Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
A society properly rooted in indigenous knowledge system can easily pave way for sustainable development. Indigenous knowledge is a local knowledge that is peculiar to a particular society. It is referred to as folk knowledge, people's knowledge, traditional science or traditional wisdom. Over time, indigenous knowledge is usually generated and transmitted by communities, in an attempt to solve their own societal challenges such as ecological and socio-economic problems. Indigenous knowledge is passed from generation to generation, usually by word of mouth and cultural rituals, and has been the basis for agriculture, food preparation and conservation, health care, education, and the wide range of other activities that sustain a society and its environment in different parts of the world for many centuries. This realization that true development cannot take place without member of the society being able to have equal access to knowledge gave birth to the idea of the knowledge society for a sustainable development. Sustainable development emphasized the development in all aspects of human life affecting sustenance. It means resolving the conflict between the various competing goals and the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity with progress as the major objective. The paper also identified the challenges of indigenous knowledge to include funding, time requirement, labour requirement, ICTs etc. Finally, the paper highlighted the strategies to mitigate these challenges; Nigeria libraries should make effort to persuade traditional institutions and elderly who are resource persons in local communities to share their indigenous knowledge with librarians for proper documentation, preservation and accessibility; Libraries should as a matter of urgency repackage the documented indigenous knowledge in different languages for easy access.