The library began to grow rapidly because there was a need to preserve records and also accommodate new ones, and its growth has seen steady progress. The chronology and history of the library, along with the institution’s establishment, can be traced back to the founding of an Advanced Teachers Training College (ATTC) on 14th June, 1971, by Commander Alfred P. Diete-Spiff (Academic Procedures and Regulations, 2000). The College was in temporary quarters at Stella Maris College, Port Harcourt, with an intake of 116 students and a total number of 412 volumes of books under the headship of Mr. William Maxwell (Jnr) as the first principal, who was then a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff serving in Rivers State. At the expiration of one year, precisely January 1972, the school moved to yet another site in Orominieke primary school now known as Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) Orominieke, D/Line, Diobu Port Harcourt. There was also a major change as the late Mr. J E. Ohochukwu became the principal that same year.

According to the Undergraduate Regulation and Brief (2013), the school was upgraded to a College of Education in 1975 following the promulgation of Edict No. 1 on 25th February that same year. With this outstanding development, the institution became autonomous and was no longer under the Ministry of Education.

Library Accommodation and Furnishing

At the commencement of the school as Advanced Teachers Training College, the library was housed in a room and later moved to a bigger apartment in the main campus. As a college with three campuses, the library has three branches, namely: the Ndele Campus library, St. John’s Diobu Campus library and the main campus library.

The third building is presently houses the permanent library known as Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan Automated Library, all on the main campus. Suffice to say that the university has its branch libraries at St. John’s campus along Aba Express Road in Port Harcourt Local Government Area. It is worthy to note that the establishment of these campuses is not without the establishment of libraries to complement the efforts of various academic duties and activities carried out in these campuses.

The institution eventually won its credence with hard work and persistence in educational development, and by October 2009, the then Rivers State Governor Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi consented to the school’s request and proclaimed it a university and pronounced it the 35^th State-owned University by the National Universities Commission (NUC) on Thursday, 4^th November, 2010. It was renamed Ignatius Ajuru University of Education on 15^th of August, 2011, to honour the late former Chairman of the Institution’s Governing Council, Ambassador Ignatius Ajuru who was assassinated in 2008.

The library is rich with various information resources which include: textbooks, journals, inaugural lectures, reference materials as well as digital resources housed by Proquest, JSTOR, HINARI among other outstanding materials. There have been kind donations from organisations that have boosted the library’s collection apart from the materials purchased. They include: materials from Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Bonny Indigenes in Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE), Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, Clark Atlanta University (CAU). New Partnership for Development (NEPAD), Association of National Accountants (ANAN) and Prince Tony Momoh Foundation, Numerous individuals have also contributed immensely to the growth and development of the library making the library very rich in its collections. The university library built over a stock of 40,000 physical volumes while its digital collection runs in millions of books and journals. The collection is comprehensive in nature and is constantly being developed to meet the information needs of the parent institution and the users’ community.

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