MPILO MEDICAL LIBRARY

LOCATION

Physical location:

Postal address

OPENING HOURS

• Monday to Thursday: 0800 to 1830 hrs
• Friday: 0800 to 1800 hrs
• Saturday: 0800 to 1400 hrs
• Sunday : Closed.
• Public Holidays : Closed.

STAFF

• Ms. T. Sibanda– Assistant Librarian
• Mr A Ndlovu – Senior Library Assistant
• Mr J Sithole – Doorguard/Cleaner

MEMBERSHIP

Membership is open to University of Zimbabwe-Bulawayo College of Health Sciences (UZ-BCHS) and University of Zimbabwe academic and technical staff and students. Health professionals registered with the Medical and Dental Health Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe may join the library as Approved Borrowers and can borrow up to three books at a time. Staff and students from other universities and health-training institutions in and around Bulawayo, and the Midlands and Matabeleland North and South regions may join as Approved Readers and may use all library facilities except book loans. Membership fee is payable annually or bi-annually.

RESOURCES IN THE LIBRARY

Books:
The library currently holds about 6 000 books mainly on medicine and allied health topics. The books are categorized as follows (depending on the level of demand, hence period for which the books may be borrowed):

• Reference Collection: books in this group are for use in the library only and may not be borrowed.
• Overnight loan/Reserve collection: these books may be borrowed overnight, from 1500 to 10.00 hrs the following day or over the weekend. Between 0800 and 1500 hrs the books may be used in the library.
• Short-term loan books: these can be borrowed for up to 7 days.
• Ordinary loan books: these can be borrowed for up to 3 weeks

Periodicals:
The library has about 120 journal titles, 10 of which are current. Periodicals may not be borrowed.

Periodicals on microfiche: The library also holds 87 journal titles for 1987-1991 on microfiche.

CD-ROM databases:
vailable to all library users. Databases currently available are:-

• Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews: issue no 4, 1997 and no 3 2003-
• Frontiers in Reproductive Health Electronic Library 1990-1999
• WHO Reproductive Health Library no 5, 2002-
• CINAHL 1982-2001

SERVICES

Information services

• Reference inquiries
• Literature searches on the Internet (mostly PubMed)

Inter-Library Loan

• The library works largely with the UZ Medical Library, Harare, to source for books and journal articles that are not available in either the Mpilo library or the UZ Medical library.

Library Orientation Tours

• Training on how the library operates is offered to all new library users.