Inadequate Fund
Effective library management and provision of services depends upon the availability of adequate funding. While preparing the budget for e-resources, one should consider the high price of e-resources, price fluctuations, different pricing models, inflation etc.
The emergence of e-resources, librarians is faced with the challenge of acquiring sophisticated materials needed to access and use of these materials. The cost of acquiring such material is really a problem in the face of inadequate funding. Funding still remains one of the outstanding problems hindering the growth libraries in many parts of the country. Lacks of funds hamper the adequate continuous training of the library staff. Eze (2012) stressed that inadequate funding is a major hindrance to the development and maintenance of e-resource especially in developing countries. Computerization and automation of library services and subsequent acquisition of e-resources can only be facilitated when there is adequate fund to do so.
Fund is critical to any library initiative, especially electronic information resources. E-resources are very costly in terms of hardware and software. Most academic librarians have been unable to satisfy the information needs of their academic users, as it is rather expensive to regularly subscribe to every book and journals needed by them. Lack of funds has posed a major challenge towards effective integration of ICT and acquisition of relevant e-resources. Majority of the academic libraries does not have separate budget for e-resources.
Inadequate funding or lack of it is a major challenge faced by the academic librarian while developing e-resource collection. This is most affected in the acquisition of computers, application s...
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...es the librarian ensure that those catalogued e-resources are preserved and made accessible for the present as well as the future users? Third, given the mutability of electronic records, how does the librarian ensure that the catalogue records reflect the present state of the catalogued document? Internet resources change in content and computer location or disappear permanently. The librarian has no control over whether or when such changes happen. The burden of responsibility for discovering changes on e-resources lay on the librarian who catalogued them. As Martin Dillon and Eric Jul of OCLC put it, “maintaining a link between a bibliographic record and the resource it describes is essential, but the volatility of internet resources can make this difficult. Overcoming this volatility of resource availability must be a high priority for research and testing".
Whenever a person logs onto and begins to use a computer in the library, different kinds of information are automatically collected into transaction logs (Jansen, 2006). Sullenger (1997) recommends transaction logs “be examined by librarians to analyze how patrons use the catalog, what features they are using, and to see what areas of searching are problematic” (p. 21). Data can also be collected on “items viewed, sessions, site penetration; time online, users (trace evidence of, not individual information), navigational information” (Nicholas, Huntington, Jamali & Tenopir, 2006, p. 121). These data pieces provide useful information on usage patterns (Das & Turkoglu, 2009).
This library system is utilizing all the technologies and materials available to them to serve the community in the best way. Despite certain social indicators and demographic statistics indicating that the library should not be overly utilized, it is thriving and is heavily in use. There are areas that the library can look to improve based on statistical evidence, such as reaching out to the low income population and the over 55 years age group. This library seems to be meeting numerous needs for a wide range of patrons, and doing it well.
Nodoushani, O., & Yang, C. (2011). E-Print industry and bookseller market: A Strategic perspective. Competition Forum, 9(2), 319-324. Retrieved February 24, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2548633731).
Sperazi, L. An Evaluation of the IBM PALS Program for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Newton Highlands, MA: Evaluation Research, 1990. (ED 328 267)
“Guidelines and Considerations for Developing a Public Library Internet Use Policy.” American Library Association. 2000. American Library Association, Office for Intellectual Freedom. Accessed 1 April 2008. http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/otherpolicies/guidelinesconsiderations.cfm
Automated is transform the materials or records into digital form. As the era of the technology present, the demanding of digital records is drastically increased. Automated records may present archivists their greatest challenge in identifying, selecting, and preserving records of enduring value. Since the introduction of the computer, archivists have been concerned about its impact on their profession's mission. Based on report by the National Archives of Canada on machine-readable data stated that "if one were to take the traditional archival approach of waiting for whatever recorded information came out of the system, then the archivist in the electronic age will undoubtedly die of information starvation."23 Over the past decade archivists have tried to redefine their role in the modern information age, 24 but many seem to have been merely paying lip service to society's major shift to an "information" era. At present one can count on one hand the number of major programs established to deal with automated records, and these are only located at some of the largest archival institutions - The National Archives of Canada, the U.S. National Archives, and the New York, Utah, and Kentucky state archives. Contrast this with the facts: computers have been used for three decades, personal computers have become an ubiquitous feature of society in just the past decade, and a major portion of all information presently being created is going into automated systems of some variety. Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that archivists are not effectively appraising such information nor using the helpful findings of previous research. 25 Current research is, however, both innovative and promising. Archivists have made substantial pro...
The review of operations which had initially been signed with the Coutts company had to be halted due to operational constraints. The dilemma of the traditional versus the new methods of management brought to the surface the question of whether the traditional methods scored over the new purchase management software like the PDA. A very negative aspect which was not due to the fault of the system but due to an error in setting the upper limit for purchases in the library which was observed to cause a overshooting the budgetary limits due to a faulty definition of the upper limit for a book. The triggered a lot of activity of students who were not very conversant that they were working in a PDA environment. Book purchases due to the low threshold of purchase limit and these were subsequently never read. The local ISBN also caused a lot of problems which is an operational matter to be resolved with Coutts. The habit of academicians to bookmark titles also added to the complexity. This resulted in a redesign issue to ensure that bookmarked issues were kept alive at the end of a plan period.
Information technology services industry is a highly competitive cost based operation sector where availability of resources, tangible and intangible is key to successful projects. This makes a significant challenge to accurately reconcile capacity and demand. OpenText is a leader in providing enterprise content management solutions and we will analyse consulting services provided in the European market along with effect on demand with today’s changing economic environment.
Adaptive Technology Equipment for the Library. Lisiecki, Christine; Computers in Libraries, v19 n6 p18-20,22 Jun 1999
A library or information unit must have a dedicated plan on having an organized Collection Development Policy, represents the guideposts of all types of library institutions. Collection development is the process of planning, selecting, acquiring and evaluating the library collections’ convenience to print and electronic collection developments. Thus, it is essential to have a written collection development policy, a statement of general collection building principles with desalinating the purpose and content of a collection in terms of relevance and internal audiences (Clayton and Gorman 2007). Broadly, the international and local libraries have sketched written collection development policies which they are aware of its uses. Recently, the written policies consistently renewed with the rise of digital collections. However, the value of the written collection development plan shakes with the complexity of managing electronic resources, funding and time considerations, criticism on how it written and also its inflexibility. This essay will examine the arguments for having the advantages of the written collection development policy (CDP) and the issues evolve which against the latter.
In the world of preservation and library science the common focus is on preserving content, ensuring its longevity, findability, and a stable consistent metadata and technology solution, However we live in an age where everyone is a publisher of some form, and more consistently the content they produce will be in a digital rather than analogue form. Within that content there will always be varying amounts of metadata, some will be populated with an immense detail and granularity, some content will have been created with no human intervention to add additional information to it. In fact much of the digital material produced will have been done so by people who have no concept of metadata, and no inclination to know about it or time to use it. The question raised by Smiths statement highlights many of the issues around data preservation and digital content, with metadata only being a part of those issues, but integral to the ongoing management of the massive influx of digital content being produced.
Kingma, B. R. (2001). The economics of information: A guide to economic and cost-benefit analysis for information professionals (2nd ed.). United States of America: Libraries Unlimited.
Maverick electronic journals are no longer alone on the Internet. A string of initiatives has placed a stunning amount of textual material on-line for purchase or direct retrieval. For example publishing companies and University p...
The discussion into the relevance of this question can only be fabricated based on the definitive consideration of the internet, a key digital facet that expedites the abrasion of print publications. The internet has rendered access to information very effective, easy and strategic. Gone are the days when one would walk miles to the nearest library in order to satisfy their appetite for reading. With the internet, information storage has largely been restructured and can be retrieved in various digital forms. It is therefore commonsensical to assume that many publications, previously in print form, will eventually appear in digital format as e-books. To champions of printed books, this futuristic scenario provides the basis for their arguments.
The Bibliographic Chain is a process whereby information proceeds through an individual’s imagination/mind to its final resting place which may be in the format of an encyclopaedia summary [1]. The Bibliographic Chain contains eleven progressive links which consists of: knowledge within human resources; information created by institutions; documents that are currently being worked on; unpublished studies and findings; periodicals; reports and monographs; services (indexing and abstracting); bibliographic lists and essays/reports; yearly reviews and prolific reports, books and encyclopaedic summaries [5].