Career Aspiration as Predictor of Students’ Performance in Cataloguing and Classification

Abstract

This paper investigated career aspiration as predictor of students’ performance in cataloguing and classification with the major objectives of identifying the career aspiration of students studying cataloguing and classification and identifying the relationship between career aspiration and academic performance. The descriptive research design was used for the study. The population was made up of 129 students of Information Resources Management, Babcock University, Nigeria. Sampling was enumerative. Data was collected using a questionnaire. Results show that minority of the respondents desire to work as librarians or archivists.  Even though respondents who aspire to work as librarians were more consistent in their perceived utility of cataloguing and classification, they were still out performed in academic performance by those aspiring for careers as bankers and system analysts. Based on the findings, the study concludes that library schools should find a way of accommodating varied career aspirations in a way that would enable students fit into their career choices while retaining the core librarianship courses. The study recommends that librarians and indeed library organisations make concerted efforts to market the library profession in order to attract prospective students who desire to pursue careers in librarianship amongst others.

Keywords: Academic performance, Career aspiration, Cataloguing and classification, Librarianship, Subject utility