Effective Resource Sharing Services In University Libraries In North Central Nigeria

Abstract

Albeit university libraries in Nigeria have a long history of resource-sharing services, their yield in the past has not been impactful. The passiveness of university libraries generates a syndrome of insufficiency and will linger for a long time in as much university libraries in North Central Nigeria continues to shy away from resource sharing services. This paper addresses the constraints and benefits of embracing resource-sharing services. The study adopted a survey research design and the population comprised a total of sixty (60) librarians and twenty (20) university libraries in North Central Nigeria. Findings revealed that e-books, e-journals, e-magazines, e-newspapers, human resources, e-theses and e-dissertations are the resources shared among university libraries, resource sharing affects the library’s resource acquisition such as the library possessing the ability to subscribe to many databases, university libraries in North Central Nigeria has ability to offer between delivery services, ability to access electronic journals which will eliminate demand for large library space and shelving cost, ability to able to exchange professional ideas with other libraries, ability to acquire more titles relevant to institutional curriculum, consortium training, ability to acquire more titles with less fund, benefit from cooperative collection development and bibliographic processing. Benefits of resource sharing among libraries are networking, Cooperative processing (Cataloguing and classification), exchange of information materials (e-resources), library security: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), cooperative acquisition and joint publication. Findings further reveal that resource-sharing services in university libraries in North Central, Nigeria at an optimal level coupled with challenges of buoyant finances which affects university libraries in achieving full library automation.