As a support paper for the international, Ford Foundation-funded project on “Democratic Transition and Structural Adjustment in Nigeria, 1984-1992” (jointly directed by Drs. Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution, Oyedele Oyediran of the University of Ibadan, and the present writer representing the University of Oxford), which plans to distil into two volumes the fifty papers presented at the sequential Conferences held at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, in August 1990 and at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, in January 1991 for publication to coincide with the Nigerian military’s withdrawal from government scheduled by President Ibrahim Babagida for late 1992,1 constructed a select calendar of primary official documentation relating to Nigeria’s constitutional history from 1919 to 1989. This, of course, takes no account of the secondary literature.

The paper examines the contributions that libraries in Ghana are making towards research and scholarship in the country. The libraries discussed are mainly academic and special libraries as it is the view of the writer that school and public libraries are so poorly developed as to provide any materials of value to scholarship and research. It is also the view of the writer that libraries in Ghana are not making adequate contributions to scholarship and research in large part because of inadequate funds and physical facilities.

In his article, in the Zambia Library Association Journal in 1973, the late Rigg referred to bibliographies appearing at the end of a book or article as ‘hidden’. Thus, he wrote:

It is Rigg’s article that has inspired the present writer to carry out a similar investigation on Malawi as Rigg’s on Zambia. It is only fair to stress the usefulness of such bibliographies as Rigg had earlier pointed out. A researcher may find a single bibliography on his subject, but is bound to discover more information if he turns to the hidden bibliographies.

In this paper the author has attempted a review of related literature in three main areas, namely, the importance of legal deposit laws for Nigerian libraries; legal deposit as a special means for collection development for depository libraries and collection strategy problems in depository libraries.

Much has been written about Nigerian library laws since the first legislation was enacted in 1950. “By virtue of Section 3(1) of the publication ordinance 1950, the University of Ibadan Library became one of the two legal depositories for Nigerian publications”. The second depository library at the time was the Secretariat Office, Lagos. The legal force behind deposit was defined by Agidee in his important 1970 article on Library Laws 1948-68: “Laws or legislations are rules made by a state or community for establishment and operation of an institution and that such rules or regulations become binding on the members of the state or community”.