The University Library

The Main University Library's splendid exhibition of rare and precious books, maps and manuscripts now being shown, symbolises its role as a collector of research material for use not just by the University's academics and students but also by scholars from outside the University.

A good deal of this material can be traced on the library's online catalogue that forms a substantial part of its very helpful Website. Scholars from all over the world are now accessing this catalogue, with the result that inquiries and requests for items in the University Library's collections have been increasing.

This online catalogue is only one facet of this Library's increasing reliance on information technology for its stock and for its services. This enables it, for instance, to trace and obtain in impressively short times from foreign libraries, books and journals not available here and needed by its readers. It enables it to save large sums on the binding of periodicals by subscribing to an increasing number of them either in CD-ROM or online form. The full text of the online journals is already available to users of the University of Malta's network on their personal computers on campus or at home.

Again, 20 workstations in the Main Library make it possible for any reader to have a full range of desktop publishing services and to browse the Internet. Naturally these workstations are always fully occupied.

All these developments, and new reference services being projected, would have been impossible without the Library's enlightened recruitment and staff development policies. All senior and middle-rank staff have a degree or a professional library qualification or both, and at the moment five staff members are reading for a British Master's degree in library and information science, while another six will be starting their own University's respected Diploma in Library and Information Science course later this year.

The University has always tried to be generous towards its Library, but the huge and rapid increases in students, staff, departments and institutes of the past years have made even the substantial funds made available to it, inadequate. This has been most evident in the purchase of monographs.

The University is supplementing its Government grant with its own earnings, but for some years to come the healthy continued development of its Library, one of its most important central services, will depend largely on what its parent body receives from the State.