As we expected that most of our students have a little knowledge about Kirkuk Public Library, we conducted a site visit there on Tuesday, July 26th 2016. We took two Access program classes (about 33 students) to Kirkuk Public Library.
The aim of this site visit is to show our student that we have such a place in Kirkuk and they can go there at any time to study and borrow books.
During our site visit to Kirkuk Public Library, one of the employees explained the following:-
- All the books in the library are classified according the subject (topic) of the book
- The process of borrowing books after finding your specific book and searching the card catalog.
- Two types of books checkout either internal or external.
- In addition to the required official documents when students need to check out books.
The students took a tour inside the halls and put some library related words inside the library in their specific places as the printed words have been prepared for that purpose in advance.
Then we talked to them about the importance of books as it is considered the food for our brain. Then we talked about Mala Said Ahmed Khanaqa who donated the land to be constructed as a library to Kirkuk inhabitants and readers in 1952. After that, one of the students presented a speech about the role of books in our life. Later on, and to add some entertainment to our visit, we played some games such as spelling, matching word and definitions (library related words) and tongue twisters between Class A and class B.
To measure the impact of this site visit, we developed a questionnaire consist of 5 items. The result showed that
1- 78% of the students have never visited this place before.
2- This site visit was an important event for about 79% of the students.
3- 62% of the students confirmed that they have learned new library related words in addition to a lot of information related to the process of checking books out.
4- 35 % are going to visit again to read books or study because the place is very quiet and clean. Whereas the rest of the students were not sure and some of them stated that the place is far from their houses as they requested to have such places in their neighborhoods.
5- 67% of the students confirmed that they had fun and they enjoyed themselves during the site visit.
