I must emphasise at the outset that the views expressed here are those of someone who had never visited Nigeria, or indeed the African Continent, until last year. I am all too conscious of the fact that much of what I say will be self-evident to many of you, who must know that Continent from the inside, and possibly naive, or even completely wrong.

If my views have any value this must in fact be due to this, to the newness to me of Africa, to my uncontaminated, if you like virgin, state, to my hitherto clearly circumscribed Library vision. British and Germanic speaking libraries of Europe pretty, well sums up my library experience, a thoroughly parochial background in the context of the Third World. I was, as it turned out, only superficially prepared for what one of my new-found colleagues in Zaria termed “cultural shock”, the impact of Nigerian life on the raw European visitor.