The Chief Librarian at Nyandarua Institute of Science & Technology, Wilson Kabucho, made a benchmarking visit at Jomo Kenyatta memorial Library on 25th July 2018.
The Circulation Librarian took him for a library tour in all the sections and later on he was briefed on activities that take place in each of the sections. The first section was the Circulation where he was taken through the circulation module by the Circulation Librarian. Some of the activities covered included; online registration of users, charging and discharging of library materials, fines of overdue materials, borrowers’ maintenance, categories of users (Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Academic staff, Non-Academic and Alumni, Online Public Catalogue training, Checking of user borrowing history and keeping vigilance of the library materials by the 3M machine and library personnel.
Mr. Kabucho was then taken to Digital Content Unit. In this unit, he was given a short introduction about the unit, the sub-sections that make up the Digital Content Unit. He was then introduced to various types of e-resources such as e-books, e-journals, UoN Digital repository and open access resources. He witnessed library users accessing resources using different devices such as the PCs and laptops. He also got an opportunity to be demonstrated to the digitization of the institutional documents for online uploading. This was followed by a demonstration of how Turnitin software works (anti-plagiarism software).
The East African collection could not have been bypassed because of its rich collection. Some of the content in this section includes; Masters and PhD theses, research reports and books written by Kenyans. At the acquisition section, he was informed that selection of information materials is decentralized whereas ordering, receiving and accessioning is centralized.
Finally, at the Cataloguing section, Mr. Kabucho was taken through the cataloguing process including cataloguing module in V-smart which is a Library Information Management System. This was just the beginning of collaboration between the two libraries and the institutions as a whole.