Greening: pluses and minuses of Nigerian libraries in promoting environmental sustainability

Abstract

Addressing and reversing the human impact on the environment is part of a library’s social responsibility. This paper examines green initiatives within the context of Nigerian libraries with emphasis on analysis of related policy and practice of green librarianship, and pluses and minuses of Nigerian libraries in the green initiatives. The result of a survey of librarians in Nigeria is presented. A four-dimensional, cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study which combined library search, interview, participant observation and a 10-item survey questionnaire using the Surveymonkey tool for data collection. The questionnaire was administered on librarians registered in the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Online Forum. It sought to investigate the level of awareness of librarians of greening, attitude to greening libraries, efforts at greening libraries, greening policy in the libraries and ways of further advancing greening for sustainable development. Preliminary findings from the literature search indicated that there is an exciting emergent library discourse on “green” policy and actions, however, Nigerian libraries are implementing “green” measures at minimal level and rather unconsciously. The level of awareness of greening initiatives among Nigerian librarians is still relatively low and the recommendations of this study calls for increased awareness and environmental literacy among library users and the entire community to build better green momentum in Nigerian libraries.