Assessing the Compliance of the Commission of University Education (CUE) Standards for the Library Physical Facilities at Rongo University Library, Western Kenya

摘要

The ultimate goal of University Libraries is to provide services that satisfy the information needs of users. The best way to find out whether the services and facilities in place address these needs is to go out and find out from the users. The purpose of this study is to assess whether university libraries in the Western region comply to the Commission of University Education (CUE) standards for library physical facilities. The study was conducted at the Rongo University Library which was purposively selected from six universities in Western Kenya. The main respondents comprised of 52 undergraduate students and 12 lecturers from selected departments. The study adopted a descriptive survey design and structured questionnaire to collect data. The study results were analyzed using descriptive statistics aided by SPSS and presented in graphs and tabulated summaries. The study found out that the respondents perceive that the Rongo university library has inadequate physical facilities to provide quality information resources and services that supports teaching, learning and research endeavors of the university. The study eminently noted that dwindling budget allocation was hampering a clear compliance to the CUE standard for library facilities. Findings and recommendations of the study will be significantly important to Library Management in Universities to enable them identify the reasons of inadequate library facilities and how this can be improved to meet the standards of information provision excellence set by CUE. The study concluded that the University Libraries should provide both physical and virtual spaces to enable users can access relevant information resources.