Searching through the shelves of the main library in Nigeria's premier university earlier today makes me think that fire outbreak at the University of Jos Library may be a blessing in disguise. At least, it is an opportunity to stock up on recent and relevant books in the library. Our people would say Ilé ọba tí ó jó, ẹwà ló bùsi (When a king's palace burns down, the re-built palace is more beautiful). My experience at the Kenneth Dike Library made me wonder where we are going in our education sector. If the library in Jos' former mother university could be like this, what could the incinerated Jos library had looked like?

The book titles I needed were not available. The ones I saw listed on the e-catalogue were almost entirely old (mostly from the 1940s-1970s). The ones listed were not on the shelves due to lack of correlation between the library's e-catalogue and the books on the shelves. Old texts were catalogued based on the Dewey System while new ones were based on the Library of Congress.

I left the shelves and returned to the Distribution Table only to be told by the library officials that there was nothing they could do about that. By the way, the books I saw on the shelves were not serially arranged. These are just few among other library administrative issues in a university where they do Library and Information Science as a course at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Walking through those shelves was even enough to give one catarrh. The mostly yellow or brown books were competing with the pitch close to the library in terms of which had gathered more dust. One just had to wash their hands after touching the books.

My search continues elsewhere. I still need to get my hands on some books which were not available online. That's why I got to see what I saw in the first place.

Government and private agencies need to do more in improving the quality of our libraries. We can't encourage scholarship by having outdated books in stock. Our university libraries shouldn't be competing with the National Archives of Nigeria in terms of the age of books. I hope something would be done to get more recent books on the shelves of our universities at least to consolidate on the improvement of the quality of learning.

Scholars and students in our universities have been elsewhere and could readily suggest recent and relevant book titles to add to the library stock. Our library catalogues should be easily accessible online as we add to the stocks. Equally, library staff have to be up and doing in their various roles to ensure the smooth running of our libraries. The electronic preservation of the books of our old books is equally important for posterity sake. Proper fire safety measures have to be set in order to prevent the recurrence or enormity of the inferno that befell the University of Jos. To the University of Jos community, I pray that Olúwa á fi òfò ra ẹmí o! (May God replace/compensate the loss with a longer life!)

Abdussalam Amoo
Ibadan
10-10-16