Nigeria: All universities to benefit from NUC’s virtual library

The library has 7,000 titles of journals in 13 disciplines The National Universities Commission (NUC), in Abuja, said that all universities in Nigeria would benefit from its virtual library project.
NUC’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Julius Okojie, who made the declaration, said the objective was to enhance learning skills and the acquisition of knowledge.
He added that the library would also provide a more solid basis for quality assurance in education using ICT-based methods. “It is fully in place. We have subscribed to more than 7,000 titles of journals in 13 disciplines,” he said.

“We are going to pay about half-a-billion naira for e-books and e-journals. It’s to all universities, whether private or state-owned. We are now getting the consent of the new institutions now.”
Okojie said that the virtual library would provide remote, on-line or CD-ROM-based access to a variety of national and international content like curricula, learning materials, books, journals, magazines and newspapers. He said the virtual library would combine on-site collections of materials in electronic format with an electronic network which ensured access to and delivery of those materials.
According to him, the aim was to ensure that Nigerian universities had the highest and latest publications in various fields to facilitate teaching, research and learning. The National Virtual Library Project was established in 2001 as one of the many strategies to bolster the quality of teaching, learning and research in Nigerian schools.
It is called “Virtual” because it is an electronically networked library in which the user enjoys the comfort of library facilities on the internet without going to a library. According to Okojie, it is a technology that will greatly aid e-teaching and e-learning.