The University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) has presented Professor Adeyinka Tella of the Department of Library and Information Science with an automobile as its researcher of the year.
Tella lectures in the Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, according to the university’s bulletin.
The honor, which came with a car, was the centerpiece of the university’s 14th annual merit awards ceremony.
“The event marked the end of the 37th and 38th combined convocation ceremonies of the university,” it said.
Tella mentioned in his response that his current research focus is on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which covers topics such as AI and blockchain technology.
He explained that he had previously won the Emerald Literacy Awards’ Outstanding Paper Award for his paper on Robots and Public Libraries, which had been published in the magazine Library Hi Tech News.
The don hinted that the paper had sparked a lot of interest among Library Scientists because robots are now shelving and re-shelfing volumes.
“They also help reduce the fatigue of library users and get them refreshed by entertaining them, among other functions,” he said.
Having the fourth industrial revolution in a library, he believes, “promises to stem the social malaise of poor reading culture in Nigeria.”
Tella was a Commonwealth scholar in his PhD days who had written extensively on the integration of new technology into public and university libraries, according to the magazine.
Other recipients of the various categories of the university’s merit awards, according to it, included the university’s 18 recently retired professors.
Professor Jacob Gbadeyan of the Department of Mathematics, Professor Michael Fakomogbon of Education Technology, and Professor Esther Omosewo of Science Education were among those named as researchers.
