Librarians Harp On Improvement Of Libraries

The Library Association of Nigeria has identified neglect of libraries by education policy makers as the major cause of mass failure of students in the examinations conducted by West African Examination Council and other related bodies in recent times.
Disclosing this while declaring open the 29th annual conference of the association in Lokoja, Dr Ibidapo Oketunji observed that the country’s education policies including those on the Universal Basic Education programme, lacked input by librarians.
Dr Oketuji, who is the chairman of cataloguing, classification and indexing of the association lamented a situation where students relied solely on their teachers without the use of well-established libraries.
He therefore suggested that modern day library buildings should be developed to attract readers pointing out that reading culture was dwindling among Nigerians due to lack of good materials and location of some libraries across the country.
Similarly, Dr Oketunji called on the federal government to restructure the country’s educational programmes including syllabuses to create room for librarians to make an input.
According to him, the annual conference was designed for librarians to exchange ideas on new developments in the profession.
He further appealed to various state governments to resuscitate state library boards while new ones should be open to meet the needs of increasing student population in the country.