In an effort to sensitize the institute community and its environs, National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration under the leadership of its Director-General Professor Lilian Salami, organized a public lecture titled: “Effective Use of the Institutional Library” on Friday 24th May, 2019.
According to the Publication and Documentation Coordinator, Mr. Hulegi Zachi, the institute’s E-Library plays a central role of adding value to information for the academic community by creatively improving and providing information resources and services.
It also strives to create an environment that encourages the pursuit of intellectual endeavors and the creation of knowledge. The publication and documentation head further added that, NIEPA E-Library cultivates a workplace that nurtures cooperation, harmony, and personal growth by providing information resources and services to the Institute’s community in a manner that supports and enriches training, research and service missions.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Zachi also said “A library is a very important aspect of any institution. It is the hub of information for research and training purpose in any academic environment. With the advent of search engines such as Google, which offers a lot of information, users must be very careful in accessing most of its information which are not sieved. It cannot be a reliable source since it is just a search engine. This is not the case with the E Library at NIEPA. NIEPA E Library is a collection of documents – such as magazine articles, book, papers, images, sound files and videos – organized in an electronic form and available on the Internet or on a digital support. This sieved information is updated on a daily basis, indicating credibility of its sources.”
Guest speaker at the occasion, Dr. Samuel Ogunniyi from Babs Fafunwa Library, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, espoused strategies for effective utilization of special library services. He stated that, educational systems all over the world need E-Libraries to support and enhance their operations.
According to Dr. Ogunniyi, libraries are service points where information resources (physical and electronic) are systematically selected, acquired, organized, preserved and disseminated to needed users. The scholar listed some challenges confronting special libraries to include; lack of professional staff and poor funding. He concluded by recommending regular training of librarians and support staff to be able to meet the needs of library users.
Also speaking at the event, chairman of the occasion, Dr. Sunday Adegbesan applauded the guest lecturer Dr. Samuel Ogunniyi for presenting a contemporary, comprehensive and apt paper on library utilization.
Dr. Adegbesan encouraged all interested in broadening their horizon, to key into salient points raised by the guest speaker. The programme collapsed into a question and answer session that saw questions, answers and observations relating to efficient and proficient and use of special libraries. A climax to the occasion was the celebration of the contributions of former Librarian of the institute, Dr. Mrs. Adebola Adebisi Agbaje to the modernization of Library services in the institute.