British influence on the education of librarians in Anglophone Africa

Abstract

Librarianship is a relatively new profession in Africa. It is certainly less than 100 years old. Most of the countries in Africa, having being colonised by the British and the French, imported librarianship into the continent wholesale from their colonial masters. For Anglophone Africans, their first contact with librarianship was when British officials set up libraries in the various colonies. To a large, extent, librarianship, can be said to be alien to the culture of Anglophone Africans. However, the role of a library in the development of a nation was quickly, recognised by the peoples of Anglophone Africa and libraries were warmly received when they were established.As early as 1908, a medical library was established in the then Gold Coast, now Ghana, and a geology library was set up in Nigeria in 1919 (Akinyotu, 1972). According to Ogunsheye (1970) the Tom Jones library in Nigeria was founded between 1910 and 1920.