CONTINUING LIBRARY EDUCATION PROGRAMS FOR NIGERIAN FEDERAL LIBRARY PERSONNEL: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Continuing library education is an integral part of the education for librarianship that deserves more attention by the library educators, the employers, and the practitioners. As the horizons of knowledge expand, so does the need to keep the professional library personnel abreast of the changes and the developments in the field.;Survey research methodology was employed, and data gathering instruments used included a three-part questionnaire that was hand-delivered and collected and an interview scheme. A selected group of library administrators, a library policy-maker in the federal civil service, and the president of the Nigerian Library Association were interviewed. Of the 109 questionnaires distributed, seventy-six usable returns were received.;The respondents possessed one or more of the following library qualifications: the Master's degree in library science, the Bachelor's degree in library science, or the Associate of the (British) Library Association. Shortage of qualified librarians influenced the government's decision to recruit college graduates with neither library qualifications nor experience as librarians-in-training in the expectation that they would later acquire the post-baccalaureate library degree. But this arrangement was questioned by the federal librarians interviewed on the grounds that it only exacerbates the issue of the acceptable entry-level qualification into the library profession in Nigeria.;Obstacles to providing meaningful continuing education programs for these federal library personnel were identified. Four of the interviewees and 57.9% of the respondents held that participants' educational backgrounds would influence their continuing education needs. Two of the interviewees and 39.5% of the respondents thought that the rationale for designing continuing educational programs should be based on the job requirements rather than on the participants' educational backgrounds. But they all agreed that there should be a bifurcated continuing education program for junior and senior professional librarians, and recommended that continuing education should receive top priority in federal libraries.;This study was designed to add to the information about the continuing education needs of Nigerian federal library personnel. A brief history of formal library education in Nigeria and the roles of the various agencies that organize continuing education were delineated.