A STUDY ON THE UTILISATION OF LIBRARY SOFTWARE IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES WITHIN THE NIGERIAN CONTEXT

ABSTRACT: This study used a survey design to examine libraries software usage in academic libraries using selected universities in Adamawa State as case study. The study was guided by four (4) research questions. The population included all librarians of selected university Yola, Adamawa State; while the sample used for the study included 60 university librarians cutting across the five selected universities in the study area. An instrument called Software Usage Questionnaire (SUQ) was developed by the researcher for this study. This SUQ was validated by three librarians from the selected university. The data gathered and collated was analysed using frequency tables and percentages. The findings of the study indicated the software programs available to academic libraries in Nigerian universities which include; KOHA, Virtua, Microsoft Access, Alice, CDS/ISIS, SLAM, X – LIB, DSpace, ALICE and E-Lib. The findings also indicated that the reasons behind the need for adopting software programs in academic library in Nigeria are; easy access to information, elimination of repetition, accuracy and timeliness, speedy information retrieval and increase efficiency. With respect to the findings of the study, the researcher recommended that the government, especially the National Universities Commission (NUC) in liaison with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), should ensure the enactment and implementation of policies and guidelines on automation of Nigerian university libraries. More so, effort should be made to provide training and retraining on a regular basis on the use of library software packages to library staff and users in particular.