Kenyan Library of the Year Award

The Kenyan library award is an initiative of the Goethe-Institut, the Kenya Library Association and the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. The project is also financially supported by the Kenyan Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts. Other project partners such as World Reader, Book Aid International and eKitabu give donations (books, computers, eReaders) as prizes for the winners. The purpose of the award is to strengthen libraries in their important role for Kenyan society and to motivate the libraries through competition for quality.

Libraries compete in the following categories: large public libraries, small public libraries, special libraries, university libraries and school libraries. The winners of each category and the overall winner - "Library of the Year" - are chosen by an independent jury on the grounds of detailed applications and site visits. The prize is to be used for a project to improve the services in the winning library.
 
The following criteria are decisive for the award:

1. services for the community such as public events or programmes to promote reading;
2. current and up-to-date media inventory;
3. consideration for the cultural diversity of the Kenyan society;
4. dealing with the basic questions of Kenyan society;
5. use of modern technologies in information services.

Kenyan Library of the Year 2017

On Friday, September 22, the Kenyan Library of the Year Awards (Maktaba Awards) were celebrated for the eighth time. A total of 75 libraries participated in this year’s competition. The Library of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD ECD), was awarded the main prize as ’’Library of the Year’’.

All ten jury members concurred that this library deserved the prize for the following reasons:
 
 

• This is a one stop shop library with a restaurant within the building
• The library collection is unique and consists of curriculum support materials that have been locally developed and produced. These include: ECD syllabuses,handbooks,teaching and learning materials(realia),toys, photographs and audio visual materials. Books on local languages e.g.Luo,Kikuyu,Kamba,Embu etc are also collected and preserved for posterity
• The library has a special collection on the new competence-based curriculum for pre-school that is currently being piloted in selected 470 schools within the country
• The collection also included pre-school digital content that has been developed locally and installed in laptops. The laptops are used to access e-resources and introduce young children to computers
• The library embraces modern trends in information dissemination. It has an automated Library Management System with an Online Public Access Catalogue
• The library conducts online searched and disseminates information to library clients through email
• To enhance its security the library has installed CCTV cameras which are integrated with a surveillance station