The University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB) is one of the three universities of agriculture established by the Federal government of Nigeria. UNAAB was established on January 1, 1988. It started its operation at a mini-campus at Isale-Igbein in the center of Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State. The University later moved into its permanent site which is located some 20km away and shares a common boundary with the Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority on the Abeokuta-Ibadan Road. The university has a total population of around 6,000 students comprising of around 4,500 undergraduate and 1,500 postgraduate students. Faculty staff strength is around 500. The university was adjudged the best university in Nigeria in 2003 in the area of students/faculty staff ratio and research activities.
UNAAB, has passed through different stages of merger and de-merge until it finally evolved as UNAAB in January 1988. The library was later named ‘Nimbe Adedipe library to honour the first Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Nurudeen Olorunnimbe Adedipe. The ultra modern library building can accommodate 1000 users at a time. The total collection of books at present is 50,622 titles.
The library started its automation programme in 1994 when it acquired through a World Bank Project, an IBM personal computer and the TINLIB library software designed for four work stations. This was later upgraded to ten work stations. The library has since migrated from the DOS based TINLIB software to a more versatile windows based GLAS (Graphical Library Automated System) software with capability to operate 50 work stations within the library. At present the OPAC is fully functional making it possible to catalogue books on line and for library clients to access such books immediately.
There are terminals in all sections which are connected to the main server. The University acquired two CD-ROM databases in 1998 to improve literature search and document delivery capacity in the library. The CD-ROM databases are CAB Abstracts on CD-ROM, 1992-2000 and TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library) CD-ROM, 1993-1996. Yearly updates up to 2005 are available for users in the library. There are many other agricultural databases available for Online and CD-ROM searching.
AT PRESENT …
The library has access to the followings electronic databases:
- TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library)
- AGORA (Access to Global on-line Research in Agriculture)
- HINARI (Health International Network Access to Research Initiatives)
- Nigerian University Libraries Consortium (NULIC) which provides access to EBSCO Host full text e- journals in virtually all subjects.
- Several CDs covering journal abstracts and full texts as well as books.
- The library has about 10,000:00 records in the GLAS database.
The University Librarian is Dr (Mrs)M. O. Salaam