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CHALLENGES AND COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS
FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN AFRICA
Dr. Elisha R. T. Chiware
Director: CPUT Libraries
Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Cape Town, South Africa
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Presentation Outline
• The Higher Education Landscape
in Africa
• Value of Academic Libraries in
Africa
• Challenges in Service Delivery
• Collaborative Ventures
• Conclusion
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Higher Education in Africa
• HE in Africa – is playing a critical role in Human
Resources development for the Civil Service and
Development of Education System
• Challenges
• Access – rising but still behind in global terms
• Gender equality – the girl child is still marginalized
• Relevance – to development priorities and social change
• Quality – teaching staff, low skilled researchers
• Management – poor resources focus
• Funding – inadequate investment from funders
• Research - poor and not being applied to social and economic
change
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Value of Libraries in Higher Education in
Africa
• A growing global disconnect between libraries and
academics(RIN and RLUK, 2011)
• Growing call for libraries to articulate their value and align
with institutional goals (Value of Academic Libraries
Initiative – ACRL, 2010)
• Value of academic libraries in the Developing World –
SAGE, 2013
by
demonstrating the value and impact of academic
libraries to university leadership (A joint ACU/INASP
• Enabling academic excellence in African universities
publication for African vice chancellors, rectors and university leaders)
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Libraries in Higher Education in Africa
• Challenges
• Funding - a rise in investment (in the last decade) – but not
adequate
• (academic research – a source of information and knowledge - for
social, economic and political well being of countries)
• Information Access
• While resources – are now widely available – the main problem remains
with access – technical
• Acceptance by users – faculty and students
• Technology challenge
• Broadband connectivity
• Reach to areas beyond major cities
• Training
• Brain Drain
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Libraries in Higher Education in Africa
• Challenges
• Advocacy and Administration
• Position of library in the institution
• Appreciated value
• Political and economic stability / instability
• Varied external funding sources and agendas
• Rapid growth of student population
• Challenge on library facilities
• Library physical infrastructures
• Buildings
• Electricity
• Climate control
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Providing Solutions through Collaboration
• Principles
• Types of collaboration
• Future areas of collaboration
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Principles of collaboration
• Benefit for all the participants
• Well defined relationships
• Common, new goals
• Have the commitment of the organizations leaders
• Several projects with long term effort and results
• Comprehensive planning, including:
- development of joint strategies and
- measures of success i.e. benefits to the user
• Mutual risk
• Shared resources or jointly contracted
• Distributed benefits – more is accomplished jointly than could be
individually
Murray Shepherd, University of Waterloo, Canada
http://www.iatul.org/doclibrary/public/conf_proceedings/2004/murray20sheperd.pdf
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Country specific collaboration
• University Library Directors Councils
• Coordinated national forums
• Consortium
• Resource sharing and joint development projects
• Combined Donor sponsored initiatives
• In various areas
• Library Association Chapters
• Focused on academic library development
• National conferences, workshops and seminars
• Open Access initiatives
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Collaboration initiatives among African
academic libraries
• IFLA - Africa Section
• African Library Summit
• Carnegie Leadership Academy
• Leadership development
• DRUSSA
• Libraries Support Research Uptake initiatives
• Open Access – Digitization initiatives
• Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) – ACU
• (18 countries)
• Information Literacy Standards
• Statistics Databases
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Areas of future collaboration
• National electronic licences
• Learn from Brazil
• Research data management – a coordinated response to the
emerging area of e-Research
• Likely provide African researchers with opportunities to share and
collaborate on common research areas
• Open access - Increase African content on the web
• Make a whole wealth of research outputs from govts, NGOs,
universities more visible
• Share technical expertise across boarders
• Provide African technical experts in the Diaspora the opportunity to
plough back home
• Provide focused opportunities for growth and development of
new professionals in global LIS trends
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Conclusion
• Continuous demonstration of library value –
through advocacy and alignment with
university goals
• Sustaining current collaborative initiatives
• Learn from more developed emerging
economies e.g. in BRICS
• Provide opportunities for broader global
networking
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Acknowledgements
• To USFC for giving IATUL an opportunity to interact with
Library Directors in Latin America
• To USFC Library Staff for organizing the workshop and
ensuring that we have all information prior to travel
• To my colleagues (Mark Snyders at CPUT Libraries) for
assisting me with putting this presentation together
• And all those in attendance today
• Estamos ansiosos para a família
IATUL!!
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Obrigado!!
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