ABSTRACT
Librarians’
performance is meeting information needs of users by providing quality services
and resources. Library automation afford great chance for library personnel to
get and use required information to enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.
The use of electronic information resources assists librarians to meet the
current level of users’ requirement for information and services which promotes
the performance of librarians.
Librarians’ performance seems to be below the expectations of its users
with the rate and current level by which users demand and want information. The
aim of this study therefore, was to find out the extent to which library
automation and electronic information resources’ use affected the performance
of librarians in South-West, Nigeria.
The
survey research design was used. The population of the study was 349 librarians
from 22 private university libraries in South-West Nigeria. Total enumeration
technique was employed. A self-constructed questionnaire titled “Library
Automation, Electronic Information Resources’ Use and Performance of Librarians
questionnaire” was used to collect data. 272 copies of the questionnaire were
returned giving a return rate of 80.1%. The reliability coefficient for Library
Automation was 0.76, Electronic Information Resources’ Use was 0.78 and
Librarians’ performance was 0.81. Data collected were analyzed using
descriptive statistics, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and
multiple regression.
Findings
revealed that out of the six library services identified in this study, five
were fully automated and 90% of the private university libraries have automated
their services. More than 90% of known electronic information resources like
TEEAL, electronic journals, e-books, AGORA, social network, JSTOR, HINARI,
AJOL, EBSCOHOST and OARE were available in the libraries. More than 60% of
electronic information resources available were used by library personnel and
users in various libraries. From the findings, librarians’ performance had been
increased by 70% as a result of automated library and electronic information
resources’ use in private universities in South West Nigeria. The study showed
that there was significant and positive relationship between library automation
and librarians’ performance in private university libraries (r =.372,
p<.01). Electronic information resources’ use had significant and negative
relationship with performance of librarians (r =.-126, p<.049). Library
automation had greater contribution to performance of librarians (β = .391,
p(.000)<.05) than electronic information resources’ use (β = .044,
p(.505)>.05)
This
study concluded that most private university libraries in South-West Nigeria
were fully automated which allowed librarians to increase the quality of
services rendered. Both the library service automation and electronic
information resources’ use were determinant factors of library performance in
private universities in South-West Nigeria. This study recommended that
university library managers need to further enlighten both the library staff
and library users on the importance of library automation and use of electronic
information resources by organizing workshops,
seminars and conferences in order to meet the current information needs of
users.
Keywords: Librarians’ performance,
Electronic information resources, Electronic informationresource’s use, Library automation, Librarians, Private universities
Word Count: 467
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Content Page
Title page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract vi
Table of Contents viii
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
CHAPTER
ONE: INTRODUCTION
- Background to the Study 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem 10
1.3 Objective of the Study 10
- Research Questions 11
- Hypotheses 11
1.6 Scope of the Study 12
1.7 Significance of the Study 12
1.8 Operational Definition of Terms 13
CHAPTER
TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.0 Introduction 14
2.1 Librarians’ Performance 14
2.2 Automation of Library 18
2.2.1 Barriers to Library
Automation and Some Library Automation Software 21
2.2.2 Advantages of Library Automation 21
2.3 Automation of Library and Librarians’ Performance 22
Content Page
2.4 Electronic Information Resources’ Use 27
2.4.1 Availability and Use of Electronic Information Resources 28
2.4.2 Classification of Electronic Information Resources 31
2.5 Library Automation and Electronic Information Resources Use 35
2.6 Electronic Information Resources Use and Librarians’ Performance 36
2.6.1 Factors
Influencing the Electronic InformationResources Use in the Library 38
2.7 Theoretical Framework 41
2.7.1 Diffusion of Innovation Theory 41
2.7.1.1 Relevance of the theories to the Study 44
2.7.2 Theory of Organizational Development 45
2.7.2.1 Relevance of the Theories to the Study 47
2.8 Conceptual Model 48
2.9 Appraisal of Literature 49
CHAPTER
THREE: METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction 51
3.1 Research Design 51
3.2 Population 52
3.3 Sample size and sampling Technique 54
3.4 Research Instrument 54
3.5 Validity and Reliability of Instrument 55
3.6 Method of Data Collection 56
3.7 Method of Data Analysis 56
Content Page
CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
4.0 Introduction 57
4.1 Demographic Information of Respondents 58
4.2 Research Questions 61
4.3 Hypotheses 71
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.0 Introduction 76
5.1 Summary 76
5.2 Conclusion 78
5.3 Recommendations 78
5.4 Contribution to Knowledge 79
5.5 Implication of Findings 79
5.6 Limitation of the Study 80
5.7 Suggestion for Further Studies 80
References 81
Appendix 91
LIST OF
TABLES
Table Page
- Population of Librarians in Private Universities in South-West, Nigeria 52
- Demographic Distribution of Respondents 57
- Level of Automation of Library in Private
Universities in South-West, Nigeria 60
- Availability of Electronic Resources in Private Universities in South-West,Nigeria 61
- Frequency of Use of Electronic Resources in Private University Libraries in South-West, Nigeria 64
- Perceived effect of library Automation and Electronic Information Resources Use on Performance of Librarians Private University libraries in South-West, Nigeria 66
- Challenges of Library Automation and Electronic Information Resources’ Use in Private Universities in South-West, Nigeria 70
- Correlation Analysis of Library Automation and Performance of Librarians in Private Universities in South -West, Nigeria 71
- Correlation Analysis of Electronic Resources’ Use and Performance of Librarians in Private Universities in South -West, Nigeria 72
- Multiple Regression Analysis of Library Automation and Electronic Resources’ Use on Performance of Librarians in Private Universities in South-West, Nigeria 73
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
2.1 Diffusion of Innovation Theory Diagram 43
2.2 Conceptual
Model 47
4.1.1 Qualification of Respondents 58
4.1.2 Respondents Years of Experience 59
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background
to the Study
Library
is a place where information materials are acquired, organized, preserved and
made available for use. Academic libraries are organizations which are created
to cater for the information request of students, lecturers, researchers and
other community of scholars. Their specific task is to offer quality
information services and products (print and electronic) to community of
scholars. According to Uddin (2009), academic libraries are charge effective
material and information resource centres that serve a community of
scholars.
Libraries
perform various operation like current awareness services, indexing and
abstracting, selective dissemination of information and responding of user’s
enquiries to make sure that library users are contented. As the library perform
these activities through information professionals, the availability of these
library resources does not ensure their access and use by the university
community. The library managers of university are projected to inspire,
enhance, and sustain the interest of users in go to see the library and using
the information contained therein. The facts about how to make use information
in the library in other to improve their work will ensure effective librarian’s
performance in any university system.
Library
is saddled with a lot of responsibilities which include analysis of patron
demand to know required data and support in finding that data, seek standard
reference materials including on the web assets and web so as to answer
benefactors’ reference inquiries, to show library supporters how to scan for
data operating databases, to retain records of spreading and materials and
indexes with a specific close goal to elect and position print of electronic
assets.
Librarian’s performance is considered to be the self-actualization of an obligation, in a way that frees the performer from all responsibilities under the organization. Yaya (2007) defined library’s performance as the work (activities) perform by the worker towards the accomplishment of their organizational goals. It is an act of accompany one’s obligation to the organization within one’s capacity and proficiency. This depends not only on the amount of physical effort exerted but also on the person’s mental ability to perform work in the library.
According to Borman and Motowidlo (2012), librarian’s
performance can be measured in two ways: task performance and contextual
performance. Task performance is described as behaviours that directly or
indirectly subsidize to the organization’s main work and contextual performance
as behaviours that backing the organizational, social and psychological
situation in which the organization main work must function and
measurable.
Performance
measurement is a method for characterizing the performing of an individual,
gathering or association. Errand performance occasions for the most part shift
starting with one association then onto the next which is called work related
conduct, yet logical performance occasions are basic to work. Assignment performance
measures incorporate nature of work done, amount of work performed, cost
adequacy and occupation pertinent practices while the logical measures comprise
of taking after hierarchical guidelines and technique, helping and coordinating
with associates, volunteering for extra work and other individual practices. A
portion of the assignments performed in the library incorporate the enrollment
of library clients, characterization and keeping of library materials, charging
and releasing of books and taking care of clients’ needs. Library work includes
keeping and arrangement of materials, arrangement of reference administrations,
looking at in and checking of library materials to clients. The concentrate of
this review is on the assignment performance estimations.
Performance
measurement can be surveyed by a few strategies among which incorporate
stimulus capacity and the workplace, the devices, resources and information
expected to carry out the occupation. If libraries do not have the capacity,
instruments and material to play out the employment it will have negative
impact on library performance. Library performance is the capacity to do
statutory capacities which depend on the library’s units and improvement and
additionally library goals. Librarian’s performance is characterize as that
part of work conduct that is of importance to the library performance and
achievement. Library performance is equipped towards meeting, the clients’ data
needs, as well as a reason for advancing staff in the library. Librarian’s
performance in this period has seen positive changes via automation prepare.
Automation is
the system that is used with the plan and growth of a process that decreases
the need of human involvement in operator of a given job. It is additionally a
procedure of utilizing hardware to perform work effectively in this way sparing
the library power and time. Automation may be well-defined as the use of
automatic and semi-automatic data processing devices (computers) to carried out
traditional library activities such as acquisition, circulation, cataloguing,
reference and serials (Satyanarayana, 2013). This is a system of using computer
or electronic devices to perform traditional library activities.
Library automation
is the use of COMPUTER based item and administrations in the performance of
various library procedures and capacities in the arrangement of different
administrations and generation of coveted outcomes. As indicated by Aswal
(2006), library automation is essential to library adequacy since it expands
staff profitability, upgrades housekeeping operations, empowers headway in
innovation, and empowers access to outer data through the Internet. Since the
commencement of library automation, scholarly libraries have experienced
noteworthy changes in the ways they store, list, and get to data. Innovative
advances made configurations other than the physical book, accessible, for
example, microfilm and microfiche. The advancements of the nineteenth century
are presently obsolete and considered superfluous to new innovation. To grow
access to library accumulations, scholarly libraries computerized indexing
capacities, supplanting the card list with the coordinated library framework
(ILS), incredibly affecting the everyday exercises of library and the impacts
that changing advancements may have on librarianship.
The essence of
library automation is to permitted the library and its staff from tedious work
and to allow them contribute more meaningfully in the spread of knowledge and
Information. Library patrons now have guide contact to online inventories and
remote access to bibliographic databases accessible around the globe connected
through computersystems, for example, the Internet. These administrations have
uprooted the old thought of a library as a place to peruse for data assets.
More libraries are into agreeable sharing, bringing about an outlook change
from the customary accentuation on library proprietorship to community. All
these have made an effect on conventional library arranging.
In this 21st
century, academic librarians are seeing many changes created by advances in
library automation. Current innovation is attempting to change drastically the
means of our general public and affect the predominant monetary, political and
societal potentials and libraries are not overlooked. It is attractive that
library record-keeping be computerized for a few reasons. Firstly, a
significant part of the work includes the exact refreshing of records in
documents. The undertakings included are by and large dull, tedious, mechanical
in nature, and loan themselves to automation, despite the fact that the records
might be perplexing and organized in confused ways. Besides, automation is to
enhance savvy performance by expanding precision, by diminishing the rate of
increment in expenses in labor-escalated exercises, and by expanding viability.
Thirdly, it winds up noticeably conceivable to play out a few undertakings more
completely than levels of staffing for the most part allow with manual
strategies, for example, the standard guaranteeing of unsupplied issues of
periodicals, or by doing things that is impossible in paper documents, quite
hunting down blends of characters. Fourthly, automation licenses decentralized
access to records. Branches of a library can confirm the status of another
without keeping up copy documents, flying out to another division, or requesting
that other staff intrude on their work so as to discover. What’s more, clients
can verify whether a book is out on credit without heading out to the library
to see whether it is on the rack. Contemplations of administration, cost, and
the human use of staff all contend for the use of Computer to facilitate the
weight and to expand the adequacy of dealing with library records through
library automation framework.
Automation of
library helps in dealing with the library’s assets better while sparing time,
cash, and labor. For instance, once the bibliographic subtle elements like
creator, title, version, distributer, value, ISBN number, are entered at the
season of requesting, similar information can be utilized for accessioning,
indexing, Online Public Access Cataloging (OPAC), and dissemination. Other
vital variables related with automation are speed, and precision. One can
envision the time spared in writing looks and in get ready reference indices.
Library automation additionally offers opportunity from doing tedious and
routine fills in and also giving administrations appropriately and all the more
effectively chopping down time and enhancing library performance. It
additionally encourages era of various reports for better basic leadership in
the viable administration of the library. Accessibility of different factual
and other use and performance reports will guarantee better thankfulness from
library clients. For instance, merchant performance investigation is
conceivable. Flow can give data on titles that are in awesome request with the
goal that more duplicates can be secured as required. Numerous present
mindfulness administrations like current version, substance of books and
diaries can likewise be accommodated clients (Egberongbe, 2011). Library
administrations automation does not just bolster library performance,
electronic data assets additionally assume a fundamental part.
Electronic
data assets are data put away in electronic configuration in COMPUTER or COMPUTER
related offices, for example, CD –ROMS, computerized libraries or web. They are
research apparatuses that supplement the print-based assets in a library
setting. Okiki and Asiru (2011) expressed that electronic assets are
“results of data and correspondence innovations and they have been
discovered important to help library performance and research prepare in the
colleges”. Electronic data assets are diminishing the focal part of
customary libraries. Libraries need to acknowledge their obligations as data
expert in the new allotment. Electronic data assets gear help library to offer
quick, satisfactory and productive administrations to the library client.
Electronic data asset is a method for putting away, preparing, and sharing data
through electronic means, for example, phone, web and as of late presented
e-assets like digital book, web based business and e – realizing which are
currently prevalent data assets on the planet. The up to said offices can be
alluded to as the advanced electronic data assets received to oversee and exchange
data from one source to others. Electronic data assets are a help to library
repetitive administrations that included the conventional library benefit which
has been in operation before the beginning of data and correspondence
innovation devices to higher foundations in Nigeria. It likewise helps
libraries to meet the different needs of their supporters using electronic data
assets.
The
use of electronic data assets is to help the library in playing out a double
part: one to the supporters towards their data needs in the school, while the
second is showed in the day by day routine work inside the library condition
where library work is found in the two administration units, Reader
administrations and Technical segments of the library. The administrations of
library utilizing electronic data assets is showed in the administrations they
offer inside the areas in the library, for example, Acquisition segment,
Cataloging unit, Serial Services, Reference and Bibliographic Services, Current
Awareness Services, On-line Public Access Catalog, and records units. Every one
of these administrations have been given an awesome lift by applying the
offices of data and correspondence innovation to the day by day elements of the
library. The basic electronic data assets office in Nigerian scholastic
libraries is the web which offers boundless access to worldwide data accessible
on the Net for the individuals who can make use of the assets for their
advantage. Through the web, data is being refreshed and dispersed frequently
which empowers library to get fast and productive administrations at the
fitting time. The web as a learning asset gives more an incentive to the
administrations and assets that the library makes accessible to the
understudies and staff inside the scholastic establishment.
The
high rate of the use of these electronic data assets could be credited to the
way that they for the most part contain current data which is exceedingly
prized by scholastics. The use of these electronic data assets realized an insurgency
in the movement of data arrangement and spread. The use of electronic data
assets gives a superior stage and more open doors for clients since it has
preferences over the print assets. A portion of the benefits of the use of
electronic data assets when contrasted and print data assets incorporate the
preservation of space and time. The client can have fast access to data by
making a mix of likely catchphrases identified with his/her pursuit. The speed
in recovery of required data is a noteworthy favorable position that electronic
asset has over the print asset. Different focal points of electronic data
assets incorporate cash, simple and various get to. Electronic data assets are
of various sorts which are electronic diaries, electronic books, electronic
magazines and daily papers, CD-ROM databases, electronic meeting procedures and
online databases. Maybe the most utilized electronic asset in libraries today
is online database.
Automation
of library helps in dealing with the library’s assets better while sparing
time, cash, and labor. For instance, once the bibliographic subtle elements
like creator, title, release, distributer, value, ISBN number, are entered at
the season of requesting, similar information can be utilized for accessioning,
recording, Online Public Access Cataloging (OPAC), and course. Other critical
elements related with automation are speed, and precision. One can envision the
time spared in writing looks and in get ready lists of sources. Library automation
likewise offers flexibility from doing redundant and routine fills in and in
addition giving administrations legitimately and all the more proficiently
chopping down time and enhancing library performance. It likewise encourages
era of various reports for better basic leadership in the compelling
administration of the library. Accessibility of different factual and other use
and performance reports will guarantee better thankfulness from library
clients. For instance, seller performance investigation is conceivable.
Dissemination can give data on titles that are in incredible request with the
goal that more duplicates can be acquired as required. Numerous present
mindfulness administrations like current version, substance of books and
diaries can likewise be accommodated clients (Egberongbe, 2011). Library
administrations automation does not just bolster library performance,
electronic data assets additionally assume a fundamental part.
According
to Moghaddam (2009), a database is an accumulation of information that is
sorted out for simple storing and get to. These incorporate paper-based devices
like word references and libraries of print materials. From this, we can state
that online databases are accumulations of information which are sorted out for
simple get to and recovery through the web; that is get to is made accessible
through the web. The online databases comprise of data on particular branch of
knowledge which shifts in arrangement. With the association of the assets
contained in these online databases as per their different subjects and trains,
the library client confronts less test of extensive review and low exactness.
As it were, with the use of online databases, the level of data recovery is
higher particularly when contrasted and the use of web. The client while recovering
data through the web may get high review of data materials whether valuable or
not so far as it is identified with the pursuit term yet when making use of
online databases the turn around is the situation. This is on the grounds that
these online databases contain just organized data which will be helpful to the
library client or data searcher. Some examples of electronic databases being
used today in academic libraries include Journal Storage (JSTOR), Access to
Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), Access to Research in Health
Programme (HINARI), EBSCOHOST, Sci
