Crater Library & Publishers was conceived in 2016 by Adachukwu Onwudiwe who was a research librarian with a think-tank called African Heritage Institution at the time. She felt that the government designated institutions for preserving intellectual and cultural content were handicapped by poor funding.
As a result, a lot of books and other intellectual resources were getting abandoned on the dusty shelves of creators and copyright owners, and this is contributing to the loss of indigenous intellectual content for research and leisure purposes.

In 2017, Crater started out as an online store and digital shelf for paid and open access e-books and was officially registered in Nigeria on 26th July 2018. The objective was to build an e-collection and provide access to a digital library where readers and researchers can visit for their research or literary purposes.

In 2020, during the pandemic, it became obvious that poor access to educational resources is a major problem in Africa and Nigeria. Consequently, it became necessary to review Crater Library’s vision and mission to cater for basic educational needs that match the current African situation. A lot of students, researchers and even leisure readers do not have the facility to access digital resources, and this becomes secondary when one realises that they do not also have basic access to hardcopy books and print resources in their public and school libraries. This also informed the adoption of programmes and activities that promote literacy and curiosity for research.

In 2021, Crater Library actively began collating and curating print resources with the intention to digitise them as part of its sustainability plan. In 2022, the library had collected over 253 print resources, and in 2023, began to lend out these print resources through partner schools and public libraries in Enugu metropolis.

In keeping with the Crater library’s original plan, in 2023, its website was redesigned to enable donations of e-resources via its ‘Deposit E-Resources’’ button on the homepage. Its online store was retained and redesigned to enable literary creators sell their publications. Due to lack of funding to build its own customised library management system, Librarika was also adopted as its integrated library management system for providing easy access to print and e-resources.