Information System and Services in Educational Institutions of Bangladesh: A Study of Selected Teachers' Training College Libraries

Abstract

Teachers' Training Colleges are the main instrumental bodies of the education system through which the new generations of teachers are trained up. The B. Ed and M. Ed programmes are designed to better the teaching capability of secondary school teachers of fresher group who intend to choose teaching as profession. According to the course-curricula, the course attendants can be able to know how to teach secondary level students the methodological way. But in fact, this objective remains largely unattended due to undeveloped Information System and Services at the Information Centre, i.e. the Library. Situation prevailing in library services. While it is in such a college where Bachelor-in Education (B. Ed) and Master-in-Education (M.Ed) programmes are administered regularly. These are the pedagogic programs what the secondary school teachers, in respect to their ranks and seniority, need to complete. The completion is mandatory. Many of the freshmen also come to attain these degrees with a vision of becoming teachers. They get library cards and easy access to the old-fashioned library where many antiquated books are shelved in the racks. The only officer looking after the library is the Assistant Librarian (in-charge of Librarian)-cum-Cataloguer, sitting behind a desk and maintaining registrars of book lending activities. The libraries are deprived of remaining on the edge of communications owing to the bureaucratic nature of concerned officers who could have thought of stratified development programs for the said libraries. It is a matter of great astonishment that the teachers' Training College' faculty-members and officers also do not seem to have any headache except expressing some passion in this regard. Basically, any type of development-oriented projects in the Teachers Training College Campuses are executed by the Director General (Secondary and Higher Education)'s office. So, the college authority of any govt. College does not bear the responsibility of structural development in which the development of Library and Information System and Services is solely accommodated. However, this study was administered among 10 libraries of the 14 teachers' training colleges belonging to the government, and for finding a better picture, 10 other libraries of private TTCs. The investigation based on separate sets of questionnaires and field observations has found a disgraceful picture of the information system and services. The services of these libraries are basically very much of pivotal support to the pedagogic courses in the developed countries. Whereas in Bangladesh, the DSHE of the Ministry of Education has not taken any massive development program to change the information system and services in these libraries, which is inevitably required in context of global scenario. The study has found, 20% of them provide the users with indexing services as a whole. 30% of the public TIC libraries offer abstracting services while 20% of the private TIC libraries offer this kind of servi.ces. In addition to this, 60% do not offer CAS services and 70% do not offer SDI services. In-house data base/CD-ROM searching, EDD services and internet / online services are not at all available in these libraries (100%). The current trend in the developed countries is to make teacher-librarians, whereas in Bangladesh the secondary school teachers are not aware of their ethical responsibility to make their students informed of academic library services. In the TTCs, Library Science is taught as an optional subject, but this investigator being an ex-lecturer of Govt owned TTC has sharply observed that almost all of the trainee teachers undergo this course keeping a secret desire for mounting up better score in the B Ed program. The study has found that on an average 1.6 people work in these libraries with the vacancy of a librarian almost in all the TTCs except a few. As a result, the vision of such teacher-education program hardly sees pragmatic exposure of improving system in the secondary schools. In the context of findings of this investigation, it is recommended that structural development of both library building and information system and pattern of services should be developed incorporating with the Annual Development Plan (ADP) for the soonest implementation. For a structural development, this researcher designs a diagram [see Figure 6.1], which might set up an effective system of information services in this kind of libraries. It is also recommended that the human resources of the library has to be minimum 10 altogether including technical desk executives.