Success story of Koha adoption in Nigeria

by Brendan Gallagher on Nov 1, 2011

The case of Adeyemi College of Education Ondo, Ondo State

Presenter = Egunjobi Rotimi (PhD)

A majority of libraries in Nigeria operate their libraries completely manually. Nigeria is a developing country and there are many challenges and constraints facing library automation. There is erratic power supply and not many professional librarians. There is also an absence of maintenance and support agreements present from library vendors. The funding present for libraries in Nigeria is close to non-existent, even though there is a rule in academic institutions that a certain percentage of funding should go to the library – that does not happen. Even sometimes there is a poor attitude (negative) from the heads of the libraries.

Adeyemi College of Education, which was established in 1962 and is named after the Reverend Canon M C Adeyemi (1882-1942) and was created to produce qualified manpower to teach education. They offer certificates in education, bachelors degrees, and post graduate degrees. There are about 10,000 students and their library has a collection size of about 50,000 records.

Migration to Koha, First the library director had to convince the management of the library to provide funding to purchase hardware and other accessories for the library. They agreed!!! Using an education fund they were able to purchase equipment and begin installing Koha and manually migrating their data to Koha. There were some initial problems , such as phobia of the staff in automation, erratic power supplies (which is a very common problem in Nigeria).

Final thoughts – They are very excited in presenting their story and Koha to other college community members in Nigeria and help them spread and install Koha. Koha is gaining recognition in Nigeria. They would love to host a Koha conference in Nigeria and we really hope that they will be able to some day.

It’s very encouraging to hear success stories about Koha in developing countries and that we are all part of helping these people and librarians get and use a really great system. Go Nigeria and Go Koha!

-Brendan