Sometimes the gift of knowledge is greatest of them all. For the library at the National University of Samoa, a generous donation from overseas made this gift possible.

The University Library received almost 100 textbooks with an estimated value of A$10.000 from the University of Newcastle in Australia. The donation was preceded by a brief visit to the National University of Samoa’s Faculty of Business and Entrepreneurship last year by a group of ten undergraduate business students and their two lecturers from the Australian University’s Faculty of Business and Law. 

The trip funded by the Australian government marked the beginning of a close and collaborative relationship between the two educational institutions. The collection given to the library includes works about Accounting, Business management and law.

“The library is a very important part of any institution of education,” said Vice Chancellor, Professor Fui Asofou So’o.

“We have a very good range of books here in the library, but there’s also a lot of room for improvement. We need to double and even triple the volumes of books that we have in order to take our university to the next level compared to other universities.

“Our visitors from Australia […] came and realized that we need assistance in terms of books for our university. They went away and put together these books.”

But the University of Newcastle first had to find a solution for another problem to finally show its generosity to N.U.S.: the transportation of the books. “They were looking for a way to get the books from Australia to Samoa. This was then made possible with the assistance of the Consulate General of Samoa based in Sydney.”

According to the University’s Vice Chancellor, the most important part of this donation is to “make available the books [and] then encourage the students to come and read the books, whether they do or not is their very own issue. Most of them come and read the books, but some of them won’t, which is a phenomenon that can be found throughout any generation of students”, he said.

Even though Professor Fui stressed that “nothing compares to the process of learning with books”, this donation by the University of Newcastle in Australia should not be the only one of the day.

The National University of Samoa also welcomed a most noble contribution done by the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand that fits together perfectly with the previous book donation from Australia: 834 book shelfs, desks, tables and chairs found their way to Samoa’s University.

“Every now and then, most universities […] change their book shelfs and other parts of their equipment and replace them with new furniture,” said the Vice Chancellor.

“We’re really happy and thankful to now have those book shelfs and the furniture for our university from our friends in New Zealand.

 “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space in our two main libraries to accommodate those new book shelfs. But plans are already being made to enlarge our libraries so that we can also offer a broader range of books for our students with these new facilities from Wellington.”