BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
2.4 Library services
This section deals with services the library provides to users. These services include:
lending, reference, electronic journals, catalogues, computers and printing.
2.4.1 Lending services
The library maintains lending services to its users. Users in good standing with the University are allowed to borrow books from the general circulating collection. The
normal loan period for books is two weeks. Materials may be renewed once, provided no one else has requested them. Fines are charged for failing to return the book within the allotted time period of two weeks for students and a semester for academic staff. All books are returned to the library at the end of each semester; no books are signed out over the holidays, although users are allowed to use the library's resources within the facility during school breaks. Students who fail to return books for any reason are billed for their replacement cost (Horst 2003). According to Sanga (2006), the current statistics show that 500 to 600 users borrow books every day at the circulation desk. For the short loan, about 4000 transactions are done every day.
2.4.2 Special reserve collection (Short loan) services
The library maintains a Special Reserve Collection as a service to the faculty and students. The short loan collection is located behind the circulation desk. High demand material, including faculty members' personal resources, are kept in this separate room and are available for in-library use only. This material is available for a prescribed time frame and a valid IUCo student identity card is required for all transactions. Fines are charged for failing to observe the time regulations (Horst 2003).
2.4.3 Reference services
The reference collection is maintained by the library for the use of all users. These books do not leave the facility and are available for use at all times. Examples of reference books include encyclopaedias, almanacs, dictionaries, directories, Bible commentaries, and atlases. The print journals are also considered by the library as part of the reference collection, so they are also not circulated (Horst 2003).
2.4.4 Library w e b p a g e and electronic full-text journal databases
The library has a webpage within the IUCo website. It also maintains electronic full-text journals, reviews and other resources for users. Participation in the Programme for the
Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) has enabled the library and its users access to the following databases: Annual Reviews, Blackwell Publishing-Synergy, Cochrane Library, EBSCO Host, Emerald Publishing Group Limited, Gale (Thomson Learning)- Academic ASAP, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, Multilingual Matters, Oxford University Press - Oxford Journals, Palgrave Macmillan Journals, and Wiley Interscience-John Wiley and Sons to mention a few. The library also subscribes to the East Africa Law Society Review (Horst 2003).
2.4.5 Catalogue
The library uses the traditional paper card catalogue for bibliographic control of the items in the library. The bibliographic control is accomplished by processing and cataloguing of the items. The circulating items have cards and pockets and spine labels for the call numbers. An accession number, a unique number that helps the library identify its holdings, is stamped into the item, onto the circulation card, and the pocket to help with identification. The reference items are not given circulation cards and pockets (Horst 2003).
Cataloguing is done using a computer aided database called Librarians' Helper. The Librarians' Helper database provides Machine Readable Catalogue (MARC) fields where the bibliographic information is typed. The database allows 300 items to be catalogued and printed at a time. Once catalogued items are commanded to be printed, the database automatically prints cards with different entry points, that is cards that the users see in the card cabinets such as author, title and subject and an additional card for the shelflist which carries all the bibliographical data for the items as well as the accession number.
The shelflist cards are for the use of library staff only (Horst 2003).
The library has a plan to retrospectively convert the collection into a computer catalogue, incorporating an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC). It has purchased and installed dedicated computer servers for the automation of the library operations. The open-source software (Koha) has been identified, modified and installed for this purpose. All the
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computers on campus have been connected to the library database servers for future access to the library holdings (Sanga 2006).
2.4.6 Opening hours
The library opening hours during the academic semester are 8 am - 12 pm (midnight) Monday to Saturday and from 4 pm - 12 pm on Sundays and on holidays. During school breaks the library is open from 8 am - 4:30 pm (Sanga 2006).
2.4.7 Computer, printing, binding and photocopying services
Computer facilities have become an integral part of library services in the 21st century.
The library received its first computer for administrative uses in 1994, but because of various difficulties with the technology, continued to employ typists to produce catalogue cards until 2000. The library started with one computer lab with 16 computers for word processing. There are now three computer labs with a total of more than 65 networked and Internet capable computers. The library users use these facilities for Internet access, online databases, communication, processing their work, and for Intranet communication within the university. Six computers are for administrative use in the library. These computers are also networked and connected to the Internet using cable or wireless connections (Sanga 2006).
Printing and photocopying services are available through a centre located in the library;
binding services are planned for the future. The printing centre is managed by one Information Communication Technology (ICT) staff member. Each and every student is provided with a certain number of pages to print for each semester. The students who are in the final year are given more pages to print for their research work. Once a student exhausts the allowed number of pages, the system automatically disables any further printing for that student. Payments for the printing services are included in the university tuition fees (Sanga 2006).