Libraries of Sierra Leone, by William Jiang, MLS

My interest in Sierra Leone began with the DiCaprio movie "Blood Diamonds." In this film there was a world full of bloody conflicts and short life revolved around the diamond trade. That's why the movie is called "Blood Diamonds" because of blood being shed to collect the gems.

Sierra Leone is a small West African country bordered by Guinea, Liberia, and the Pacific Ocean. The country has 5 million people with a GDP of just over $ 4 billion with an average per capita income of about $ 900 per year. In Sierra Leone there are very rich and very poor. About half of the population is involved in agriculture, and about half of export revenues generated by diamonds. Sierra Leone is a young democracy. The median age of the population is 19 years of age. A median age so young is an indication that life is hard there. 10,000 children fought in the year of the civil war in Sierra Leone. And now, another 500,000 are in the paramilitary groups.(Http://www.un.org/works/goingon/soldiers/goingon_soldiers.html)

Amid all this death and destruction in this small country, I wondered if there would be some libraries to serve this nation devastated by war. According tohttp://www.sabre.org,

there is a main library in the city of Freetown and two of the nine branch libraries survived the war. The country also has a repository of the United Nations Library at the University of Sierra Leone. This leaves the main library sources of war-scarred country and university libraries, the University of Sierra Leone and Njala University, with a combined number of 500,000 books and no web presence.

As of September 2010, the University Sierra Leone does not have online page dedicated to their library or library catalog and there are very terse instructions on a website of the institution: http://www.tusol.org/.

Njala University has a website http://www.njalauniversity.net

and a page for their library that says "Coming Soon". There is no other information. Much of this information is by John Abdul Kargbo, Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Library, Information and Communication Studies at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.

Getting a good book to read is generally not a priority of a population facing major problems of life and possible early death in their daily lives. However, for the long-term health of Sierra Leone’s democracy it would be great if they could increase their collections in order to serve its people.