Reference Service
This service is composed of:
Personal User Assistance
where users are assisted by library staff at personal level to find the information resources, they need for their research needs.
User education / Instruction
where the users are helped by library personnel to learn the skills they need to find and use the library materials.
Guidance
where users are assisted in choosing library materials appropriate for their research needs.
Specialized Collections
These are used to locate resources for specific facts and background information.
Subject specific print books– Printed books that focus on a specific discipline or subject within a discipline.
Subject specific print journals/periodicals – Printed journals or periodicals that focus on a specific discipline or subject within a discipline.
Please visit: www.opac.library.ac.zw
Circulation Services
Circulation services comprises of the following functions:
Membership registration
Issuing / checking out of library materials
Returning / checking in of library materials
Identifying damaged materials for repairing
Reference services
Students’ clearance upon completion / termination of studies at ZOU. See Library procedures.
See rules and regulations document, library procedures.
Research Data E-Portals’ Services.
Institutional repository – an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of articles produced by ZOU academia and students. Also contains abstracts of articles published outside ZOU by academia. These include dissertations, theses, project and lecturers’ articles. Please visit: https://ir.zou.ac.zw.
E-Journal Portal This is a digital platform / research repository of all e-journals from each faculty by ZOU academia and researchers.
E-Hive – This is a digital platform acting as a databank for all past students projects. This platform is not live. It is just for future reference by all alumnae.
Off Campus Access to Digital library Service –
This service allows all bonafide students, staff, researchers and approved readers to access both subscribed and open access electronic resources outside ZOU campuses. This service is offered courteous of the digital library platform called RemoteX. The user needs to have an account with the RemoteX Please visit: http://www.zou.ac.zw/library/remoteXs
Information Literacy Skills Tutorial Service –
This is a self-learning information literacy skills tutorial available online to acquire the skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information. This is a free online course called Learning In a Digital Age (LIDA) provided courtis of the Open Educational Resources Universitus (OERs). This course is offered to all registered ZOU students through MyVista platform.
Training
The ZOU library provides training to all registered students, staff and researchers of ZOU on how to access and use the digital library, anti-plagiarism check software and the reference management system. The training begins with all first-year students and then spreads to other returning students throughout the semester. There is a training calendar for all categories. See www.opac.library.ac.zw,; https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/reference-manager and https://www.turnitin.com/-
Inter-Library Loans (ILL) –
Is the cooperative arrangement among libraries that allows books and other materials from one library to be loaned out to a patron from another library.