Exploring Collaborative Practices: A Survey of Library Cooperation within University Networks

Abstract

The University library is considered the heart of the educational system.Collaboration among university libraries is essential to fulfill the users'information needs. The current study is designed to examine areas of librarycooperation between the central library and departmental libraries within theuniversity domain. Benefits, obstacles, and preferences for library cooperationhave also been explored. A quantitative research methodology was adopted toexecute the study. A questionnaire was used as a data collection tool and data wascollected only from those university libraries having central and departmentallibraries. The data was collected from 110 academic librarians working in centralor departmental libraries of universities across Pakistan. The findings revealed thatlibraries within a university are frequently cooperating in many areas. The highestcooperation is in the exchange of books followed by cooperation in theclassification of books. More than half of the universities have establishedintegrated cooperation among libraries within the university. One-fifth of thelibraries have interactive relationships, and the remaining libraries have weakcooperation or no cooperation at all. Cooperation among libraries has improvedaccess to print resources, improved quality of the library services, enhanced accessto library services, and improved coordination in the acquisition of librarymaterial. Limited financial resources, lack of formal framework for librarycooperation, and lack of technology infrastructure were major obstacles faced bylibraries. Based on the study findings it is proposed that there should be anintegrated relationship among libraries for cooperation and resource sharing withinthe university domain for uniformity in services.