Legal deposit practices at Makerere University Library: how the audiovisual collection is treated?

This paper examines the role of the legal deposit law towards the audiovisual collection at Makerere University Library. By law, Makerere University is one of the oldest legal deposit centres in Uganda established since 1952. It is a one-stop depository of all materials on and about Uganda. These include among others; theses and dissertations, publications from International Bodies, archives, music collection and all the audiovisual materials. With the introduction of technology, the legal deposit law and practices seem to be lagging in addition to the law which has not been amended to apply to the current practices at Makerere University. This generates debate on the current law and policies in place which results into strong democracy and governance leading to the need to incorporate into the current state. Therefore, the major objective of the study was to find out whether the legal deposit law is being applied to the collections at Makerere University specifically the audiovisual collection in the current era. Twenty users were involved in the study, eight of which were lecturers, six were staff from Makerere University Africana section (depository centre) and the six where from other depository centres in Uganda. A self-administered questionnaire was used with eight questions five of which were open ended to answer the how and why while the three were closed. The analysis was based on the quantifiable data and qualitative data from the findings. The paper therefore will highlight issues at Makerere University in regard to the audiovisual collection.