Search

Government College University, Lahore is the oldest seat of learning in Sub-continent. It is the Alma-matter of many renowned scholars, researchers, writers and philosophers. Besides this great honor, GCU Library stands prominent among its peers for preserving highly valuable personal collections. It is the preserver of over 48 personal collections having more than 124,000 books. It also includes 6134 letters of 1933 literary figures of Urdu language and literature. Few personal collections had been sent to England many years ago. But after their inheritors' visit to the GCU Library, they decided to bring those collections back to Pakistan and donated them to GCU. The historical record of 4970. letters and scripts of famous short stories, poems and essays by prominent men of letters has recently been donated to GCU. Saadat Hasssan Manto's famous typewriter has also been preserved at the Library. Besides these personal collections, a special collection of very old and rare books/manuscripts have been developed in 1998. GCU Library is also working on digitization of these precious manuscripts and rar.e books since 2005. An index with library reference pages of valuable collection of former Indian Govt. documents, reports, gazettes, gazetteers etc. is arranged subject wise. GCU has also decided to set up Nuqoosh Museum at the GCU Library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the library use pattern of humanities faculty members at University of the Punjab, Lahore. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to get response from the targeted population which consisted of 90 teaching and research staff of humanities departments. The response rate was 69 percent. Findings – The study reveals that most of the respondents feel themselves good in library use skills, which is owing to their high frequency of library use, not to any formal training. They prefer to use the library themselves, rather than seeking help from the library staff. Respondents found the central library richer in collection than their departmental libraries. Most of respondents were visiting the library for using the reference material or for searching some specific information and they seldom seek help from the library staff. Resources and services/facilities available in the central library were professed to be better than their departmental libraries. Respondents fulfilled their information needs not only from central and departmental libraries of the university but from other libraries in the city as well. They were facing the problem of non-availability of required material due to their heavy dependency on the library resources. Dissatisfaction was also shown with the library staff and technical support. More journals and reference material in humanities were suggested by the respondents, along with better facilities and services. Practical implications – The knowledge about the information needs and library use pattern of users helps the library and information science professionals to develop the library collections, improve the services and upgrade the facilities. Originality/value – This paper provides a case study of how specific kinds of scholars use library services and should be of interest to librarians providing information services for humanists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]