| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this project was to design an automated library Accession Register for UMSSN library which electronically records all information resources acquisitioned by UMSSN library and makes their accountability more effective and efficient. The project objectives were to; examine the procedures for accessioning information resources, find out the challenges encountered in accessioning information resources, suggest strategies for effective accessioning of information resources, and design an automated library Accession Register for UMSSN library. The project targeted a population of 3 people comprising of 2 library staff that were actively in charge of various tasks at the library and 1 ICT personnel because they were directly responsible for ICT related tasks in the library. Given the small population size, the entirety of the population was treated as sample size. The project adopted a qualitative research design and used interviews, observation and document review methods to collect data.
The project found out that UMSSN managed a variety of information resource categories including; text books of different subject categories, encyclopedias, newspapers, dictionaries, year books, magazines, novels, directories and written notes. These information resources were acquisitioned by way of purchase or donations. Upon acquisition, the resources needed to be accessioned. The accessioning was a process that started out with stamping of resources, classification, cataloguing, spine labeling, accessioning, and finally shelving or boxing them.
The project also established that the existing accessioning process was manual and aided by the book accession register. This manual accessioning process was criticized for the fact that; it was tiresome especially when dealing with many books, characterised with unavoidable of errors, slow and hectic, book accession registers are prone to damages or loss, sometimes the details about the information resources are inadequate to generate a complete an accession record, expensive in a long run, and make accountability and reporting difficult. To remedy the challenges associated with the manual accessioning, the project suggested; training new library staff about accessioning of resources at the library, establishing guidelines for use and preservation of accession register, making timely and planned acquisitions to simplify work for accessioning librarian, adopting electronic accession register for long-term accessioning, organising information resources pending accessioning under subject categories or authors to simplify work for the accessioning librarian, and searching online for extra details about an information resource whose accession details could be missing.
The project concluded that the book Accession Register used in the manual accessioning was characterised with lots of challenges and thus recommended that the automated Accession Register with wide range of benefits, be implemented to electronically record all information resources acquisitioned by UMSSN library and make their accountability more effective and efficient. The project highly recommended that the proposed automated library Accession Register should be designed with features or components that allow the accessions librarian to record details about the information resource author, title, number of copies, accession number, call number, publisher and source. | en_US |
