Acquisition Modes of Collections in the Addabor and Centenary Libraries of the Tamale and Bagabaga Colleges of Education in Ghana

This paper sought to explore the acquisition modes of collections in the libraries of Tamale and Bagabaga Colleges of Education in Ghana. The population consisted of all the library staff in both colleges. In all, the sixteenlibrary staffs of the two libraries were use as respondents. Centenary Library has four library staff and Addabor library has twelve library staff. The entire population was used for the study. Archival and structured interview were used as data collection instruments/tools of the study. The study findings revealed that the two libraries largely build their collections through donations aside the few collections from purchase, exchange, interlibrary loan and consortia. The findings also indicated that donation was the most infectious (bookworm, termites, fungi, silverfish, rodents, booklice) acquisition mode in the Addabor and Centenary libraries. The study concludes that both libraries largely build their collections through donations and gifts. The purpose of the study was to add to academic knowledge of the field, fill literature gap, serve as a policy document to acquisition librarians, Ministry of Education and Princof in their bid to building relevant collections to meet user needs. The recommendations from the study which include recruitment of more professional librarians, training of acquisition librarians, provision of enough funding, provision of enough infrastructure, provision of preservation chemicals for the treatment of infected collections and assertiveness in the refusal of being dumping grounds for irrelevant collections. Collections of libraries are acquired to meet the objective of advancing knowledge and wisdom to promote sustainable and comprehensive education for national development.