Information needs by special disable users: Visual impaired students

Information needs is not a new term in the library field. Librarians need to identify the needs of their users in order to have a versatile and effective library collection and library services. There’s a lot of benefit in studying the information needs of a certain category of users, especially...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mohd Faizal, H., Annur Thahirah, A.H.
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://eprints.um.edu.my/15945/1/DownloadFile.pdf
Description
Summary:Information needs is not a new term in the library field. Librarians need to identify the needs of their users in order to have a versatile and effective library collection and library services. There’s a lot of benefit in studying the information needs of a certain category of users, especially users with disabilities who are using the facilities and services at the University of Malaya Library (UML). There are few categories of students with disabilities at the University of Malaya (UM), however this research is focusing on visually impaired persons due to the huge number registered as students in UM with total of 48 students. Persons with disabilities have a special range and spectrum of information needs as a result of their limitations. Therefore, there are multitude of factors to consider, such as accessibility of the library services and library facilities, in order to achieve an equal opportunity in accessing information at the library. The role of the library changes as librarians need to be more sensitive and need to conduct more research on how to deal with the needs of the impaired users. The result of the survey will be a guideline for UML to improve the library services provided for this particular user group. As a conclusion, it is important to ensure that UML can provide special library services concerning this specific user group, thus ensuring “a library for everyone”