Preservation and Conservation of Yoruba Cultural Artifacts: The Place of Nigerian Libraries and Archives

Abstract

There had been losses of a lot of invaluable Yoruba cultural artefacts and sources of oral information to ignorance, inferno, burglary, and sabotage, biological and chemical "attackers" and to other forms and agents of annihilation. Some of these losses are avoidable and therefore preventable. These avoidable losses have had and will continue to have unquantifiable effects on the rich and cherished traditional values because the richness of the Yoruba cultural values is not unconnected with their cultural artefacts and oral information. The paper briefly examines the origin of Yoruba race and chronicles the history and growth of libraries and their antecedents - writing and printing. Besides, the concerns of this paper are the subjects of preservation and conservation and the dangers inherent in the insecurity of the traditional artefacts. Recommendations that could improve the situation, especially by addressing the problems of gross under-utilization of opportunities provided by libraries and archives in the preservation and conservation of Yoruba artefacts and oral information were offered.