Library Milestones

1995 NUST Library was established, with about 3000 items in stock, and the 1st Chief Librarian was appointed.

1996 NUST Library established its own Acquisitions and User Services Departments - 7 staff members are on board.

2000 The Library holding surpasses 20 000 and there were 10 computers available to patrons.

2002 The 1st Library newsletter is published online and received the 1st Book Aid International Donation.

2003 Library subscribes to EBSCOHost, our 1st full-text e-resource database subscription and the staff compliment is 14.

2004 The NUST Library becomes the only World Tourism Organization Depository Library in Africa and the electronic collection of articles on the NUST is started.

2005 The new Library building was inaugurated on 7 October by Pres Hifikepunye Pohamba and the staff complement has grown to 27. The Library subscribes to 150 printed and more than 17000 online journals. 85 Computers were made available to patrons.

2006 The newsletter was revamped, re-named to Bibliomane and printed for the first time. The Subject & Research Services was established and 1st Subject Librarian was appointed.

2007 The Library starts offering Library and Information Skills Training and the Namibia Development Information Centre (NDIC) is established in cooperation with the World Bank and other partners. A collaborative agreement between the NUST and the Utah Valley University leads to the launch of the Digital Namibian Archive (DNA). The Library has 54803 items in stock.

2008 The 1st Author's Event was held by the Library. The retrospective conversion of the Library's catalogue from SAMARC to the internationally accepted MARC21 was completed. The Library received the first instalment of the N$300 000 Old Mutual donation, stretching of 3 years.

2009 The new Regional Centres, which included Library Resource Centres, was established. A new staff structure was submitted, as part of PSP-3. The DSpace software was installed for the institutional repository. The Reference and Outreach Services were established.

2010 The Library's newly developed online catalogue and the Ounongo Repository was introduced to the NUST Community. About 150 computers are now available to patrons. The printed collection has grown to 56 621 books and 192 journal titles, while the e-journal collection has grown to 111 645 titles. The staff complement has also increased to 38, of which 15 are degreed.

2011 Subscription to EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) started, which offers single point access to all the Library resources.  

2012 The Library ventured into purchasing single, e-textbook titles to give students online access to prescribed textbooks 24/7.

2013 During this year the investigating into options for a new library management system started and Library staff participated in the arrangement and programme of the Namibia Library Symposium, which was an international event.

2014 Subscriptions to printed journals, that also have online subscription options, were cancelled. Alumni membership was established.

2015 The Research Commons, aimed at services for postgraduate students and staff, was established.

2016 The Polytechnic of Namibia became the Namibia University of Science and Technology.  During the same year, Innovative Interfaces’ library management system, Sierra, was fully implemented as library management system.

2017 The Library hosted the IATUL Directors’ Summit. The Library’s new website was launched and it grew to a staff complement of 48.

2018 Research Data Management (RDM) was brought to NUST through a sensitising workshop and survey to determine researcher RDM needs. Social media platforms were created for the Library to improve client engagement.