Mobile library can be best said to mean knowledge provides on the wheel. This implies knowledge on a moveable objects that moves from one place to another to provide library services to those in an areas where library is not situated. The objects include camel, donkey, bicycle, car, boat, train etc. These were used by many countries of the world to provide an extensional library services to people living outside sketches of where the library is situated.
Book box library service is a system through which a library reach out to its target clients by packaging books and other information materials in a box and send to those in an isolated areas that does not have access to the library. Many ancient libraries uses this pattern to provide essential library services to rural areas.
In Nigeria, UNESCO held seminar in 1953 and gave a recomendation that public library services should be given a priority by the regional governments and other west African states with focus on providing extensional services to rural areas. In respect to the above recommendations, Public Library development was first practiced in the Eastern part of Nigeria with its headquarters in Enugu and with divisional branches in Onitsha, Calaba, Warri and other part of East region with extensional services. The major collection then were centered on business, health and agriculture.
Before 1953 in the Northern part of Nigeria; similar services were locally on ground with its headquarters in Kaduna (Lugard Hall) where bookbox were sent to various branches like Okene library, Kano, Hadejia, Sokoto and the rest. But the then collection were on Islamic jurisprudence and few on western education, but the conference recommendation came to enhanced it.
The case was not different in the western part of Nigeria with its head office in Ibadan and the major collection are on yoruba local content and deeply western education. The libraries then were attacted to royal palaces and schools in Lagos, Ijebu, Iwo, owo and other part of the western region.
During this period, extensional library services were offered extensively to rural dwellers so to enable them to be a lives within happening around them and beyond. More, so, mobile library/extensional services were not limited to rural dwellers alone but they also provide services to under serves and the ages that are interested in library services. Among all, the above services later metamorphus into what is popularly known an as ‘IRead Mobile Library’
Finally, this service is captured in the library budget to ensure that proper services were rendered without hitches. And the target audience will receive knowledge on a platter of gold.
– Adabara A. Abdulhadi.
