LESSON 7: LIBRARY SKILLS

Definition of a library
A library is place where books and other literary materials are housed, and are arranged in a
systematic order for reading, study, and consultation.
The different types of libraries
1. Public libraries
These are libraries that serve every citizen at every stage of life. They serve a wider range of
needs and objectives than other libraries. They serve the needs of all people from toddlers to
senior citizens, patrons from first grade to scholars. Can even be termed as the “people‟s
university”. They have the broadest mission. The mission is to meet the needs of the particular
community. Services offered include age specific services, reference services, outreach services
etc. Kenya National library has a branch in Kisii town. One can pay visit and know the kind of
services they offer.
2. School library
These are found in schools, which could be private or public. Just like academic libraries, they
support the curriculum of institutions to which they belong, such as primary and secondary
schools.
3. Academic library
Found in public and private post-secondary institutions of higher learning, i.e. colleges and
universities.
The Mission of academic libraries is to support the faculty, students, and staff of the college or
university and achieve the mission of the parent institution.
4. Special library/information centers
Include corporate, medical, law, religious, governmental, prison, not for profit organizational
libraries. They have a highly specialized collection eg UNEP, UNICEF<ILRI, ICRAF etc . for
instance, all High courts in Kenya have libraries for their purposes.

Definition of Information?
1. A collection of facts or data
2. Knowledge derived from study, experience or instruction.
Information may be presented in a variety of ways i.e. illustrations, photographs, charts, graphs,
multimedia, sound recording, computer graphics or animation.
Information retrieval
This is the process of recovering information from stored data.

Formats of information
Print and non-print
1. Print- e.g books, magazines, newspapers, brochures
2. Non-print –e.g. electronic journals-books, sound recordings, CD-ROMs

Sources of information
Mainly categorized into three
 Primary sources- Primary sources of information allow the learner to access original and
unedited information. A primary source requires the learner to interact with the source
and extract information

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  Person
 Interview
 E-Mail contact
 Event
 Discussion
 Debate
 Community Meeting
 Survey
 Artifact
 Observation of object (animate and inanimate)

 Secondary sources- Secondary sources are edited primary sources, second-hand

versions. They represent someone else's thinking.

 Reference Material
 Book
 CD Rom
 Encyclopedia
 Magazine
 Newspaper
 Video Tape
 Audio Tape
 TV

Primary or secondary

 Internet Web Site

 Graph, chart, diagram, table

 Tertiary sources -works, which list primary and secondary sources in a specific subject
area.
Works, which index, organize and show you how to use primary and sometimes secondary
and primary sources. They include
Almanacs and year books
Guide books and manuals
Indexing and abstracting tools
Directories. and secondary resources in a specific subject area works

The role of the University library.

The Library exists to serve the needs of the University in information provision and will aim to
offer the highest quality of service, so far as resources permit.
Traditionally, the university library is responsible for selecting, acquiring, organizing, preserving
and providing access to information
The Library's aim is to deliver information in the form, at the place and at the time of most
benefit to the user, within the requirements of the University.

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Support the university mission of developing an individual in all aspects i.e. physically,
culturally. Spiritually and academically by providing materials in all these areas.
Support research and scholarly publishing by providing books and electronic journals for
consultation during research
Organization of library materials
Classification
A method of organizing book titles so that books on the same subject are kept near each other on
the bookshelf.
Why classification?
It is essential because it keeps information books on the same subject together and users can find
the information they want as quickly as possible.
Types of classification schemes used in libraries
You need to decide which classification scheme to use to meet the needs of your library. The
major ones used are two
1. LC
2. DDC
Dewey decimal classification
It‟s used in many libraries especially the secondary school libraries with more than 500
information books.
It classifies books into 10 broad subject areas, which are coded by numbers. The range starts
from 000-900.
Subject Code
Reference: 000
Philosophy 100
Religions 200
Social sciences 300
Languages 400
Science 500
Technology 600
Arts and recreation 700
Literature 800
History and geography 900
Library of congress
The library arranges its books on the shelves in accordance with the library of congress
classification scheme. In this system each major class of knowledge is represented by a letter. eg
L- education H-social sciences.
In this scheme knowledge areas are arranged from A-Z.
The scheme uses a mixed notation i.e. a combination of both letters and numerals.
Call numbers
This is a number consisting of three parts:
a) A classification number
A number that represents what the item being catalogued is about/subject
b) A cutter number or a book number
An Alphanumeric device for representing words or names by using one or more letters followed
by one or more Arabic numerals treated as decimal numbers.

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The combination of letters and numbers called the cutter follows the classification number and is
preceded by a decimal part.
c) Additional information e.g. date, volume etc
HQ
5415
. C65
2006
Reading list and its content
A list of references on a particular subject for further reading.
Main features
Author, title, publisher, place of publication. Date of publication, edition statement.
What is a library catalogue
This is a list that tells you what books you have in your library and where to find them.
Types
 Title catalogue-materials are arranged according to titles
 Author catalogue-materials are arranged according to author
 Subject catalogue-materials are arranged according to subjects
Formats
Mainly can be classified into two
 Print catalogue-card, book
 Electronic catalogue/online –database in electronic format
OPAC
Online public access catalogue. In this catalogue you can search using the title, author or subject.
Collections in the library
 Books
 Daily Newspapers
 Indexed newspaper files
 Electronic journals
 Print journals
 Videotapes
 CD-ROMs
 Cassettes
 Government publications.

REFERENCE MATERIALS
A yearbook, the term may refer to a book of statistics or facts published annually.
Handbook: a concise reference book providing specific information about a subject or location
Almanac an annual publication containing tabular information in a particular field or fields
arranged according to the calendar of a given year
Directory an alphabetical list of names and addresses and telephone numbers
Encyclopedia a reference work (often in several volumes) containing articles on various topics
(often arranged in alphabetical order) dealing with the entire range of human knowledge or with
some particular specialty
Atlas a collection of maps in book form
Dictionary: a reference book containing an alphabetical list of words with information about
them

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Bibliography: a list of writings with time and place of publication (such as the writings of a
single author or the works referred to in preparing a document etc
Biography: an account of the series of events making up a person's life
Index: an alphabetical listing of names and topics along with page numbers where they are
discussed
USES OF JOURNAL, PERIODICALS, INDEXES AND ABSTRACTS
i. Journal or periodicals: Stella Cottrell, (2003, p. 117), notes “that journals
or periodicals usually contain the latest research for your subject, as well as book
reviews. Most journal articles have a short abstract at the beginning which tells
you what the articles are about. Browsing through journal articles and reviews
helps to keep you up to date with the subject.” You will be expected to refer to
articles in most assignments. Journals are published at regular intervals during the
year. They are collected into numbered volumes, usually one for each year. To
find a journal article, you need to know the following:
a. The title of the journal, the year it was published, and its volume number.
b. The name and initials of the article‟s author.
c. The title of the article.
ii. Indexes and abstracts: As Stella Cottrell, (2003, p. 117), “these are separate
publications which give brief details of journal articles, including who wrote what
and where to find it. Sometimes reading the abstracts will be sufficient for your
assignment but at other times you will need to read the actual article.”
In the indexes, you can search by subject heading and by keywords for all the
articles in a given subject. They are updated regularly and they are worth using.
iii. Electronic information: To locate the information in the internet, you type in the
address at which it is stored. This will consist of short abbreviations. Spaces, dots,
dashes, and letters must be typed in very precisely. For example, the following is
the address of the website address of the friends of the earth:
http://www.foe.co.uk
Having logged on to the internet, you would simply type this in on the computer
screen in the space provided. You can usually omit http://.
ADVANTAGES OF USING THE INTERNET
i. The range of information: Through the internet you have access to a great deal
of information including the following:
a. Newspapers
b. Government papers
c. Company data
d. Magazines
e. Financial data
f. Library catalogues and several others.
ii. Types of information: Modes of information on the internet can include the
following:
a. Sound like voices and music
b. Film and video clips
c. Interactive pages
d. Computer programs and many others.

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 The internet offers you the chance to browse for information across an enormous
range of sources without leaving your chair.
CAUTION IN USING THE INTERNET
Ask yourself the following questions:
i. Is it an authoritative source? Almost anybody can put information on
the net and much of it is of poor quality, from an academic point of view,
consisting of chat lines, commercial sites and advertising. This means it is
important that you check for the details of who entered any information
you are thinking of using and consider if that person is an authoritative
source.
ii. When were the data entered? People sometimes assume that if data is
accessible on the Net it must be true and up to date and this is not always
the case.
BROWSERS AND SEARCH TOOLS
Although there is a lot of information on the internet, it is generally well
organized. Software called “web browsers” help you to find web pages that
interest you.
i. Internet explorer: This is a Microsoft web browser. It is free,
and easy to use.
ii. Search tools: These are vast directories that cover a whole range
of subjects and which are cross-referenced. They are easy to use.
Examples are: Yahoo.com and Google.com
iii. Research tools (at www.iTools.com/research/) This browser is
useful for definitions, quotations, language translations,
synonyms and many other aspects.
iv. OneLook Dictionaries (at www.onelook.com/) This checks
over 150 dictionaries.
SEARCHING FOR WHAT YOU WANT
First, use a search tool such as Yahoo or Google, to find the general topic such as “sport”. Then
look for the specific topic search as “football, or hockey or volleyball”. If you are looking for a
specific person or event, use a search engine such as one of the following:
excite.co.uk/
ask.co.uk
Search for keywords that the text is likely to contain. To narrow down the search, look for a
group of keywords. Be as precise as you can or you may be presented with hundreds of entries.
Montgomery (1990), p.27) encourages one to use synonyms or near synonyms. He says that,
“suppose you look up films and find no entry in the subject index, you might try thinking of a
heading like entertainment or leisure and look that up. Alternatively, you might be wiser to
think of another word for films, that is, a synonym, and look that up. An obvious word would be
cinema”.
Another reason why you should consider looking up cinema rather than films is because cinema
is more technical than films, and you are more likely to find technical and academic terms.
NOTE:
The word synonym is used here in a very broad sense to include the following pairs of words:
i. Those which in some way of their senses have the same meaning, e.g.
films/cinema; author/writer.

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 ii. Those in which one or both words have a subjective value e.g. guerrilla/terrorist.
iii. Words whose meanings, though not the same, are very closely related, e.g.
murder/homicide.

NOTE:
It needs mental energy and flexibility on your part to think of suitable synonyms. You will not be
able to think of another word for a topic if you know only one word for it. It is important,
therefore, that you should have a broad knowledge of the names of academic and technical
topics.

ASSIGNMENT
Pay visit the Kisii University main Library and ensure you understand the special collections
stocked

Try using online sources to download e-books for this course or other: try PDF Drive, http://b-
ok.cc, or library genesis. For instance, from your google search engine, key in: libgen, search
and download PDFs and Ebooks…, Library Genesis, in the dialogue box key in Communication
skills, click on „search,‟ at the end of the dialogue box, then click on any of the many titles
(ensure it is a PDF, click on the displayed front cover and GET (Download). You will enjoy the
wealth of e-books available on this site throughout your study life at the University and after.
Best wishes
End