Garissa Universally College scored another first by participating in the Kenya Library Association (KLA) international Conference which was held on 27th July to 29th July 2016 at Nairobi Safari Club Hotel. This was in line with KLA’s mandate of striving to be a leading professional body for Librarians, Archivist, Information Specialists, and knowledge managers in Eastern Africa. The theme of the Conference was “Postmodern Information and Knowledge Impact on Organizational Growth and Development”.
GUC was represented by Dr. Iddi Juma who is the Acting University Librarian and Ms Rukiya Abdi also from the Library Department. The two presented a paper on The Impact of the Internet on Postgraduate Research: A Global Perspective which registered a lot of positive feedback. The paper delved into the contribution of the internet hype in helping institutions of higher learning improve the quality of learning at graduate levels with a view to fostering it for a better future. The paper which was published in the The Maktaba Vol. 5 No. 1 0f 2016 – a peer reviewed journal of KLA, recommends that developing economies must increase their investment in ICTs and promotional initiatives to foster higher levels of internet usage by researchers. It avers that Kenya in particular should expedite the ongoing ICT infrastructure, Open Access and Institutional Repositories initiatives to increase the web presence of institutions of higher learning. Above all, Kenya should invest more on research on behavioural response to internet to improve its volume and quality of usage.
The subthemes of the conference included: Effectiveness of information as a basis for decision making in organizations; Impact of knowledge management on organizational culture for business or public organizations; Disruptive innovations and the growing knowledge economy with shifting policies and priorities; Library security Vs impending terrorist attacks; Knowledge trends that will recreate a smart world; Library leadership trends; Library as business tool in revenue generation; Re-engineering of services and resources in the library to meet the ever changing demands; Knowledge management and organizational culture in dynamic world; The way forward for public libraries; Borderless librarianship.