Libraries are places for sharing human knowledge. Trade
secrets and patents remain secret and are protected with patent and copyright
laws. But if generations have hidden human knowledge, scientific discoveries
would not have taken man to the moon and the stars! Many institutions award
scholarships annually. If they provide libraries, thousands of the children of
their employees and children of non-employees would gain access to education to
whatever level they have the academic ability.
There are immense resources in this country. Guinness
(Nigeria) Limited donated N25,000 to the Ogunpa Flood Relief Fund. Texaco
donated N100000 to charitable organizations in 1980. One rich, anonymous
Nigerian left millions of naira to an “unknown” beneficiary in England. Hunreds
of Nigerians spend thousands of naira annually on funerals, reburials,
memorials, matrimonial, etc. What a more befitting memorial can a person or an
organisation want than to have his or its name perpetuated in living public
library for generations born and yet to be born? Or for a lawyer, doctor,
bishop, architect, librarian, to bequeathe his valuable library collections to
a particular library with endowment for its perpetuation?
It is ignorance on the part of the members of the public,
of valuable ways, to spend their profits or wealth for the benefit of larger
public that has prevented this country from having hundreds of libraries of
every variety_ public, college, special and research_ in every part of this
country. One would like to see alumni and alumnae of secondary clubs, voluntary
organisations, business and professional bodies, private commercial, financial,
industrial and manufacturing houses, helping in the operation feed the mind,
the mental welfare programme for the entire population of this nation, through
the provision of libraries.
QUESTION
In not more than three sentences, summarise the writer’s
view on the advantages of libraries.
ANSWERS
1. Libraries
afford people the opportunity of gaining knowledge to their highest academic
potential
2. They
constitute a reservoir of knowledge for posterity
3. They
aid the mental welfare programme of the centre nation.
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