Preservation and Conservation of Information Resources in Special Libraries: A Peep into Selected Law Libraries in Nigeria

Law library serves as a legal information resource repository. Its vitality in innovative research and training of legal professionals is extensive. This study reports preservation and conservation practices of law libraries. The survey design was espoused; census sampling imbibed, questionnaire was developed and administered to 113 respondents (with 93% return rate) drawn from selected universities. The study revealed that deterioration of resources includes book spines breakage, thorn book pages due to regular photocopying and frequent usage. Sand buckets and fire extinguishers were the only adopted ways of remediating natural outbreaks. Amidst these, there was a remarkably low adoption of most preservation techniques apart from dusting/cleaning, proper shelving of books and physical security. Digital preservation is yet to be explored as it is constrained by lack of practicable policies, poor electricity supply and funding. The intervention of parent institutions and concerned organisations is crucial at this point.