The Research Support Unit responds to client’s research needs and covers the technical and client functions of the Library services. Its activities encompass the content development of the digital and physical library repositories of knowledge generated in-house and acquisitions from other institutions to support the research needs of the targeted users. The technical services work in the back-end to ensure that knowledge holdings are properly managed, preserved and made accessible while the client services acts as the front-end to dissemination of the knowledge.
Specifically, the unit is responsible for
- Formulating policies, procedures, objectives and guidelines for content development and maintenance of ECA’s digital and physical knowledge collections and delivery of knowledge-based reference services
- Cataloguing and organizing material for bookshelves and display
- Organizes Reference Services for requesting professionals and other requests for research assistance.
- Providing comprehensive knowledge guides through library liaison services and development of thematic Libguides to Divisions, SROs and IDEP staff in support of their research needs
- Hosting book talks, report launches, and thematic exhibitions
- Marketing the knowledge resources to create awareness of the knowledge holdings
- Managing the physical library services as research commons, including circulations, acquisitions, public internet access facilities, lecture halls, and exhibition spaces;
- Keeping content current on ECA’s KLSS website pages
The units has been serving its clients using a comprehensive collection of knowledge accessible through its online catalogue @ http://libcat.uneca.org. These include general collection of over 200,000 titles, E-resources from 139 online databases, OCLC spotlight programme - 74,000 libraries, ECA knowledge products over 34,000 titles, extended wealth of knowledge through our linkage to various UN catalogues.
KLSS has been helping its clients to tap into a huge pool of continental knowledge through its Access to Socioeconomic and scientific knowledge on/in Africa (ASKIA) http:/askia.uneca.org. ASKIA is a truly multilingual federated platform (accessible in 5 languages En, Fr, Ar, Sp, and Pt). It probes connected information resources on the Internet, African sources through the AVLIN network and present them in a single window. ASKIA pulls several kinds of resources including maps, directors, the web, scientific databases, journals, news, knowledge networks related to the searched term.
The Unit maintains the ECA Knowledge Repository (http://repository.uneca.org), which houses ECA’s flagship publications; conference proceedings; technical publications (mission reports, annual reports, working papers, series (policy briefs, research papers, working papers, newsletters etc.), Journals; speeches and press releases; other grey literature; multimedia (videos, audio, photos) produced during the close to 60 years of ECA existence in support of its member States.