Igbeka and Ola, Part 6
Discussion
How then does the collection in the Africana Section of Kenneth Dike Library meet the ‘selection criteria for digitization’ mentioned previously in this paper?
Given the standard criteria for digitizing library materials, can we reliably affirm that Africana and other selected materials in KDL should be digitized? It becomes imperative that these materials should be digitized for the following reasons:
The Africana Section of the KDL is located in the innermost section of the Research Library and books can only be brought to users by the library staff. Users/researchers are not allowed into that area of the library. They can only consult the catalogue, copy the call marks and submit them to the library staff at the reference desk to search and obtain the materials for them. In a few cases, the material may not be found as it might not have been properly shelved.
The P.O. materials and even the Africana books are most often left on the trolleys due to limited number of staff; in some cases some P.O. materials may not have been catalogued or classified.
In some cases, researchers and even library staff do not know many of the materials in the Africana Section.
The section is not well lit either and this affects the search of information sources by the library staff. This becomes worse when there is a power outage, as the section becomes very dark and the library staff is not able to search or collect information sources for users at all.
All these inhibit accessibility of some of the most needed materials in the Africana section and thus meet the reasons for digitization as discussed earlier.
The Africana materials and P.O. materials have intellectual justification, else they would not have been requested by researchers.
The copyright status of the texts/monographs is not questionable. They are guaranteed as already discussed. The Publication Ordinance guarantees this and the other means of acquisition of the Africana materials have been stated above.
The materials are also relevant to the institution’s goals and objectives as they are of great educational benefits to the students. They sometimes even provide financial benefit to the library as can be seen from the requisitions made by outside users, especially from foreign countries (See Table 6). If and when the materials are digitized, appropriate charges would be made for the information provided.
The Africana and P.O. materials and theses are not fragile. Most of them are newly published or acquired. They are current materials with current information; therefore, the physical nature and content of the materials are not questionable.
The creation of the metadata of these materials is feasible since catalogue records of the materials are available. The reconversion of the records to machine–readable data will not be very difficult.
The materials are also of international repute, based on requests made from other parts of the world as can be seen in Table 6.
Storage facilities for the materials are not enough. More space is needed especially for the P.O. materials. A lot of chaos can be seen when one visits the section, and there is a tendency of not knowing where to begin to put materials or to instill order. Newspapers, which are also stored in the section, help to create a state of entropy.
Digitization will make easy the accessibility of these materials. Organization would be enhanced; speed of finding materials and productivity in terms of research would be increased. These materials will acquire more prestige, for if a collection is unique or nationally or internationally important (see tables), but only available to a limited number of researchers, digitization can bring popularity to it and make it world–acclaimed. The institution will also acquire enhanced visibility and publicity.