A study of censorship in Kenya: with specific reference to its effects on the availability of literature in libraries

Abstract

Retrospective conversion is a pphenomenon worth of special consideration because, a complete library catalogue in machine readable form, brings indispensable dynamics to library service. Libraries are commonly faced with issues related to the approach of retrospective conversion. This is because available methods are often expensive in terms of staff time, hire/purchase of external database services as a well as telecommunication charges.

This research work is a report of a relatively economical appreach to retrospective conversion. In particular it is a report of a Dbase III Plus program that is developed to accept input keyed in directly from card catalogue records, existing in Kenyatta University Library, then their elements are sorted and stored in a database, each element into its proper field. Basically a cataloguer assigns a code to each record before the operator inputs them in the computer, taking care of all punctuations as in done when typing the minigraph stencils. It is an appreach whic libraries with a well defined cataloguing policy can consider to adapt.