The National Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Nigeria (NLN), Professor Chinwe Veronica Anunobi, has said she has been able to work with staff of the agency to build bridges and digitize the services of the library to meet international best practices within three years in office.
Speaking Friday, during an interaction with journalists at the headquarters of the library, Prof Anunobi, who assumed office on September 14, 2021 said, despite paucity of funds, hike in fuel price and other challenges faced by the library, members of the staff of the agency remain undaunted in meeting the needs of Nigerians.
She said Nigerians, especially 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 needed information from NLN when they visit the website of the NLN and its social media handles.
She said the library has branches in 33 states of the federation, including the FCT, while Kebbi, Zamfara, Delta and Anambra states are still trying to provide lands for the library to establish offices.
She said: “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. Tomorrow will be my three years in office as the National Librarian. 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.
“However, we are undaunted. 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 that will help us work on the bridges. We are using automated processes. We have over 20,000 titles deposited in the National Library of Nigeria from 36 states of the federation and the FCT.
“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 Honourable Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman.”
Blueprint reports that the highlight of the event was the presentation of two books written by a journalist to the National Librarian.
The books, entitled If Only We Knew and Being Twins were written by Kuni Tyessi, a reporter working with This Day newspaper.
