Enforcing tertiary school library rules and regulations: The experiences and challenges

Abstract

The tendency to flout library rules and regulations has become a common phenomenon amongst library users. The data is staggering and widespread, and the trend has failed to abate with its attendant consequences –man-hour, financial and material losses. This however, does not imply that there are no effective rules and regulations, but enforcing them has its own challenges. This paper was therefore designed to examine the challenges and factors apparently militating against the effective enforcement of library rules and regulations in a typical tertiary library setting. It was indeed obvious, that there are many administrative, logistic and legal challenges militating against effective ‘policing’ and enforcement of relevant library rules and regulations. As such, it is recommended that key policies be put in place to ameliorate the challenges of library rule violations, while funding and training/retraining of staff should be enhanced.

KeyWords: Library, Rules, Regulations, Enforcement, Discipline