Factors influencing outreach services for empowering underprivileged people by university libraries in sri lanka: librarian’s perception

Abstract

Outreach has become a crucial element of library services in academic libraries. The paper deliberates various mechanisms of outreach programmess of university libraries in Sri Lanka. The study mainly focuses in categorizing the role of remaining outreach (OR) services in University libraries identify the objectives and outcomes of the OR services which imbued of influence created over the communities through university library OR services and culminate the potential obstacles in implementing OR services in Sri Lankan academic libraries and explore the remedial measures for those problems. The study highlights that in this changing landscape university librarians elaborate to provide specific directions and conduct the OR programmes as an ad hoc programme of the library. The Sri Lankan university librarians are competent to provide specific directions for making this endeavor worthwhile and sustainable in the long run through OR services and contribute to empower the disadvantaged people and national development. Time limitation (53%), human resources (60%), technology (80%) and communication, coordination and collaboration(80%) are the factors that manipulated the realization of OR services of university libraries. Based on the four influencing aspects found in this study, the finding suggests that, librarians can pursue these opportunities through broad-based direction support across the diverse services.