Professor Anankyela Anaba Alemna, a consultant in librarianship has bemoaned the lack of access to academic library resources for non-residential students, and called for educational facilities to be made available to all.
He said academic libraries seemed to concentrate only on residential students and was not accessible to those on sandwich courses.
“We seem to have marginalized distant education students, part time students etc. Meanwhile we are supposed to serve all. Sandwich students are not allowed, yet they pay more fees than residential students,” Prof. Alemna noted.
The Professor said this when he delivered a talk on academic library management at the 39th Regular Meeting and Seminar of the Committee of University Librarians and their Deputies (CULD), held in Cedi Auditorium of the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ho.
The Professor said with the exception of the Cape Coast University, all other tertiary institutions in the country had no libraries at their student centres.
He asked librarians to reorient themselves to their roles as in the academic system, and help deliver the resources needed in the pursuit of excellence.
“Every library must have a mission and a vision. Libraries are subsets of the mother university and materials must relate to the vision of the university.
“Librarians must ensure information is acquired and organised in such a manner that meets the needs and programmes of library and their users, he said and asked them to stock only relevant materials,” he said.
The Professor urged them to make the library more visible and accessible to all, further calling for persons living with disabilities to be granted fair access.
“So much effort is invested in acquiring resources, and we must work to ensure that they are put to use. We have to be proactive with customer relations and must not wait for students to come”.
The professor called for knowledge sharing among libraries across institutions for development, and said they needed to come together to provide information in more diverse ways to suit the times.
The two day meeting is an annual convergence of librarians, and information professionals from universities, research, and tertiary institutions from across the country.
It is on the theme “The Role of Academic Librarians in Higher Education”, and has over the years been held on themes that helped explore ways of enhancing academic library management.
Mr Christian Yao Kofi, Librarian of UHAS, and Chairman of CULD, said librarians must be innovative and creative to enable them develop the library as an efficient and effective information infrastructure.
