On a personal note, I am originally from Nigeria in West Africa. My mother is from Onitsha, an Igbo tribe in Eastern Nigeria. My father is from Ijebu, a Yoruba tribe in Ogun State, Western Nigeria. I was born in the city of Enugu in Enugu State, which is located in Eastern Nigeria. I was a child during the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War and I have provided a brief account of what I remember about this war at: NigerianBiafranwar.htm.


 Education

B.A., Linguistics University of Cincinnati, Ohio
M.S., Mass Communication Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
M.L.S., Library and Information Science University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)

Professional background

Librarianship is more challenging and demanding in this current technology-oriented world. It is fallacy to believe that all a librarian does is to assist people at the reference desk and/or warn library patrons not to make noise or not to disturb others.

On the contrary, librarians are inundated with assignments and various complicated and time consuming tasks. The duties of a librarian varies depending on our place of employment. We may attain faculty status; be required to publish; participate on both on- and off-campus committees; attend, coordinate, and present workshops and conferences; be active members of professional associations and organizations.

I am a full time tenured faculty librarian at the Long Beach City College Library, my principal responsibility is cataloging. Information about my assignments is posted at: http://lib.lbcc.edu/ukwu/dele2.html. I have provided an essay on what is involved in cataloging at http://lib.lbcc.edu/cataloging.htm.
I also serve at the reference desk where I assist library patrons with a variety of questions ranging from directional to complicated questions to teaching and instantly providing workshops to groups with similar questions. Prior to this assignment, I worked at the Loyola Marymount University Library library in Los Angeles.

Additionally, I provide orientations and bibliographic instructions to library patrons to introduce them to resources available to them. I teach patrons how construct search strategies to effectively conduct their research and find the information that they are seeking.

I participate in collection development by suggesting and selecting titles to be added to the library's collection. This assignment involves reviewing appropriate sources to select pertinent titles. As a librarian, we "graduate" from school only in theory. We never stop reading, writing, and researching. The only difference is that as a professional, we get paid to do these.

My colleagues and I have also compiled several handouts for your use. You may click here to view the handouts or here to view handouts on specific topics.