Sociology of Fourah Bay College Library as Critical Cultural-Social Space in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Abstract

The thought and modes of sociological study of Fourah Bay College library emanate predominantly from the sociology of communications and organisation, according to which a library is a social mechanism. The functional social function of this is to probe and form selections from the stream of engraved communications to systematise and stock the preferred publications and to form the streamed stock of publication accessible to a social public and to determine the social and cultural domination of the touch between the library and the students’ social community. The accomplishment of students in the future is lodged upon the social pillar established during years utilised at Fourah Bay College. Fourah Bay College library plays a critical functional social function in carving the future of students by nurturing them for intellectual engagement beyond the college. The college library as a fundamental presence of the college curriculum has considerable potential to carve students through contingent privileges for autonomous learning. The research will seek to find out the strategies that Fourah Bay College library exploits to advance students’ relational abilities in the onset of Information and Communication Technology. It will also examine the functional social function of Fourah Bay College library in broadening relational abilities progress amongst students to bolster authoritative social behaviour or intellectual self-determination. The research will explore the extent to which Fourah Bay College library can utilise technology to enhance interpersonal communication, thus enhancing social inclusion. The researcher will utilise a phenomenological prototype to point out the challenges and conveniences or opportunities facing Fourah Bay College library in traditional metropolitan Freetown to provide competent library services to students so that they can be appropriately processed for the electric technology motivated life predicated on such abilities like information social scholarship.