By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Students Union Government (SUG) of Fourah Bay College (FBC), University of Sierra Leone (USL), has launched a campaign designed to equip the college’s library with much more relevant books and to establish an e-library portal for remote access by students. The student body is leading the efforts in collaboration with the college administration.
A public campaign launched this week by the student body, which is calling on institutions and individuals to donate books and computers to revive the library, has now gone viral on social media.
The Minister of Education in the SUG, Marian Pleasant Kargbo, told Politico on Tuesday that the campaign was borne out of the need to create access for students to get relevant materials to help with heir course work.
“Some of us have done our first degree here and we know how we struggled to get up to date books, especially when we had assignments to do,” she said.
“When you go online you see established universities have e-libraries. When we search for books we see them but we can’t access them because we are not members of those universities,” Kargbo added.
Setting up an e-library comes with challenges like having a basic technological infrastructure in place, a challenge that Kargbo said the SUG has already highlighted and are working towards tackling.
“We have developed a proposal for the internet because we know an e-library will not be possible without one. So we are hoping to get support for that,” she said.
The students also have the backing of the administration. The SUG said the college has even giving them an office space to help them setup the e-library.
FBC is the oldest college in the West Africa sub-region, but the college has struggled with basic infrastructure and has been largely left behind in the ongoing wave of digitalization of the educational sector across the globe.
This is the first time the college is venturing in to establishing an e-library, a decision that has largely been necessitated by the push from students for more innovation.
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