Challenges and Opportunities in the Use of Information Communication Technology in Management of Government Libraries: A Case Study of Kajiado County ? Kenya

The use of Information communication technology in the library management has become widely applied to almost all the services rendered by the library. It has gradually brought a revolutionary progress in the field of Librarianship. Technology has totally changed how the library discharge the services to the clients and all aspect of library management has also changed including acquisition of information sources, processing, storage, preservations and dissemination of the information resources to the library users. It has greatly contributed to the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery of the library. The management of the library, staffs and users no longer waste a lot of time searching for the desired information sources, they retrieve just with a click of a mouse. The study was carried out to examine the challenges and opportunities of using the information communication technology in the management of Government libraries, in Kajiado County-Kenya which is one of the 47 counties in the country with a view of coming up with the solutions to solve the existing challenges and enhance the access and usability of the e-sources in the library. The objectives laid down on this research were, to find out the effect of system usability on speed and ease retrieval of information resources, to determine the effects of training and skills on accessibility of electronic information sources, to establish the components of information communication technology Infrastructures and its development and to establish the challenges and opportunities of using the Information Communication Technology in the management of information sources in library. The study changed into knowledgeable by using Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. The study used descriptive research layout with a target population of library staffs and users. Questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data from the respondent purposively decided on. Data was analyzed using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The findings indicated that the use of information communication technology in the library management has both the challenges and opportunities. The challenges were High cost of installation of information communication technology, lack of know-how.