About the library


Aims and objectives

The UWICE library is committed to support the research programs, teaching and learning activities by providing quality, cost effective information and learning resources and services through various media.

To fulfil its aims and objectives, the library undertakes to

  • Collect, retrieve, organize and manage resources of all formats
  • Provide unbiased access to all users
  • Impart information literacy skills to users to make optimum use of resources
  • Facilitate user centered services, meaning according to the need of users
  • Ensure that users are treated with respect and politeness by the library staff

At present, the library is located at the right wing of the dzong under the conference hall. It caters the information need of UWICE faculty, researchers, trainees and other external members.

The UWICE library is a "growing organism" (Raganathan, n.d) and over the years it will be grown into a large organization. With the rapid advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), users are fostered to increase their demand to access information resources virtually from their desk, regardless of time and place. This force has helped users' demand to overleap the conventional services offered from the library.

In response, we aspire to develop a digital library, which has a great potential to reduce the pressing issue of not having enough reference resources in the library. Also it may act as a conduit to share and disseminate scholarly information among environmental researchers and scientists.

Given the lack of infrastructures and technical experts, the pragmatic realization of fully functional digital library would be a challenge. However, we need to see through it.

Collections

Currently, the library has a good collection of materials on diverse subjects with a strong emphasis on natural science. It's collection consists of 4,870 volumes of books and a number of government project reports, documents, and other publications, in total of 7,975 volumes. In addition, we also have 435 printed version back issue Taxon journals (1951-2005), and 50 DVDs on various subjects. These resources has an immense value for our users.

Similarly, we have a good number of other international publications, basically related to environmental science. Most of the literature is in English and few of them are in Dzongkha. We also provide the internet facilities to access electronic resources and other computing facilities and comfort reading atmosphere as well.

The library subscribes to current open access electronic journals such as Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and Oxford journals and many more. We also have subscription to e-kuensel both in Dzongkha and English medium and other in-country newspapers, as well as international magazines like The Economist in printed version.