Digital Library Services: The Kenya Methodist

University (KeMU) Experience

Authors
1. Victor Kamau: works at KeMU, Head Digital Library and Editor Kenya Library
Association.
2. Vincent Tanui: Works at KeMU, Head of Library - Nakuru Campus
3. Hellen Ndegwa: Works at KeMU, Head Online Outreach and Reference Services

Abstract
The Kenya Methodist university library system consists of libraries in Meru, Nairobi, Mombasa,
Nyeri, Maua and Nakuru campuses. These libraries are equipped with digital libraries. The
libraries serve a diverse client base consisting of students, lecturers, and administrative staff.
Serving the students is a great challenge because most of them are non-traditional students who
attend class in the evenings, distance learners, or attend class over the weekends (weekend
intensive). This makes the use of the library a challenge. The digital library has resources and
services that strive to serve these diverse clients. These services include: e-books, e-journals, past
papers, online outreach services, audio visual, online chat and the ask-a-librarian. Despite their
availability, maximum utilization has not been achieved due to challenges such as limited access
of electronic information resources due to the IP authentication method used by publishers, poor
search and retrieval skills, frequent changes in IP address by ICT department without
notifications to the library, limited bandwidth and lack of a remote access single sign-on
software. This paper gives possible solutions such as redesign of website, installation of remote
computer booking software, installation of Ezproxy software and issuing digital library with a
dedicated registered external IP Address for registering resources.

Introduction
KeMU is a university that started way back in the year 1995 as a university college. KeMU
library was created to fulfill the vision and mission of the university namely: To provide a setting
for development of intellectual skills, attitude and values through quality teaching and learning to
promote discovery and application of knowledge through search and to provide service and
stewardship to others.

The vision of the universitys library is to be a dynamic, inclusive, competitive and indispensable
center of excellence in teaching, learning, research and service to humanity. The Mission of the
library is to provide student, academic staff and other users of the library access to an intensive
range of current and relevant quality information resources in support of academic and research
activities.
The digital Library services were first introduced in the University in the year 2008 and its policy
is to maintain one central digital library to serve the entire university as well as the surrounding
community through its digital library services. The digital library services are available online
and also in all KeMU campuses i.e. Meru, Nairobi, Nyeri, Nakuru and Maua Campuses.
Mombasa campus does not have a digital library but access digital library services through
computer labs, personal laptops and tablets. A total of 9780 students are registered as current
students in KeMU and 5300 of these are registered in Nairobi campus.
Digital library has staff in all campuses. The staff in Nairobi campus is overall in charge of
access of e-resources which include ebooks, ejounals, past papers, databases and audio visual.
Staff in other campuses are responsible for user assistance, training, computer-time allocation
and maintenance of hardware and software in conjunction with ICT department. Digital library
personnel are well qualified; all staff have degree qualification with two who have attained
masters in information science.
Distribution and qualification of Digital library staff in KeMU Campuses
Campuses

No. of Staff

Qualification

Nairobi

Masters, Degree and Diploma

Nyeri

Diploma

Meru

Masters, Degree

Nakuru

Degree

Maua

Degree

Digital Library Services

The digital library federation in the USA defines the digital library as: organizations that provide
the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to,
interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections
of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined
community or set of communities (liswiki.org, 2014). The same federation concludes that: A
digital library is an organized collection of digitized material or its holding in the digital form,
which can be accessible by a computer on the network by using TCP/IP or other protocols.

The Digital Library therefore can be described by the following:

1. Organized collection of multimedia and other types of resources.
2. Resources are available in computer processable form.
3. The function of acquisition, storage, preservation, retrieval is carried out through the use
of digital technology.
4. Access to the entire collection is globally available directly or indirectly across a
network.
5. Support users in dealing with information objects
6. Helps in the organization and presentation of the above objects via electronic/digital
means etc. (liswiki.org, 2014)
Most digital libraries offer the conventional library services such as acquisition, organization,
preservation, access, retrieval and reference of information materials via electronic means. These
however are basic, digital library are able to offer additional services based on the advantage of
the internet. By applying technology, digital libraries are able to extend their services to outside
library walls and offer the services on a 24/7 basis. Florida virtual campus is a good example of a
digital library that offers unique services. Their services include:

Helping the state university libraries put digital collections online,

Grant writing and coordinating grant funded projects,
Hosting digital collections and indexes,
Providing tools for managing digital resources over time,
Making scholarly journals accessible on the web(Florida Virtual Campus, n.d.)

KeMU digital library offers the following services: provision of computers and internet; ebooks
and ejournals; Special Collection & Audio visual; Past papers; Reference Services;
Training/Information Literacy; Federated Search Tool.

Provision of Computersand Internet

The pure definition of a digital library according to according to liswiki.org above does not
include provision of computers as a service/product of a digital library. KeMU, however, has this
service which has been motivated by:

Not all Students own computers

The University does not provide the students with an ownership program

Not all students have computer skills thus need assistance in using computers
Wired internet connection is faster than wireless connection which individual laptops are
connected to.
Provision of standard software such as office for submitting students work
Not all students with computers/laptops have access to internet

KeMU Digital library computers are distributed in all campuses and are as shown below.
Campus

No. of Computers

Nairobi

40

Nakuru

10

Nyeri

Meru

16

Maua

Provision of computers in the digital library enables the library offer services such as training,
hands-on user assistance and also share computer-time thus achieving efficient use of resources
such as internet, software and hardware as they are used throughout the day by different users.as
at 12th November 2014, the digital library at Nairobi campus which has 40 computers was
opened for 295 days (for the year 2014) it has served a total of 54048 users serving an average of
183 users per day. This was possible by allowing users only two hours per session which is
renewable only when there are no users on the queue.
KeMU digital library uses Cybera software. This is a computer-time management software that
allows for sharing of computers between different users at different times. It also keeps records
of usage of the computers. The digital library has been using this software for five years and has
derived the following benefits from it:

Well kept records of usage of computers

Unbiased sharing of computer-time among library users
Unbiased implementation of library rules and regulations
Keeping of opening and closing time

Cybera software is a simple database that keeps information on use of computers, implements
rules such as blocking users from using computers, shutting down when users time is over, and
recording users activity on the computer. It enables simultaneous shutdown or restart of all
computers and simultaneous communication to all users. It also detects when internet connection
is down.

The challenge KeMU digital library faces is the few computers available. This challenge
however has made introduction and use of cybera system possible in Nairobi where the
computers are few compared with the number of students/users. The university has also
introduced wireless internet connectivity to students within campuses so that they can use their
own laptops, tablets, smart phonesand other mobile devices. Digital library also encourages the
users to make use of their own computers to leave the few desktops available to those who do not
have their own computers.
Internet speeds is also a major handle. During busy periods within the trimesters, internet speeds
reduce. This affects the quality of research as users do not get to access and retrieve all the
information resources they would have wanted.
Digital library has proposed that the university purchases laptops or tablets for students to pay in
installments over their period of study. This will reduce the pressure on digital library computers
while at the same time allowing the students unlimited access to internet and information
resources. The digital library plans to acquire ebook readers such as a kindles and issue them to
distance learning students after loading them with eBooks and ejournals articles of their choice
for a whole trimester. This will reduce the pressure on digital library computers and internet as
they (Distance Learning Students) will not need to access internet. KeMU should also invest in a
computer-time management system that can allow online booking of computers so that library
staff are free to offer more professional services instead of the hitherto issuing of computer-time.

Ebooks and Ejournals

E-book is an electronic version of a printed book that can be read on a computer or handheld
device designed specifically for this purpose in principle an eBook is quite similar to a print
book: only the medium is different. For a traditional print book the medium is paper. Because an
eBook is the digital representation of the printed material (print book), the medium can vary
from a laptop computer to digital eBook reader, PDA, mobile phone or even (through a desktop
printer) traditional paper. Usually the content is available in PDF or HTML format, but also plain
text or XML formats. This makes the content much more versatile, and flexible than the
traditional print book ( der Velde & Ernst, 2009).
An electronic journal is a periodical publication which is published in electronic format, usually
on the Internet. (Nunoo, 2012) states that electronic journals take two different forms: journals
that are otherwise published in print form, available in digital form; and electronic only journals,
which do not necessarily need a publisher, and which can be managed by an editor and a
scholarly community. Both of these types of journals may have a significant impact on scholarly
communication and the way in which knowledge is created and disseminated.
For readers, ebooks provide economy in mass; they are digital copies that do not take up physical
space, and thousands of titles can fit on lightweight memory cards. Additionally, their non-

physical nature makes ebooks easily portable. In addition, many ebooks use hyperlinks and
provide multimedia services, full-text searching, reference linking, browsing, customizable fonts
and backlighting (Tholkappian and Chandran, 2007).
KeMU has invested in both ebooks and ejournals and are accessible in all KeMU campuses via
IP Verification and some are accessible via username and password.
To benefit from these advantages, KeMU digital library has invested in both ebooks and
ejournals. These are acquired through Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium
(KLISC), directly from the publishers or open source databases. The following table shows these
databases and source of acquisition.
KLISC

Open Source

Journals

Ebooks

Journals

Ebooks

World Bank eLibrary

Ebrary

Africa Law Library

UNESDOC
Database

Wiley Online Library STM

Taylor &
Francis

ARDI

BookboonEbooks

ELIS: E-prints in Library

and Information Science

Freebooks Center

Globethics

Free EBooks

Google Scholar

East Texas Baptist

University E-books

Wiley Online Library HSS

University of Chicago
Journal

University of California
Pres
HINARI
Taylor & Francis Journals
Journals for Free
Sage Online Journals

KENYA LAWS
Royal Society - Royal
Society Journals Online

Project MUSE journals

National Institute of
Science Communication
And Information
Resources
(NISCAIR)Online
Periodicals Repository
National Academies Press

OUP - Oxford Journals

Open Access Repositories

JSTOR

OARE
Institute for Operations
Research and Management
Sciences (INFORMS
AGORA
Geological Society The Lyell Collection
Complete
BPO Journals
Emerald Management
120 eJournal Collection

Wikipedia
EBSCO Host Research
Databases

Wiktionary
Cochrane Library

Cambridge University

Press - Cambridge Journals

Online

KeMU library has acquired Springer ebooks directly from the Springer publishers on a perpetual
access model. This is no subscription but it is actually purchasing. KeMU will always have
access to Springer ebooks they purchased all the time.
These resources cover various subjects such as Agriculture, Education, Geography,
Anthropology, Recreation, History, Language and Literature, Law, Medicine, Philosophy,
Psychology, Religion, Political Science, Social Sciences, and Technology.
The access methods also differ: most of the ebooks and ejournals are accessible via IP
verification/authentication while a few are accessible via username and password such as Ebrary
ebooks, ARDI, AGORA and HINARI. Springer offers both IP verification and username and
password access with a requirement that users must register their username and password while
within the KeMU campuses. Emerald journals offers IP verification and a token URL for remote
users.
Various challenges affect ebooks and ejournals for example Ebrary ebooks content downloading
differs based on device and operating system. Thesevariations make it difficult for the library to
provide a single comprehensive educational handout on the matter. Hence, staff needs to rely on
knowledge gathered from personally experience.
The library users tend to lack interest in accessing e-books and e-journals and prefer Googling
because of the steps involved in access the information materials from within the individual
database search engines, the process of inserting user names and passwords tend to frustrate
users and hence they would prefer the normal typing on Google page. Library users find it
difficulty reading on a computer screen and trouble navigating search interfaces and hence they
would prefer using hard copies.
Students in different campus of KeMU apart from Nairobi always experience difficulty in
connectivity this is because the access internet directly and thus must have their external IP
registered with all the ebooks and ejournals KeMU has access This problem tends to frustrate
them and they avoid accessing information online.
Selection of individual ejournals to be accessed has been a challenge as most of the ejournals
publishers offer packages intended for developing countries with already selected ejournals.
Some of the journals KeMU would want included are not. Example is Emerald ejounals that

KLISC subscribe to KeMU only have access to 120 journals only thus missing some important
journals such as African Journals of Economic and Management studies and Agricultural
Finance Review.
Some of the solutions this paper suggests is first training to digital library staff so that they are
able to deal with variations between devices and operating systems so that they are able to assist
users regardless of the mobile device or the Operating system the devices have installed.
Secondly, library staffs should produce list proceduresfor the library users on how to use
electronic information materials in their devices and for those within the library premises should
be practically trained on how to go about it by the librarians concern.
Lastly, the digital library should publicize and encourage users to attend the weekly training
session through incentives such as pens, writing pads, drinking water so that they gain
information search, retrieval and use skills.

Special Collection & Audio visual

KeMU digital library has a special collection and audio visual section which is availed via the
library website (KeMU, 2014a). These resources are freely available to anyone including nonKeMU students and staff. This section has the following products:
Ebola special collection
Henry Stewart Talks: The Bio-medical and Life Sciences collection
HST - Libraries in a Digital Age
TED Talks
Google Tech Talks
All these products are freely available online. The library has organized them under one page for
ease of access and use.
Ebola Special collection is a search tool developed by KeMU digital library and only searches
for information on Ebola (KeMU, 2014b). KeMU digital library taking cognizant of the need for
information on Ebola in Africa and Kenya specifically developed this tool. For any information
on Ebola the only thing one needs to do is to type the term and search all the results will be about
Ebola. This is a collection of over 50 authoritative and current websites and databases on Ebola.
Henry Steward Talks - The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection is a collection that
includes speeches, power-point presentations, lectures and videos on: Biochemistry, Cancer, Cell
Biology, Diseases, Disorders & Treatments, Drug Discovery, Genetics, Immunology, Methods,
Microbiology & Virology, Neurobiology and Pharmaceutical Science (hstalks.com, n.d).

Henry Stewart Talks Libraries in Digital Age is a Special collection of 16 talks prepared for
researchers, librarians and university faculty members. It includes online, animated, audio-visual
lectures by world leading authorities on library developments in a digital environment
(hstalks.com, 2013)
TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas,
usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a
conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all
topics from science to business to global issues in more than 100 languages (TED, n.d).
Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown,
Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, Bono, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many
Nobel Prize winners. Since June 2006, the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under
Attribution -NonCommercial- NoDerivs Creative Commons license, through TED.com. As of
November 6th 2014, 1860 talks are available free online.
According to Google Tech Talks Channel on youtube.com, Google Tech Talks:
is a grass-roots program at Google for sharing information of interest to
technical community. It is part of an ongoing discussion about the world
featuring top experts in diverse fields. Presentations range from the broadest
of perspective overviews to the most technical of deep dives, on topics wellestablished to wildly speculative (Google Tech Talks, 2014).
Google makes use of their own product YouTube to provide access to Google
Tech Talks. They have created a channel on YouTube where by anyone who wishes to
view/watch the talks can free of charge.
Through this section on the library website KeMU digital library has improved its visibility
especially to students who want to watch and listen rather than read. The library does not have a
budget for developing a special collection and acquiring audio-visual materials therefore this
section enabled the library to have the special collection (Ebola) and Audio-visual section
without spending a single cent.
Videos are affected by slow bandwidth as they require more bandwidth to download which could
be a disadvantage to our users as they may not afford this while at home and it could be too slow
during busy periods within a trimester. Another challenge is that the library does not get accurate
statistics on the usage of these audio-visual resources because they are free for all; anyone can
use KeMU library website to access these resources thus the usage statistics will include even
non-KeMU users.
KeMU digital library should in the future invest in servers so that they can harvest these
resources and avail them to their users without need for bandwidth. This may raise copyright
issues that can be dealt with an agreement between the content owners and KeMU.

KeMU should also invest in EZproxy server that will require anyone who wants to make use of
KeMU digital library to login. This way only authorized users will make use of digital library
resources and statistics will be accurate.

Past papers
A past paper is an examination paper from a previous year or previous years, usually used either
for exam practice or for tests such as University of Oxford College Collections
(www.wikipedia.com , 2014a). KeMU digital library has digitized the universitys past papers
and availed them for access via the library website. These past papers are hosted in KeMU
servers and thus issues of copyright ownership do not arise. Because they are hosted within
KeMU, two ways of accessing them have been provided: on campus
(http://online.kemu.ac.ke/kemuwiki/index.php/Main_Page)
and
off
campus
(http://online.kemu.ac.ke/kemuwiki/index.php/Main_Page). Within KeMU campuses, users do
not need internet to access these past papers and this method of access is usually fast while those
who are outside KeMU campuses must use the off campus link on the website this links speed
will depend on the bandwidth of the user.
Kemuwiki the software KeMU uses for past papers management is an implementation of
mediawiki a free and open-source wiki app, used to power wiki websites such as Wikipedia,
Wiktionary and Commons, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation and others. It also runs
thousands of other websites. It is written in the PHP programming language and uses a backend
database (www.wikipedia.com, 2014b). Mediawiki was customized by Victor Kamau in 2009 to
provide KeMU digital library with a platform for collecting, collating, preserving, accessing and
using past papers.
Kemuwiki has a collection of 7,631 pages and 3,143 uploaded files as at 6 thNovmeber 2014.
These have been accessed for over 1,052,431 times and each past paper has been accessed for
83.84 on average (KeMU, 2014c).
KemuWiki has improved the delivery of past paper to students as they can easily be accessed
within and without KeMU. Previously students used to search through files of past papers that
were mutilated leading to most of them missing and therefore not accessible. With KemuWiki,
even the teaching departments do not have a collection of their own because they are aware that
the digital library collects and uploads all past papers- the notion that if its not in KemuWiki
the past paper does not exist is true in KeMU. The process of collecting past papers was
improved from previously when librarians used to attend all examination sessions and collect at
least two physical past papers for the library collection to the current one where the examination
departments sends all examination softcopy to librarian in charge of past papers for uploading to
the KemuWiki.

The challenge faced with past papers is user skills on how to retrieve past papers. Most users
want to retrieve all past papers they want in bulk while KemuWiki allows downloads of one
paper at a time. The other challenge is that KemuWiki does not translate the formulas and
pictures into wikitext thus these are lost in the fine conversion of word to wikitext, this however
has been overcome by uploading of the whole paper as it is on the KemuWiki so that users can
download and use it as a word document.
The problem of who is accessing the past papers is also a big challenge as it is not possible to tell
whether we have non-KeMU users as the link is available publicly on the library website.

Reference Services
Reference services refer to the personal assistance provided to users in the pursuit of information
(Bunge, 1999).The KeMU digital library provides reference services in several ways. These
include:

Ask a Librarian
Twitter and Facebook
Askjeeves

Ask a Librarian is a virtual reference service that connects students, faculty and researchers to a
librarian for reference services. It is a university wide service which assists clients by answering
their immediate queries. The KeMU library network offers the Ask a librarian service in two
ways:Via Email - Clients send their queries via email by clicking the link of ask a librarian on the
library websites. The reference librarian replies to these emails during working hours; and
Chat/Instant messaging - This service is a supplement to the e- mail reference service as the
exchange of information between the user and reference librarian is live (takes place in real
time). When the librarians are engaged with one user the others are given the option of leaving
an email.
Twitter and facebookare two social networking tools that have gained a momentum among
individuals of all ages. According to (Buroughs, 2010) social networking websites allow users to
share interests and communicate with others. Social networks have been described to possess
three functions: (1) allow socialization among individuals, (2) generate participation
opportunities, and (3) facilitate decisions (Passy, 2003). These tools have been utilized by the
KeMU library in the promotion of library services. It has also been utilized in the provision of
current awareness and reference services
Askjeeves (http://www.askjeeves.com) is a type of search engine that allows you to type in a
question, using a normal English language sentence. Type in a simple sentence, asking a question
and AskJeeves points you to several sites and often asks the question in other ways, pointing you
to information sites. The advantages of Askjeeves as a search and retrieval tool is that it is

accessible from remote locations and for many hours, Appropriate answers can be obtained,
Responses are quick and It makes comfortable atmosphere to ask whatever questions one has.
Its major drawback is that it gives answers that are way too broad or sometimes the answers are
lacking in common sense and require one to keep on rephrasing the questions which is quite
frustrating to some clients.
Reference services have become more efficient because it is easier to assist users who are off
campus without having them travelling to the campuses. The user query is solved in real-time i.e.
interaction between the user and the reference librarian is live. Therefore the speed of this service
is faster than e-mail service, so users do not have to wait for the response.
Clarification can be sought online. Where the client has not understood the instructions that the
reference librarian has given then he/she can ask for clarification. The same can be said of the
reference librarian where he/she has not understood the query.A Reference librarian can attend to
multiple users simultaneously. For the live chat the librarian is able to assist multiple users unlike
the face to face reference where one serves only one client at a time.
Some challenges KeMU digital library face in regard to reference services are associated to the
software used for online chat. This software is a free version of the proprietary one and has many
features excluded such as multiple chat, multiple librarians. The current installation only allows
one librarian to chat to all possible users. KeMU has not acquired the full featured version yet
therefore users who find the chat engaged can leave an email to be replied latter.
Reference service is a labor-intensive as on is required to deal with all type of users: from
freshmen, post graduate users, lecturers and even non-teaching staff; those who are within and
whiteout campus; and those who are in different time zones. Having only one dedicated librarian
to do this is a big challenge as this service is only up when she/he is available and cannot be
availed 24/7.
The live chat is available during working hours 8am to 5 pm on weekdays. Beyond working
hours queries are forwarded to the ask-a-librarian to be handled the following day. This leaves
clients who may have needed instance assistance unsatisfied.
Off campus access is a request that clients have made several times and at times it becomes
impossible to give an answer that can satisfy them and although searching for them makes them
satisfied for now it is not a long term solution.

Training/Information Literacy
When new students join the university they are taken through library orientation. The library is
allocated four hours each day for a period of five days. Three of this hours are spent at the digital
library where the students are taken through search and retrieval of e-books,e-journals and past

papers. They are also taken through the librarys Koha OPAC where they are shown how to
search and renew books.
The library organizes e-book/e-journals training for the students every Wednesday afternoon
from 2.00pm -5.00pm at the digital library. Students register in the course of the week and those
who are registered attend the Wednesday training. Between January and March keMU Library
had trained 41 students. For those who are not able to attend Wednesday training one-on-one
training is conducted whenever they are available. On request training sessions are also offered
to individuals and groups of individuals. These on-request sessions are offered daily and the
library is able to train an average of ten users per week. On average about an average of 120
clients are trained in a trimester. This is way below what it should be since the campus has about
6000 students. For other campuses only the orientation and training on request are being utilized.
Generally the training covers: search techniques; searching and retrieval; using e-books and ejournals; bibliographic management softwares;and ethical, moral and legal use of information.
Internet challenges which are experienced especially in the afternoons when information literacy
training is taking place. This is usually caused by slow internet speeds both at KeMU and also at
ebooks providers as many of the users are accessing the same resources at the same time. This
paper suggests that KeMU should provide the library with its own internet link direct from the
Interent Service Provider (ISP) to reduce fluctuations especially in the afternoon when the
training is taking place.
Most of the ejournals and ebooks are accessed via IP verification which makes it difficult for
users to access when they are outside the campus. This means that the training they get can only
be useful when they are within the campus. This limitation leads to most of the users losing
interest in the training as it cannot be helpful anywhere else, if it has to be used within campus
and librarians are around so there is no need to bother with the training librarians can always
help.
There is also a lot of interest for users who want to attend the trainings but those who actually
attend are very few. On average only 30% of those who registered for training attend the training
while those who attend without registering are usually 10% of the total number of attendees. This
raises the question of whether there is importance of asking users to register. In future the kemu
should consider recording the trainings and have them accessible to those who cannot attend the
live sessions.
Several users have requested the digital library to organize the training on Weekends and in the
evenings but this has not been done. the fact that users do not attend the weekday sessions
impressively coupled with unavailability of staff to train during these times have contributed the
library not arranging for training sessions during weekends and in the evenings.
In response to these challenges, the library has proposed the integration of information literacy
into the curriculum to ensure that all students undertake this training. This will ensure 100%

attendance to the class since there will be an examination at the end of the training. It is believed
that this will assist the university to achieve its broader objective of a student centered learning.
There is need for a comprehensive information literacy curriculum to be developed to cater for
all the campuses to ensure harmonized learning. Currently each campus handles the training in
its own way.

Federated Search Tool

Federated search tools refer to tools that aid the simultaneous search of multiple remote
resources. Jonson & lobrano (2004) describe a federated search engine as one that uses a specific
search protocol to gather information and provide one search result to the patron. The KeMU
library utilizes the LibHub federated search tool. The tool allows users to search multiple
databases at the same time. It provides search results from both library subscribed journals and
open access journals. LIbHub searches all KLISC and open source databases such as Citeseer,
directory of open access journals, Catchword, Elsevier, Emerald, Wiley and Blackwell.
The greatest success that has been achieved via the use of libhub has been in the reduction of
search time for the client. This is because the client is able to search several databases at the
same time unlike searching each database separately. Thus a client is able to get more results.
The federated search toll has also resulted to more efficient access to resources because more
databases are being utilized unlike before when clients used to search database by database
leaving some of these underutilized.
It has also led to greater satisfaction among clients sing even the most narrow subject gets some
resources owing to the larger amount of information available for searching.
The greatest challenge to the use of the federated search tool is its reliance on IP authentication.
This means that clients outside the university local area network cannot make use of it.
Another major challenge is its use for information literacy training since different databases have
different search requirements for example in terms of which keywords to use. Also some
recognize the + and used in the Boolean logic while others will only accept the AND and NOT
for the same. This necessitates training to be done using the individual databases.

Conclusion

KeMU digital library has the necessary services a digital library should have. Reference, ebooks,
ejournals, information literacy and search tools are vital services; however, these services are not
always available outside KeMU campuses. Having the services unavailable outside KeMU
campuses is counterproductive of a digital library. These should be services offered online to
remote users thus location of the library or the users should not matter. KeMU should plan to
install and use Ezproxya software for enabling remote access to electronic resources. This
software will enable seamless, single sign-on to all the electronic resources KeMUsubscribes as
well as avail statistics to the usage of the resources.
The digital library services offered online are availed to users via the library website. This
website is too clouded and requires to be redesigned to include only the necessary information
for users such as easily visible and direct accessible links to ebooks, ejournals and other services.
The library should consider using their Koha library management as an interface for the digital
library website.
One of the important services the digital library lacks is printing. This is a service that should be
added to the library so that users who want - printed format of electronic resources can easily
print. This is more so important because the digital library does not have remote access solution
for users outside KeMUcampuses. The digital library at KeMU is not in charge of institutional
repository. This is established as a separate section within the library. It is the conclusion of this
paper that institutional repository should be offered as a service by the digital library so that its
access and use is managed like other electronic resources. This may improve its usage as it will
be accessed via the library website together with other digital library services.
The digital library services in KeMU needs to improve its access so that it is able to serve all
users without being limited by location this way it can be a true digital library as per definition.

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