Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
10-2011
Abstract
This paper is an examination of the digital preservation of the University of Nigeria’s institutional based research outputs. After an initial fitful start the digitization initiative of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (U.N.N) has fully taken off. This paper seeks to bring out the major issues and challenges of the work through the first hand experience of members involved in the initiative. Six research questions guided the study. A twenty item questionnaire was distributed to the respondents who comprised of the total population of both librarians and the technical staff mainly from the university’s department of Management and Information Systems (MIS) directly involved in the project. The results of the findings show that librarians in the project are yet to fully possess the whole gamut of the skills needed for the job, particularly skills dealing with book marking, rasterization of the scanned documents and troubleshooting the equipment for the project. The paper recommends more training for library staff, procurement of more state-of-the equipment, inclusion of digitization skills in the Library and Information Science curriculum, the continued synergy between the library and MIS in terms of resource sharing and technical support even though the project will be domiciled in the library. The paper advocates that since digitization encourages the development of local contents and the sharing of digital resources among libraries within the country and beyond that Nigerian Libraries should adopt this initiative for the preservation of their institutions heritage resources.
Comments
Published in Library Philosophy and Practice (2011) 16 p.