University of Ghana
University of Zambia
Some knowledge of the structure, size and organization of the two universities in which the research took place and, in particular, of their libraries is necessary to fully understand the research findings and conclusions. The information which follows aims to provide that background and context.
The oldest of Ghana's five universities, UGL was founded in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast and became an independent university in 1961. Its main campus lies 13 kilometres north-east of Accra at Legon. Only the Medical School is sited on a separate campus.
The academic life of the University is centred around seven Faculties: Agriculture, Arts, Law, Medicine, Science, Social Studies and Administration. Research took place in the Faculties of Arts and Social Studies. Arts has nine departments: Classics, Drama and Theatre Arts, English, Language Centre, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Mathematics, Music, Philosophy and Study of Religions. Social Studies has ten departments: Archaeology, Economics, Geography and Resource Development, History, Library and Archival Studies, Mathematics, Nursing, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. There are also five research institutes and three schools: African Studies, Adult Education, Statistical, Social and Economic Research, Medical Research, Population Studies, Public Health, Communication Studies and Performing Arts. Teaching is at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including PhD.
Over the three years of the research, the student population rose from around 6,500 in 1996 to 10,000 in 1998. Academic staff numbers rose from 500 to 650.
The Balme Library (named after the first Principal of the University) is the Central Library of the University. There are also a number of affiliated libraries, for example the libraries at the School of Administration and the Institute of African Studies, which were included in the library count of journal use. The buildings of the library were opened in 1959 and designed to accommodate 350 readers and 250,000 books. The present estimated stock of the library is 585,075. The library desperately needs to extend its premises so as to seat at least 1,500 readers. New accessions, however, were less than 2,000 in 1998, and averaged at less than 3,000 over the last three years.
The expenditure of the library was in the region of US$ 32,000 in 1998. The majority of new books are donations and the library purchases no journals, apart from those published locally, from its institutional funding. In the future, the library hopes to generate income for the purchase of books and journals, by incorporating a user services fee into the student fee.
The library holds a total of 8,894 journal titles (97,428 volumes) (excluding newspapers, annual reports, yearbooks, pamphlet series, etc. but including newsletters and bulletins). Of these, 8,222 are now closed files. Of the closed files, 407 titles were published in Africa and, of these, 158 in Ghana. Some 200 titles relate directly to the arts and social sciences. Most of the closed files were published between the 1950s and the late 1970s and are representative of the whole of Africa, including Francophone and North Africa. A glance through the titles reveals that, in the period immediately after Independence, most countries in Africa published scholarly journals in each main academic area of study.
The number of current journals did not change over the period of the research. The library expected to receive around 670 journal titles, out of which 60 were published in Africa. Of this 60, 35 were published in Ghana and 28 were directly related to the arts and social sciences.
Between 1995 and 1998, the library received aid from the World Bank, which enabled them to subscribe to between 100 and 200 international journals. Now that the support has ended, there will be a sharp decrease in current journals. The AAAS CD-ROM project provided six databases on CD-ROM between 1994 and 1996. None of these subscriptions have since been renewed. Most of the current non-Ghanaian African-published journals are donated to the library through AJDP, starting in 1994.
The library does not make access to journals easy. There is no holdings list to which academics can refer. The only records are maintained on a Kardex, kept in the Periodicals Office. This is not frequently updated. There is no subject index to journals and files, although on open access, are in alphabetical order of title; the shelf order is poor. The library does not publicize new titles or new issues in any way. It appears that many of the World Bank titles were selected without departmental knowledge and academics therefore do not know that they are now available in the library.
African-published titles are not differentiated in any way. In 1998, the researcher examined the shelves of the Balme Library, to see which of the 32 journals distributed under AJDP were actually available for use. Only 17 titles could be located on the shelves and only 15 were on the library's lists of holdings. These 15 were not the same as the 17 found on the shelves. Some titles were located in the Periodicals Office, awaiting processing. Local journals are, however, available for sale in the University Bookshop.
Since 1996, the library has offered an e-mail service to staff and students. The library staff send and receive the messages. Users pay around the equivalent of 20 US cents on receipt of each e-mail. More recently, the library has established modems in departments, if so requested. In this case the departments pay a rental to the library. There is evidence to suggest that e-mail is not much used for academic purposes. CD-ROM services are only available in the library. Here there are four work stations, which in 1998 were in full working order. This number of work stations means that it is necessary to book ahead and sessions are limited to 30 minutes. Unfortunately all the CD-ROMs are now out of date, as subscriptions have not been renewed since 1996. In 1998 one of the World Bank's virtual university sites was established at UGL. Academic staff and postgraduate students are allowed to use the Internet from this site, on an individual basis and on payment of a fee for each usage. From 1999, the library expects that it will also be able to offer access to the Internet.
One service the library continues to offer is inter-library loan, thanks to the IFLA/Danida project, which is underway. Document delivery both within and from outside of Ghana is being facilitated.
The library does not offer training to academic staff in the identification and use of journals and journal articles. When the CD-ROMs were first introduced, there was widespread marketing and publicity. But it was mainly students who attended the training sessions, whether these were in the library or in the departments. And training was not later provided for academic staff who were unable to attend the advertised sessions.
A feature of the University of Ghana in recent years has been the growth of departmental libraries. These are now well established in most departments and their independence is fiercely guarded. They are an important source of journals, as twinning arrangements and direct funding from outside agencies have allowed the acquisition of new and relevant titles, often more recent that those in the Balme Library. The Department of Library and Archival Studies has now agreed to train staff for these departmental libraries. It is however rare for a departmental library to have a holdings list of journals stocked and access is therefore restricted. Stocks of the libraries also depend on donor support and when projects end, so do the journals received by each library.
The University of Zambia was created in 1965. It remained the only public university in Zambia until the Copperbelt University (previously a campus of UNZA from 1978) was established in 1987. The main campus of the university is in Lusaka on the Great East Road. Only the School of Medicine is separately sited at the Teaching Hospital on Nationalist Road in Lusaka.
There are nine schools in the university: Agricultural Sciences, Education, Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, Law, Medicine, Mines, Natural Science and Veterinary Medicine. Research was carried out in the Schools of Agricultural Sciences and Medicine. The School of Agricultural Sciences has six departments: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Engineering, Agriculture, Animal Science, Crop Science and Soil Science. That of Medicine has eight: Community Medicine, Medicine, Nursing, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Pathology, Physiological Sciences, Psychiatry and Surgery. Teaching is at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
In 1998, students numbered 4,306. This was an increase of almost 800 on 1996. The great majority of students are fulltime (as opposed to part-time or distance) and under 100 are studying at postgraduate level. In 1998, there were 221 students studying agriculture and 299 studying medicine. In 1997, the Commission of Inquiry into the Operations of the University of Zambia and Copperbelt University reported that UNZA had 470 academic staff in post. This was well under the establishment of 646; there was a particular shortage of senior academic staff.
The university library is organized as a unified service. The Main University Library moved into its present building at the centre of the Great East Road campus in 1969. The building is designed to hold 300,000 volumes and to seat 1,600 readers. At present it is estimated that the library collection numbers 500,000 volumes. There are two branch libraries, serving the Schools of Medicine and of Veterinary Medicine.
According to the findings of the Commission, the University of Zambia has not allocated any funds to the library for the purchase of books and journals since 1993. Instead the library has had to depend on donations. Over these five years, an average per year of around 1,000 books and 240 journal subscriptions were donated. The library does not generate much income of its own. For the five years between 1993 and 1997, the total self-generated income amounted to about US$2,000.
The library holds a total of 2,725 titles (800,007 volumes) of journal back files. Most of these files are now closed; they started in the late 60s and early 70s and ceased soon thereafter. 144 of these are African-published titles, of which 33 were published in Zambia. 41 of the 144 relate to agriculture and medicine. Most of the non-Zambian journals come from neighbouring countries in Southern Africa.
In 1998, 398 titles were being currently received by the library. This was a slight increase on 1997. Out of these, 58 were published in Africa and of this 58, 10 were published in Zambia and 12 were directly related to agriculture and medicine. As at UGL, the majority (33 out of 48) of the current non-Zambian African-published journals are donated to the library through AJDP. The remainder are mostly from South Africa.
The library does provide a printed holdings list of journals. However there is no subject index and access is made more difficult at the Main Library as back files are on closed access. Although academics and postgraduates are allowed to enter this area, undergraduates must request the issue they want and they are only allowed one request at a time. (At the Medical Library, however, all journals are on open access.) The researcher also said that access was made more difficult by the fact that journals are not kept in good order and shelving is only carried out once a day. Journals are therefore often 'lost'. Those that have been used during the day or returned by members of staff (who are allowed to borrow three issues for three days) are not found on the shelves. The library does not offer any SDI or circulation of TOCs to academic staff. No special efforts are made to acquire or publicize African-published journals. (It is interesting to note that the only Zambian journal distributed through AJDP - Quest - is not acquired by the library.) It is not possible to tell from the holdings list which journals are published in Africa. However journals published in Zambia are available for purchase at the university bookshop.
E-mail was introduced to UNZA in 1991 and Internet access in 1994. A full campus network has been installed, which allows common access from all locations. Donor agencies have been particularly active in providing computers at departmental level and there is a computer laboratory for students adjacent to (although not part of) the university library. Access to e-mail and the Internet is free of charge. The main university library is fully automated and is connected to e-mail and the Internet through the campus network. It has five workstations for CD-ROM. At the present time, however, the library's ICT facilities are limited. None of the CD-ROM subscriptions have been renewed since the AAAS project finished in 1996. The network connection to the Main University Library has not been working in 1998 and the fault has not yet been repaired. The Medical Library has been disconnected because of non-payment of the telephone bill. The library cannot offer any document delivery services, due to lack to funds.
As at UGL, the researcher reported that most departments have set up their own libraries, which acquire books and journals and also lend to students. The reasons given were that most departments were physically a long way from the Main University Library, as the campus is large, and that many academics feel that the library is poorly organized and does not meet their needs.
