THE DILLEMA OF BIBLIOGRAGHIC CENTRES-- A CRITICS MIND

By Eric Sindabi

A Bibliographic centre is a unit within an Information Centre that aims at enriching the provision of information through the enhancement of organization and retrieval of information resources. An efficient bibliographic centre should be vast and dynamic in nature considering the trends, type of information materials at hand, nature of resource centre and users of information.

The term Biblio is a Latin word that means Book. In the Information Sciences fraternity, “Book” is a closure term to generalize information resources. Bibliographic centers are concerned with providing accurate access points to all classes of information in an information centre. Such centers thus have a mandate of producing a variety of information or tools that guide users to desired information. This ensures maximum usage of information and saves time for both users and personnel in an information centre.

In the modern era of high information use trends for human development, information centers have a mandate to recognize the high values of information resources. This can be done by instituting efficient bibliographic centers that include tools like; Catalogues, Indexes, Abstracts, Shelf lists, author indexes, Accession lists, Websites and databases among others. Such tools of retrieval should be up dated and linked with modern technological trends.

Nevertheless, over the years in the history of information centers in Kenya and other developing countries, lack of adequate bibliographic centers has been a big stumbling block to sufficient provision of information. A spot check in information centers like Academic libraries, Public libraries, Archives, Media libraries and Record centers leaves much behind to be desired.

Critics however believe that greater effectiveness of any house of knowledge is the success of bibliographic services that ensures efficient dissemination of information. Poor management of such centers in developing countries according to the critics is characterized by lack of clear policies, and in adequate human and financial resources.

The critics say, majority of information users in many information centre in developing states have little access to desired information while on the other hand many of these centers lack a variety of retrieval tools.

According to them separate departments to handle bibliographic services should be set up equipped with trained and qualified personnel. Managers of information centers should also set aside financial resources adequate to support such centers.
To cap it, the critics argue that “Information not used is worth not being, but if every ‘book’ must have its user, why not provide it”