School library and reading culture promotion among secondary school students in Nigeria

Abstract

Reading is a basic life skill needed by an individual throughout one’s life. Recognizing the importance of reading and the decline in reading culture, this study aims to give an overview of the school library services towards promoting reading habits of the school children through number of ways and equip them with all the necessary guides to understand and make effective use of the library and its resources in their studies. The role of library cannot be over emphasized when it comes to promotion of reading culture as it offers diverse services to users of information resources. Various ways on how to encourage the children to love and make use of the library resources which includes film shows, storytelling, plays, participating in library week etc. were discussed. Similarly, current global Information and communication Technologies (ICT) which have extended the school libraries beyond mere collection of books to the provision of variety of media learning resources, were also discussed. Problems of effective school library services together with necessary recommendations were also highlighted.