A Historical Background

The Copperbelt University Library has undergone several transformations from being a school collection in 1978 to being a University Library from 1989 onwards. The following is its brief history.

The UNZANDO Branch Library

From 1978 the library was a small collection specifically set up to serve the needs of the then School of Business & Industrial Studies - the only School at the establishment of the Ndola Campus of the University of Zambia.

With the introduction of the School of Environmental Studies in 1981, the library also assumed the identity of a Branch Library for the Ndola Campus of the University of Zambia (UNZA). It occupied the smaller of the two floors that constituted the Zambia Institute of Technology (ZIT) Library.

The Library was headed by the equivalent of a Sub-librarian III. All the planning and co- ordination was done at UNZA in Lusaka. The initial function was that of providing LOAN facilities only. All the other functions were performed centrally in Lusaka and only the finished products in terms of processed books and records were transported to Kitwe to facilitate the LOANS service.

In 1982 a substantive Campus Librarian [Mr. C.B.M. Lungu] was appointed. With that appointment came the process of delinkage with Lusaka. By 1988 virtually all functions previously performed at UNZA had been localised. Budgeting for the library had also been decentralised from the Chief Librarian's Office to the Campus budgetary control. What is significant is that although the major clientele had remained the two Schools, the library had strengthened its capacity to operate all its functions without the involvement of the main library in Lusaka. These developments had obvious implications on staff development projections.

THE CBU LIBRARY
The ZIT/UNZANDO amalgamation

The dissolution of the Zambia Institute of Technology in 1988, which hitherto played host to UNZANDO, induced the amalgamation of the libraries of the two institutions into the CBU library. This single act demanded the reorganisation of the library from being a branch of another, into being an independent University library. The task was obviously a mammoth one as it had serious implications on rationalising resources, capacity building for manpower development, collection development and provision of quality services. Thus, the CBU library has been undergoing an evolutionary process since 1988.

The (New) Administrative Structure

The biggest challenge of the newly established independent library was its transformation into a "standard" University Library. The initial step was to put in place a structure whose establishment we would strive to achieve. Such a structure would be basic to the development of the perceived library similar to other academic libraries in the world. It is a structure that is responsive to the needs of any basic university. The structure was as per diagram 1.

It is important to note that this structure is not completely in place as at now. The entire Non-Book Media Division for instance, is yet to be established. The implementation of the Job Evaluation and Implementation Committee recommendations may have a very significant disruption to these planned developments as its preoccupation on manpower reduction may overlook the basic underlying factor that the CBU library has not yet completed the evolution process started in 1988.