Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
2021
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The main objective of this study was to find out the challenges and opportunities of medical teaching libraries in Lahore for resource sharing and to know the situation of availability of pre-requisites and problems in the way of resource sharing among libraries. To achieve these objectives, a comprehensive questionnaire was developed as an instrument for data collection through a survey. The population of the study consisted of medical teaching libraries situated in Lahore. Keeping in view the relevant literature, extent, nature, and timeline given to accomplish this study and available resources a comprehensive sample of 26 medical libraries of Lahore has been selected for this study. The Census Sampling technique was applied to gather the required data. An instrument of the questionnaire was applied for data collection. Major findings of the study show that there is no significant variation in the availability of prerequisites among different institutions. The findings of the study reveal that this is the area where the majority of institutions have missing elements. The most common requisite which is not available within a major part of the population is the unavailability of the catalog on the World Wide Web. Most institutions show this unavailability to bear a major part of the cost to build a shared collection in any other library to be detrimental to resource sharing. The unavailability of Z39.50 compatible software and catalog has been seen as a missing prerequisite in most cases. The majority of respondents showed their absence to provide space and share cost for hosting a shared collection. Availability of a machine-readable catalog is commonly present in most institutions. It was found that financial resources, shortage of staff, unsupportive organizational culture and unavailability of catalog, etc. are other major problems.