National Library Goes Digital at Twilight of Diamond Jubilee
Kuni Tyessi in Abuja
The National Library of Nigeria (NLN) has upgraded by going digital in all of its services in meeting up with global standards and best practices within the last three years, even as it clocks 60 by November this year.
So far, over 20,000 titles have been deposited in the apex library from 36 states of the federation including the FCT.
With this, researchers no longer need to come to the headquarters to acquire International Standard Book Number (ISBN), International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), index of newspaper publications and other services as they can get information from NLN when they visit its website and social media handles.
Speaking during an interaction with journalists in Abuja, the Chief Librarian and CEO, Prof. Chinwe Veronica Anunobi. who assumed office on September 14, 2021, said despite paucity of funds, hike in fuel price and other challenges facing the country, members of staff of the agency remain undaunted in meeting the needs of Nigerians.
She said the library has branches in 33 states of the federation, including the FCT, while Kebbi, Zamfara, Delta and Anambra state government are still trying to provide lands for the national library to establish offices.
According to her, “When I started work on September 14, 2021, I wanted us to build and straighten bridges. Now, I want to see how we are working on the bridges, despite all odds. During the three years, we had many internal and external challenges, which I referred to as all odds. The external challenges are above the management to address, including the fuel hike issues, which has affected the movement of staff. We also have internal challenges like limited staff strength.
“The National Library of Nigeria can be counted as one of the agencies adding values to the country. We are building bridges as a family. We need to work on the bridges. We are building the capacity of our staff. We engaged 103 staff members that will help us work on the bridges. We are using automated processes.
“The International Community and Artificial Intelligence (AI) now refer to the National Library of Nigeria for information. If you are looking for any information in the newspaper, you won’t need to flip through pages. You will just go to the index on our website and you will get the information as long as it was published online by the newspaper.
“From January to September, this year, we have issued more than 26,000 ISBN. You don’t need to come to the National Library of Nigeria to access the information you need. We have a virtual library. We also subscribed to ProQuest for e-books. We have Online Public Access Catalogue.
“We are doing a compendium of the numerical and alphabets in our indigenous languages, among other digital services at the National Library of Nigeria. So, it has been three eventful years and we hope to surmount our challenges, especially as we are receiving huge support from the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman,” she added.
