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{
    "id": 631939,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/631939/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 339,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "legislation. The Constitution is clear that library services have been devolved to the counties. The intention of this Bill is quite straightforward. It seeks to establish county libraries and a County Library Development Committee in each county. It also provides for the functions and powers of each county library development committee and for connected purposes. The legislation surrounding libraries in this nation has been guided by the Kenya National Library Services Board Act, which is fairly old. It was, initially, done in 1965 and the last amendment must have been in the 1990s. Therefore, the Kenya National Library Services Board Act is quite outdated and out of touch with the new arrangements that have been introduced by the Constitution (2010). If you look at the spread of the libraries across the country, you will notice a trend that libraries follow the main highways in this country. In other words, the Kenya National Library Services website has a map with dots of where it has established libraries since 1965, when the Kenya National Library Services Board Act was promulgated. Most of the dots appear from Mombasa along the highway into Nairobi, Bungoma, Kakamega or Kisumu. This means that the development and establishment of libraries has been aligned to that outdated model of the Sessional Paper that was done by Tom Mboya and the former President, Mwai Kibaki, where development was concentrated in those areas that were considered to be of high potential. In northern Kenya and other marginalized areas, libraries have not been established properly. The Kenya National Library Services Board has always argued that it provides mobile library services to some of these areas. It further argued that in these areas, there are pastoralists who cannot be served by sedentary libraries but the truth is that the mobile libraries have not served the objective of promoting literacy and a reading culture in these parts of the country. Therefore, by advocating for libraries to be established at the county level, I believe that we will be moving a great step towards promotion of literacy, a reading culture and generally, promoting the standards of education in the country. Madam Temporary Speaker, librarianship needs to be looked at as a profession. For your information, in my first degree, I studied Information Sciences even though I specialized in information technology. There are certain techniques and arts in librarianship that you will not get anywhere. A librarian is an expert in cataloging, classification of data and information materials, which is a science rather than an art because there are classification schemes. There is the Dewey Classification Scheme and when it comes to cataloging, there is the Library of Congress Scheme. Librarianship need to be looked at as a profession and not just any other job that can be done by someone who loves to read books. That person needs to love books, but must also understand the intricacies of the profession. A librarian is an expert in indexing. Indexing is a science and not an art. There is also archiving, retrieval and building of databases and linking information sources. I say this because one of the areas that I wish this Bill could address - and these are recommendations that we will bring up when it gets to the Committee stage- is that as we set up these county library development committees, we should also designate the role of a county librarian. He or she will be a professional who is trained in information The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}