Cooperative Publishing in Developing Countries: Nigerian Librarians Join The Trail
Publishing is the bed-rock of library services. Without it, Library and Information Professionals (LIPs) would be jobless. Publishing as we know it is not limited to books, but include all other media. But the beauty of publishing is when the final product is accessible to the target audience. Authors of such great works have either done it alone or cooperated with others. This is a common practice in developed countries and some developing countries particularly in librarianship. Nigerian LIPs recently have joined the trail in cooperative publishing. On the NLA ONLINE FORUM, we read about two of such viz Management of Cybercafé and Current Issues on ICT. We await the products of these noble ventures.
Recently, I came across this collaborative or cooperative publishing and I was inspired by what I saw and read. The title is SPECIAL LIBRARIES MANAGEMENT HANDBOOK: THE BASICS @ http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis724/SpecialLibrariesHandbook/INDEX.htm "The 'chapters' were written by students in CLIS 724 (Special Libraries and Information Centers) at the University of South Carolina College of Library and Information Science over the period 1999-2004." Students? Why can't the LIPs venture to do this online as well over a period. I have looked through the contents and I think we have a lot to learn from the Handbook. What do you think?