THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY IN THE ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATION

THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY IN THE ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATION:WHAT IS A LIBRARY, TYPES OF LIBRARY, THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY

INTRODUCTION

what is a library: A library is an organized collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both. The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. Private or personal libraries made up of written books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the very close of the Classical period, the great libraries of the Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria.

A library is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, a corporation, or a private individual. Public and institutional collections and services may be intended for use by people who choose not to or cannot afford to purchase an extensive collection themselves, who need material no individual can reasonably be expected to have, or who require professional assistance with their research. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are experts at finding and organizing information and at interpreting information needs. Libraries often provide quiet areas for studying, and they also often offer common areas to facilitate group study and collaboration. Libraries often provide public facilities for access to their electronic resources and the Internet. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats and from many sources. They are extending services beyond the physical walls of a building, by providing material accessible by electronic means, and by providing the assistance of librarians in navigating and analyzing very large amounts of information with a variety of digital tools

TYPES OF LIBRARIES

ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

Academic libraries serve colleges and universities, their students, staff and faculty. Larger institutions may have several libraries on their campuses dedicated to serving particular schools such as law and science libraries. Many academic librarians become specialists in an area of knowledge and can have faculty status.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Public libraries serve communities of all sizes and types. Wherever you live, there's bound to be a local public library nearby! As the name implies, public libraries serve the general public, "from cradle to grave" as more than one public librarian has been heard to say. Public libraries often have departments that focus on areas of service, such as youth, teens and adults.

SCHOOL LIBRARIES

School libraries are usually part of a school system, and serve students between Kindergarten and grade

The school library is central to learning and plays a key role as a place for encouraging innovation, curiosity, and problem solving. Your library is a catalyst for literacy and reading and for teaching and scaffolding inquiry learning. School libraries make a difference to students’ understanding and achievement and provide support for teaching and learning throughout the school. The school library is an important part of the school community and reflects and welcomes this community.

Your school library plays a key role in the cultural and social life of the school. It can be a central point for engagement with all kinds of reading, cultural activities, access to information, knowledge building, deep thinking and lively discussion.

SPECIAL LIBRARIES

Special libraries offer unique opportunities to work in a specialized environment of interest, such as corporations, hospitals, the military, museums, private businesses, and the government. Special libraries can serve particular populations, such as the blind and physically handicapped, while others are dedicated to special collections, such as the Library of Congress or a presidential library.

ACADEMIC LIBRARY

An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution which serves two complementary purposes to support the school's curriculum, and to support the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic libraries there are internationally. An academic and research portal maintained by UNESCO links to 3,785 libraries. According to the National Center for Education Statistics there are an estimated 3,700 academic libraries in the United States.[1] The support of teaching and learning requires material for class readings and for student papers. In the past, the material for class readings, intended to supplement lectures as prescribed by the instructor, has been called reserves. In the period before electronic resources became available, the reserves were supplied as actual books or as photocopies of appropriate journal articles.

Academic libraries must determine a focus for collection development since comprehensive collections are not feasible. Librarians do this by identifying the needs of the faculty and student body, as well as the mission and academic programs of the college or university. When there are particular areas of specialization in academic libraries these are often referred to as niche collections. These collections are often the basis of a special collection department and may include original papers, artwork, and artifacts written or created by a single author or about a specific subject.

There is a great deal of variation among academic libraries based on their size, resources, collections and services. The Harvard University Library is considered to be the largest academic library in the world and has the third largest collection in the United States. Another notable example is the University of South Pacific which has academic libraries distributed throughout its twelve member countries.

THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY IN THE ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATION

The library is not just a repository, or a service like any other, or a place for study:  it is all these things.  It can also be a partner in research and in teaching, and institutions which fail to capitalise fully on this asset will find it harder to compete in the future.

1.       The library continues to fulfill its role as the heart of the university, despite the move away from print and towards electronic resources.  The work the library undertakes contributes directly to the institution’s academic mission and to equipping students with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve academically and to maximise their employability.

2.       Libraries’ high level of expenditure on resources, £682 million in 2010-11 has helped UK universities maintain their place as a world leader in higher education. In recent years UK HE libraries have been at the forefront of the move into digital resources.

3.       Investment in e-resources has a direct impact on the productivity of an institution. Where academics and students have good access to e-content, effectively the library is now open 24 hours irrespective of building opening hours, and finding books and journals has become fast and immediate, freeing time up for the research and for teaching.

4.       Research in the US has found that the economic benefits of a university library are considerable. A number of studies have undertaken an economic benefit analysis showing that accessing a book or journal through the library rather via another route saves significant time and resources. For example academics at the University of Pittsburgh would have to spend an average of 17 minutes and $2.10 finding the information they needed from other sources.

5.       For an individual university, good quality library resources can help attract and retain academic high flyers and contribute to the prestige of an institution.

6.       These resources can also help universities attract and retain graduate students

7.       The quality and depth of those resources are also a determinant of the quality of research a university’s academics can produce. Per capita expenditure and use of e-journals is strongly and positively correlated with papers published, numbers of PhD awards, and research grants and contracts income.

8.       Many institutions will also involve their library staff in the process of research, including in developing bids for funding.

9.       Universities which invest in their library see a return in terms of the quality of the grant applications they are able to make, and ultimately therefore to grant income. Research in the US looked at the return on investment (ROI) in library resources and showed a return of $4.38 in grant income for every dollar invested in 2006.

10.     The library is much more than a passive repository for knowledge. For the undergraduate, the library as a place, and the library as a service are central to their experience of university.  The library represents an important point of continuity for students during their time at university as does their relationship with its staff. This growing understanding of the role of the librarian as a student advisor is now helping to drive convergence between the library and support services within HEIs.

11.     The quality of the library is more important even than teaching contact time for prospective students considering which university to attend. Satisfaction with library services was in the top ten (8th) of factors that prospective students would consider when deciding which university to apply for.

12.     Despite the move to e-resources, students are visiting their university library more often and spending more time when they do. Particularly in the arts and humanities, undergraduates may well spend more time with their librarian than with their lecturer. That time is spent supporting students to become self-directed learners.

13.     Emerging UK evidence also suggests that universities which succeed in engaging students to use library resources are rewarded with higher academic outcomes among those students . Comparable research in South Africa and the US has given similar results.

14.     Investing in the teaching and support services offered by the library can increase the employability of a university’s graduates. The ability for source and manage information, and to use electronic resources and technology effectively, are skills which are highly valued by employers.

15.     Universities with libraries that spend more on materials and employ more staff also have greater retention rates.

16.     The role of the modern library director is extremely demanding one, requiring a high level of skill in procurement, staff management and ICT skills.  They are responsible for the purchase and running of highly complex IT systems; budgets which average £4.6million and may be ten times that, and numbers of up to 500 library staff. Many also manage converged IT and library services, student support services and even health and safety and building management.

REASONS WHY LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS ARE STILL EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT OF THE NATION

Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. As libraries' relevance comes into question, librarians face an existential crisis at a time when students need them the most. Despite their perceived obsolescence in the digital age, both libraries and librarians are irreplaceable for many reasons. Nearly twenty reasons, in fact. We've listed them here:

1. Not Everything is Available on the Internet: The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true.

Google Books recognizes this. That's why they take on the monolith task of digitizing millions of books from the world's largest libraries. But even if Google does successfully digitize the sum of human knowledge, it is unlikely that the sum of contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their works to be freely accessible over the internet. It is already prohibited by law to make copyrighted books fully accessible through Google Book search.

2. Digital Libraries are not the Internet: A fundamental understanding of what the internet is and isn't can help clearly define the role of a library, and why libraries are still extremely important. Online library collections, however, are different. They typically include materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes and are riddled with quantitative anaysis, instead of opinion.Types of materials include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.

While one might use the internet or a search engine to find these databases, deeper access to them requires registration. You are still online, but you are no longer on the internet. You are in a library.

3. The Internet isn't Free: Numerous academic research papers, journals, and other important materials are virtually inaccessible to someone seeking to pull them off the web for free. Rather, access is restricted to expensive subscription accounts, which are typically paid for by college libraries. Visiting a college library in person or logging in to the library through your school account, is therefore the only way to affordably access necessary archived resources.

4. The Internet Compliments Libraries, but Doesn't Replace Them: The internet is clearly a great resource to finding information, but it's not a replacement for a library. There are clear advantages of libraries over the internet for research, however the benefits of the internet, includes "sampling public opinion", gathering "quick facts" and  pooling a wide range of ideas. Overall, the point is this: libraries are completely different than the web. In this light, to talk about one replacing the other begins to seem absurd.

5. School Libraries and Librarians Improve Student Test Scores: A 2005 study of the Illinois School Libraries shows that students who frequently visit well-stocked and well-staffed school libraries end up with higher ACT scores and perform better on reading and writing exams. Interestingly, the study points out that access digital technology plays a strong role in test results, noting that "high schools with computers that connect to library catalogs and databases average 6.2 percent improvement on ACT scores".

6. Libraries Aren't Just Books: Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not to happen), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and have books only accessible digitally. So where does that leave librarians? Are they being overtaken by technology, the timeless enemy of labor?

Technology is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not go this far), we could eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and only be able to access books digitally

CONCLUSION

An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution which serves two complementary purposes to support the school's curriculum, and to support the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic libraries there are internationally. An academic and research portal maintained by UNESCO links to 3,785 libraries. According to the National Center for Education Statistics there are an estimated 3,700 academic libraries in the United States.The support of teaching and learning requires material for class readings and for student papers. In the past, the material for class readings, intended to supplement lectures as prescribed by the instructor, has been called reserves. In the period before electronic resources became available, the reserves were supplied as actual books or as photocopies of appropriate journal articles.