Dean's Message
international renowned academic libraries. KSU libraries have concrete planning and infrastructure to fulfill a leading role in the informational, instructional, and technological aspects for efficient learning resources. Such resources are essential for academic research, pedagogical planning, and education. KSU libraries' strive for excellence is realized in its research academic library system which is constantly being reviewed, upgraded, and developed to serve faculty and students as well as facilitate the resources for curriculum development highlighting the role of the library in the modern academic curriculum and the importance of research. KSU library strives to provide a quality service and leadership in facilitating professional and instructional programs mending the path educational developments encouraging students to efficiently use library resources.
The objective of the academic libraries has dramatically changed from simply meeting information storage purposes to being actively involved in the classroom as students conduct their research using critical cognitive analysis that requires the professional utilization of library resources. In addition to this educational role, the libraries have a genuine task in serving the community not only within the boundaries of the academia but also to meet the needs of the public. This is why KSU libraries welcome the public's use of its resource outlets as it also draws in many writers, artists, researchers, and other professionals in different fields to show their work in exhibits organized by KSU libraries, hold workshops for staff, faculty, and/or students as well as give speeches and lectures.
That being said, the library has indeed been assigned new perspectives such as: depending on technological devices in storing data sources, before retrieving them in order to make use of them; investing technical applications in controlling various interactive contacts with such sources; and producing data, studies, statistical approaches, and questionnaires about several issues related to the use of knowledge and other notions that may concern both the user and the provider of this service.
The most prominent task of the library is its role in modern academic curricula, because the library has provided the essential databases for academic research, and has trained students and researches to depend on scientific sources and employ them systematically in their researches. The library has, thus, created an academic environment suitable for self-development through various courses, seminars and lectures delivered by researches from interdisciplinary domains within and outside the University. The library, therefore, has become an integral part in developing the curricula through laying emphasis training and acquiring research skills made up of analytical, logical and critical thinking, positing views in a systematic and logical way, drawing comparisons between views, situations, and approaches in an objective and realistic way that respects different opinions and leaves no space for exclusion and intolerance.
The Deanship of the Library Affairs is keen that the library should be acquainted with recent development in informatics, automation and digitalization. The Deanship, therefore, has made alliances with international libraries and universities and has established mutual relationships with a number of centers and libraries in various disciplines to make use of different sorts of experience and invest such fruitful efforts in fulfilling three major goals: enriching knowledge, developing skills, and expanding the scope of academic research.
In order to pursue the movement of development in knowledge and education which is currently taking place at the University, the Deanship has managed to provide a lot of the necessary databases accessible to researchers who are made members of the University via the electronic portal. The schedule of the library’s opening times has been amended, so the library now opens until midnight everyday including the weekend day: Friday, in order to help everyone to benefit from the services which the library provides. New seventeen branches of the library have been established in the city of Riyadh in order to facilitate the users’ access to the contents of the library in any area of the city. The Deanship has, furthermore, established educational programs which provide courses to students and other people who benefit in areas like writing skills such as research, summarization, presentation, and correction and performance-orientated skills in the domains of education, art, technology and sport.
The Deanship is, furthermore, currently cooperating with other universities and specialized companies to establish a program which provides a high-quality service to all the University; it is called ‘knowledge management’, and aims firstly to collect the scientific achievements of the University staff and its programs, and secondly to document these materials in certain formulas that go with their contents in order to facilitate electronic access according to a variety of methods and entry points through an electronic section the combines both scientific and administrative achievements of the University.
The Deanship is working, at the present time, on two big projects within the plan of 2010, which are related to the goal of enriching the content of knowledge. The first aims to collect a million Arabic titles; the abstract of each book includes the table of contents, an introduction, a conclusion and a synopsis of the book. Summaries will be available to users who will be able to search within the file, save data, and comment on each book in a certain section of the Deanship website. The second plans to collect visual and audio data sources and establish a special library for films and various documentary and educating programs. The Deanship has already began to collect all that is available at the University after a few processes of montage, classification, and indexing and after providing all that is necessary for such materials in a special laboratory.
The electronic portal of the Deanship is under construction in order to be rendered a practical tool for data search. This website would provide commentary on the components of the library: knowledge basis, programs and activities, and various contents with different shapes and several frames. A comprehensive Meta-Data section of the library resources would be established and linked to all the automatic systems of the University in order to help users to have access to data and to retrieve it according to the frame which provides the service of regional search. In addition, the electronic portal aims to posit a description of the University curricula through hierarchies that include all the disciplines available in the University and through presenting an alphabetical list of the University resources. The website would, furthermore, construct a profile for each subject matter and each member, in order to facilitate the possibility of search and to recall the users’ previous comments that are archived in the website. The electric portal includes also a mail box-like section for written and audio suggestions, so the user can participate in the process of improving the role of the library and the services it provides.
The aim of this electronic portal is to provide an accurate and specialized service for each researcher on the basis of his language and interests. The researcher can have access to a huge library, in the area of his specialization, which includes researches, articles, books, films, lectures, comments and all components related to a given discipline of knowledge that lies within the interests of the user who can set up the homepage of this website according to his preferences. The website also attempts to provide for the user a means which enables him to be acquainted with recent researches, books, periodicals, databases, and relevant technical aspects.
Due to the fact that work in the domain of knowledge is endless, all the aforementioned issues constitute only one aspect of the aspirations in development and search for new methods that improve the quality of academic research. Intense efforts will be made as long as researches can offer all that is new. That facilitates search for knowledge and improves academic research in order to make human beings’ life better.
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Dr.Saud Leily Al Rowaily
srowaily@ksu.edu.sa