On December 11, 2013 at the Great Hall the University of Ghana will launch an innovative series of books, the first of its kind in West Africa, indeed in the whole of Africa. The venture is a major feature of the University’s celebration of its 65th anniversary as an independent, self-governing, fully fledged university.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, has seized the occasion to highlight the university’s contribution over all those years to the economic, social, physical, spiritual and intellectual betterment of the lot of the people of Ghana and beyond, by initiating the creation and publication of a series of Readers from all the units of the university.
These readers are collections of articles that review the department or institute’s history, its development over the years, and its past and present research activities. Many articles are newly written for the occasion, while others reproduce important contributions from the past. They demonstrate how each department has responded to developments and advances in the relevant discipline over the years, and also how it has responded to the perceived needs of Ghana and the West African region.
If there are people who still believe that the universities are ivory towers out of touch with the problems of common humanity, these books will certainly give them second thoughts. The books to be launched on December 11 include articles by many luminaries, Professors and Lecturers past and present. They include Readers for Surgery, Nursing, the Regional Institute for Population Studies (the first of two), Geography, Accounting, English, Philosophy and Classics, Psychology, Psychiatry and Economics.
These readers will soon be followed by equally distinguished Readers for Microbiology, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (in two volumes), Linguistics, History, Modern Languages, the Study of Religions, Archaeology, Social Work, African Studies, the Performing Arts, Finance, the Institute for Agricultural Research, and many more. The final number is expected to reach at least forty.
Each Reader will be essential reading for senior undergraduates, graduate students and professionals in the field concerned. They will give the students and even the faculty themselves a better understanding of their roles as participants in an on-going intellectual activity and tradition. But the intended audience is not limited to academia – each reader presents the face of its unit to the wider community, both in Ghana and abroad, and will be useful to anyone who wants to know something of what is going on in that field at the University of Ghana.
All the books are being published by Ghanaian publishers, at affordable prices. The University and its Vice-Chancellor are to be congratulated on this exciting and ambitious development.
The general public is invited to the launch of the University of Ghana’s pace-setting Readers series on Wednesday, December 11, 2013 at the Great Hall at 4.00 p.m. Justice Dr. S.K. Date-Bah, Chairman of Council, will perform the launch.
