UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

The history of university library development in Nigeria dates back to pre-independence time when the University of Ibadan and its library were established in 1948. As pointed out by Aguolu (1996), since independence in 1960, there has been an unrelenting upsurge in the establishment of educational institutions at all levels, especially university education. Successive Nigerian governments have continued to invest strongly in education. It must be realized that university libraries, being integral academic parts of the universities, generally emerged simultaneously with their parent institutions. Hence there are as many university libraries as there are universities. The proliferation of universities, despite the economic recession in the country since the 1980s, has increased the problems of the universities and their libraries so much that now their future seems uncertain. Added to these problems are the problems of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Nigerian universities as related to library development. Ever since the problem of the literature explosion became noticeable in the 1970s, the developed world has devised various systems to facilitate the flow of information both within and across the countries, and developing countries are invited to take advantage of these devices. However, this invitation is not often readily accepted by the developing nations like Nigeria because of some mitigating factors. These include the human factors, fear, and the level of developmentcum infrastructure of the nation and so on. The case of application of modern technology in the library should start with the acceptance of the new technology as vital to the effective performance of the functions of the library.