Assessment of Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour of Undergraduates in University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

To thrive in this era, one needs varieties of information, no matter how versed one is in a field or profession. Information is new knowledge, which leads to a change in actions of people exposed to it. The concept of information needs and seeking behaviour of undergraduate has been of great concern to stakeholders especially in developing countries where access to information is seen as a mirage. Researchers have made it known that, the way students organize their learning and search for academic information could be considered very crucial to their overall performance at the end of the day. Thus, information needs and seeking behaviour is pertinent for undergraduate academic performance. Notwithstanding, no study has been conducted on undergraduate information needs and seeking behaviour at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. In this light, the study examined information needs and seeking behaviour of undergraduates in the University of Ilorin.  Survey design was adopted using a questionnaire as instrument for data collection. A simple random sampling technique was employed to sample twenty (20) respondents each from the twelve (12) faculties in the university. To achieve the objectives of the study, five (5) research questions were developed to guide the study. The results indicate that undergraduate use information sought to prepare for examination, test and assignment while information sources available from which the respondents seek information are books, journals, Internet, etc. The study recommends that adequate and relevant information materials should be acquired so as to meet undergraduate’s information needs.

Keywords: Information, Information Needs, Information Seeking behaviour, Undergraduates, University of Ilorin.