LIBRARY CATALOGUE AND ACCESSIBILITY OF INFORMATION RESOURCES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

LIBRARY CATALOGUE AND ACCESSIBILITY OF INFORMATION RESOURCES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

​​​​​​​BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The goal of the library is to provide users with access to its resources and encourage them to make use of those resources. There has been a movement in the definite stance of what a library used to be, which is a location where a collection of books is maintained for people to come and use. The academic library on campus is obligated to fulfill that task in order to provide support for academic work there. According to Alemna (2000), libraries of the last century also acted as reservoirs for information and knowledge. She goes on to say that libraries have supplied the essential foundations for the socioeconomic, political, and cultural development of every civilisation.

According to Aina (2004), a university library has a collection that spans a wide spectrum of topics' fields, but a college library only has a collection of a restricted number of subjects' fields. This is how Aina differentiates a college library from an academic library.

In developed countries, the resources found in libraries support teaching and learning functions by facilitating the research and scholarship of students and lecturers. However, this is not the case in the majority of developing countries because libraries are fighting for their very existence due to financial constraints.

There is a rising worry regarding the usage of trustworthy information retrieval tools in this day and age, such as catalogues, abstracts, indexes, bibliographies, and citations. This problem is a direct result of the explosion of information. Students are meant to be able to use the library, which has been called the "heart of the learning community," as a location to do research and improve their ability to retrieve knowledge in order to progress their education.

Therefore, being aware of the library catalogue refers to the students' capacity to communicate and be cognizant of its substance, its retrieval strategy, and its significance to the information consumer. The skills of students to search catalogues may be developed via the use of library studies, tours, orientations, seminars, and lectures; library personnel; seminars; handbooks; and library tours and orientations (Perera, 2005).

Even while a lot of people may become aware of the retrieval tools in the libraries, this does not always indicate that such tools are accessible, much alone that they can be used. The fact that they assist library patrons in locating and retrieving the information items that they need is the primary reason for their significance.

In most cases, these access points are the channels via which library patrons navigate their way to the many resources that are made accessible by the library. They play a vital role in the services provided by the library since a significant number of patrons do not understand the bibliographic information items that they are searching for. The efficient utilization of the library catalogue is pushed forward by aspects including awareness and accessibility (Obichere and Amaechi, 2008). The need to make access more easily available throughout the years has not been given the highest attention, which has led to a low utilization of the catalogue and the inaccessibility of her resources among students. This will have a significant influence, either directly or indirectly, on the services provided by the library.

As a result of this, the availability of a broader variety of information resources inside libraries in general and academic libraries in particular has been made possible by the library catalogue. In most cases, they take the shape of an information retrieval system interface that provides information searchers with assistance in accessing the resources of libraries through a number of different access points.

Edoka (2000) asserts that they seem to be the tools that are used the most widely for the purpose of information search and retrieval. This is due to the fact that they include bibliographic data and that they rely on easy access and use. In addition, Ola (2011) claims that academic libraries are the most common places to find catalogues because of their method of arrangement, which could either be in the dictionary order or classified order. If the catalogue is arranged in the dictionary order, all of the entries, including the title, subject, author, and any additional entries, are combined and arranged in alphabetical file or sequence. While classified arrangements are filled according to the classification number or any other symbol provided to the materials, as a representation of the topic, while unclassified arrangements are filled according to the classification number alone. There are a few alternative formats for the library catalogue. Such include the card catalogues, the sheaf catalogues, the books, the machine readable catalogues (MARCs), and the online public access catalogues (OPACs) (Perera, 2005).

Because of the recent emphasis placed on library resources and the fact that users are more concerned with access than with awareness, many libraries are struggling with low catalogue usage and a lack of adequate knowledge regarding how they can be used most effectively for the purpose of information acquisition. These problems prevent efficient library services, which in turn have an impact on library patrons. Students are able to comprehend the skills necessary for information access and use if suitable user awareness programs and gratifications are provided.

Despite this, the role of librarians in providing access to information has been too sluggish to keep up with the proliferation of technologies for information retrieval and the poor management of information resources. In light of this, the following will attempt to illustrate how library catalogues and the availability of information resources may be accessed in academic libraries.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

It's possible that an access of awareness is to blame for an inability to utilize the catalogue to access the information you need, as well as an incapacity to use it yourself. It is the duty of university libraries to make students aware of available resources and to facilitate access to those resources as they pursue academic goals and information (Perera, 2005). The employment of the library catalogue as a primary information retrieval method has resulted in several improvements, which have simplified, enhanced, and improved the quality of information access. However, despite the necessity of the library catalogue, the majority of libraries continue to be lacking in the fundamental skills and awareness programs necessary for its efficient utilization. This results in undergraduate students having trouble accessing information resources, creating confusion, and making it impossible for them to utilize the library catalogue to get the information resources they need (Perera, 2005). Students often choose to go straight via the archive because they believe it to be the most efficient way to get access to the information resources they need.

Therefore, the goal of each and every student's information quest should be the achievement of outcomes and the fulfillment of his or her own information requirements. Since of the awareness effect, this cannot be achieved because it would prevent access and utilization of the library's resources and services to their full potential. Therefore, it is important to investigate how awareness programs, access points, and the consequences of the library catalogue hinder the utilization of the library catalogue by undergraduate students.

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