Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
2022
Abstract
Like many countries, Nigeria’s university library services are affected by the integrated software used for service delivery. This study (conducted in 2021) examined the priorities and barriers for users perception of the use of integrated library software for service delivery in federal university libraries in the Niger Delta, Nigeria and the type of integrated software used by the Federal university libraries in Niger Delta, Nigeria, including what type of services rendered with the use of integrated library software to users, ease of use of integrated library software and benefit derived from the use and factors affecting the use were evaluated. A structured questionnaire was the instrument for data collection and was distributed to the respondents face to face at their various offices across all the university libraries in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. The populace of the study was sampled using the total enumeration sampling technique because of the smaller and manageable size of the population. There are 489 responses (83% response rate) from six federal universities in the Niger Delta. The findings reveal that the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom has the highest rate of respondents -90 (18.40%) followed by Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa State -88 (17.99%). It could deduce that the Federal Universities in Niger Delta are dominated by male in Nigeria, from 24-26 years are doiminated in the university system, students in 500 and 600 levels are majority of the respondents that participated in this exercise, Koha integrated software (402) had the highest response rate, majority of the respondents agreed that they used ILS to render the following services ; user registration, changing and dischanging of library materials, referral service,e-reference service,internet service,electronic library service, OPAC and book reservation, majority of the respondents agreed that ILS is easier for user interface, accessing personal account is easy and straightforward,users can independently interact well with ILS and its OPAC user interface, users can easily search on their own, users can query the ILS using the keyboard, users can recover lost of information during query, users can retrieve information from the ILS without the help of a librarian and users can retrieve documents from ILS when needed, majority of the respondents agreed that ILS allow users to access to the books and other materials in the library, allows for round the clock library services, helps to know a documents reservation status, bring the library closer to the users, help to know easily the total number of books held in a library, know a document return date or date of availability in the library, allows for easy borrowing of library materials, auto-renewal of borrowed book is easy and fast, helps to know the position of a particular title held by the library, helps to know the position of a particular materials on the shelf and Helps to ascertain if a book is present in the library or not and the majority of the respondents testify that bottle necks on the use of ILS are as follows, lack of awareness, poor Internet connectivity /low bandwidth, lack of information searching skills, lack of proper guidance from librarians, lack of funds to support automation project by library management, shortage of computer systems designated for library OPAC, lack of required ICT skills, complex OPAC interface design, erractic electricity power supply/high cost of running electricity generating sets and lack of user training on how to use the library software. The respondents were concerned about the service delivery in the library. It is expected that librarians should ensure that users get their information needs on time and in the right format and that the best integrated library software should be installed and used in library services. Keywords: Integrated library software, users' perception, service delivery, Federal University Libraries, Niger Delta, Nigeria. Introduction Almost all libraries in this 21st Century have a collection of both print as well as electronic resources.