Passion and Purpose: The Essence of Librarianship Beyond Monetary Considerations

 Azeez Adeoye

If money were not a problem, would you still choose to remain a librarian?

Often, we complain about people's attitudes towards librarianship. We lament how the parent institution neglects its role towards the library. We complain about how university management only remembers the library during National Universities Commission (NUC) accreditation. We lament how library apathy grows among users. But have we stopped and asked ourselves how much passion we put into our work?

Librarianship is a caregiver profession where we prioritize the information needs of our clients. We are expected to give our best to satisfy our users. And in extreme cases where the information cannot be met, we refer them to knowledgeable individuals and follow up on it. Do you do all this with your patrons?

How strong is your passion for librarianship? How many books do you complete in a month? Librarians are living polymaths who know something about everything. This is not magic; to achieve this, you have to be a bibliophile and a habitual reader. You cannot go far in the librarianship profession if you are a lazy reader. Librarians read, which is why it's easy for them to remain relevant in their communities, engage in intelligent conversations, and make an impact on their clients within three minutes of discussion.

A compassionate librarian learns, unlearns, stays relevant, and upskills. It has been said many times that the illiterate of this century is not someone without a degree but someone who cannot learn, relearn, and upskill. Every profession evolves due to the emergence of ICT, and librarianship is one of the most affected. Almost every second, new application are invented, software packages are deployed, new search engines are adopted, and OpenAI is updated and upgraded every week. Your passion for librarianship must push you to learn and upskill continuously.

No profession has it all, including librarianship. There will always be a need to acquire resources, purchase gadgets, subscribe to reputable databases, and renew subscriptions on platforms like Ebscohost. But have you done your very best with the limited resources you have? So, the next time you are asked about your contribution to the librarian profession and your organization, tell them about the list of activities you have accomplished with the limited resources provided. This attitude will ensure your success and increase the relevance of our beloved profession.

Therefore, before you complain about neglect as a librarian, reevaluate yourself. If money is not the problem; would you still hold on to this career path? Are you a passionate reader? Do you upskill and learn emerging technologies to ease your work? Do you go the extra mile to meet your client's needs? Do you give your best with the limited resources you have? I assure you, if you do all these, you cannot complain about irrelevance as a librarian.

Azeez ADEOYE

Wizard Librarian

+234(703)0292959

adeoyeazeezphd@gmail.com 

NEED FOR INCLUSION OF LIBRARY PERIOD IN NIGERIAN SCHOOL TIMETABLE

Olabode Olajide (Ph.D.)

I write to appeal to concerned authority and other education stakeholders in the country to introduce, compulsorily, “library period” into timetable of both primary and secondary schools across the country. This is imperative considering the high level of inadequate library skills exhibit by Nigerian undergraduates. It is not uncommon to hear undergraduates complaining about their college, polytechnic or university libraries of inability to provide or satisfy their information needs no matter how equipped the libraries might be. Research has shown that in most cases, it is not as if libraries don’t have what it takes to satisfy the students’ information needs but the skills required of students to effectively utilize the library resources to the fullest are lacking. Though, students are not to be totally blamed for this absurdity but our educational system that allows school to operate without functional library. Imagine a situation where student never stepped into the four walls of library before gaining admission to higher institution. Yet, it happens, and library at that level of education is unavoidable. Students will ever need it for either personal, recreational, assignment, learning or research purpose.

However, it is primary and secondary schools that serve as a basic foundation of education, and it is at this levels the basic skills required to effectively utilize any type of libraries at any level of education can easily be acquired. From personal experience with students during visitation to the University Library where I work, I could say that students spend much time than necessary on shelves searching, via trial and error, for the needed materials. Realizing this, many of the tertiary institutions introduce a course - “Use of Library and Study Skills” to assist the students in finding their footing in library usage. Though, this is somehow belated, as all the library skills cannot be impacted and well grasped by students within a short period of a semester allotted for teaching the course.

Therefore, I would like to appeal to Federal and State governments as well as other education stakeholders to, as matter of urgency, introduce and enforce “Library Period” in school timetable where pupils could be introduced to library early enough, as this will not only acquaint them with library skills that will be needed in future but also improve their reading culture.

 Dr. Olabode Olajide 

 Librarian/Information Manager

Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria

Promoting Nigerian Research With Open Science: Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for Research Publication

 Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

The 2023 Eko-Konnect Users conference that held between January 24-26, 2023 virtually had distinguished scholars, professionals and representatives of relevant government agencies discussed topics relating to the central theme, Promoting Nigerian Research With Open Science. 

I spoke on the topic, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for Research Publication, in the Session 4 of the event, Maximising Persistent Identifiers For Global Research Visibility. DOI is a chief member of the PIDs (persistent identifiers) scholarly communication infrastructure family. DOI provides a system for persistent and actionable identification and interoperable exchange of managed information on digital networks. 

The details of my presentation can be accessed here or the streamed version watched on YouTube.

Special thanks to Owen Iyoha, MD/CEO of Eko-Konnect, for the invitation to participate, address the attendees and most importantly contribute to the general discourse on the evolution of Nigerian scholarly communication sector and open science uptake in which I have keen interest. 

Society for Scholarly Publishing Announced 2023 Fellows: Two Nigerian Librarians Awarded!

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) has announced that sixteen students and early-career professionals in publishing, librarianship and scholarly communications have been awarded the highly competitive Fellowships for 2023. According to the SSP "the Career Development Committee selected these outstanding individuals from a robust applicant pool based on their high level of engagement in their fields and a diverse range of skills in scholarly communications".

Two distinguished Nigerian librarians: Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi, Central Bank of Nigeria Center for Economics and Finance, University of Ibadan, make the prestigious award. 

The full list of 2023 Fellows are: 

• Andrea Blatz, University of Texas Press

• 

  SSP 2023 Fellows

  Anna Maltbie, Wiley
• Cassandra Larose, Royal Roads University
• Chen He, Wuhan University
• Chenyue Jiao, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• Francesca Soldati, University of Aberdeen
• Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti
• Jamaica Jones, University of Pittsburgh
• Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Mario Pallua, Libertas International University
• Mary Alice Keller, HCA Healthcare
• Nataliia Kaliuzhna, Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts; State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine
• Oyedele Abimbola Ojeniyi, Central Bank of Nigeria Center for Economics and Finance, University of Ibadan
• Rebecca Michaels-Walker, Toronto Metropolitan University
• Sarah Frances Gordon, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City
• Shriyaa Mittal, AIP Publishing

Congratulations!

See more details about the fellowship and SSP here

Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: The TriangleSCI Facilitation

 

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari
Our team's project was accepted in June as one of the five teams (projects) to participate in the ongoing Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute in Duke University, Durham, NC, United States. Our project aims to mitigate the predatory publishing debacle through a community of practice (CoP)-developed toolkit and/or strategies. Members of our team have varying expertise in the core components and contexts of the project. The cross-regional team represents a good example of North-South collaboration of scholars/librarians from Canada- Prof Dan O'Donnell; Algeria- Prof Samir Hachani; Canada/United States- Dr. Nathan Woods; Bangladesh- Shaharima Parvin; Nigeria- Dr. Basiru Adetomiwa and Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari. Post TriangleSCI, we hope to expand the project to other regions of the Global South therefore recruiting more participants into a named community. 

So far it has been a wonderful experience participating in the institute generously funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

The participating teams and projects in the 2022 institute include:

• A Post-Pandemic Reckoning: Improving Metadata for Better Accessibility to Scholarly Archives for People with Disabilities by Erika Fülöp, Dene Grigar, Jarah Moesch, Richard Snyder
• Building a contextual alternative to scholarly journal un/safelists by Joshua Neds-Fox, Matt Ruen, Teresa Schultz, Brianne Selman, Leila Sterman, Stephanie Towery
• Equity Toolkit for Disability Inclusion by Karen Stoll Farrell, Kimberly Gladfelter Graham, Simon Holt, Sylvia Izzo Hunter, Erin Osborne-Martin, Stacy Scott
• Intercultural & interdisciplinary open resources supporting environmental justice by Nadine Aboulmagd, Alex Armstrong, Elena Berg, Jeff Gima, Fiona Glasgow, Antonio Lopez, Dalal Rahme
• Towards Curing the Predatory Publishing Malady in the South: Community of Practice Approach to Developing Local Strategies and Toolkits by Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari, Basiru Adetomiwa, Samir Hachani, Dan Paul O’Donnell, Shaharima Parvin, Nathan Woods

We would be leaving Durham energized to pursue the implementation of our project and by that contribute to the public good. We however express our profound gratitude to the TriangleSCI team, Paolo Mangiafico, Mellon Foundation and of course, our home institutions.

"Libraries on the Front Line of War": Iryna Kuchma's Narration of Libraries' Inspiring Roles during the Russia Invasion of Ukraine

Iryna Kuchma

Originally posted to EIFL blog

I am just a few kilometres away from Kyiv with my family and every   day I hear another story about how libraries are supporting their  communities. I hugely admire them. 

In times like these everyone is doing much more than they can. The Ukrainian Library Association reports that libraries are providing shelters, facilitating access to information and the internet, launching humanitarian hubs, documenting the war and supporting each other. 

Many libraries have turned their book storage spaces into bomb shelters for local communities - cozy with lots of interesting books around! Tea and support is also offered, so this is already considered a new library service. 

In more or less quiet parts of Ukraine, libraries continue to offer access to information - guides from local authorities, tips from psychologists for coping each day, motivational quotes from literature - and access to the internet. They also serve as hubs to collect goods and humanitarian aid for defence units and hospitals, and to sew medical gowns and knit camouflage nets. 

A national digital library kicks-off, recording the war - photo, video and audio facts that document the Russian aggression and the Ukrainian struggle; posters, memes and jokes showcasing creativity; information showing support from the international library community and drawing attention to fake news and information. 

A librarian self-support network is also being built, offering help and responding to requests for help. 

And planning for rebuilding of  damaged library buildings has started as well - together with the Ukrainian charitable foundation Library Country which is documenting the damage.

About the writer

Iryna Kuchma is a multilingual expert in open access, open data and open science. She works with EIFL as Open Access Programme Manager since 2008 where in collaboration with libraries and library consortia in more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, she advocates for open access to research results, facilitates the development and implementation of open science policies and infrastructures, and provides support and training. Iryna is based in Ukraine.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Re: Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!

Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari 

With reference to my December 3, 2018 post titled "Internationalizing Nigerian Journals Using OJS: Time to Act is Now!", I am glad to announce the huge role I played leading to the online presence of two Nigerian journals and still counting. With my advice and expertise in conjunction with the technical prowess of a colleague and the goodwill of the editorial teams of these two journals we have now begun the journey to massively enroll more Nigerian journals online and consequently put them on the International map. The PKP's Open Journal System is the preferred choice of platform given its leading role in the sector and being a supporting infrastructure for Open as default (Open- Science, Access, etc) which I actively advocate for.

I hereby gladly present our two latest journals online as mediums of communicating credible research of scholars in cognate fields from every part of the world:

1. ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS)

AIJNAS

AIJNAS is a university-based scholarly journal of the College of Science, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. The journal publishes research articles, based on theoretical or experimental research works in all the fields of natural and applied sciences. In addition to having a journal-level digital object identifier (DOI)- https://doi.org/10.53982/aijnas, every accepted and published article carries its unique DOI and indexed in many reputable scholarly databases and archiving infrastructures for persistent visibility and access. Authors are thereby cordially invited to submit original and unpublished full-length papers for the forthcoming issues of the ABUAD International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (AIJNAS). 

2. Fountain of Knowledge Journal of Library and Information Science (FKJOLIS)

FKJOLIS

FKJOLIS is a scholarly society journal of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Ekiti State Chapter. The journal is a peer reviewed publication that publishes scholarly articles and essays that contribute to knowledge and boost the frontiers of research in the areas of library and information science (LIS) scholarship and practice. 

In addition to these, we have improved capacity through experience in getting Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for published articles which will go a long way in giving Nigerian journals permanent footprints in the scholarly communications landscape.

Call it walking the talk, you are absolutely not wrong!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Alleged 'Plagiarism': Appeal Quashed, Justice Served for FUNAAB's Associate Professor and Assistant Lecturer

Nine years after they were maliciously accused of 'plagiarism' and unjustly dismissed by the authorities of Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Dr. Janet Bamgbose and Mr. Akeem Bamigbade have, for the second time in six years, received favourable court ruling on the case they filed suing the university. An Appeal Court sitting in  Lagos has on November 25, 2021 dismissed a case of plagiarism filed by the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, against them reported The Punch, Tribune and many other news media as the details of the court verdict emerged.

Prior to this round of legal victory for the victimized duo, Hon. Justice J. D. Peters of the National Industrial Court sitting at the Lagos Judicial Division in the Suit No: NICN/IA/ 371/2013 on the 1st of December 2016, granted the reliefs sought by Bamgbose and Bamigbade against which the university filed the failed appeal. Both  Bamgbose and Bamigbade were Associate Professor and Assistant Lecturer of Chemistry respectively before their acrimonious disengagement from the service of the university. 

It is hoped that the university will now do the needful and learn to follow due process especially shunning malice and vendetta when handling a serious issue like plagiarism. It would be recalled, however, that the illegality was perpetrated in May 2013 during the administration of the then Vice-Chancellor, Prof Olusola Oyewole.

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn- The Holy Bible

 

 

Now that I'm a graduate: My degree and the World

 Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

A presentation to graduating students of Library and Information Science Department, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria on Tuesday, August 24, 2021. The central theme is getting the college grads inspired to think beyond their degrees as they transit to the larger society. A sub-theme is the touch on emerging technologies poised to change the world and the library and information science profession. Click to read and download.

Our Published Article on ICT Skills of University Freshmen and their Projections for Improvement upon Graduation...

 Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

We researched and published the ICT Skills of University Freshmen and their Projections for Improvement uponGraduation: A Case Study of Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Nigeria. 

Authored by Adegbilero-Iwari, Idowu; Odefadehan, Oluwaseun O.; Owoeye, Olubunmi Idowu Mrs.; and Christopher, Abraham, the paper reported the outcomes of the assessment of the information and communication technology (ICT) skills of freshmen in a Nigerian private university and the projection of the students for improvement at graduation. It became necessary in this digital era, where it is assumed the Millennial are digital natives, to know what computing capabilities fresh university students are coming with from their earlier educational exposures and also to know their expectations for ICT skills honing at higher educational level. The findings show that although many of the students are proficient users of varying devices (desktop, laptop and mobile devices), laptop is their preferred device for academic work. It also indicated that laptop and smartphones are their best choice for a device combination. The students are more skillful in E-mail (59%), web browsing (53%), online registration (57%), mobile apps use (53%), e-banking (49%), e-commerce (44%). Whereas they show interest in learning other skills, they indicated that the ICT unit is the arm of the university perceived to contribute the most to their skills improvement during the study years. Recommendations were made based on the findings.

Having Both Landscape and Portrait Pages in the Same Word Document: How to Do It

The page layout of your Word document, usually, is either in Portrait (vertical sort of) or Landscape (horizontal so to say) format. However, there could be instances when yo want to combine both formats in a single document. The how to do it is shown in three steps below:

Step 1: Open the Microsoft Word document, place your cursor at the start of the page that you want to change to landscape or portrait.

Step 2: Select PAGE LAYOUT, then Breaks, then Next Page to place a section break where you had your cursor.

Step 3: While ensuring your cursor is still at the start of that page, go to the Orientation option. Select Landscape, and you’ll notice how everything after our section break has changed to horizontal.

All you have to do now is go to the next page, insert another break, change the orientation back to portrait, and the pages after will be portrait.

Repeat the same steps if your document is originally in landscape and you need to insert portrait in between.

Just Before We M…

by Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari

Source: https://www.dreamstime.com/

While you seek to mine the Moon and move to Mars,

Never forget to make it a duty, 

The Earth to mind, to mind the Earth I say;

To wane her many woes;

The myriads of mire that threatens her life.

Neither for her errors nor the Maker’s though,

But for the horrors of your works and time in her.

This also note, O man!

Less a safe Earth,

Your sail to Space beyond may not persuade.

Now, you must do all you can,

To delay, nay, avert her derail as Pangaea.

Should you not, and proceed as Babel,

You may not be the one to tell how unwarm the Earth once was. 

A sonnet, composed @Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti on 28th October, 2020.