Partnerships in Libraries: Cornerstones of Access. The Case of Institute of Development Studies Library University of Zimbabwe

Elizabeth Matare Miambo
Institute of Development Studies
University of Zimbabwe

Alternate paper for the ALA Conference June 13-19 2002.

Partnerships in libraries have existed in Africa and particularly in Zimbabwe although they have been slow to take-off. It is an undisputed fact that libraries have developed many unusual and necessary partnerships in order to provide the best possible access to information for their users. This paper examines the cooperative ventures that have been undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies library in an attempt to improve on the provision of information services. It focuses on the use of technology networks, consortium building, inter library loan programs and many other forms of library cooperation. It highlights how these have brought a lot of benefits to the development of the Institute and enhanced the capacity of the organization as a whole.

Introduction

Cooperation between libraries is a universal language spoken in different dialects. The mission of the cooperative ventures is to improve library services through cooperation. Cooperation is no longer instrumental for libraries – it is strategic. Today the following elements make cooperation a strategic subject for libraries;

1. Globalization of the economy and society - the economic and social changes shaping the so-called information society involve the globalization of the activities of all institutions - including libraries.
2. The rationalization of countries e.g. SADC – there is an increasing tendency toward regional organization and administration of services and this is also occurring in libraries.
3. The increasing complexity of environment calls for the need of specialized knowledge, which calls for budgeting for technical expenses as well as the need for internal reorganization and the creation of new services.
4. The need to overcome inertia – isolation and inertia tend to go together and the best antidote maybe to know what other libraries do in similar cases and to exchange experiences and information with colleagues from other libraries.

Institute of Development Studies

The Institute of Development Studies library at the University of Zimbabwe is one library, which has to a great extent been influenced by the aforementioned elements. To understand its partnership arrangement it’s best to give an overview of the library in relation to the University of Zimbabwe Libraries.

The Institute of Development Studies library houses a large collection of materials in the SADC region related to development issues linked to the Social Sciences, Technology, Education and the Environment. It maintains a computerized database of 29786 records, 36 current subscriptions to various social science journals and about 20 000 documents from similar institutes, various international organizations government departments etc. It is a branch library of the Main Library of the University Libraries and provides a specialized information service to the researchers, academic staff and postgraduate students of the University of Zimbabwe. Independent Researchers for the public and private sectors are also eligible for membership. A team of two professional librarians and two support staff mans it.

Partnership Arrangements

As a branch library of the Main Library, IDS library enjoys the benefits of resource sharing and partnership arrangements organized by the Main Library. Currently the University of Zimbabwe is a member of ZULC (Zimbabwe University Librarians Consortium), which was formed to provide resource sharing among the members of the community in general. The consortium is fundamentally driven by the belief that access as opposed to traditional unqualified ownership, is the most viable strategy to maintain the ideals of the Universities in Zimbabwe. The Consortium includes:

• University of Zimbabwe (UZ)
• National University of Science and Technology (NUST)
• Midlands State University (MSU)
• Bindura University (BU)
• Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU)
• Africa University (AU)
• Solusi University

The aim of the consortium has been to share resources in the face of dwindling global budgets from parent institutions. The institutions have always collaborated on a variety of systems such as the National Interlending Systems (Through the National Free Library in Bulawayo). The consortium has had a great impact on the IDS library in that its capacity to provide standard service to users has not been disastrously affected by the escalating costs of imported books and rapid fall of the local currency against major currencies. It has continued to provide a maximum service through:

• Inter-library loan programs
• Running a collective catalogue
• Photocopying services
• Staff training and utilization
• Production of bibliographic utilities

Information Technology Networks

Cooperation has been at its highest ebb through information technology networks, electronic content loading and presentation. The library has managed to access EBSCO HOST and AVU (Africa Virtual University) for electronic journal full text articles.

Zimbabwe has been recently accepted to the PERI programme (Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information ) an INASP sponsored programme which will enable Zimbabwe and other institutions of higher learning to access;

• current awareness services
• full text on-line services
• document delivery

Through this partnership programme the library can now access several full-text online journal which include

1. Blackwells suites
2. EBSCO-host
3. Academic Publishers (Elsevier)

This in itself has led to improved level of resource availability for IDS library.

TEEAL

The library has established links with the faculties of Social Studies and Agriculture in particular through sharing of TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library), a ROCKFELLER Foundation sponsored project which has enabled the library the opportunity to build a network with these faculties to build an academic library network to underpin teaching learning and research at the University of Zimbabwe. It provides strategic representation and acts as a communication hub across faculty, departmental and regional libraries dealing with development issues.

SABINET

IDS library enjoys the membership of the Main Library to Sabinet Online which is a full fledged online information network. It is responsible for the catalogoue of books journals and materials in Southern African libraries and contains approximately 2,5million bibliographic references with more than 7 million holdings (Kemp 1996)

IDS library enjoys the resources offered by SABINET which supports the cataloguing and acquisition processes . The resource sharing is promoted through the inter-lending system where most requests are processed through the SABINET system.

International Cooperation

It is through international cooperation that sister institutions worldwide continue to support the library by providing the much needed research material. A case in point is the Japan Library Foundation, which presented the Institute with 65 titles on the economic developments of Japan. This donation came at time when local researchers are seeking information about the economic models that are responsible for the rapid development of the East.

The library relies on the Institute’s publications as a means of exchange to enhance the growth and development of the collection. It receives 16 titles gratis and has benefited from AAAS’s superceded CD-ROM databases received from the University department of Economics, as well as the CTA funded CD-ROM databases received by the Faculty of Agriculture.

Document Delivery

IDS cooperative arrangements extended to its participation in the Document Delivery project with IDS-SUSSEX whose purpose was to provide free of charge photocopies of journal articles, chapters in books and entire books not available in the library system. IDS library took the opportunity to fill in gaps in its collection of the more popular development studies journal titles as well as request material on recent research topics.

There has been a collegial cooperation, which was developed between University of Zimbabwe and Michigan State University, which involved the exchange of more than 400 faculty students, and the resultant publication of more than 200 articles, chapter’s reports books dissertations. This is the single largest U.S. linkage with an African Institution. MSU students are invited to enroll at University of Zimbabwe because of the larger faculty exchanges especially active between the colleges of Education, Agriculture the library and Social Science. The library benefits in terms of access to research information.

Staff Development

In the field of staff development and training some cooperative ventures have been established. University attends world, regional and national conferences, continuing education courses workshops to strengthen contacts between members of the profession. .The University Librarian attended SCANUL (Standing Conference for National University Librarian) and SCESCAL (Standing Conference for Eastern and Southern African Librarians) in South Africa. In such foras the librarians discuss the state of university libraries on the continent. These conferences offer the possibility of sharing practical experiences of similar professionals organizations and maybe enable librarians to design creative solutions for our unique African environment. IDS library has benefited from the standing cooperation arrangement between university and SIDA-SAREC on staff development. One of the librarians received sponsorship for further training at postgraduate level in librarianship. SAREC has also sponsored staff training on SABINET-ONLINE and attendances to conferences. This kind of cooperation has allowed greater staff specialization.

DATAD Project

The Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) an AAU project is cooperative agreement of eleven African universities of which Zimbabwe is a participating member whose aim to contribute to the creation of capacity in African Universities for the collection, management and dissemination of theses and dissertations electronically. Through this arrangement IDS library is able to provide visibility and improve accessibility to the work of its researchers both within and outside the continent. The project aims at capacity building in the areas of research and promotion of cooperation among member universities and networking of institutions having access to a central source of information.

IDS library works continuously towards improved levels of service and more efficient use of resources. Its visibility to the community to its stakeholders to government has been vital to gain support for improved services and resources to and to avoid threats to the affordable flow of information. In a nutshell IDS library has participated in the following cooperative ventures.

• Sending photocopies
• Soliciting outside donations
• Dissemination of information about the Institute through newsletters
• Accessing electronic journals
• Receiving professional support
• Staff training
• Joining Listservs
• Using email
• WWW access
• Inter Library Loans (through SABINET ON-Line)

In an effort to transform the way the library works with the business community in Zimbabwe on both the local and country wide basis IDS library IDS has formed what is known as Friends of IDS library. The aim has been to build stronger relationships between IDS library and business in support of research on development issues. This has helped the library package the benefits of research on development work in order to attract business partners, and has also facilitated business mentoring support and advice for librarians. The profile for librarians and research development initiatives have been developed among the business community. Links with other stakeholders have been developed to ensure the development of Friends of IDS Library.

Through these cooperative ventures the partnerships programs have had positive impact. The institutional backing which is vital to any partnership projects with the University bearing most of the costs has strengthened the impact. The most important element in partnership, as Mchombu(1999) argues is that although information sharing has become a very globalized and regionalized process commitment is needed. Libraries attempting partnerships must indicate their willingness to cooperate must provide information on available resources and should aim to establish an effective communication system. IDS library’s unique feature is its commitment to the partnership arrangement.

It has established partnership links which helps enrich the research process whilst building and enhancing the capacity of the organization. Although cooperation has its difficulties and problems such as the real or subjective loss of control, the need for good communication, the synchronization of the different rhythms of each library and the difficulty of reaching agreements between different cooperate culture, IDS continues to pioneer new thinking on how to organize and deliver high quality research based development information in a way that meets the needs of different types of information users. Only what is needed is SHARED VISION that acts as a driving force for the cooperative activities. BY WORKING TOGETHER WE LEARN TOGETHER.

REFERENCES

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