THOHOYANDOU – The library at the University of Venda for Science and Technology (Univen) received a major boost when it received the first batch of 1 194 academic textbooks, as part of the European Union's Higher Education Libraries Programme (HELP).

This programme, which is facilitated by the Department of Education, targets the libraries of all historically disadvantaged tertiary institutions in South Africa, and consists of three sub-programmes, namely personnel development, textbooks and information technology. So far Univen Library has already benefited substantially from the first two sub-programmes.

Its entire library staff, from junior to senior, has attended staff development interventions, mainly at venues in Gauteng and the first batch of books worth about R604 000 has arrived.

According to the Univen Director of Public Relations, Mr Rufus Kharidzha, the second batch is expected soon. This consists of books that were out of print and have now been replaced with other titles to the value of R362 000.

"When all the books donated by the EU have been received, their combined value will be almost R1million, the largest single donation the library has ever received," said Kharidzha.

Kharidzha said another important feature of the EU donation is that a world-class electronic database, EBSCOHost, has been partly funded by the program. The Univen library, which has paid its portion of the EBSCOHost subscription (R88 000) has benefited greatly from this because these are the first full-text scientific periodicals the university has subscribed to. The third programme under the EU/DoE HELP is the IT (Information Technology) programme.

This is the program which will provide computers (PCs) for extensive use in the library, e.g. a computerized catalogue for under-graduate students' use (to allow access to Internet databases), for our electronic classroom as well as for staff use. It is expected that delivery will start after September 2002.

Meanwhile, Eskia Mphahlele's Collection, which was donated in 2001 by Prof Mphahlele, a distinguished South African author, is kept in a special room in the Library. Kharidzha said this collection is truly the pride of the Univen Library.