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Effects Of Poor Funding Of Public Libraries In Nigeria
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CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The public library is a social
institution which is tied to the political and social realities of the
communities where it is situated. As the name implies, this is a library
that serves the public.
UNESCO (1966) defines public library as
“Those which serve the population of the community or region free of
change or for a nominal fee. It is a library designed to serve the
generality of the people.
According to Oduagwu (2002) public
libraries that serve the public are supported by government subvention,
local rates or charges. He went further to explain that public library
is often regarded as a poor man’s university. Its clientele is
heterogeneous devoid of race, status, rank, bias as to who would avail
of its services. It stocks every conceivable item that would add
knowledge, education, research, information and cultural needs of the
society. In Nigeria today, each of the 36 states kin the country
including Abuja has a public library board established under the public
library act as united kingdom (UK), but here in Nigeria, library board
of states is established by edict or laws made by the states
legislators.
Oparaku, Anyanwu, Madi, (2005) defined a public library
as an institution that is set up by the government through enabling
law, funded and mentioned are expected to meet the educational,
informational and recreational needs of its community, public library
funding refers to making money available for the day running of the
library. Funding here deals with making money or funds available to
public libraries.
Finance is the life wire of any establishment
including land, labour, capitals and entrepreneur and information. The
capital here refers to finance which can be used to procure other
factors of production there by making it more important than others.
Fund is obviously the major element in every establishment. It is
equally the working capital of an establishment.
Public library
funding generally means the various ways we derive the expected funds
for capital and recurrent expenses. It involves the money available or
allocation to library for running its day to day activities.
However,
the funding and financial allocations to public libraries have remained
poor decades. Public libraries needs adequate resources to run their
services pay and hire personal provides current information, arrange,
organize and monitor both human and materials resources. Nigeria is a
developing country and its society is not a reading society. Nigeria do
not appreciate the importance and needs of public libraries and the
services it offers and this problem reflect in the level of funds
allocated to it by the government. State government subventions which
constitute about 80% of public library fund is grossly inadequate. This
inadequacy is because of the political instability and bad economy of
the country. Ulu (1997) for instance, the Imo state library was the
first in he country to start services to handicap. But due to lack of
fund to train staff and carry out services, there services have been on
glow progression.
Late release of fund by the government is another
problem, it means things can’t be done when required. All the plans of
public library are hampsed by late release of fund. For instance, the
public library’s plan is to establish community information services in
Imo state did not take off due to late release of fund.
Another
problem is the existing infrastructural facilities in most public
libraries are inadequate. Their reference materials are too old. There
are no separate rooms for music library and audio-visual materials, and
no rooms for serious readers especially those carrying out research
works.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The public library is a social institution which is tied to the political and social realities of the communities, where it is situated. Library helps an organizations to achieve this stated goals and its achievement is dependent I the adequate fund available to the library involved. Looking at one goal set out by public library to achieve and with the fact that less is achieved due to poor materials and infrastructural facilities in our present day societies, its discovered that inadequate fund ... Continue reading---
