD, KIE, ICRAF, AMREF, UNESCO
and Bankers’ Institute Libraries.

The functions of a special library;

• It selects and procures documents and other sources of relevant information

• It processes the procured information or documents with the help of classification,
cataloguing, shelf arrangements to make them easily available for the users
• It subscribes to a good number of journals related to its area
• It provides indexing and abstracting services to the users to save their time
• It gives translation services to provide the desired information to the users in their
convenient language

5. Digital Libraries

These are mainly accessed through computers with internet facilities. They store up to date
information of diversified fields.

Other types of libraries include;

 • Children’s libraries which are special collections of books intended for juvenile
readers and usually kept in separate rooms of general public libraries
• Research libraries contains an in-depth collection of material on one or more
subjects. It supports scholarly research and will generally include primary as well as
secondary sources; it will maintain permanent collections and attempt to provide
access to all necessary material.
• Reference libraries a reference library does not lend books and other items; instead,
they must be read at the library itself. Typically such libraries are used for research
purposes in the university.

ORGANISATION OF LIBRARY MATERIALS

Organization of library resources, broadly speaking, refers to the process of getting library
materials including books and non-book into an arranged form so as to aid easy retrieval of
such materials and for posterity. Specifically, organization of library materials refers to the
cataloguing and classification of library materials. Cataloguing is the process of describing a
book or non-book material. Classification, on the other hand is the process by which we
group things according to their likeness and separate them according to the differences.

The need for organizing library material is to:

maximize search capabilities for users;

display the available resources and;

minimize physical, intellectual and time barriers.

The material has to be organized in such a way that it becomes easier for library staff and the
library users to find information they require.

Purpose of organising library materials;

It is important to organize library materials for easier location of the same thus saving the
time of the users in locating documents. Subject access in the case of certain subject material
also becomes easy and the place looks tidy. The purpose of organizing library material is to:

ensure location of library material;

facilitate easy accessibility of the material;

enhance the effective utilization of the material; and attract users to the library .
Steps in organising the library materials;

The main goal of every library is to share information with the user community.

It is sometimes easy to get involved up in the details of organizing a library that we lose sight
of that goal. How we organize the books is not as important as the end result. An organizing
system is only successful if it makes it easier for library staff and the library users to find
desired information as and when required.

The steps of organizing library materials are:

a) Acquisition

To start organizing a library, a librarian must know what he or she needs. To do this, the first
step is to identify collection requirements.

b) Collection development

Once a librarian has assessed the collection requirements, the next step is to begin acquiring
those items. In this step, it is imperative that a librarian knows the best ways in which to
acquire necessary items. Various steps involved are:

• Select materials based on the availability of funds.

• Place orders for purchase
• Acquire the material
• Maintain the records of newly acquired material
c) Technical processing of library material

Libraries adopt various methods to organize their material. As most of the libraries have open
access facility for their users, the following steps are taken to organize library material:

Process new material

o Classification of material

o Cataloguing of material

Physical processing (stamping, pasting, labelling, etc.)

Display the resources

Storing and shelving

Besides the above, the library material must be maintained if it has to stay effective and
relevant to the changing technologies. For this, librarians must adopt various procedures
related to maintenance in order to keep the collection current and functional. This requires:

Care of library resources

Shelf maintenance

Maintaining records of collection development and use

Identifying the lost and damaged materials

Housekeeping activities for the collection

Library classification systems

The purpose of classification in the library is to group documents on the same subject
(Likeness) together in one class; and to provide formal orderly access to the shelves. This
process is accomplished by using various classification schemes.

There are several classification schemes but in this course, only two will be briefly
considered. These are:

1. Library of Congress Classification Scheme (LCC)

2. Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)

1. Library of Congress classification scheme

This classification scheme derives its name from the library of congress from which it was
devised. It is, however used in many libraries. It consists of twenty-one major classes
represented by letters of the Alphabet (A-Z).

Advantages include

i. Classification by discipline
ii. Economy of notation
iii. Alphabetically and geographically transparent

iv. Lots of room for growth

iv. Hospitable

Disadvantages include
 i. Piecemeal
ii. Few mnemonic devices
iii. No overall instructions

iv. It is highly US-centric because of the nature of the system, and it has been translated
into far fewer languages than DDC and UDC.

iv. No overall index

v. Library of Congress Classification is almost totally enumerative.

2. Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)

The Dewey Decimal Classification scheme devised by Melvil Dewey is the oldest and the
most widely used in the world. It was first published in 1876. The scheme arranges library
materials into ten classes using Arabic numerals in the range 000-900.

Advantages of DDC

i. The Dewey decimal classification system is universal because of its numerical notation.

A system based on Arabic numerals is used throughout the world.

ii.Documents are classified by subject. Those interested or specialized in a particular topic

can find all the documents they need under the same classification.

iii.Simplicity because of its notational, a mnemonics system and a hierarchical decimal place
system, it is generally easier to use

iv.Dewey decimal classification is more flexible than Library of Congress Classification

because of greater use of facets (via auxiliary tables).

Disadvantages of DDC

i. DDC was developed in the 19th century essentially by one man and was built on a
top-down approach to classify all human knowledge, which makes it difficult to
adapt to changing fields of knowledge.
ii. It is less hospitable to the addition of new subjects. DDC notations can be much
longer compared to other classification systems.
iii. Dewey system has highly artificial nature of the original division, and the
assumption that knowledge can be conveniently sliced into divisions of ten, no
more and no less.
The library catalogue

A catalogue is list of available materials in a library arranged systematically. The

arrangement facilitates the use of the collections and also acts as a guide to the library's
materials. The main uses of the catalogue therefore are to:

a) Enables a person to find a document of which either the author, the title of the subject
is known

b) Show what the library has by a given author or in a given subject

c) Show which editions of a particular work are in the library

Types of library catalogue

i. Author card: a formal catalogue, sorted alphabetically according to the author’s or

editor’s names of the entries.

ii. Title catalogue: a formal catalogue, sorted alphabetically according to the title of the
entries.

iii. Dictionary catalogue: a catalogue in which all entries (author, title, subject, series) are
interfiled in a single alphabetical order. This was the primary form of card catalogue in
North American libraries just prior to the introduction of the computer-based catalogue.

iv. Keyword catalogue: a subject catalogue, sorted alphabetically according to some

system of keywords.

v. Mixed alphabetic catalogue forms: sometimes, one finds a mixed author / title, or an
author / title / keyword catalogue.

vi. Systematic catalogue: a subject catalogue, sorted according to some systematic

subdivision of subjects. Also called a classified catalogue.

vi. Shelf list catalogue: a formal catalogue with entries sorted in the same order as
bibliographic items are shelved. This catalogue may also serve as the primary
inventory for the library.

The objectives of library catalogue

There are basically three objectives of a library catalogue as discussed below;

i.To enable a person to find a book of which either of the following is known: (Identifying
objective)

a. the author

b. the title

c. the subject

d. the category

ii. To show what the library has (Collocating objective)

a. by a given author

b. on a given subject

c. in a given kind of literature

iii. To assist in the choice of a book (Evaluating objective)
a. as to its edition (bibliographically)
b. as to its character (literary or topical)

Information sources and services

Information sources are carrier of information. In general information sources can be

divided into three

1. Primary Information sources: these are first hand source of information narrated by
see witnesses, examples are memoir, dairies, daily newspapers, autobiographies, etc.

2. Secondary Information Sources: these are edited primary sources of information, they
contain explanation, detail descriptions, analysis of primary sources. example textbooks.
However, some authors argue that secondary sources are pointers to tertiary sources,
such as abstracts, bibliography, indexes etc.

3. Tertiary Information Sources: these are well organized sources of information in either,
chronological, alphabetical, or numerical order for easy retrieval. examples are the
reference materials: dictionary, encyclopaedia, compendium etc.

Yes, all these information sources can be found in library.

Users information needs will determine the use of all these information sources.

in summary. the information sources are used to satisfy information need.