Awareness and Utilization of Electronic Resources by Librarians of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The paper looked at the level of awareness of e-resources and utilization by librarians of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Nigeria. The adoption of e-resources has changed the way the daily routine work is carried out by the librarians to accomplish a variety of functions in the libraries.

The instrument used for data collection is a questionnaire which was administered by the researcher to all the 16 professional librarians of the university. The 16 copies of the questionnaire were returned and found usable. The completed questionnaire was analyzed using frequency counts and percentages. Finding from the study revealed that majority of the respondents attested to the availability of internet/e-mail facilities as the most e-resources used by the librarians. Challenges against the usage of electronic resources by librarian were categorized. Recurrent power outages with (38%) topping the list, followed by limited bandwidth (25%), insufficient fund (19%), and inability to download information (12%), and network problems (06%).Furthermore, the e-resources were use for more than one purpose: for in-house official duty and information services to the patrons.

As a way forward, the study recommends that the library should invest greater part of its budget into the issue of ICT resources for effective service delivery. The constraints that hindered the effective utilization of e–resources by the librarians should be address by the library management KEYWORDS: Awareness: Library utilization: e-resources, Librarians, University.