COMMUNITY LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION SERVICE DELIVERY AS PANACEA FOR GRASS ROOTS DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Man cannot exist without information in any society and in any era. It is through information that people understand their roles, privileges, responsibilities and right within the society. This paper reveals that community libraries and information service delivery is critical for grassroots development in Nigeria. It maintains the important of timely information availability and usage in the implementation of any community development cannot be overemphasised. It also reveals that community libraries play critical roles in the realization of the grassroots development in Nigeria. Consequently, references were made using reliable data from literature and evidence-based observations and to relevant websites. Subsequently, this paper explored the information needs assessment of the rural communities as well as the methods of information service delivery for grassroots development in Nigeria. However, several literatures have noted that there are a number of generally recognized problems that hinder the effective information service delivery in rural communities. The paper identified lack of information services in the indigenous languages of the rural communities, lack of provision of basic amenities in the rural communities which transcend to rural dwellers indifference to governance and information service delivery. Based, on the article, some of the recommendations were made, which include: use of indigenous languages for information dissemination in the rural communities in Nigeria, integrating traditional methods of information delivery such as: oral communication, town criers, etc., to bolster community libraries’ capacity to deliver information services for grassroots development in Nigeria.