A comparative study of education for librarianship in West Africa

Abstract

Formal library education was first organized in West Africa in 1944 when a library school was opened at Achimota College, Gold Coast. This school was established as a result of a survey conducted by Miss Ethel Fegan whose report was submitted to the British Colonial Office in 1944.1 The school was headed by Miss Fegan and financed jointly by the British Council and the Governments of the three colonies of Nigeria, Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. There were 14 students in all, made up of six from Nigeria, four from the Gold Coast, three from Sierra Leone and one from French Togo. Ten of these successfully sat for the entrance examination of the British Library Association.2 But the school was closed down after one year because, as Miss Evelyn Evans* pointed out, it was felt that more libraries were not likely to be established in the near future and therefore it was pointless to continue to train librarians for whom there would be no jobs. Harold Lancour4 later summed up the situation thus: “At that time there were no properly conceived or operated libraries to serve as examples of what could be accomplished. There was no cadre of trained and experienced people to conduct a training program. There was in no sense a library profession or tradition.” With the closure of this school came the end of the first experiment in formal library education in West Africa and it was several years after that before any such venture was attempted again. In the interval, however, some form of training was going on in the few libraries that then existed in the different countries. The British