Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

 

Abstract

The importance of information in human development and growth brought about this descriptive research study which generally determined the library information needs of parents of children who are career workers. To achieve the above aforementioned aims, four research questions guided the study. A total of 212 staff were used as participants. A structured questionnaire designed by the researcher and titled: Information Needs of Academic Staff in Academic Library Questionnaire (INASALQ) was used as an instrument for data collection. The instrument was face validated by three experts. It was trial tested using 20 staff of academic library and its internal consistency was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha co-efficient statistical method. The result gave overall Alpha- co-efficient value of 0.87. The data collected was analyzed using mean, and standard deviation. The major findings revealed that awareness creation, seeking for knowledge exposure, capacity building, teaching, research, technological and e-library skills among others are the information needs of college Library staff (parents of children). It was also found that conference participations and training are not their information needs. The finding revealed that the college staff agreed that staff meeting, media, internet, academic discussion and conference are their source of information needs. It was found that the problems affecting the satisfaction of information needs of college Library staff are lack of awareness, infrastructural facilities, high cost of information materials, roads, financial incentives, fund, power supply and motivation. Finally, it was found that improvement of infrastructure, manpower development, procurement of advanced facilities, knowledge management, increased library funding, improvement of information related policy, improved credit facilities and accessible road are the strategies for meeting the information needs of the academic library staff (parents of children). Based on these findings, some practice implications were highlighted, and recommendations made.

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