The primary goal of this paper is to establish the cultural issues of automating academics libraries in Tanzania. It is evident that lots of libraries, especially in the developed countries are employing automated libraries to retrieve data, hence save space, time and increase efficiency in their day to day activities. While there are some automatic libraries such as that of the University or college of Dar ha sido salaam, majority are functioning still personally. This paper starts with bringing out the paper and defining academic library, automated catalogue, automated librarian and goes forward in identifying some eight ethnic challenges that become a stumbling block to the automation of Tanzanian libraries. Amongst those are poor reading culture, limited capital, availability of services, poor infrastructure, lack of ICT skills, insufficient management support and the donor - funded dependency symptoms. It ends with a summary on how better to get over these stumbling blocks.
Key words: Obstacles, automated libraries, academic library
Introduction
In speaking about automating Tanzania academic libraries, stumbling blocks in various forms surface, including social, cultural, academic, economical, and infrastructural, to mention a few. For this newspaper however, it is intended to emphasize the cultural challenges facing the automation of academic libraries. It must be noted that there are twenty - eight academic libraries across Tanzania, in both open public and private universities (TLS, 2012). Many of these libraries are operated personally, with few remotely automated. In his paper, Kasulwa (2008), mentioned that 15 Universities are already in the process of automating their libraries. Out of those, only the University of Dar sera salaam seemed in those days to obtain completed automating its library. This paper will try to address the cultural problems that are a result of this and provides recommendations about how to defeat these challenges in order to move to a far more futuristic collection.
In understanding the educational library, it has to be noted that type of collection is generally on the campuses of colleges and universities and serve primarily the students and faculty of this and other educational institutions. Some academics libraries, especially those at open public establishments, are accessible to users of everyone in whole or partly.
Academic libraries are libraries that are hosted in post-secondary educational corporations, such as colleges and universities. The main functions of academic library are to provide resources and research support for students and faculty of the educational establishment. Specific course-related resources are usually provided by the library, such as copies of textbooks and article readings held on 'reserve' (and therefore they are simply loaned out only on the short-term basis, usually a subject of time).
Academic libraries offer workshops and lessons outside of formal, graded coursework, which can be meant to provide students with the various tools necessary to flourish in their programs. These workshops can include assistance with citations, effective search techniques, journal databases, and digital citation software. Workshops organized by academics libraries assist students in acquiring skills needed in their academics endeavors and in the long run in their occupations, in many cases knowledge often not received in classrooms.
Depending on the type of the task that the university student or user generally has for the library, an academic collection offers both, a quite study place and in a few libraries, a debate area. In North America, Europe, and other areas of the world, educational libraries have grown to be more automated. As a result, users have a variety of choice in selecting their reading resources between printed and digital information according to need (Dowler, 1997). In lots of libraries, academic companies have subscribed to electronic journals databases, providing research and scholarly writing software, and usually provide computer workstations or computer labs for students to access publications, library search directories and portals, institutional digital resources, access to the internet, and course- or task-related software (i. e. word processing and spreadsheet software). They may be increasingly operating as an electric repository for institutional scholarly research and academic knowledge, such as the collection and duration of digital copies of students' theses and dissertations, proceeding towards what we call: the futuristic library (Anunobi et al, 2012).
Tanzania is making an effort in automating the library services in every its libraries through training, assisting libraries with pcs and building the capability of staff and other stakeholders. The Tanzania Library Relationship supervises these activities and facilitates them through inviting paper presentations, hosting workshops and training.
Defining the automated library
2. 1 The Automated Library
An automated library is a robotically handled device made to weight and unload removable cartridges without operator treatment. Cartridges are brought in to and exported from the collection. They are loaded and unloaded automatically. The archiving and staging processes use a site-defined scheme for allocating the number of drives to use. Automated libraries are also known as media changers, jukeboxes, robots, libraries, or multimedia libraries.
The term "automated library" may be used to describe a collection where all tasks are completed automatically. Computer programs substitute for the intellectually challenging tasks that are customarily carried out by skilled specialists. These duties include selection, cataloguing and indexing, searching for information, guide services, and so on. The common theme is that these activities require appreciable mental activity, the sort of activity that individuals are skilled at and personal computers find difficult.
A cases of automated collection is that of the University or college of Chicago, that has spent over $80 million on the Joe and Riko Mansueto Collection, that is exclusive and useful to its end users and staff.
Instead of filling the collection hall with literature and journals filled with dirt, the Mansueto collection houses its contents fifty toes below the bottom. Students and anyone who wants to check out a booklet searches the online catalog for that and fills out a get form. A catalogue attendant then explains to the system to get the book, prompting the robotic aspects of the collection to dominate. The books are retrieved by way of a robotic arm which profits the storage bin made up of the publication or item.
This is different, for the reason that it reduces lounging around in the collection here, everything's a lot more efficient and quick - implementing and picking up the book could take less than 10 minutes, depending on where in fact the college student is on campus. View the video tutorial below to get a better idea of the way the Mansueto Library does things in a different way. It's another very smart consumption of robotic technology, one that wouldn't be out of place in Japan, where new robo-tech gadgetry appears to make waves every other day.
2. 2 The programmed Librarian
A librarian, the individual who manages the storage space and retrieval of information was previously appropriately trained and informed to deal with information in a wide variety of formats and configurations" (WordiQ, 2010). Today, in the automatic collection, the librarian is likely to helps users to understand into the voyage of internet and evaluate information successfully. Librarian offers a supporting side for users to discover the required piece of information also to put it to use for personal and professional purposes (BLS, 2011). Due to the introduction of Internet, World Extensive Web and proliferation of online catalogue, the role of librarian has been modified. Now he is better and has new assignments as intermediary, facilitator, end-user trainer/educator, web organizer & artist, researcher, interface developer, knowledge manager/professional and sifter of information resources (Rao & Babu, 2001). Librarian should be educated in a number of information sources and follow the new trends and improvements in computers, advertising and publishing (Careeroverview, 2011).
Cultural Issues in automating Tanzanian Libraries
The problems of automated libraries vary from country to country, while occasionally there are some similarities. Kamba (2011) identifies obstacles in Nigeria as being ICT illiteracy, ICT awareness and insufficient ICT platform. Muller (2005), identifies difficulties facing special libraries in South Africa as being craze change, adding value to the special collection, limited education on collection information service, lack of or inadequate proper benchmarking and lack of succession plan. For cultural issues in Tanzania, this paper identifies six major challenges as discussed in the areas hereunder:
3. 1 Poor reading culture of several university/college students
A survey conducted by the daily information paper in 2011 at the St. Augustine University or college of Tanzania, reported a poor tendency of specific reading at the collection, which resulted to poor projects and research reports and occasionally even duplication of research reviews. It revealed information of 60 percent of students go into the library for tasks and research, and 85 percent of those who do visit the library study literature that are relevant in their respected courses only. As a result, the language proficiency is low, the research papers have poor and the theory of 'I can read' has preceded 'I do read. ' Relating to their survey, some students complete their three years in college without having visited the collection by any means. While this is an example in a single university, experience reported in research and studies reveal that the case is nearly similar in a great many other universities in the united states.
3. 2 Inadequate Capital
This will come in four forms. Inadequate economical, social, social and institutional capital. The monetary capital is within conditions of financial implications so that they can get linked, purchase of a computer, train responsible staff and student's, build a user-friendly infrastructure for the automatic collection and the favors. Cultural refers to knowledge purchased through cultural expression learned from the family socialization and education organizations. With these statistics, the uneducated outweigh the informed, posing a significant challenge on how the former affect the later in decision making and studying habit. Social means the sociable networking and human relationships benefits one can get from taking part in certain library networks and databases related to lending books, journals, paperwork and research. As for institutional capital, they include conditions that mediate most of economic, political and social life. Included in these are bodies that allow and support the initiatives to bring the web access. Insufficient capital results into poor libraries with least automation, poor personnel with little qualification for automatic libraries and inadequately developed students with limited resources for his or her education.
3. 4 Option of Service
In their review on providers, the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Specialist (TCRA), confirmed that by June 2010, only 46 (67%) out of 68 ASLs were found operating, 20 of these (30%) were not tracked and 2 (3%) were not functional. Out of 46 operational licensees only 38 (83%) of them provide online sites. As a result, option of service to end user is bound, often unreliable. Hence, even if libraries were to use their services, the collection services' quality would still be in jeopardy. Uncertainty in availability of services acts as a obstacle in learning, using and interacting in an automatic catalogue environment.
3. 5 Infrastructure Barrier
Infrastructure carries a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed platform and by as all the people, processes, methods, tools, facilities, and technology which facilitates the creation, use, transportation, storage, and damage of information, Pironti (2006). The idea of information infrastructures, created in the 1990s and sophisticated during the pursuing 10 years, has proven quite productive to the info Systems (IS) field. It changed the point of view from organizations to systems and from systems to infrastructures, enabling a global and emergent perspective on information systems. Information infrastructure is a technological structure of your organizational form, an analytical perspective or a semantic network. If a few of the component of the robotic infrastructure doesn't operate just how it should, then other parts are afflicted. In Tanzania, if the personnel aren't well equipped, then they are in no good position to aid students, while if the students hardly understand on how to make use of the infrastructure, then the personnel and equipment will never be of any use. Should the staff and students understand the computer and robotic equipment, but absence computer systems and or electricity, then that serves as a obstacle. Should everything maintain order however the provider are on and off, again it influences the operation of the automated library. Alas, in the majority of the academics libraries in Tanzania, one of all these or even more are off-order, hence performing as stumbling blocks to the collection.
3. 6 Inadequate ICT skills
Most of the ICT personnel and customers lack the correct know-how in consumption of ICT equipment. Scarcity of personal computers and low computer - student ratio, lead to some students not touching computer for all the three years in their academics endeavor. Because of this universities end up with graduates who have no skills. Even the staff lack enough environment to show their skills and use their skills.
3. 7 Lack of Management Support
Though the catalogue is at the guts of any educational institution, the management has not been supportive to modernizing and automating their services. This is usually a result of little cash, low enrolment, never-ending priorities and increasing competition, resulting to spending more in marketing, bettering remuneration and modernizing complexes.
3. 8 Donor - Funded Dependency Syndrome
By description, donor funded dependency syndrome also known as aid dependence can be explained as a situation in which a country cannot perform its activities without the help of funding and knowledge. It is a countrywide pandemic, and has multiply in all areas of the country, academic establishments not exempted. Looking forward to sister-colleges to contribute computers, printers, catalogs, experts in automation, structure, tools, laboratory equipment and so much more. This again works as a obstacle in that in kills creative imagination on how best to utilize available resources and work on automating their libraries hence save space, time and increase efficiency.
Conclusion
The significance of automating academic libraries can never be forgotten. The center of the academic world is based on the library of course, if that is not updated, operated in an efficient and professonally executed manner, the quality of the merchandise from the neighborhood colleges will be jeopardized. Operating campaigns on need for automating libraries, providing ICT training to librarian, educational staff and students and building a user-friendly infrastructure that can help the smooth jogging of an automated library will place Tanzania in a better situation academic smart and will assist it to work hand in hand with other universities around the world.
