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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges affecting disaster training in federal and state university libraries in Southwest Nigeria with a view to finding ways of overcoming them. Design/methodology/approach: Having adopted the descriptive research design, 14 university libraries (seven each of federal and state) were selected from the Southwest geo-political zone of Nigeria. The total enumeration sampling technique was employed. Questionnaire and interview methods were used for data collection. The three research questions that guided the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and ranking. Judgments were drawn using real limit of numbers and 2.50 as criterion mean. Findings: Results emanated from the study showed that university libraries in the studied region are more equipped to fight fire disaster than any other emergency which is why fire drills and exercises are the prevailing disaster training received by library staff. It was also found that inadequate disaster facilities and equipment as well as poor funding were the greatest challenges confronting disaster training. The provision of adequate disaster facilities and equipment with the constitution of disaster prevention and response team was found as the most potent strategy for addressing the identified challenges. Originality/value: The study lends strong empirical evidence for the underlining factors affecting disaster training in federal and state university libraries as well as academic libraries in general. The strategies for addressing the identified challenges are of more significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]