Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
5-31-2021
Abstract
This study was designed to investigate the awareness and utilization of electronic databases for scholarly research by faculty of education lecturers in federal universities in South East, Nigeria. Six (6) research questions were formulated to guide the study. In conducting this research, the researcher used descriptive survey design which was considered most appropriate for this study. The study was conducted in the South East zone with a population of five hundred and ninety-one (591) lecturers in faculties of education from three selected federal universities. The instruments used for data collection was the questionnaire and interview schedule. The validity of the research instrument was established by three experts. One of the instruments which is a questionnaire, contains 86 items from cluster 1-6. A total of 591 copies of the questionnaires were distributed and 527 were filled and returned for the study. Data obtained from the questionnaire was analyzed using mean and percentages. Findings from the study revealed that faculty of education lecturers are aware of the electronic databases highlighted in the study and electronic databases listed are utilized by faculty of education lecturers for scholarly research. The study identified erratic power, shaky network, indifference, know-how deficit and poor computer literacy as hiccups of awareness and utilization of electronic databases for scholarly research. The study recommends that institutional heads and management should be sensitized on the need and importance of subscribing to relevant databases; Training and Re-training of lecturers as well as library staff should be constant; Internet facilities of the University like the local and wide area networks (LAN and WAN) should also be improved and maintained to facilitate easy access to the databases among others.
Included in
Information Literacy Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, Scholarly Publishing Commons