TABLE CONTENT
Title page – – – – – – – – – – –
Certification – – – – – – – – – – –
Approval page – – – – – – – – – – –
Dedication – – – – – – – – – – –
Acknowledgement – – – – – – – – – –
Table of contents- – – – – – – – – – –
List of Tables- – – – – – – – – – –
Abstract- – – – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION – – – – – – –
Background of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Statement of the Problem- – – – – – – – –
Purpose of Study- – – – – – – – – – –
Significance of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Research Questions- – – – – – – – – –
Scope of the study- – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW– – – – – –
Definition of Concepts- – – – – – – – – –
Methods of Special Collection Acquisition in Academic Libraries- — –
Organization of Special Collections- – – – – – – –
Users Services in Academic Libraries – – – – – – –
Problems of Special Collection Management Academic Libraries – – –
Summary of Literature Review – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY– – –
Research Design – – – – – – – – – – –
Area of the Study – – – – – – – – – – –
Population of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Sample and Sampling Technique – – – – – – – –
Method of Data Collection- – – – – – – – –
Instrument for Data Collection- – – – – – – – –
Validation of the Instrument – – – – – – – – –
Method of Data Analysis – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER FOUR: PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA- –
Research question one – – – – – – – – – –
Research question two – – – – – – – – – –
Research question three- – – – – – – – – –
Research question four- – – – – – – – – –
Research question five – – – – – – – – – –
Research question six – – – – – – – – – –
CHAPTER FIVE: Discussion, Conclusion, Recommendations .- – –
Conclusion – – – – – – – – – – – –
Implications of the Study- – – – – – – – –
Recommendation – – – – – – – – – – –
Limitation of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Summary of the Study – – – – – – – – – –
Suggestions for Further Research- – – – – – – –
References – – – – – – – – – – – –
Appendix- – – – – – – – – – – –
LIST OF TABLE
Table 1: Number of staff in the Special Collections Division
Table 2: Number of users of the Special Collections Division randomly selected.
Table 3: Types of research resources available in the Special Collections Division.
Table 4: Methods of resources acquisition during the period of the study.
Table 5: Ways the resources are arranged or organized.
Table 6: Effect of reduced funding on the resources and services.
Table 7: Extent to users satisfaction.
Table 8: Strategies for improvement.
THESIS ABSTRACT
The objective of this research was to investigate the management
of the Special Collection Division in a period of reduced funding in Nnamdi Azikiwe Library, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Six research questions were framed to guide the study. It was a case study. The population comprise of all the users of Special Collection Division, the Library Staff working there and the University Librarian himself. A sample population was made of 14 staff and 75 users of different categories. Questionnaire and oral interview were the instrument use for data collection while data collected was analyzed using frequency tables. The major findings of the study were as follows. There is a lack of bibliographic tools for processing of the resources, there is inadequate resources that are acquired and stocked for users, users are frustrated as a result of lack of learning resources they need and few learning resources are acquired for teaching and learning. A number of recommendations were made that could help alleviate the condition such as provision of more space for better organization of materials, taking acquisition tour to fill gaps in government document from Nigeria and paying for United Nations Documents, introduction of information technology in the management of Special Collection, recruiting more hands to handle materials organization and services in the division, prudent management of available resources as well as customer-oriented services, among others.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The quality of the management of any organization, whether it be a corporation, a government agency or a museum has a great deal to do with ultimate success of the group involved Mount (1984). This certainly holds true for libraries including those devoted to special collections. There is un-doubtable general agreement that the degree to which Special Collection Division achieve high standard of performance in dealing with their users especially during period of reduced funding depends chiefly upon the administrative ability of the library managers.
Special Collection according to Love and Feather (1998) are collection of materials, which are distinguished by their age, rarity, provenance, subject matter, or some other definition characteristics. They are a traditional feature of many academic libraries, and an important resource for primary research in the humanities and the historical social science. According to Harrods’s Librarian Glossary (1995) special collections are a collections of books connected with local history, celebrities, industries etc or on a certain subject or period or gathered for some particular reason in library which is general in character. Beemer (1984) pointed out that special collections division were formed for administrative convenience in libraries to take care of miscellaneous non-conforming library such as photographic collections, incunabula, and literary manuscripts, “archive” of the institutional variety are a recent addition to the list.
Nearly all academic libraries including Nnamdi Azikiwe Library, University of Nigeria, Nsukka have some part of the collection which have to be treated in a special way: a collection of rare valuable books, important donations, or achieves etc. In many cases these special collections are resources of national important, the qualities unique to special collections according to Scham (1987) set this department apart from the rest of the library and frequently from the library administration as well. The decision according to him by libraries to replace the term “rare books” with “special collection” has been of incalculable significance to both libraries and their users. If “rare books” traditionally includes mainly old, rare, unique and valuable works, the change and expansion of such holdings offered by the term “special collection” becomes apparent immediately.
Special Collection frequently exceed these boundaries. A distinguished scholar may donate his or her papers, recordings, video tapes and books or a government may establish a special collection, to include everything on the subject of its politics, history and commerce, which would include both the oldest and most recent publications in order to maintain and complete a library as possible. There is nothing mysterious about the reasons for the existence of special collection. Indeed, it would be faire to say that without them in our libraries and institutions our society would be grievously poorer. And even now, despite our efforts great gaps exist in our knowledge about certain societies. We learn about human history by studying human works, neglect or destroy those works and we will have caused those who have proceeded us to have lived in vain by having made it impossible for them to hand down to us the fruits of their labour and experiences.
Special Collection exist because of the research needs of students, staff and researchers. It provides specialized information for researchers and other categories of users. Special Collections also preserve our human heritage, which are rare “materials” and such collections are indispensable for scholarship. All special collections division with undoubtedly have operating cost which, unless are remarkable we and consistently funded, will have an effect up to the overall operation of the library. Unfortunately, the economic problem of the country started to manifest in the late eighties and was aggravated in the eighties to the fluctuation in grant allocation to the universities and indeed their libraries Kolo, (1999). This situation makes it even more imperative for proper management of existing special collection in academic libraries.
Management according to Edoka, (2000) refer to a special group of people whose job is to combine and utilize the organizational resources of men, money, information items and other resources to achieve organizational objectives. Library management according to the Harrods’s Librarians’ Glossary (1995) entails organizing motivating staff, securing resources and evaluating performance. According to Shafrits (1985) management can be referred to both the people responsible for running an organization and the running process itself, the utilization of numerous resources to accomplish an organizational goal. On his own part Johnson (1990) refers to management as the effective use and coordination of resources such as capital, plants, materials and labour to achieve defined objectives with maximum efficiency.
For the purpose of this work, management means those people whose duty it is to effectively use the resources of any organization, such as materials, labour and capital to achieve the purpose of its establishment.
Special Collection Department carryout these tasks by determining the direction of the Division, determining the fiscal constraints of the Division, determining the type and size of staff and how best to motivate for effective service/productivity and periodically examining the division performance among other strategies Mount, (1984). The management of libraries generally and in particular Special Collection has never been an easy task even at the best of time. At a time of dwindling resources, the management of special collection therefore, becomes a great challenge to the library administrations. In the past, libraries and information centers had to manually manage their information resources. The laboriousness of such practice, the attendant delay in information processing and delivery services and general ineffectiveness of information services at that time no doubt motivated serious research into the better means of information management.
Nwalo (2000), said that the information technologies found in libraries at present can be divided into three categories: computer storage, media and telecommunication. These three aspects, working together have brought about great improvement in the quantity and quality of library services to users and an amazing reduction in the delivery time. With the emergence of the Internet, the world has been truly reduced to a global information village. This world wide network, though designed to serve the information needs and interests of all facets of the society has provided a great boost to library services generally and special collections in particular.
The availability and access of special collections in the information technologies is a welcome development and should be integrated with other library collections with the aim of maximizing services to users. As result of increased pressures and demands, and in view of the reduced funding experienced in most libraries, concerted effort will inevitably be spent on the process of resources management in academic libraries in future. Proper management in academic libraries collection becomes imperative if the general objectives of any university library should be achieved. In order to achieve optimum result, a number of strategies should be put in place to manage special collections in the face of reduced funding.
The Nnamdi Azikiwe Library University of Nigeria Nsukka Special Collection Division was set up to acquire, process and service and assortment of special document of grate relevance to the research students and the academic staff, Okorie (1998). The library was opened in October 1960 occupying temporary two tiny rooms in the faculty of education building. The Africana collection otherwise known as Special Collections today, opened in a room of its own with an initial collection of one thousand five hundred volumes of books in September, 1964. Many of the books in the special collections were donations from the late right honorable Dr.Nnamdi Azikiwe Obi, (1986). According to Okorie, (1998) Nnamdi Azikiwe Library Special Collection habours a number nudocuments, which include Africana, Achebeana, Biafrana, Government documents/Achieves and United Nations Publications. This division is part of the general administrative system of the library.
Statement of the problem
