Legal Information Resources Availability and Utilisation as Determinants of Law Lecturers Research Productivity in Nigerian universities

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the legal information resources availability and utilisation as determinants of law lecturers research productivity in Nigerian universities. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The multistage sampling technique was used to select 517 out of 905 lecturers from sixteen faculties of law in twenty-nine universities across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. A self-developed questionnaire was used for lecturers and eighty percent response rate was obtained. Four research questions and one hypothesis were answered and data were analysed using descriptive statistics. The result shows that law books, legal periodicals, reference materials, law reports, reference materials, legislation and statutes, newspapers, loose leaf, indexes and abstracts, and digests were readily available to Law lecturers. E-resources and online legal databases were less available and had the lowest scores in terms of availability. The study found that legal information resources such as law reports, legal periodicals, legislation and statutes, indexes and abstracts, law book, non- legal materials, reference materials, digests and e-resources were used by lecturers in Nigerian universities.  Also, the analysis establishes the fact that the research productivity of the lecturers in Faculties of Law in Nigerian universities was higher in publication of journal articles, chapters in books, conference proceedings, and international peer-reviewed journals but low in co-authored books, textbooks publication, and occasional papers.

Keywords: Availability, Utilisation, Research productivity, Law lecturers, Legal information resources, Nigeria.