The Impact of CD-ROM in the University of Ghana Medical School Library

International trends in health science librarianship part 15: West Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal)

“…Before the advent of the Internet, Addo identified document identification and delivery as the two most pressing issues facing libraries in Ghana and in Africa . This resulted in a move away from institution based services by health sciences librarians to outreach services to users in deprived areas to maximise existing limited resources . In Ghana, CD‐ROM technology was used to create local publications based on MEDLINE citations and abstracts and distributed to all medical practitioners in the country.…”

“…A decentralised cooperative effort was also embarked upon to identify and establish access to African research publications which resulted in the African Index Medicus. The planning, execution and funding of this project was supported by a partnership between the WHO, AHILA and the Health Foundation of New York …”

Information Seeking Behavior of Health Sciences Faculty at the College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana

“…For developing economies, and in Ghana in particular, computerization in the academic environment and Internet connectivity in libraries are not only a recent phenomenon, but also come at a great startup cost (Boye, 1996;Sulemani and Badu, 2003). This is because equipment, installation, maintenance and access to full text electronic journals are not within easy reach of these institutions as they strive to keep pace with the information divide.…”

“…Developing countries, in Africa in particular, have hitherto suffered from poor communication facilities and shortage of foreign currency to import regular journals and other media of information. (Sulemani and Badu, 2003;Alemna, 1996;Armah, 1996). Ojo-Igbinoba (1993) affi rmed this when he observed that, "Africa has a harsh information environment due to poor communication facilities and a shortage of foreign currency to import regular journals and other media of information".…”