By Madini Bash-Thomas
The success of any establishments is largely predicated on the type of leadership or management that runs them. Also it must be stated from the outset that the status of a country’s library system speaks so much about the level of seriousness with which that country takes its educational system.
In 1959 an Ordinance establishing a comprehensive public library system in Sierra Leone was proclaimed. Libraries were established in every part of the country. Many people in and out of power today will tell you that indeed they used the library throughout their educational life, especially those in formal education. To cover the whole country, the Sierra Leone Library Board had specially-designed vans, visiting villages from their provincial headquarters. I am a very regular regular at the main library at Rokel Street, close to the Victoria Park. I always try to visit the libraries in Kenema, Bo and Makeni whenever I visit those places. I here proudly and publicly pronounce my marriage with books, as I did already on this forum last week. I have since then established links with books, front line workers and long-time fellow users of those libraries to date.
Communication flows amongst us all freely to the point that I know the problems our public library system has been going through. This is how I also got to lay hands on the aforementioned 1959 Ordinance, which states the objectives of the Sierra Leone Library Board as follows, among others: “provide effective services for children and young people,
including requisite services to schools”, and to “support and reinforce programmes of adult and fundamental education”. For sometime since its inception, the library was following this track. This development however developed hiccups on the way due to funding, which could be attributed to a general economic malaise in the entire
country then. The fact remained however that the library was then very organized.
Surely, an organized public library system is a major contributor in the process of developing the education and preservation of the cultural values of a country. This is why in many advanced countries provision of public library services is under the purview of the local and municipal administrations. As such, they serve as very good resource
centres for news, information, activities and cultural values of their localities. That is why in the United Kingdom, for example, the public library services are under the support and monitoring of the Ministry of Culture. The Sierra Leone Library Board was thus given the honour, by law, to also serve as a national library.
Apart from all other functions, this kind of a library is charged with the primary responsibility of compiling a national bibliography. This is a compilation of information details of all books and related materials published in a country and by citizens of a country. It must be noted that Sierra Leone has never been short of authors. For instance, we were also represented in the Pacesetter novel series of the 1980’s and even among the Nigerian-author-dominated African
Writers’ series, no matter the paucity of such representation. Well, let me do some modification here a little bit; that the Pacesetter series was also more or less dominated by the Nigerians – titles like Stop Press, Murder! Christmas in the city, Too cold for Comfort, Meet me in Conakry, Director etc. The Sierra Leone Library Board used to perform this function. They even had newspaper indexing; meaning they had people who judged the importance of news items and information articles in newspapers which were indexed. In this light, if you went to the library and asked for raw information as it was reported then on who and who went to the Lancashire Conference in England that ushered in this country’s independence, the staff would bring it for you in no time, and without having to rummage through the gamut of newspapers. Their index would be there steady and ready to obey them.
As already mentioned, the public library serves as a cultural centre. It normally has halls for such things as education and entertainment. It is a place where not only poetry can be written but also provides the environment for reading it to school, college and general public audiences. It provides ambience for the acting of plays and other
culture, education and information-related activities. Debates and quiz competitions are supposed to be the order of the day in a public library system. It is even sweeter in rural areas, where the culture of story and riddle-telling is or was deep-seated. Equally importantly, the public library serves as an instrument for acceleration of the reading ability of the children. Reading competitions can be organized among children and between schools as frequently as possible during the course of the year.
The library should be a key player in the promotion of adult literacy in communities in which they operate. They should be seen to provide the facilities, which are largely their very tools of trade – books, books and more books. For the adult literacy, you should be able to bring in pictorial books of large print, which will help in speeding up the learning process. You see, I have not introduced the introduction of any technology here, so one cannot say computers
would be too expensive. They may be, of course, as of now but would not hesitate to speak in their favour in due course. I will do so especially under the background that there are people of good will out there, who would listen in donation if you ask.
I learned that the Chairman of the Board that was dissolved by Minister of Education, Dr Minkailu Bah was already excitedly deeply buried in seeking help for the rapid development of the Sierra Leone Library Board. I learnt that he had already brought in abundant quantities of computers for the Sierra Leone Library Board and had also succeeded
in seeking so much funding for the establishment that the staff were already in cloud nine. He had introduced an internet system for public browsing, and that he was also preparing to automate the library when Dr Minkailu Bah brought down the axe on him. In the interest of the children of this country in particular and the reading public in general, this man, who I understand is currently in and out of the country on consultancies, must be sought. For Sierra
Leone, he has mostly offered his services on a voluntary basis.
Public library development should not be neglected and left to hungry hawks to freely feed themselves, as is currently happening, with funds allocated to city councils around the country for that purpose. Appropriate actions should be taken to attract humanitarian organisations like the Children International book charity who withdrew their goodwill because they were unsure their donations were in good hands – as it did turn out to be. At school, we loved American books because apart from their attractive illustrations, they are also written using easy-to-learn and straightforward
methods. Some of us came to love mathematics and the sciences through such books.
These are the books the children of Sierra Leone have been deprived of due to (political) manipulations at the Sierra Leone Library Board. In fact it is further understood that this book charity even had bigger plans for the less-privileged children of this country all of which has now gone to the drain. The fact remains that for decades this country actually depended on such book aid from different organizations, and the Sierra Leone Library Board was doing well as they concentrated on paying salaries and other aspects of running the library. This is no more, and the library might just die a natural death in this country. It is unfortunate as I also know that Fourah Bay College is now churning out – annually – many professionals at diploma, graduate and postgraduate levels.
Bash-Thomas is a Researcher. Email: thombash@yahoo.com
