Fifty years ago | Inadequate library services in Asia and Africa

Lusaka, October 13: The Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Zambia, Mr. Moses Musonda has underlined the need for greater efforts by developing countries in Asia and Africa to develop their information systems to get over the woefully inadequate situation in this field.

The state of libraries and information services in Africa — and indeed in developing countries — are appalling, he said, in a closing speech to the six-day standing conference of Eastern, Central and Southern African librarians here yesterday.

Equally frightening, he told the delegates, was the paucity of trained and qualified personnel to man these services which made the running of the libraries and information systems poorly co-ordinated. The main reason for this situation developing, Mr. Musonda said, could be attributed to the fact that some governments had not recognised the importance of these systems as instruments of economic, social, political, cultural and educational development. Mr. Musonda said, another reason was that personnel training has not been encouraging since there were very few people who understood or appreciated the importance and implication of developing information systems for the benefit of developing countries.