Kenneth Dike Library was founded in 1948 as part of the

University of Ibadan The University of Ibadan (UI) is a public research university in Ibadan, Nigeria. The university was founded in 1948 as University College Ibadan, one of many colleges within the University of London. It became an independent university in 196 ...

academic community. It has over two million academic materials such as books, theses and journals. The library was previously known as the Main Library and started with about 3600 volumes of book that was transferred from the library at Yaba Higher College. The Dike library was the first professionally managed library in the country staffed with a professional librarian and reference and research services.

History

Upon the establishment of University College, Ibadan, a makeshift structure built with a concrete foundation and wooden walls and shutters temporarily housed volumes of books transferred from Yaba College in Lagos. The Library, like all the departments and the central administration of the University, operated in a prefabricated wooden building at the Eleyele site in Ibadan from its inception until 1954, when it moved to its permanent site at Oyo Road, Ibadan. It was among the first buildings to be constructed on the permanent site. Sited in the centre of the university campus, the library building was officially commissioned on the 17th of November, 1954 as the Main Library of Ibadan University. The university was also developed with 18,000 volumes of diverse subjects from the Henry Carr Collection, it also received items from the Herbert Macaulay Collection. Other significant gifts included donations from Lady Lane, the wife of

Allen Lane Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...

, the British Directorate of Overseas Survey, Frederick Montague Dyke, the Church Missionary Society, and a granddaughter of

MacGregor Laird Macgregor Laird (1808 – 9 January 1861) was a Scottish merchant pioneer of British trade on the River Niger. Laird's commercial expedition between 1832 and 1834 to navigate the Niger and initiate trade between Europeans and Africans northward ...

. In 1950, an ordinance made the library a repository of publications published in Nigeria.

Services

Kenneth Dike library provides information services to all categories of users to support the teaching, learning and research process of the parent institution. These services include library education (orientation for new students), reference service, charging and discharging, current awareness service, e-resources service, and among others.

Special collections

Africana collection

The library has an African-oriented collection, a closed access reference point for scholars on Nigerian history. Developed from the early donations to the library which had a strong focus on Nigerian and African materials. Donations by Carr, Macaulay, Edward Reginald Jerrim helped make it an important repository in Nigeria. In 1950, the library became a depository of published books from Nigeria. The collection includes rare Arabic manuscripts, manuscripts and books, newspaper clips, photographs and records, and archives of materials from the colonial era and government reports.

References

{{coord missing, Nigeria Academic libraries in Nigeria University of Ibadan