Serials as Vital Resources: A Bird’s Eye View

Abstract

Serials are important sources of information to library users. This study examines the serials management in a Law library, the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS). Diverse resources aid research, learning and teaching, among these are serials. They feature as inaugural lectures, public briefings, reports, white papers, gazettes and other government publications, hazards, panels/commissions of inquiry, memoirs, findings, treaties, field trip’ reports, television or film series, body corporate statements of accounts, newspapers, conference proceedings. The role of UNESCO coupons in paying for foreign journals was briefly mentioned-though these are no longer sent to many Nigeria libraries. The compulsion for all serials editors to write to NLN for an ISSN to enhance the compilation of National Bibliographic Control, like the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals, and collective aim at ensuring a knowledge output consortia among all libraries to ‘save the bucks’ was also mentioned, this, so many of the knowledge industries do not comply with this statute, unfortunately. The paper discussed the management of serials which include: acquisitions, classification, storage and preservation. The study recommends the need for acquisitions policy reviews, staff skills, suggesting the employment of only possessors of library and information science qualifications in the libraries, preservation and conservation of serials via binding and pre-purchase quality assurance.

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