Utilising ICTs for Resource Sharing Initiatives in Academic Institutions in Zimbabwe: Towards a New Trajectory

Introduction

In the Information and Communication Technology (ICT’s) driven world, it has become extremely complex for academic libraries to solely satisfy the information needs of their users without cooperating with others. This has forced many libraries to enter into cooperative arrangement to share resources. The twenty- first millennium presents numerous challenges for academic libraries because of ever increasing cost of library resources, dwindling budgets, rising cost of scholarly publications, competition from free Web Based resources, digital divide, and rapid pace of ICT’s. Globally, there is a macro-economic challenge and budgetary constraints which have resulted in limited fiscal support for academic libraries thus affecting quality of service delivery at a time when the critical role of information in development cannot be compromised. In the drive to remain relevant and buoyant against a background of such challenges, academic libraries are exploiting and embracing the numerous opportunities ICT’s provide such as intra and inter-institutional cooperation and partnerships, Free Open Source Software(FOSS), and open access initiative(OAI), federated searches, knowledge discovery, webometrics among others.