Why resource sharing is necessary in libraries

On the basis of experience and involvement in resource sharing activities in the area of management, it can be visualized that the management institutes can have the following objectives for their resource sharing initiatives:.

Keeping in view the need of stake holders of the management institutes as well as the potential information needs of the users of library and information support services provided by management institutes, it is essentially required to identify the various areas for resource sharing activities so that the management of management institutes as well as users are able to enjoy the fruits of resource sharing equitably. Scientific and research based information has a significant contribution for rapid promotion of research, education and development of various other sectors of the economy.

It saves a lot of human effort, financial input as well as application of physical and logistic resources otherwise needed to re-invent the wheel every time.

It provides vital technical support to keep going on all the scientific endeavors. Sharing of research information through decentralized internet data input has a significance of its own. It is both economical and time saving not only for users but also for the information professionals and document lists.

For the cause of economy, information data is prepared, entered, processed, stored and retrieved at a very high speed. Therefore, its utility is many times higher than the conventional means of information sharing.

Knowledge Explosion: Research institutions, universities, industrial and commercial organizations and others academic institutions are responsible for knowledge generation.

Inter-disciplinary, extra-disciplinary research and emergence of new disciplines have become more important and relevant. Procuring all published literature by a library is too difficult, but on the other hand the users have been demanding access to all such available literature.

Increase in Library Users: Population explosion, influx of people from rural to urban, education, high priority on research and development have shown liberal use of libraries by all.

Increase in user population demands growth in libraries and services, but there is a limit to such growth, as libraries cannot grow beyond a certain point. Resource sharing offers practical solutions to these problems. Library Services: Users in the libraries have become more and more information conscious than ever before, demanding effective quality library services. Also the disciplinary interdependence calls for diverse collections of a variety of disciplines, which is not within the capacities and competence of a single library.

Acquisition Problems: Increase in publishing output necessitates large intake in libraries to update their collection. This needs a large space to house the collection.

Obsolescence of knowledge also calls for weeding of collection. Co-operative acquisition, storage, and services can eliminate the problems of space, balanced collection building, efficient services, etc. Economic Resources: General Price Index everywhere indicates the rising trend.

Prices of books and journals have zoomed over the years. This has tremendously affected the purchasing capacity of libraries. In spite of governmental and institutional finance, libraries are not in a position to buy all that is required for their user community.

Regular budgetary cuts and introduction of new services and maintenance of staff also have affected the procurement of libraries. Web Based Resource Sharing: Computer and telecommunication technology are playing a vital role in the design and operation of resource sharing systems network. A library network means as a group of libraries are inter-related through different areas. The application of computers to information storage and retrieval has brought new possibilities of automatic indexing and free text searching for the words or phrases on the subject, which is likely to occur in any document, and the computer is set to read entire document for the appropriate words or phrases.

The development of digital representation of information has made the computer an effective tool for data processing.

The qualitative changes in design and architecture of computers and their software have enlarged the sphere or computer applications in library and information centers. The computers are of great significance with the advancement of telecommunication and reprography technologies in the library automation. When computers interconnected by some of the modern communicable vehicles, i. Information Technology provides an excellent opportunity for library professionals to manage themselves better.

Application of communication technology and electronic data processing of information have made a great impact on libraries and information centres, and the computers and associated facilities have come to be recognized as indispensable for accurate storage, processing, retrieval and dissemination of information.

All librarians should be perfectly familiar with the benefits of modern technology and perform efficiently. The main features of the recent development in Information Technology can be briefed as follows:. There has been a very considerable increase in the amount of information available in the form of full-text documents, bibliographical references, factual and numerical data and at the same time increase in the complexity of information handling and storage system.

In this modern scientific world, manual handling of information has become difficult and complicated. This old system is not accurate and speeding to channetise the information. These innovative software packages are helping the modern librarians in processing and distributing the information and extending the scope of sophisticated kinds of information technology.

Many hardware industries like Wipro and Penguin India Ltd. Have come forward in manufacturing library-relevant packages which give users almost instant access to a large portion of scientific and technological knowledge by means of On-line communication technology.

Since information literature grows at exponential rate causing problem of space for storage and speedy utilization of vast amount of information, the librarians may take advantages of the computer while searching and retrieving the required information useful to users. The computers are being increasingly used in library and information services for information processing and repackaging of information and on improving products and services of Library and Information Centers.

In modern days, many librarians prefer to adopt computers because of their following advantages:. Recently, there has developed an awareness of the importance of computers and librarians have started using non-book materials for information transfer.

Librarians can utilize computers in their various house keeping activities and information services as mentioned below:. The technical processing desires occupies significant role in the channel of library administration. Computerization of these services would facilitate the library staff as well as information seekers while searching the relevant information.

Computerized information facilitates the librarians to deal with day-to-day operations, planning and decision making. This is an informative package useful to the library managers and other subordinate staff for carrying out their regular work and routine processing of the transactions.

For example, facts such as book orders, bills and other matters must be available to them to carry out daily works efficiently. If this information is made available speedily, library staff can do routine duties perfectly and promptly. The acquisition and processing of periodicals are common functions in academic, special and public libraries.

In order to maintain and process the details, a library has to maintain large volumes of various registers. The maintenance of register is tedious and every year a large set of data has to added. Accession registers occupy much space and they are expensive. Manual cataloguing also may not be at uniform standard.

It is time consuming and difficult to maintain the large set of data also. Manual calculations are likely to have errors and it is difficult to check all types of errors. To a librarian the modern technology would have a great boon. In this information age, with enormous growth of publication and emergence subject specialization and economic pressures on libraries, it has become essential for the libraries and information centers to think of sharing the information resources among libraries and optimizing the use of existing resources thought the use of computer and telecommunication technology by establishing various networking systems.

Resource sharing networks offer:. With the increasing tend in electronic publications particularly on CD-ROMs and networks, automated libraries are going to be converted into electronic libraries.

The introduction of multi-user and multi task CD-ROM systems has made more economic for most of the organizations, especially where the same data or database are required for several users. It is relevant to monitor that a number of Indian libraries have a status of rich document collection.

Through automation and networking, these rich resources can be put to best possible are not only in their respective states but even outside whenever there would be demand for the information. As stated earlier, libraries should adopt the new sophisticated information technology tools to provide accurate and instant information and to cope up with the demands of new knowledge, the enormous increase in the collection of documents, their problems of storage, dissemination and retrieval of information.

They are also used for formatting and generation of indexes. The computers are of great significance with the advancement of telecommunication and reprography technologies in the library automation — when computers interconnected by some of the modern communication vehicles, one can have information over vast distances in no time. The computers are being increasingly used in library and information services for information processing and repackaging of information and on improving products and services of library and information centers.

They offer a versatile tool for organization and retrieval of information. Computers are used:. Selection of new books can be done from commercially available services which disseminate information about forthcoming documents, or directly from MARC tapes or any local inputs. Two files are maintained in a computer-based acquisition system.

One is the main file containing records of all current orders. The second is a file with the names and addresses of booksellers used by the library. A code number for each bookseller links the two files, so that booksellers information is not repeated in the order file.

The system prints out the orders addressing the appropriate supplier printing of orders can also be done on special pre-printed stationery that can be sent directly to the book-seller. When the item is received in the library, the order record with the bibliographic details becomes the basis of the catalogue record. The edited record is merely added to the catalogue file in an integrated system. This is one library service that is most accessible to computerization.

The advantages are especially seen in the amount of time saved in issue and discharge routines, and the avoidance of bottlenecks, which are the basic of any library. Circulation systems using computers have the details of the book issued and the person borrowing it is entered on files.

Dates of return are on the basis of the period of loan one week, a fortnight etc. Daily check of the files will identify what books are due or overdue and notices can be typed and sent to the users who have borrowed them. Provision for reservation data will make it possible to pick out these books for which there is a request and a user can be asked to return that particular book.

The circulation process in a computerized system depends on giving unique identification codes to books and to users. An accession number or a call number can be used as this is a unique identification key for a book. Users can be given individual identity codes. Cataloguing includes the job of describing, recording and displaying details of the holdings of the library. Computers are used to aid in the production, maintenance and updating of catalogues.

The quality of the catalogue depends ultimately on the cataloguer. Bibliographic details are gathered from relevant sources or from the acquisitions system. Usually there is one main or master file for the holdings of the library, and a temporary file for cumulating the additional records, because printing the master file is done only once in while.

After initial input of the records, the computer can perform simple tests on the record structure, and errors can be located and checked. The computer can be asked to generate added entries, if required, which can later be sorted into the main file. Separate listings for authors, subject and key points of access can be created.

A postings file and an inverted index helps the computer search and display record relevant to a specific query. Serial control through the use of the computer is perhaps one of the most complicated tasks of housekeeping.

This is perhaps because of the literally unpredictable nature of serial publications. Some of the functions of the serials control system that can be handled by the computer are:. However with serials, there are problems relating to change in title, periodicity etc. A listing system will depend on the bibliographic record for each serial being available in machine readable form. Union lists of serials holdings by librarians within a geographic region can also be produced by computer.

To predict the arrival of periodical parts. Each record must contain information about the publication pattern of the serial. This relates to the number of volumes per calendar year, number of parts per volume supplements, if any, the pattern of numbering parts, and the frequencies of publication.

Chatterjee, A. Resource sharing through consortia and networks in Assam slide prepar…. Retrieved 12 December Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel. Facebook Twitter Instagram. You are at: Home » English » Resource sharing in library : A brief information.

The demands and needs of library users also changes from time to time, so the library get trouble to meet their users needs. To solve the problems of information explosion, the concept of resource sharing has been developed. Resource Sharing is nothing but sharing of library resources with other participating libraries who need it.

The goals of resource sharing include: Facilitating users to have better access to library collection and services. Reduction in all round cost. Exchange of library resources and information to benefit users. Enabling the users to be more aware regarding the resources not available in their own library.

Advocated support creative use of library information resources. Create positive effect on library budget in term of cost or more services at lesser cost than can be undertaken individually. Avoidance of unnecessary duplication of information resources and their processing and maintenance costs.