User education programme for Muteesa I Royal University Library

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to design a User Education Programme for Muteesa I Royal University library in order to help and guide library users to utilize and find the resources they need with ease. The objectives of the study were: to find out the library services offered and the current nature of access of information materials prevailing in Muteesa I Royal University library, to establish how user education services are carried out in Muteesa I Royal University, to find out the challenges faced in providing user education at Muteesa I Royal University library and to design a User Education Programme for Muteesa I Royal University library. The study was qualitative and targeted a sample size of 24 respondents consisting of 3 Assistant librarians and 1 senior librarian and 20 students and engaged only 19 of these successfully through a purposive sampling technique and with aid of Interview, observation and questionnaire methods of data collection. The findings of the study revealed the following as the types of information resources at Muteesa 1 Royal University Library; journals, maps, magazines, books, newspapers etc. The study found out that; the library provides various library services and majority reported circulation services, reference services and free computer and Internet services etc. The study also revealed some of the user education services that MRU has that is to say library orientation, library tour and guide which are mainly done in the first week of the semester especially for freshers. The findings revealed the following challenges faced by MRU in providing user education services which are barring eligible users from access, failure to identify materials, delay to access materials, loss of library materials, heavy fines upon loss, uncooperative staff, inadequate staff, loss of ID card and time wastage. Majority of the respondents from the study reported positive on the need to design a User Education Programme at MRU which should include library guides, orientation of new users, instructions on how to use the library‟s holdings, rules and regulations, literature search training, automation of UEP and registration of users. The study concluded that; the key challenges of not having an appropriate User Education Programme at Muteesa I Royal University library was new users who do not have enough skills in locating and accessing library materials, whereby they have to inquire from fellow users on what the library requires them to do in order to make use of the available collection which discourages them from going to the library which leads to very few users who visit the library. This is due to lack of information about the library collection and how to get access it, leading to underutilization of the library‟s collection. Therefore, the most appropriate way to solve all the problems above was to design a User Education Programme which the library of Muteesa I Royal University should adopt to equip users with skills that will enable users become independent users of the library and its resources. The study recommended that: there should be introduction of a web based user education programme, provision of adequate resources, mandate user education and ICT systems should be upgraded to benefit users to a wider extent so as to meet their user needs. Other services can be improved through provision of staff training and educating users about them to make them outstanding and to remedy challenges of underutilization of resources. A User Education Programme was designed to guide and help users to effectively access the resources in the library