CHANGING NATURE OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS IN TYPE AND NUMBER
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
THE STUDY’S BACKGROUND
A community library provides a unique service that should be available to everyone. A library is an organization that acquires, organizes, processes, and disseminates information materials in all disciplines to those who require them at little or no cost. Since its inception, the public library has been regarded as a free library set up to provide service to everyone. It serves the community, which is why it is known as Peoples University (Adimora, 1999). The public library has the most diverse clientele of any type of library.
The services are available to everyone, including the literate, the illiterate, students, teachers, farmers, industrialists, doctors, bankers, civil servants, businessmen, poor, wealthy, able, and disabled people, among others. The public library must strive to support the general interests of the community it serves in order to improve the quality of life and increase man’s overall happiness and awareness of himself, others, and his environment.
The UNESCO public library manifesto, published in 1949 and revised in 1972 and 1994, states that “the public library is the local center of information, making all types of knowledge and information readily available to its users.” The public library’s services are provided on the basis of equal access to all, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, nationality, language, or social status.
Specific services and materials must be provided for users who, for whatever reason, are unable to use the regular services and materials, such as linguistic minorities, people with disabilities, or people in hospitals or prison.
The following are the key missions that should be at the heart of public library services, according to the same manifesto: – developing and reinforcing reading habits in children from an early age, supporting both individual and
self-directed education as well as formal education at all levels, providing opportunities for personal creative development, stimulating the imagination and creativity of children and young people, creating awareness of cultural heritage, appreciating artistic/scientific achievements and innovations, providing access to cultural expression of all performing arts
Edoka (2000) defines formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formal According to Achebe (2005), the study of ancient and medieval libraries leaves no doubt about the importance of public libraries in education.
She named some of the pioneers of public library services, including Edward Edwards of the United Kingdom, Melvin Dewey of the United States, and Antonio Pannizi of Italy, who worked tirelessly throughout the history of libraries to establish public libraries with the goal of bringing education and knowledge to the doorsteps of their people, thereby encouraging them to read without necessarily attending school.
According to Olanlokun (1993) and Achebe (2005), the first public library in Nigeria was the Lagos Municipal Library, which was a subscription library with branches throughout the country. These were followed by the Nigerian government public relations office library in Lagos, as well as numerous reading rooms throughout Eastern, Western, and Northern Nigeria.
Thus, the goals of public libraries are to meet the community’s information needs, to support their educational efforts [both formal and informal], to encourage purposeful use of leisure, and to encourage and promote reading – especially among children. This research focuses on reference services, which are provided by public libraries. A public library’s ability to provide reference services is an important function.
This service is provided to readers upon request. People have a variety of reference questions that the librarian must answer. As a result, it is typically a person –to –person service. In some cases, reference processes include interviewing the reader in order for the reference librarian to clearly articulate the user’s problem. Assistance in carrying out functions is required, and a specific administrative organization of qualified personnel must be provided.
According to Alokun (2003), reference services entail assisting readers in obtaining information from the library. As a result, the primary goal of reference service is to locate precisely the right materials to solve immediate problems. Reference service also refers to the various library activities that are specifically designed to make information more easily accessible Edoka (2000).
Many public libraries have been established in various parts of the country over the last century, emphasizing reference services. For example, the Lagos Town Council Library, which opened in the early 1950s, provided reference services to adult users who primarily studied for public examinations. The Lagos municipal library opened its main and branch libraries to the public, as well as providing children’s reference services.
In the Western states of Nigeria, mobile reference and loan services were provided in the state capital in the 1970s, despite the fact that other cities and towns in the state did not have access to such services. The regional reference library was established in Kaduna in 1963, and branches were established throughout the region.
The divisional libraries in the Eastern parts of the country, such as Onitsha, Enugu, and Awka, place a premium on reference services for their clients. Recently, the various state library boards have prioritized reference services, despite the fact that the majority of them are underfunded (Olanlokun, 2003).
The following are some of the reference services provided to clients: Inter–Library loan, user education, current awareness, reprographic service, computer literature search/online searches, Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI), and other services are available. When a library does not have some materials needed by users, instead of discharging the user, the library will seek that particular material from another library to ensure that the user gets the appropriate material he/she needed so that he/she is not stranded.
After identifying their areas of need and request, the borrowing and lending process can also use the internet for both requesting and delivering inter-library loan materials. The goal of an inter-library loan program for a library is to expand its collection and provide better and more qualitative services to its users. Another type of reference service provided to library patrons is user education.
In this case, the reference librarian instructs users on how to use the library and its resources. User education is information provided to readers to assist them in making use of the library. It is concerned with the entire information and communication process, and one aspect of this is the users’ total interaction with the library.
In general, the reasons for user education revolve around the issue of acquainting users with the library building itself, staff, library tools, and so on. The lack of this is why users become easily frustrated when it comes time to use the library.
Current Awareness Service; this service entails displaying new additions in the library for at least one week for users to browse through. Periodic exhibitions on current issues of academic and research interest are also held. Reprographic service entails making materials that cannot be loaned available in print [photocopying and printing] and non-print [CD-Burning, Scanning] formats.
According to authors such as Abel, Gogdil, and Zaka (2002), regardless of the future, information provision services will continue to be an essential instrument of human welfare. Similarly, Margeston [2002] recognizes the significance of dynamic information access.
According to Edoka (2000), the entire human and material resources in the library are put in place at a significant cost for the overall purpose of providing effective services to library users.
CHANGING NATURE OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS IN TYPE AND NUMBER
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