A Review of Citizen Librarianship in Academic Libraries in Kenya
View/ Open
Date
2019Author
Gikunju, Milcah
Kwenda, Roselyn N
Kwanya, Tom
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Citizen librarianship is the involvement of ordinary library users to create, review and share library services and content. Citizen
librarianship emerged from the concept of citizen science in which non-experts are actively involved in and contribute to scientific
research projects. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the understanding and extent of use of citizen librarianship in academic
libraries in Kenya; identify the citizen media used in academic libraries in Kenya; analyse how the academic library users in Kenya
interact with citizen media in their library spaces; examine the impact of citizen media on the effectiveness of academic libraries in
Kenya; and propose a citizen librarianship model for academic libraries in Kenya. Primary data for the study on which this chapter
is based was collected from the web sites of the libraries of all the chartered public and private universities in Kenya. Additional
data was collected from key informant interviews with academic library directors and systems librarians in Kenya selected through information-oriented purposive sampling. The findings revealed that the majority of academic librarians in Kenya have never
heard of the concepts of citizen science or citizen librarianship. Although citizen librarianship offers an important framework for
users’ involvement in meeting their own information needs and those of their peers through citizen media, its application in Kenyan
academic libraries is low. The findings of this study may be used by academic librarians to adopt citizen librarianship in their
institutions.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Subject
Citizen Librarianship, Citizen Science, Social Media, Citizen Media, Academic Libraries, KenyaRights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
The following license files are associated with this item: