Abstract:
The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the operations and performance of the
National Union Catalogue of National Library & Documentation Centre of Sri Lanka
in order to identify the underlying problems and to make recommendations for its
improvements.
This evaluation would help the NL&DC to justify the operation of the NUC project,
to know the effectiveness, to diagnose the problems in the project and for the future
developments of the NUC.
Two types of questionnaires were used to collect data, from the NUC participants and
non-participants. Out of the 68 participants in the NUC, 51 libraries had responded to
the questionnaire, which was sent for them. Another questionnaire was sent to 50 nonparticipant
libraries and out of them 29 libraries had responded. In addition to the
above, observations and interviews were used by the researcher to collect data.
The survey findings revealed the following.
The participation of academic and public libraries was low in NUC and only large
public libraries (with large collection size, large cadre size and large budget level)
were interested in participation in NUC. But the collection size, cadre size and budget
level were not factors, which influenced the participation of special libraries.
