The President and Chairman of Council, Nigeria Library Association ((NLA), Dr. Dominic Omokaro, has expressed concern that Nigerians have abandoned libraries.
Omokaro spoke on Saturday in Abuja while briefing journalists on the sideline of the NLA 2024 Award Dinner, themed: “The Library as an Agent of Change in Contemporary Nigeria”.
He said: “The idea of the library being an agent of change is, if we want to get Nigeria as a leading nation, we need to get people back to the library and in getting people back to the library, we want to build a reading society and any reading society is a leading society because readers are leaders.”
He, however, disagreed that using AI will replace the library, saying, “You still need the human factor and for you to study, you need the library because the audience of the library helps you and that sense that you left your home to go and study is there for you, unlike where you don’t even have that distance.”
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The guest speaker, Dr Chinyere Ibeh, noted that the library had been an indispensable tool in her journey as a researcher, saying, “the library is a fulcrum of research and development and there is no field that doesn’t rely on research and development, and they rely on resources from the library.”
She, however, pointed out that libraries in Nigeria are facing many challenges, which include limited physical and virtual libraries compared to the total population; wide digital divide among population; inability of librarians to organize programmes that promote reading culture and limited investment; and lack of funding from stakeholders.
“If we are to harness the full potentials as agents of transformation, we must tackle the factors that limit their reach and effectiveness by investing in both physical and digital infrastructure of libraries and empowering librarians with necessary tools and training,” she said.
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