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The Nigerian Library Association (NLA) National Conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM) had as its theme, "Libraries: dynamic engines for the knowledge and information Society," when it met at Abuja, June 18-3, 2006. Over 537 delegates attended and they represented over 30 out of the 37 State Chapters of the Association in Nigeria. It is noteworthy that the conference took place at the seat of Government in Nigeria - the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
One of the most treasured activities of the conference was the pre-conference seminar which was held at the venue of the conference on: "Use of open access resources on the internet." Three different papers were presented on this theme. The first paper by Samuel A. Eyitayo, IRC Specialist/Webmaster, US Embassy, Abuja, was entitled "Use of open access resource on the internet." He identified open access as composition of free, online - copies of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers as well as technical reports, theses and working papers. In most cases, any user is free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full test of the articles, for the purposes of research teaching, etc. The driving force behind open access is to give extensive recognition and access to the work of Academics/Authors; to enable readers view all research literature; and to enable libraries satisfy the information needs of their users with less expenditure on journal acquisition. Open access journals abound mostly in sciences and education, examples are: BioMed Central, Open Access Journal in Education, PubMed, Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO), PLoS, etc. The paper concluded with advice for libraries to take full advantage of opportunities provided by open access resources.
The next paper by Dalhatu Hamza, Program Specialist, Embassy of the USA, Abuja, maintained that Dial-Up Access, V-SAT Access and Broadband Access are three main types of internet Access. To set up internet network in a library, the librarian must understand how it works and what it can do to the library services, those to use it and the services it will provide to them, as well as the limitations of the services using internet. Attention must be paid to connecting to the internet through the Internet Service Providers (ISP), provision of technical expertise, satellite, bandwidth...