Management of Electronic Resources for Effective Service Delivery in Medical Libraries in South South Nigeria

Abstract

This paper survey the management of electronic resources in medical libraries in South South Nigeria. The survey was necessitated by  the fact that electronic resources have become the driving force in the provision of quality service to medical library patrons. For  electronic resources to be judiciously utilized, the management principles of planning, organizing, and controlling need to be effectively implemented in other to enhance remote access to the resources. A descriptive survey research design was adopted from five medical  libraries consisting of 71 librarians sampled out of the 14 universities that were used for the study. Data for the study were generated  using questionnaire and were presented in tables and analyzed using the mean. Findings shows among others that each of this medical  library, developed policies to determine resources to be catalogued, encouraged the use of MARC, OCLC and OPAC are the most  adequate methods of organising electronic information resources, application of Electronic Resources Control System is adopted to regulate abuse behaviour. The problems of electronic resources management is lack of managerial principles and computer literacy  skills. Following these findings, recommendations were made to the effect that medical libraries should initiate training programs for  library staff in collaboration with campus computer centers, adequate funding should be provided for the medical library to facilitate its  services, medical librarians should design library websites to provide links to their electronic/online resources and web/internet based  services.