Public libraries relevant for excellence

In Uganda, it has been argued severally that a reading culture is almost nonexistent. Lots of reading materials are in place but only a fraction of the population have the interest to read. This also accounts for the low sales of newspapers in the country.

The public does not have a similarly strong association with public libraries. The use of the library can be of great help to learners and researchers as it provides a quiet reading environment (as a rule) and variety of book resources.
Allan Musoke, a Senior Four student at Sentah College in Mbarara District testifies on how helpful the library has been.

“I was introduced to this library by a friend of mine when I was in Senior Three. I am inspired to read when I see other people reading. “Since I was the only child in secondary at home, I spent most of my time playing around with my siblings in primary. However, with the library I am able to concentrate as reading is the reason everyone comes here, so I concentrate more.” However, Rachael Ntegyereize, now a first year student at Mbarara University of Science and Technology, does not concur with Musoke.

“In secondary school, public libraries were viewed as areas where students would show off. I had never liked reading from there because students always formed ‘cliques’ of their schools and gossiping on who dressed best and who has the best phone was the order of the day. So to clear this stress, I always stayed home where I concentrated more in my room,” she says.

Security fears
“The only problem I had with public libraries was the poor security in most of these libraries. While it was meant for reading, some people came with different reasons. It is a common rule that users’ bags should be left outside,” Ms Ntegyereize says.

Students that came with other purposes like stealing took this opportunity to take what did not belong to them. “On several occasions, I lost property at the library and I had to go through a lot of explaining to my parents on why I had ‘misplaced it’,” Ms Jalia Nanziri, now working with a media company, memorises.

Nevertheless, public libraries are key in improving a student’s mind set on different subjects. “With the state of schools in our country, most school libraries are not up to date, and so public libraries come in handy to supplement students’ learning given the various books in libraries,” Ms Nanziri commends.

Mr Abdul Mutazindwa, the Director Education Standards in the Ministry of Education, says public libraries are one of the critical installations, “but I don’t know whether they qualify to be called public libraries.” He says these facilities are not re sourced and would be very effective if people knew about them. “Few people know that they exist.”

Mr Mutazindwa, who says he benefitted a lot from public libraries during his time at school, notes that the country has failed to promote reading. “The reading culture has been poor. The unfortunate part is that we have failed to outwit it. In our education system, we don’t start it early,” Mr Mutazindwa explains.

The importance of a library

The library not only compliments the classroom study but also aids in research. It helps students with text books, parallel studies, reference books and periodicals; by providing a large number of bibliographic tools and up to date literature. However most of the public libraries in Uganda do not have the IT component as most of them have one or two computers with limited access to the internet.

Unlike in classroom academics, the internet facility is important in research work. The public libraries are also short of proper book up dates. Some of them still have old, outdated books in their shelves as some depend on donations most times. “Our peak time is second term holidays when candidate classes are preparing to sit their final exams. Students come in large numbers and at times we cannot accommodate all of them because of the limited space and scarcity of books,” Ms Nalubega notes.

If public libraries are going to invest limited resources into a marketing campaign to stay relevant in the information services field, then determining the likely effectiveness of the results is imperative.