<<Print>>

Mrs. Matilda Manye Amissah-Arthur, wife of Ghana’s Vice President, has said libraries could empower the economic and social development of nations, so as matter of urgency urged librarians to get a measurement process that can access their work competency, skills and quality of service.

She said strong library measurement assessment, Mrs. Amissah-Arthur said would enable members to share knowledge and collaborate to support national development and help them in a lot of ways.

Mrs. Amissah-Arthur gave the advice on Saturday, when she chaired the 3rd African Library Summit and 1st African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AFLA ) conference for the Africa region on Saturday 30th May, under the THEME- African Libraries Rising – Leadership and Innovation for Development, at GIMPA, in Accra.

As a former President of the Ghana Library Association, Mrs. Amissah-Arthur observed that current trends require entirely new and well improved ways of running libraries dealing with information provision because information is now a commodity, citing as information brokerage and information entrepreneurship.

Herself a professional librarian, urged her fellow professionals to prepare themselves adequately for new challenges of global librarianship in the face of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) through continuous education and also to reach out to the business world, because they need information but must be careful of what information they select, make sure its relevant, efficient well profiled and measured to access what they do.

She also called for the repositioning and restructuring of libraries and stops the old technologies because the new trends can help them rise. Adding that what they need now is a major investment in the sector which can play a major role in moving them forward. She said the library background is linked to other technologies and the new technologies are very expensive, so the need for the projection of funds.

The Second Lady said the massive projection of funds would help them to achieve the MDG4, where they fit in, so the need to help librarians beef up on the goals and brace up for technology services, so that they can rise.

She said libraries could empower the economic and social development of nations, and underlined the need to build strong library associations to lead the way, and to attract members and retain them.