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The Impact Of Public Library Services
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The
Chambers Universal Learners Dictionary define a library as a building
or room containing a collection of books or some other collection, for
example, gramophone records.
Shair (1963) also defines a library as
an organization of one or more trained people who use carefully selected
or organized books, periodicals and other similar materials as a means
of giving to those who may appropriately use it to the fullest extent of
their need or desires the information, enrichment or delight which is
to be heard from the written word.
The library can be defined as an
institution that is mostly concerned with the methods, skills, and
system for acquisition, storage, preservation and dissemination of
recorded and non-recorded materials. The library is generally grouped
into six (6) which are national, academic, school, private, special and
public libraries.
The public library is a library which carters for
the informational needs of everybody in the society. It is not
restricted to anybody or a particular group of people. The implication
of the word ‘PUBLIC’ is that the library is expected to serve everybody
in the community in which it is situated; hence it is also called “The
People’s Universityâ€.
According to Gates (1976), the public library
can be defined as a library authorized by state law, supported from
general public funds or special taxes voted for the purpose and
administered for the benefits of the citizens of the country, town, city
or region which maintains it on the basis of equal access to all.
Ikokoh (2003) defines public library as a library provided wholly or
partly from public funds and the use of which is not restricted to any
class or person in the community, but is freely available to all.
The
public library primarily exists to serve the entire members of its
locality referred to as the general public. Nuhu (1994) observed that
the public library has the same universal objective of serving the
general public towards the educational upliftment and awareness of rural
and urban persons, to enhance and develop their potentialities. The
public library has the traditional role of acquiring books and
audio-visual materials, and making them available to patrons regardless
to citizenship, age, educational level, economic and social status or
any qualification or condition. It must therefore be a depository of a
variety of books and other informative materials and provide needed
services for the members of the immediate community it serves. The
public library has proved to be of the best means of providing books and
non-books materials and making them available and accessible for its
diverse users.
Public libraries are now acknowledged to be an
indispensable part of community wide range of reading materials for all
ages and centres for community information services. The public library
that provides services to the general public, is also responsible for
serving special categories of the public, such as children, members of
the armed forces, hospital, patients, prisoners, workers and employees.
In other words, it is a library established by the state to provide wide
service and supervised by either a ministry or a library board.
The
public library first started in the early 19th Century in Europe and
America. In England for instance, industrial cities like Manchester,
Russia and Detroit in the United States had public libraries so as to
meet the informational needs of the industries. Boman (1989) in addition
said that the growth of education and printing encouraged the use of
books. For that reasons, the first public library Act in England was
promulgated in 1850. It empowered that any town council with a
population of 10, 000 (later 5, 000) people was entitled to one public
library.
Emmanuel (2006) asserts that public libraries in Nigeria
were modeled after the Bristish. They started about fifty years before
independence with the establishment of libraries in Lagos. The Modern
public library movement in Nigeria can be said to have started from the
foundation in 1910 and 1920 with the Tom Jones Library in Lagos. He
further added that the Tom Jones Library had acquired the character of a
public subscription library in which the public can subscribe to
membership and get books for a particular period of time. The Lagos
Library which was established in 1932 was also on public subscription.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This research work covers the impact of the public library services to the people of Kaduna State. It examines the views of the users toward the services rendered by the library, the type of services offered and also how satisfactory the users are with the services. The survey design was adopted in this study and methods used collecting data included questionnaire, observation and interview.From the analysis, it was revealed that students are the majority users of the library and they mostly use ... Continue reading---
