Miss Akua Aforo - Law Librarian at the Ghana Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / Faculty of Law at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kamasi, Ghana

IALS Library was very pleased to welcome Miss Akua Aforo from the Ghana Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / Faculty of Law at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kamasi, Ghana for a four week placement in June 2010. 

During this time Akua undertook a planned placement training programme which included one-to-one discussions with senior staff on various law librarianship topics, research skills training, research facilitation projects and visits to other law libraries for comparative purposes.

Knowledge transfer activity:
Akua had discussion meetings with many senior library staff on all aspects of operating a successful national law library. She was able to discuss in detail: possible library strategies, efficient and productive staff structures, the role of key staff, how to best to organise national collections of foreign and international law, managing archives, library management systems, our range of research facilitation services, tailored services for LLM students, possible commercial services, our outreach programme, our website databases and our national collaborative e-initiatives.

Akua was trained in many different legal research skills during her placement - in particular she was given in-depth training in using several key legal databases including the Lexis Library and Westlaw UK. Also in order to appreciate good practice and our procedures and services, Akua"shadowed" library staff on our public enquiry desk and on our busy reference phone desk.

For comparative purposes Akua was accompanied on visits to other key law libraries in London, e.g. Lincoln's Inn Library, the British Library, SOAS Library and Norton Rose (Solicitors) Library

Outputs:
During her programme, Akua spent valuable time on the following projects:

• helping to create a web Research Guide to legal resources in Ghana which will be included on the IALS Library list of Research Guides.
• contributing specific quality Ghanaian legal websites and descriptions which will be included in the Intute Law web national gateway (which IALS edits) and in the IALS Eagle-i Internet Portal.
• reviewing the Ghana Collection of IALS Library and made very useful suggestions for new acquisitions.
• giving a presentation to IALS Library staff on the collections and services at the GIALS Library. This helped our staff understand the challenges of developing a new law library in Africa.

IALS is grateful for the receipt of a Knowledge Transfer Award from the School of Advanced Study to help support Akua's visit.