DELINQUENT READERS: A PROBLEM FOR UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigerian university libraries build their collection through purchase from book funds allocated to them in the annual university budget. In recent past, there have been drastic cuts in the amount allocated for this purpose, hence library collection development programmes have been greatly handicapped despite increase in students' population and expansion in course offerings. Arising from the inadequacy in collection building and coupled with some socio-economic factors is a mounting but latent problem of reader delinquency in these libraries. Even though there is paucity of statistical evidence to expose the danger which readers' delinquent acts pose to Nigerian university libraries, there is no doubt that their threat to collection building is real. The university libraries are therefore well advised to grapple with this endemic menace of reader delinquency and devise means of stunting its growth.