Library use for beginners

1. LIBRARY USE FOR BEGINNERS
BY
PREPARED BY
MAGNUS OSAHON IGBINOVIA
LIBRARY, ARCHIVAL AND INFORMATION STUDIES,
UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN,
IBADAN-NIGERIA.
In fulfillment of

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. The concept of a library
3. Types of libraries
4. Sections of the library
5. Knowledge organization: cataloging and classification
6. Reference sources and services
7. Collection management
8. Preservation and conservation of library resources
9. Information and communication technologies in library operation

3. INTRODUCTION
 Information has become an indispensable resources for developmental
activities and as such every activity involving human, material and financial
resources require elaborate information for the realization of set goals.
 Thus, relevant, precise and timely information could exert tremendous
influence on the behavior if individuals and their activities
 It is an establish fact that parents are unable to afford all relevant information
materials for their children and ward because of their high market cost
 It is interesting to know that within the limited resources of most academic
libraries, librarians have resiliently struggled to source, select and organize
information materials to promote academic work in our tertiary institutions.
 Recently, information and communication technologies (ICTs), with the use of
computers and other communication systems has been embraced thou
reluctantly by library institutions for efficient service delivery.
 These ICTs is changing library’s activities and services.

4. THE CONCEPT OF A LIBRARY
 The need for human beings to transmit their thoughts and visions in an
external medium to others and preservation of culture brought about the idea
of writing. Moreover, the art of writing preceded libraries.
 The history of libraries is delineated into three eras viz: Ancient times (when
clay tablets, cuneiform signs and character was used to keep record),
Medieval times (parchment codex, papyrus was used) and Modern era
(paper and now electronic device).
 Libraries are collections of records of human culture in diverse formant and
languages, preserved, organized and interpreted to meet broad and varying
needs of individuals for information, knowledge, recreation and aesthetic
enjoyment (Aguolu, 1989).
 The objectives of libraries include:
1. Conservation of knowledge
2. Serves as a gateway to information
3. Dynamic instrument of education

5. 4. preserving societal culture
5. Promotion of recreation and aesthetic enjoyment.
TYPES OF LIBRARIES
These include:
1. Private library: owned and finance by the private individual and access is
limited to the private individual and family members.
2. School library: attached to secondary schools to assist their curriculum.
3. Public library: government owned library institution open to the general
public regardless of age, religion, background, qualification and gender.
4. Special or Research library: libraries attached to organization to cater for
their information needs of special group (homogenous) of people.
5. Academic library: libraries attached to post secondary institution of
learning to enhance teaching, learning and research.
6. National library: this is the apex library and among other things controls
national publications and store key government records and materials
published within the nation.

6. SECTIONS OF THE LIBRARY
1. COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT: this section is responsible for
systematically building the stock of the library’s collection required to meet
the information needs of stakeholders.
2. TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT: responsible for organising (cataloguing and
classifying) all information materials acquired by the library for easy access
and retrieval.
3. SERIALS DEPARTMENT: this is the section stocked with information
materials like periodicals, government and official document, newspapers
and the likes which are authoritative particularly for research purposes.
4. READER’S SERVICE DEPARTMENT: Is responsible for the dissemination
of information to all library users. It’s the image of the library and it has first
contact with library users. These department is composed of:
I. Reference Unit: houses reference materials and renders reference services
to library users, meeting their quest for information.
II. circulation Unit: it is the service point of the library and is responsible for
all the circulating of information materials in the library.

7. KNOWLEDGE ORGANISATION: CATALOGUING AND
CLASSIFICATION
 The information resources in the library are systematically arranged for easy
access and retrieval by library users,
 CATALOGUE: is a retrieval tool for organizing a library’s collection. It records,
describe and locate each item present in the library.
 A catalogue performs a variety of functions. These includes:
1. Providing a bibliographic description of the library’s holdings which can be
accessed either by author, title or subject.
2. Enable a user know what is available in a particular library
3. Assist the user to make a choice of a document as regards the edition.
4. Enable a user to gain access to an item present in a collection through
multiple access points.
 FORMS OF CATALOGUE: these include:
1. Card catalogue
2. Book catalogue
3. Computer output microform (COM) catalogue

8. 4. CD-ROM catalogue
5. On-line public access catalogue
 CHARACTERISTICS OF AN IDEAL FORM OF CATALOGUE:
1. Must be flexible and easy to update.
2. Easy access to entries in the catalogue
3. Must not be too expensive to create and maintain
4. Must not occupy too much space
5. Should be easy to replicate.
 CATALOGUING: the process of preparing catalogue entries and the person
that does cataloguing is called the cataloguer. Cataloguing are of two types:
descriptive and subject cataloguing.
 DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUING involves essentially the description of an
item in a collection which will ensure that each item is different from one
another in the collection, thus making each item unique.

9.  SUBJECT CATALOGUING: involves describing the intellectual content of a
material so as to give library users access through the subject. In order to
ensure consistency and uniformity which is the basics of cataloguing, subject
headings are used.
 Therefore there is a need to have an indexing language that a cataloguer
would have to consult that would serve as a guide on how to select
consistent and uniform subject headings.
 An indexing language is a list of terms or notations from which a term can be
chosen as an access point in an index such as a catalogue. The three types
of indexing language are:
1. Controlled indexing language
2. Natural indexing language and
3. Free indexing language.
The principle of subject heading is to bring all document in a collection on
the same subject together . There are many published subject heading list
but the two common lists are: sears list of subject heading (SLSH) and the
library of congress subject headings (LCSH).

10. REFRENCE SOURCES AND SERVICES
 Reference sources are documents that contain miscellaneous information on
any topic- be it an event, place or individual. Theses reference and
information sources are not meant to be read from cover to cover.
 Reference sources are expected to be consulted as and at when necessary
in order to supply information desired by a user of the library.
 Reference sources can appear both in print and non-print or electronic
formant. They are specially compiled to provide answers to any type of
queries that might be raised by the user of a library.
 There are for categories of references queries usually demanded by users of
a library. They are:
1. Directional reference queries
2. Ready reference queries
3. Specific reference queries
4. Research queries

11.  Reference sources can be categorized into three. These are primary
sources, secondary sources and tertiary sources.
 Primary sources includes journal articles, technical reports, dissertation and
theses.
 Secondary sources are sources that interpret or condense primary sources.
They modify, interpret, condense, and rearrange primary sources in order to
satisfy the information needs of users. They include indexes, abstracts,
bibliographies, etc.
 Tertiary sources are information which have been produced after the
distillation and filtration of primary and secondary sources. They include
dictionaries, encyclopedia, yearbooks, handbooks, fact books, almanacs, etc.
REFERNCE SERVICES
These include but not limited to:
1. Guidance
2. Reader’s advisory services

12. 3. Bibliographic services
4. Selective dissemination of information
5. Instructions: one-on-one and group
6. Fee-based services and information brokering among others.
COLLECTION MANAGEMENT
 Collection management is an all-encompassing term that ensures the
systematic building of a library’s collection and ensuring a balance of
materials acquired with respect to various disciplines, types of materials,
policy of conservation and preservation of materials, as well as weeding
information materials no longer needed.
 Elements of collection development include community analysis, collection
development policy, selection, acquisition and weeding.
 COMMUNITY ANALYSIS: is the investigation of a community to know and
therefore provide what they require to meet the information need of
members of the community.

13.  The analysis is determined to know the educational qualification, social strata
etc. of members of the community.
 COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY: aids effective collection
development and management. It is a set of guidelines on how to
systematically build-up the library’s collection in a way as to fulfill the
objective of the library.
 SELECTION: is the act of choosing relevant materials that would satisfy the
information needs of users of the library. The tools for selection include
bibliographies, publisher’s catalogue, book review, publisher’s index, current
awareness aid, subject guide to forth coming books etc.
 ACQUISITION: Acquisition of library materials is done through various ways
that include purchase, gifts, exchange, legal deposit, membership of
professional association, bequeath, among others.

14. PRESERVATION AND CONSERVATION OF LIBRARY MATERIALS
 Conservation is defined as the deliberate and planned supervision, care and
preservation of the total resources of a library, archives or similar institution
from the injurious effect of age, use (or misuse), as well as external and
internal influences of all types, typically light, heat, humidity and atmospheric
influences.
 Preservation includes safe guarding not only physical materials but also
information. To this end, reformatting, replacement, and the us of protective
containers are employed to extend access to information that might be lost
once paper or electronic books or documents deteriorate.
 The major objective of preservation and conservation is to prolong the life
time of the information materials.
 Every library materials has in itself the seed of deterioration (inherent
factors).
 Other factors of deterioration would include: environment (temperature and
humidity), light (ultraviolet rays), human factors among others.

15. INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs) IN LIBRARY
OPERATIONS
 ICTs has become an important field for all information professionals including
the library. This is because of it’s relevance and applications to library
operations and services.
 The major application of ICTs to information professionals are in the areas of
networking, on-line searching, CD-ROM technology, library automation,
online cataloguing and information service delivery.
 The advent of ICT brought about the concept of digital and virtual libraries
which consist mainly of digital materials and services.
 The advantage of digital libraries include accessibility, availability,
searchability, researchability, integration of text, image, sound, video,
unlimited capacity of the computer to store a large amount of information, up-
to-date and relevant information, multiple access etc.
 Disadvantages includes cost, requires technical skills, requires training and
retraining of library personnel, system overload and crash among others.

16. REFERENCES
Aguola, C.C. (1989) Libraries, knowledge and natural development: an
inaugural lecture. University of Maduguri. P.5
Ifidon, S. E. (1989) A practical approach to library collection development,
Ekpoma: Edo State University Library.
Nwalo, K.I.N. (2012) Imposition of order on chaos: cataloguing as the soul of
librarianship. Faculty lecture delivered at the faculty of Education, University
of Ibadan
Osumah, M. A. (2004) understanding the use of library, Ibadan: Stirling-Horden
publishers (Nig) Ltd.

17. THANK YOU