How Facilities and Resources in UK University Libraries Assist Students in Their Course of Work - Essay Example

due: Introduction It has been said that education knows no end and this could not be the true judging from the high number of students enrolling for various courses at the university level. Education is a key factor in assessing development at both individual levels and societal levels and hence it is regarded with importance all over the world. According to Callen (255-249), promotion from one level of education to another demand that there be some form of evaluation undertaken by the student and this has resulted in explosion of information for those in pursuit of knowledge. Of course one cannot understate the necessity of information in education as it is paramount in order to succeed in any academic endeavour. Sources of information have evolved over time and they range from books, journals, periodicals, to different websites. There is a great deal of demand on students to be well armed with knowledge and relevant material for their course work and this relatively depends to the sources of material that they have access to. That is why libraries are of great importance to university students in the pursuit of academic excellence. The libraries stock all kinds of information through a wide variety of subjects. This assists university students in getting references for their various courses and it is compulsory for them to use these materials to understand the complexities of their curricula. Libraries have evolved with age and time in terms of their ways of preserving information (Duckworth 2002). Initially, there were only books and other written material in the libraries but today, virtual libraries have emerged owing to the widespread use of internet in this digital age. Despite this transition in libraries, there are still misgivings on the capability of libraries to assist university students in their course work. The facilities and resources available in the libraries are the greatest concerns as far as the relevance of these libraries to the students is concerned. This is largely in connection to the rise in number of students pursuing university education and the effect of the internet as a key resource of preserving information. Digitizing of libraries has had a major impact in terms of financing for expansion so as to accommodate the computers for accessing information on the net. There has also been the issue of updating their information to include the technological advancements in the digital information world. Libraries were initially known to be inertial repositories of all information in print form and with the invention of the internet, came the overwhelming challenge to upgrade their systems and services (Barnett 1987). Education demands have also risen to high numbers considering the perception of the society towards education and more so college education. These two factors have piled insurmountable pressure on libraries to up their services to university students. Typical universities require the library area to take up about 8% of the academic floor area while those universities which major in research work can have libraries that take up 10-12% of the total space of the academic area. This is because they require more books and journals as well as more access to computers than the typical institutions. The government policies however allow up to 30% of the academic area to be used as library space depending on the institution and how important the library is to the users. These libraries should have quiet space for reading as well as different spaces for interactive purposes. Apart from these, the libraries should also harbour enough learning resources for the students to be able to harness their various course works and references being offered. The facilities and learning materials being offered should be as relevant as possible to all the courses being offered in the universities so as to address individual needs of each user. This study is important in establishing the various uses that the university students in the UK have for libraries and how they rate the services being offered to them in terms of academic enhancement. Besides this, the study is also useful in getting the actual shortcomings of the library services in the universities and how these can be overcome or reduced. The purpose of this study is to find out the ability of libraries to cope with the rising demands of the course work of students at university level and facilitate their excelling academically. It is important to analyse this with a perspective of recommendations for improving services that the libraries offer for university students. The main questions that this paper seeks to address are how the libraries in the United Kingdom are useful and effective in assisting the university students in their course work and whether these can be improved. Majority of university work has to be backed up by term papers and essays among other research works (Garrison 1979). This is how the lecturers assess their students and evaluate their works. The students therefore have to work hard to get proper references. This is how the library is supposed to assist the students in getting references for their work. Every university has its own website which it uses to advertise the services they offer both academically and otherwise. Majority of the UK University libraries have used the websites to spell out their services and terms of use. These sites tend to exaggerate what they offer and as much as the libraries use them to catch the attention of the students, it is evident that many students still use other libraries apart from those in their institutions. In fact the SCONUL has made it possible for the students in some universities to access the public libraries. This is because some of the public universities have so much relevant information for the university student as compared to some of their institutional libraries. Some of the public universities do not however allow the university students to access their facilities and that is why SCONUL advocated for the access by these students (Duckworth 2002). The big question is why was it very necessary for this move to occur? It shows dissatisfaction of the students in the university libraries in terms of facilities and resources. The hypotheses questions in this paper will be: How do the libraries in the UK assist the university students in their course work? Can the services being offered by these university libraries be improved? Literature Review Libraries are places where information regarding varied subjects is stored in diverse forms and availed to different people to whom it is relevant. Universities, being academic institutions need libraries in order to facilitate the learning processes for both students and lecturers. This is why the institutions of learning go to great extends to ensure that their libraries are up to par with the level of education being offered as well the standards placed for all university libraries. According to Edwards (2009), the academic libraries in the UK have had a big challenge in upgrading to the more widely used digitized form from keeping books and journals only. They have incurred a lot of expenses in terms of expansion of their physical space to accommodate more personal computers that replace some books and journals. This digitizing has seen the libraries fill various sites with many journals to assist the students in getting information and references. Some of the material offered is relevant while others are junk. This has led the students to seek information from libraries outside their universities. The need to quickly digitize the institutional libraries has made them compromise on the information delivered to the students. This has led to the university libraries spending so much on electronic and technological advancement at the expense of uploading knowledge based information. This has caused the students to seek their references from the libraries outside their institutions as they have better material. The fact that SCONUL has facilitated for access of public libraries by the students from universities shows that the number of students in need of this services is high enough (Minow 2003). There is also the issue of libraries in the universities being hesitant to upgrade their library management systems owing to the costs incurred by this process which are quite high. This has limited their resources in terms of what they can avail to the students who in turn go to the public libraries to garner more information. The university libraries fear that there is not enough quorums to spend the high costs of library management systems on and that this expense may not have as many returns. On the other hand, there is a consensus that there is need for the institutional libraries to revisit this decision as the roles of the libraries and expectations of the users are changing. The users, in this case the students; expect speed and immediacy of information retrieval; access of aggregated services and user-generated open content. According to SCONUL, the institutional libraries have faced a lot of hardships in these hard economic times. They have had to cope with both the high number of students as well as the technological advancement issues which they have to undertake in order to compete with the other libraries and provide the best services possible. Methodology The questions that are to be addressed are whether the libraries in the UK have sufficient facilities and resources to help the university students in their course work and how they can improve their services. The population target is the university students in the UK and the major method that will be used to research these issues is use of questionnaires to find out the views of the students towards the libraries and services offered in their various institutions. The sampling method to be used in this study is random sampling and university students from various universities in the UK will be interviewed about their perspectives on the facilities and resources in their libraries and how helpful they are to their course work. The students will be asked to fill the questionnaire and give feedback on what they really feel about the libraries (John 33). The questionnaire tool will be very simple and will include questions regarding the specific problems that the students face in their libraries. Most of the questions will be closed ended. The students will tick the relevant boxes to state their opinions and will mark either a "yes” or a “no” where necessary. The questionnaires are expected to take at most 10 minutes to fill. Sample questionnaire for students Do you go to the university library? How often do you visit the university library in a day? a)once b)twice c)three times d)more than three times. How would you rate the services offered in your university library? a) Excellent b) Good c) Average d) Poor Give your reason for this rating. Are the resource materials in your library relevant in terms of referencing for your course work? a) Yes b) No Do the facilities in your library comply with your course work needs? a) Yes b) No Have you ever visited a public library because the material you wanted was missing in your institutional library? a) Yes b)No Are the staffs in your institutional libraries well trained and are their services satisfactory? a) Yes b) No In your opinion is your library well equipped in terms of research materials for your course work? a) Yes b)No What are some of the improvements that you think should be made to your library resources and facilities in order for them to be of more assistance to your course work? Sample of questionnaire for librarians. Is your library up to date for the purpose of university students to carry out research and get relevant resources for their coursework? a) Yes b) No As a member of staff, do you feel that your employer has provided the library with enough facilities and resources for your clients? a) Yes b) No In your opinion, what are the challenges that you encounter when it comes to delivering your duties at the library? Do you think that there are any changes you can implement in your libraries in order to improve the services that you offer. The above questionnaire will be printed and copies will be distributed in various universities for students to state their views. The questionnaire addresses the issues surrounding the dissatisfaction among the students. It also tackles the problem of insufficient resources and facilities in the university libraries that has caused the students’ discontent. The information collected will be harnessed and statistics will be revealed in the final document (Ellis 190). The questionnaire is expected to reveal the true opinions of the students and the library staffs because it is omits the personal details of the individual filling it thus to show confidentiality encouraging the participants to share their true feelings. The other method that will be used is through carrying out verbal interviews with students so as to get their views on the sufficiency and relevance of the facilities and resources in their libraries in relation to their course work. I also intend to interview the library staffs in various universities to find out the challenges they face in serving many people and the possible solutions that would help them offer better services to their students and other customers. The interviews will definitely be held in confidence so as to avoid any victimization (Jones 1999). They will help in getting first hand information and thus increase the validity of the research. The interview will also help in getting up close and personal with the parties involved and this will be advantageous in terms of seeking truthful accounts. I also plan to carry out observations of the use of public libraries by university students through the records of the public libraries. This is important because it backs up the problem in existence. If the students seeking the services from outside their institutional libraries were content with their institutional libraries there would be no need to assess the performances of those libraries. The data collected from these methods will be quite useful in evaluating the plausible recommendation for these libraries to better their services. The other method of data collection that will be used in this survey is the literature that has been written previously on this topic. According to Bill (230) this will include statistics gathered in reports, studies, dissertations and other literature that has been reviewed on the subject. This will help in getting varied opinions of people who have researched on this question before and compare the changes that have been made since the inception of libraries (238). These methods I believe will facilitate interaction with many people who are concerned with the issues unveiled in this paper. The students, being the most affected by this issue will be able to state their grievances in the questionnaire as well as make possible recommendations for these problems. The library staffs will also be able to state their own challenges whether in terms of facilities or resources and what can be done to avert these challenges and help them provide better services. Procedure and time frame Analysis Plan How do the libraries in the UK assist university students in their coursework? We all know that a library is essential in helping students at the university level academically. They need reference materials, supplementary readings and other information from the library. It is from this background that this question has been raised in order to find out the efficiency with which libraries in the UK universities execute their duties. This question looks at the aspects of resources available and facilities offered at the libraries for university students. Are they sufficient and if they are not, what are the reasons behind insufficiency? Can the libraries add more resources and facilities to cope with the high number of students? Another question included in this hypothesis question is the issue of the resources and facilities being at par with current times. Are the materials availed to students up to date with the current technologies? Are they relevant to what the students are currently learning or are they outdated? In case these materials are not up to date, what are the libraries doing in order to upgrade their systems with the time? If the resources and facilities are outdated then they cannot be of any help to the students. It is therefore very important that this question be addressed to all parties concerned (both the students and the libraries staff) (State Library of Ohio 1994). The other question to be asked is whether the library services being offered to the UK university students can actually be improved. This is a very important question as it seeks to unearth the challenges faced by both the students and the libraries’ staffs in the universities. On the students’ part the expected challenges are the insufficiency of resources as well as facilities and the relevance of what is available to their coursework (Shokeen 9). Any shortage on these resources and facilities presents a challenge to the students as they have to seek services from outside their campuses quarters. This question is out to find the frequency or number of times the students have had to go to public libraries because their university libraries were incompetent. It also catches the views of the students on the way forward as far as the services provided to them are concerned. The other major partaker of this question is the service provider in the form of the libraries’ staffs. Being the accused it is only fair that their challenges be addressed to find out the reason behind their shortcomings. Are they well equipped with personnel, facilities and resources? Have the universities invested well enough in their libraries in terms of all these resources against the number of students anticipated? What other challenges do they face in carrying out their duties? What can be done to avert these challenges and ease their work? These are some of the questions integrated in the major hypothesis question: Can the library services being offered to the UK university students be improved? Assumptions Like with all other surveys there are many assumptions in this study. The first assumption is that the university students in the UK are dissatisfied with the library services being offered at their institutions. This is backed up by the number of students who visit the public libraries and other libraries outside their institutions for various reasons and especially because of lack of relevant resources in their university libraries. The other basis for this assumption is that there has been a rise in number of students enrolling for courses in the universities and therefore the university libraries are actually inundated by these large numbers to the extend that it is compromising their services (Taylor 2000). This is especially true for the universities which have not upgraded their facilities in the recent past. There is also the issue of information explosion with the emergence of the internet as a major source of information. This technological advancement has caused university libraries to compromise their resource materials in a rush to expand and upgrade their libraries to digitized libraries status. Another assumption is that the students in pursuit of academic excellence are actually visiting other libraries especially the public ones in a bid to garner the information that is lacking in their institutional libraries. Kelly (1966) says that, this has its foundations on the premise that if the students are dissatisfied then they will definitely seek other services because they have to excel academically. This assumption gives way to the other assumption that the public libraries are better equipped in terms of facilities and resources as compared to the institutional libraries. This gives them higher preference by the students as compared to the institutional libraries. In this regard the assumption will be used to investigate the advantages the public libraries have over the institutional libraries and what can be done to improve the latter. The libraries in the universities seem to be crippled with problems that are causing underperformance hence there is need to find out their problems and the possible solutions to these predicaments. Scopes and limitations There are challenges that this study anticipates. The major challenge is getting the people involved in this study to tell their true perceptions in regards to the library services. According to Boyd (84-81) the students might not be willing to tell their true views as they may perceive this as risky whereby they are criticizing their respective institutions. The library staffs on the other hand might be more than hesitant to disclose their weaknesses. This may present the challenge of acquiring valid information. I intend to counter this by reassuring all the respondents of the questionnaire that the interview is quite confidential and names and other sensitive information will not be mentioned in the data provided. The personal interviews will also be conducted in private so that the respondents feel at ease to give as much relevant information as possible (87). The other challenge that is expected is the funds required to print out the questionnaires and distribute them in various universities. Shokeen (10-8) says this will cost quite an amount in order to reach a wider populace. Also getting these people to spare time to fill the questionnaires is another problem because most of the target population is very busy. The travelling costs are also inevitable because one has to distribute the questionnaires mostly manually or face to face with the respondents. All in all the expenses have to be met in order for the study to be carried out (11). There is expected opposition from the university library staffs in questioning them on the services offered as they may feel that they are being targeted. It is quite challenging for anyone to state their personal weaknesses or that of the organisation they are working for and therefore this may elicit falsified information in an attempt to cover up the libraries’ shortcomings. According to Battles (132) accessing the information the number of university students who visit the public libraries because of the better resources and facilities will also be a challenge because it is contained in private records. Besides, it is also difficult to determine what the students are looking for in particular and this would compromise on the quality of the information and data received. A reconnaissance visit and reassurance to the respondents are some of the methods that will be used to abet this. Recommendations This study looks forward to coming up with many recommendations to enable the libraries to improve on the services that they offer. These may include aspects like implementing library management systems in order to help the students who carry out their research at university level. They should also be able to expand their physical space to include both the quiet reading areas and the virtual library spaces which accommodate the interactive sessions for the students. To add to that, all libraries should have future long term planning to help in expanding its requirements in future and also be able to implement other services which will be of help to the society in terms of education. Another recommendation would be employment of professionally trained workforce (Stockham 1969). They should have the knowledge on how to go about different tasks in the library like, accessing the internet, using software like OPAC to search books, operating equipments like scanners, fax printers and many more. Moreover, orientation programs should be included to help guide people coming to study on where to find what and how to get there. This enhances better movement in the library and silence will be obtained to the maximum. Libraries should be having proper indexes and abstracts and this would make it easier to retrieve the information one needs easily without going through long procedures. According to Allen, (121) libraries should also introduce different training programs, facilities and methods of searching any sort of work in the basic libraries like the use of OPAC, internet, online and CD ROM databases, electronic journals, audio and video materials for easy access of information in the library. Allen also recommends that all libraries in the U.K should have all the sources available to the students without the problem of time and place interfering with the scholars when they are doing their work of research (122). Ziming (712-701) recommends that all library collections should be well and effectively managed. This will enhance and ensure that the many resources available for the scholars are easy to find, access and use. Building of spacious as well as aerated rooms is a library essential for healthy learning. Learning should be done in a quiet and conducive environment out of disturbances like vehicles moving and hooting, people screaming and other forms of noise pollution. A cool climate is also necessary for learning and hence a library should be professionally built to allow free circulation of air. Studying in a room that is not well ventilated can cause headaches and other type of minor illnesses that pose learning hindering discomfort. Conclusion To have a successful library, you need to have the required facilities and services offered in a library. Human beings’ search for education is increasing with the advancement of technology. Education is being preserved in books, journals, magazines, in the internet and in many more forms. For all this to be of importance to the society, there must be a library where all this is stored for future reference. The only place a person can quench their thirst for knowledge is by visiting the house of knowledge which in other words is the library (Beattie 92-83). By equipping our libraries well we preserve the knowledge for the generations to come. The thirst for more knowledge can never be quenched as education has no limit. Due to the technological advancement, libraries also should be kept up to date with the up-coming technology to enhance productivity and easier usage. Libraries serve quite an important role in preserving education, morals, values and principles of a society and as a result they should be maintained and upgraded to match the level of advancement in the society. Works cited Allen, David. A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England. British Library. 2008, p. 121. Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. 2003, p. 121. Boyd. A. Multi-channel Information Seeking: A Fuzzy Conceptual Model. Aslib Proceedings. vol 52 . 2004, p. 81 – 88. Bill, Katz, Dahl’s History of the Book. No. 2. Metuchen, N. J: Scarecrow Press, 1995, p. 238. Beattie, Derek. Blackburn: A History by Derek Beattie. Carnegie Publishing.   2007, pp.7-113. Barnett, Graham, Keith. The History of Public Libraries in France from the Revolution to 1939. London: Library Association, 1987. Callen, J. L., Buyankhishig B. and McIntosh, J. H. Clinical Information Sources Used by Hospital Doctors in Mongolia. Int. J. Med. Inform. vol 77. 2008, pp. 249-255. 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The Ohio Long Range Program for Improvement of Library Services. State Library of Ohio, 1994. Stockham, K. A., ed. British County Libraries: 1919-1969. London: André Deutsch, 1969. Taylor, Andrew. 20th Century Blackburn. Wharncliffe Books, 2000.  Ziming, L. Reading Behavior in the Digital Environment: Changes in Reading Behavior over the Past Ten Years. J. Doc. 61(6): 2005,700 – 712. Read More