Edinburgh Napier library services Essay Example for Free

Edinburgh Napier library services Essay Edinburgh Napier University was established as a technical college in 1964 taking its name from famous inventor of logarithms, John Napier. Since 1971, the college has started to offer degree level educations. In 1992, the college was converted to university, and changed its name to Napier University. However, in 2009, the university changed its name to Edinburgh Napier University. To enhance high academic integrity, the university aims to implement scalable high level Library Information Systems in order to offer high quality learning. (Edinburgh Napier University, 2009, Microsoft Corporation, 2006). The objective of this proposal is to evaluate an initiative of the Edinburgh Napier library services. To enhance greater understanding of proposal, it is essential to provide brief description of the research area. 1. 1: Background of Research The university opened Electronic Library Information systems in 2000, and since this period, the library has acquired huge amount of academic resources in electronic formats. However, with increase in the academic complexity, learners are increasingly facing challenges in accessing academic resources from the university library. (Edinburgh Napier University, 2008). By visiting the current online library resources, it is revealed that the university is facing challenges to provide high quality and innovative e- library services. Although, the university e-library has offered various services such as e-resources, teaching resources, study and research, user’s information, and information on the library resources, however, it is revealed that there are various lapses in the existing library services that have led to gaps in the knowledge. The university teaching resources from WebCT has not provided social teaching networking where students and tutors will be able to interact when lecture is taking place. Thus, the university has not been able to provide virtual face-to-face teaching strategy that resembles traditional teaching method. As being argued by Rolfe et al (2008), the WebCT which is one of the university library resources of Napier Edinburgh University has not been able to provide social interactions for students. The lack of dialogue do not provide rich virtual academic standard for students. Moreover, the university has not be able to offer 24 hour service for students in the physical university libraries such as Canaan Lane, Comely Bank, Craighouse, Craiglockhart, Livingston, Melrose, and Merchiston. The books in these libraries have not been available online. To address this problem, the university needs to implement scalable e-Resources Strategy in order to achieve high quality e-learning. It is essential to realise that the library should be able to provide varieties of online portals that should provide social networking for students and instructors. The recommendation provided is that the existing software and hardware that were used for the university library resources need to be upgraded to high quality and scalable new software and hardware. The comparison between national and international students on the effectiveness of university library resources has revealed that overall international students are happy with the university library resources. Compared to home students where only 54% of home students are happy with the university library resources. (Bawden, Robinson, Anderson et al 2007). Thus, the proposal attempts to address these gaps and make recommendations to the library. To achieve these objectives, the study provides the outline of the project in the box below. 2. Project outline for the project 1. The idea for this research arose from: The research arose from the shortcoming identified in the library services of Edinburgh Napier University. The research attempts to provide recommendations to the library in order to fill the gap. 2. The aims of the project are as follows: To provide understanding among students the different means of accessing material through the various services. To provide recommendations of high quality and scalable e-library resources in order to ensure easy and quick accessible of learning materials. 3. The main research questions that this work will address include: To what extent the existing library resources have been able to satisfy the need of students and staff? What are the high quality and scalable methods to improve university library resources? 4. The software development/design work/other deliverable of the project will be: The software design will involve Software Development Life Cycle which is typically referred as waterfall model. The prototype of the software design reveals that output from a specific stage will provide the inputs for the next stage of software design. 5. The project will involve the following research/field work/experimentation/evaluation: There will be primary and secondary research to carry out this project. Moreover, there will be experimentation of software and hardware that will be employed for the proposal. 6. This work will require the use of specialist software: MOSS 2007, Microsoft cluster, Web 2. 0 7. This work will require the use of specialist hardware: VM Ware Tools, Linux Server, podcasts, Virtual hardware 8. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with: The project is done in collaboration with a researcher and school of computing. (Bawden, Robinson, Anderson et al 2007) 3. Conclusion The proposal attempts to evaluate an initiative of Edinburgh Napier library services. The study has revealed that there are shortcomings in the existing university library resources. The gaps identified are that the university has not been able to offer 24 hours services for some of the library resources. Moreover, the WebCT has not been able to offer virtual classroom experience for students where learners would enjoy virtual classroom experience just like traditional learning. Thus, the proposal has recommends that the existing software and hardware need to be upgraded to ensure that the university offers high quality and scalable library services for students. References Bawden, D. Robinson, L. Anderson, T. et al (2007). Towards Curriculum 2. 0: library / information education for a Web 2. 0 world. Library and Information Research. 31(99):14-25). Edinburgh Napier University, (2009). History of Edinburgh Napier University. Scotland. Edinburg University Press. Edinburgh Napier University, (2008). Napier University Learning Information Services E-service strategy: Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Microsoft Corporation, (2006). Napier University, University Streamlines Access to Student Services with Improved E-Learning Portal. Microsoft Corporations. Rolfe, V. Alcocer, M. Bentley, E. (2008). Academic Staff Attitudes Towards Electronic Learning in Arts and Sciences. University of Nottingham. UK.