Quality education: Sukkur IBA’s library opens with 40,000 books

IBA authorities are planning to open membership for the public in the near future.

SUKKUR: Students and faculty of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Sukkur are proud of the new addition to their campus, Knowledge Centre — a library currently offering 40,000 print books. 

The centre was formally inaugurated by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on January 26. It has the capacity to accommodate 350 persons. At present, only the students, faculty and staff members can get membership of the centre, but the IBA authorities are planning to open its membership for the general public in the near future.

In an introductory briefing, the chief librarian, Mohammad Asif Muneer, informed that the library at Sukkur IBA is a world-class facility for students, researchers and academicians. He went on to say that qualified and experienced staff of the library remains engaged in providing proactive library services to the students from 9am till midnight throughout the week.



According to him, the library has a collection of 40,000 print books and more than 175,000 electronic books are also accessible across the campus through various databases. The library subscribes to more than 60 print journals. He said that access to a number of journals and electronic books has also been made possible through Higher Education Commission’s digital library.

Muneer said diverse library services are being provided, including the facility of borrowing material, pre check-out reservations, reference services, literature searching, online public access catalogue, helpdesk services, online renewal, inter-library loan, electronic document delivery, table of content services, multimedia services, plagiarism management, citation management, back of book index service etc.

The library also subscribes to five national dailies — Dawn, The News, Business Recorder, Jang and Express — and one international newspaper — Financial Time. Furthermore, Kawish — a Sindhi newspaper is also available.

The chief librarian said that the library welcomes book donations. The library is a depository of Asian Development Bank, he said, adding that the publications of ADB are placed in a separate section.

He said the library is providing IP-based access to electronic resources through online databases across the campus. The databases are given as under — American Society of Agricultural and  Biological Engineers, Association of Comupting Machinery, eBrary, Edinburgh University Press, McGraw-Hill’s Access Science, McGraw-Hill’s Access Engineering, Project Muse, Springerlink, Taylor and Francis Journals and Wiley-Blackwell Journals.

According to him, the library at Sukkur IBA is utilising a state-of-the-art integrated library management system ie Virtua. He said that the RFID-based security and shelf management system has also been used to facilitate library users and staff. “We take pride in being the first library in Pakistan where 3M-RFID system is integrated with Virtua.” For the help of users, a self-check-in unit has also been set-up.

He said that Chamo is the online public access catalogue of the library. It is available on the local network as well as the World Wide Web. With the help of this application, the library’s catalogue can be accessed anywhere on the internet, he added. The users can view their borrowed items, overdue items, and fines. They can renew their borrowed items by logging in to their library accounts. He said the users can also reserve those library items which are not already reserved by anyone.

Students said the centre is of great help to them, as they now can complete their assignments without any difficulty. Especially those students, who are availing hostel facility at the IBA, are very happy with the modern knowledge centre. Sukkur IBA, they said, was already a symbol of excellence for them, but the addition of knowledge centre has enhanced its worth.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2014.