The earliest known identification of subject librarianship in African academic was in the mid-1960s (Afavia, 1983), which coincides with the development of law and medicine branch libraries at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to provide adequate library material firstly for the undergraduates and the teaching staff, providing bibliographical aids, specialized collections (Made, 1969: 241). Data collected in a study conducted in 1981 by Avafia (1983) found that academic librarians at the University of Zimbabwe practiced a functional/form type of subject librarianship where subject support services are provided and academic librarians also perform traditional cataloguing, serials and acquisitions functions in a centralized location.