EDITORIAL
The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH) was born on the 17th of August 2004 and aims at ensuring a continued availability of library and information resources, print and electronic, to the academic and research community, share resources and build the capacities of personnel through workshops, seminars and conferences to improve teaching, learning and research including life-long learning in member institutions and by extension in Ghana. Its membership is open to libraries in public and private tertiary and research institutions. It began with six members and as at July 2014 it had thirty-three members.
CARLIGH has undertaken a series of activities since its inception. One such notable activities was the organisation and execution of an international conference with the theme “Innovation for Access to Information” to celebrate its ten years of existence. The Conference was held from the 14th to 18th of July 2014 in Accra, Ghana. Twelve out of several abstracts received from the Call for Papers were chosen for presentation. These papers were taken through a peer-review process after the Conference and then edited. They are presented here as the proceedings of the Conference including the rapporteurs report with comments and contributions from participants and then the recommendations made at the Conference.
The first paper by Alemna and Armah briefly reviews library cooperation and resource sharing activities in Ghana and the challenges that librarians in Ghana have gone through in their attempts at cooperation and suggests amid the success of CARLIGH that new approaches to integration and resource sharing be considered.
The second paper written by Cobblah and Aryeetey reviewed the various library consortia projects undertaken by academic and research libraries in Ghana for the purpose of resource sharing and then made future projections of library consortia and resource sharing in Ghana.
Antwi, Plockey and Akeriwe in the third paper then discussed the expectations of the 21stcentury library users and the need for libraries among other things to adopt ICT, market themselves, build their skills and capacity to stay relevant in the information access business.
This is followed by Akpokodje and Lawal’s paper which presents findings from a study undertaken to examine the prospects for the application of mobile technologies at the University of Jos Library, Nigeria.
The fifth paper written by Purnell provides some analysis of the trends and impact of Ghana’s research on the world.
Purnell and Badenhorst present the sixth paper which gives a practical approach into the opportunities and challenges regarding the monitoring of research trends, collaboration networks and resolving issues surrounding author ambiguity.
The seventh paper by Dadzie and Hinson investigates innovative library marketing practices and cooperation in Ghanaian libraries and recommends, among other things, strategic marketing planning be made to justify the huge investments made in subscriptions of electronic resources.
The eighth paper by Adu focuses on how librarians must respond to the digital, financial and societal changes confronting the current generation by providing the right services to forestall being marginalized by commercial organizations.
The next paper by Seoka illustrates how technology is used to ensure effective and efficient access to information and concludes that technology does improve access to information even to remote rural areas.
The tenth paper by Ukwoma and Onyebinama is a study to ascertain the awareness and use of open access e-resources by students of two Faculties in two Southeastern Nigeria universities. The findings show that the students know and use open access resources but they do not do so often because they lack training to effectively use them. Training of librarians to train the students on the use of the resources among other things are recommended.
The eleventh paper by Mingle, Lamptey and Hassan briefly reviews recent statistics on the use of social media tools by academic libraries in Ghana and finds out that the percentage of usage of Web 2.0 and social media tools is low although they have a good knowledge of their use and recommends that conscious efforts by librarians to use and train others to use the tools are necessary for effective communication with their users.
The twelfth and final paper by Maru provides a perspective on the role of ICTs in improving agrifood chains in African agriculture and concludes that for smallholder farmers in Africa to improve their farming systems and participate in emerging agri-food chains using ICTs, they will need assistance in policies, advisory and support systems for knowledge, skills and technology among other things.
We wish every reader a meaningful use of this proceedings of the 1st CARLIGH Conference and long life to CARLIGH to enable it organize more of such conferences in future.