Awareness and Utilization of Electronic Library Resources among University Academic Staff in Law Faculties in Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the awareness and utilization of electronic resources among law academic staff in selected universities in Enugu State of Nigeria. Specifically, the study sought to determine the extent of awareness of e-resources for teaching and research among faculty of law academic staff in the universities in Enugu State, and find out the extent of use of e-resources for teaching and research among faculty of law academic staff of the universities in Enugu State.The descriptive survey design was used to carry out the study. The population of the study was the 177 faculty of law academic staff in the trio of University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC)-federal (76 academic staff in the faculty of law); Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT)-State (64 academic staff in the faculty of law); and Godfrey Okoye University (GOU)-private (37 academic staff in the faculty of law). The census approach was used to study all the 177 academic staff in the selected universities. The questionnaire was used for data collection. Copies of the questionnaire were administered and picked up immediately they were completed by the respondents. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation to determine the extent of awareness and utilization of e-resources for teaching and research. Findings showed that the extent of awareness of e-resources for teaching and research among majority of the respondents is very high but the awareness of the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) is not high though not very high. The findings also showed that the extent of utilization of e-resources for teaching and research among majority of the respondents is generally very high but specifically, the extent of use of the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) is low. Accordingly it was recommended that the universities’ libraries should adequately raise the awareness of the academic staff on what Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) entails and how it could be utilized to access information for teaching and research. In addition to using other e-resources, the academic staff should endeavor to familiarize and use the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) for convenient access to library collections.