The use of the University of Zambia library by the social science, humanities and science faculties.

Abstract

To capture its share of the budget, an academic library has to demonstrate that it is vital to the university community. Hence, the importance of conducting an evaluative study, especially in the case of Zambia, where lack of foreign exchange has resulted in a reduction in new books and journals imported. However, no research study has been conducted on the use of the academic library at the University of Zambia. To determine faculty use of the library, a survey was conducted at the University of Zambia. Questionnaires were mailed to the Secretary in the Correspondence Department who distributed them to faculty members at the University of Zambia. In addition, the researcher also travelled to Zambia to obtain more responses. Altogether, 191 questionnaires were distributed to faculty members. One hundred and eight faculty members responded resulting in a 56.54 percent response rate. In relation to the first hypothesis which stated that, social sciences faculty members use academic libraries for their teaching needs more than the science and humanities faculty members, the study found that humanities faculty members went to the library more often than science and social sciences faculty members. Social sciences faculty members also used the library more often than science faculty members. The results of the second hypothesis which stated that social sciences faculty members encouraged undergraduate students to use university libraries more than the science or humanities faculty members, showed that social sciences faculty members encouraged students to use the library more often than science faculty members. It was also found that humanities faculty members encouraged students to use the library more often than both the science and social science faculty members.