Abstract:
The broad objective of this study was to access the prospects and challenges of lending services in the Balme Library of University of Ghana (UG), Legon. Lending services cannot be over emphasized especially for a central library like the Balme library. The library plays a critical role in enhancing the teaching, research and learning processes of several users apart from students.
The researcher used questionnaires as a method for collecting data from the staff of the Balme library and post-graduate students offering Information Studies. A total of forty two questionnaires were administered to the post-graduate students whilst another set of questionnaires administered to fifty four library that were junior staff, senior members and senior staff.
The main finding of the study were that, most students found the lending services rendered by this prestige library as not very satisfactory. Therefore, many users of the Balme library identified other options than using the library. The research also revealed that most of the library materials indicated on the catalogue could not be found on the shelves leading to more frustration on the part of the users. This invariably had affected students' academic work especially in the area of research and learning. Moreover, the researcher found out that automation of the library services had helped the library in several ways like easily identifying overdue items, calculating overdue fines, organization of materials and capturing statistics.
Lastly, the findings showed that users were displeased for the short loan period which normally creates the problem of overdue fines. Normally borrowed books would have not been fully utilized as expected.
