Biblioteca Complutense

"Empowering Rural Women Through Information Provision: The Strategic Roles of the Library"
by Scholastica C. Ukwoma and Ezii O. Njoku

Provision of information for all users has been the call by many organisations; libraries which have repeatedly emphasized access to information are not left out of this campaign.

The federal government of Nigeria inaugurated a seven point agenda aimed at achieving the development of the nation. One of the agenda centers on agriculture and food security, which is very important to any developing nation. Agriculture not only feeds the teaming population, it also enhances economic growth and development.

Rural women in Nigeria are predominantly involved in agriculture; they produce the food for the citisenry. As a result, they should be well informed with the necessary information, knowledge and resources that will assist them, to achieve this gola on improved agriculture and food security.

We can not achieve by writing this alone because many of them are non literate. Based on this fact, the service of the librarian becomes imperative, since they are the custodians of knowledge. They should repackage the information in a way that it will be accessible to rural women.

This paper will highlight the activities of rural women and examine how they access information, the challenges they face and the way forward in improving the services rendered by librarians to this critical segment of society. The population of the study consists of rural women in some local government area in South East Nigeria. The method   of data collection is interview and focus groups since many of them cannot write. The data collected from the interview will be analysed using percentages.