Indigenous Knowledge Management in the Modern Day Library and Information Services

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge (IK) is the knowledge which exists among the people in a given community and its beneficial towards sustainable development cannot be over-emphasized because of its importance in every society.It has been observed and supported by Greyling, (2010) that academic libraries in Nigeria are not playing the leading role in the promotion of IK in the country by organizing tours to collect cultural ideas of the people for management. This paper examines Indigenous knowledge management process in four academic libraries in Lagos, Nigeria. Purposive sampling method was used to select four government owned tertiary institutional libraries in Lagos State. Cochran (1963) sample size table formula was used to determine sample size of 115 respondents from the total population (135) of the study. This study adopted descriptive survey design which make used of questionnaire and interview for data collection. The finding revealed that IK was available in the selected academic libraries and health information was the main reason for using IK in the selected academic libraries. It was also revealed that all the four academic libraries have no IK policy. The challenges facing the management of IK in the selected academic libraries are the lack of relevant ICT resources that can be used to preserve Indigenous knowledge in the libraries. The study recommended that library management should make fund available for the libraries to acquaire necessary ICT tools that can be used to preserve IK and there is urgent need for IK policy, this will serve as white papers in the promotion of IK use in the selected academic library. This study has joined in the discussion in the promotion of IK in Nigeria and it has also contributed to literature on IK development.