News at ViewPointNigeria’s desk indicates that since the fire incident that engulfed materials at the University of Jos Library on October 8, 2016 the library has been lifeless, an area which used to be flowing with staff and students now seems abandoned.

The fire consumed hundreds of unmarked examination script, books and other resources in the departments of sociology, psychology, political science, economics, accounting and business administration in the faculties of social and management sciences. The fire also affected offices at the faculty of arts.

ViewPointNigeria reports that towards the end of last year shelves had been mounted for new collections of the affected faculties as part of the strategy to restore library services. All library activities had continued at the main campus which had earlier been converted into an e-library

Five months after the incident, there has been rush to restock the newly mounted shelves with books and other periodicals. The university had on the 20th of October 2016 launched Operation “Beauty from Ashes” as part of efforts to get books and cash donations to resuscitate the Naraguta library and has already compiled a great deal of books and cash donations from home and abroad.

Some students also launched the ‘Project Testify (refilling our bookshelves)’ and have since raised over 600 books for the university. So far, the university’s website shows 59 names of individuals and organisations on the honour list of donors for books, cash or both. The institution’s librarian Dr. Stephen Akintunde, said the list is not exhaustive as most recent donations are yet to be updated. The university’s principal staff including the Vice Chancellor had also donated N1million each as part of their contribution to the cause.

Shortly after the incident, students and staff had no choice but to access intellectual materials from the huge back up of digital resources in terms of books and journals which are found in the institutional repository and arranged according to different disciplines. However, Dr. Akintunde wrote on the University’s website in November that library circulation services for the affected faculties had begun at the Bauchi road main campus, and so books can be borrowed and read in the library.

He said a number of persons have responded to the “Beauty from Ashes” project and the institution had two collection points for materials in South Africa and the United States of America. “For the materials in South Africa and the USA, we are still collecting them and when we have a large quantity we will ship them to Nigeria, we may need to ship them in a container,” he said.

The librarian said the response from individuals and organisations have been overwhelming, adding that; “A lecturer in Japan wrote to the Nigerian embassy when he learnt about the incident and wanted to donate, so the Nigerian embassy wrote to us and we replied, directing him to the collection centre in the US to make his donations.”

Though over 100, 000 intellectual materials, some of which are very rare, have been lost, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Maimako, recently told the National Librarian, Professor Lenrie Aina, that he was encouraged by the many donations the institution had received through the operation ‘Beauty from Ashes’ programme it launched.

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Donors Flock to Restock Jos University’s Library After Fire