Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
Winter 1-11-2023
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Consortium Building Readiness (CBR) is inevitable for university libraries that intend to provide adequate information resources and services to users. Preliminary investigations showed that efforts at CBR have not been successful in Nigeria. This may be as a result of the unpreparedness among university libraries to provide Institutional Factors–IF (Organisational Culture–OC, Organisational Policy–OP, finance, Power Supply–PS, Internet Connection–IC, ICT Literacy skills–ILS and digitisation), Legal Factors–LF (Governing Law–GL, Log-in-Option–LO, Non-disclosure of Log-in-Option–NDO, Dispute Resolution–DR, Cash Contribution–CC and dissolution) and Ethical Factors–EF (professional and business) to drive Consortium Building (CB). Little attention, however, has been paid to factors that could predict readiness for a successful CB among university libraries. This study therefore was carried out to investigate institutional, legal and ethical factors as precursors of CBR among university libraries in Southwestern Nigeria. Exchange and Resources Dependence, Social Exchange, Socio-Technical theories and Teamwork Model were used as the framework, while the survey design of the correlational type was adopted. All the 643 university library personnel in 45 university libraries in southwestern Nigeria were enumerated. The instruments used were Institutional Factors (α=0.75), Legal Factors (α=0.79), Ethical Factors (α=0.89), CBR (α=0.81) scales. Key informant interviews were conducted with nine selected university librarians. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation and Multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance, while the qualitative data was thematically analysed.
The IF, LF and EF jointly influenced CBR (R = 0.47; F(3; 545) =51.17; Adj. R2=0.22), contributing 22.0% of its variance. The business ethics (β=0.34), OC (β=0.33), GL (β=0.24), LO (β=0.24), finance (β=0.17), PS (β=0.10) and digitisation (β=0.07) relatively contributed to CBR. The university librarians complained that CBR was impossible due to lack of acceptable platform for all university libraries to disseminate and share resources. There were yearnings to come together as a team of consortium but finance and organisational commitment of their various institutions limited the move. Business ethics, organisational culture, governing law, log-in-option, finance, power supply and digitization and accessible platform level enhanced consortium building readiness among university libraries in southwestern Nigeria. These factors should be addressed to drive consortium building among them.
Comments
Organisational culture, Consortium building readiness, University library personnel in Southwestern Nigeria