AFRICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A CONSUMER VIEWPOINT

Abstract

My first experience of an African university library was at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone in 1963. The library, serving one of the earliest established universities in Sub‐Saharan Africa, was then housed in a linked series of wooden buildings (formerly part of a military hospital) ventilated by louvred windows and fans, in which library staff struggled valiantly against the trials of Freetown's hot and humid climate. The book stock, some of it dating from the last century, was climate‐stained and insect‐eaten and successive dustings of laterite had left its unmistakeable imprint (and smell). Whilst I was at Fourah Bay the library moved to occupy the first stage of new and air‐conditioned premises. This included a room in which the rich collection of early Sierra Leoneana could be brought together. A few years later I moved too, to Ahmadu Bello University in the savanna belt of northern Nigeria where, for much of the year, the book collection (and readers) baked in a poorly ventilated concrete box. That library as well has since moved to a more spacious and air‐conditioned building. Since 1974 I have been at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. Here, at 1250 metres elevation on the Central African plateau, climatic problems are much less acute, and we are also fortunate in having an exceptionally well designed library with a book stock founded in the heady years of Zambia's immediate post‐independence period when copper prices were booming, and funding relatively easy. Today the major problem is that of maintaining the high standards of library provision established in those more affluent early years. Apart from lengthy association with these three libraries, I have also had a more casual acquaintance with university libraries in a number of other African countries (and elsewhere). In making these comments on the African university library, I do so as an expatriate (geographer) academic able, I hope, to view sympathetically these libraries relative to other such libraries in the world, and to do so in the context of the particular constraints of the African/Developing World situation. Despite an interest in things bibliographical I can claim no specific library expertise.

Citation

WILLIAMS, G.J. (1979), "AFRICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A CONSUMER VIEWPOINT", Library Review, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 239-246. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012695