Why is Nigeria getting a digital library?

Nigerian works of literature are going to be immortalized in a digital library in Norway and organizers believe this will somehow lay the foundation for an “African digital library.”

While the rationale behind that is confusing to say the least, the National Library of Norway will be digitising part of Nigeria’s collection of literary works in the Norwegian town of Mo I Rana, located at the rim of the arctic circle.

“Our goal is for this project to serve as a model for other countries, and that we can help create a fully-fledged African digital library,” the Norwegian library’s director Aslak Sira Myhre said in a statement, according to Vanguard Online.

There isn’t a lot of information on the Nigerian side of this deal: Who is putting this together? Why isn’t the digital library in Nigeria? What are the benefits for Nigeria’s educational sector? Are Nigerian authors getting any sort of remuneration?

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These are some of the questions that make it even harder to understand why Nigeria is letting another country digitise its literary content instead of doing it itself.

What we do know is the Nigerian National Library will curate and collect the literary works that will be digitised, while the Norwegian National Library will handle the actual digitisation. The Norwegian embassy here in Nigeria will bear the cost of sourcing for the literary works to be digitised.

“The project has not been launched because the National Library wants to provide foreign development aid but because it enables us to enlarge our foreign language library, so this becomes a win-win project for us and Nigeria,” a spokeswoman for the Norwegian library, Nina Braein, said, according to AFP.

In 2014, the National Library of Norway announced plans to digitise every norwegian literary work published before 2001 and make access to them free.

Maybe that is what Nigeria should be aiming for instead. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.