Browsing by Author "Igbo, Harriet U."

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Institutional policy and management of institutional repositories in Nigerian universities
(University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 2015-05-29) Imo, Nwabuisi T.; Igbo, Harriet U.
The development of institutional repositories in libraries has come as a blessing to universities in Africa. It is envisaged that it will solve problems of low visibility of African content on the World Wide Web (Internet), greater speed of dissemination of knowledge from Africa, increased citation for authors whose works are published in the repository and improved ranking for the universities amongst others. However, evidence from past studies has revealed some doubts about the effectiveness of institutional policies in facilitating the growth and development of academic projects in African universities. The study which is a conceptual one is designed to review the development of IR in Africa with emphasis on Nigerian environment, determine what should constitute an institutional policy, and situate this within the framework of conditions for registration of IR by DOAR and ROAR. The study noted that between June 2011 and December 2014 Africa has dropped from 4% to 3% of world registered IRs. In Nigeria the study pointed out that 106 of 129 registered universities have websites but only eight have registered IR and out of this number only one has policy in some aspects of the operation. It was recommended that government interventions are crucial in this regard as this would serve as watch dog in monitoring/ensuring strict adherence to the implementation of the projects.
Providing Access to Knowledge in Africa: the Need for Capacity Building in Classification, Indexing & Abstracting Skills
(2010-12-15) Imo, Nwabuisi T.; Igbo, Harriet U.
The realities of the present era of globalization and information and communication technologies (ICT) culminating in the African Virtual Library and Information Network (AVLIN) have made it expedient that African information professionals should be able to develop, showcase and make accessible African indigenous information to the knowledge world. This literature-based opinion paper has tried to identify with the view of the conference organizers that “Major digital initiatives involving African content are currently being undertaken by non-African organization without widely accepted protocols and agreement”. The paper argues that there is a serious need for a theoretical and policy framework necessary to provide a basis for systematic training of library and information science professionals to place African knowledge on a pedestal that will make it accessible to the world of knowledge. It was found that the library schools in most African universities are ill-equipped to train professionals to handle information in the new digital era. This is exacerbated by the fact that professional associations are not doing enough to retool the existing workforce for the task ahead. The paper recommends, among other things, that much emphasis should be placed on the training of cataloguers and indexers in African research institutions and universities to be able to organize African knowledge and produce information surrogates that will help researchers locate them on the internet.