Global Trends and emerging technologies: Librarian's ICT Competence and the quest to establish ICT based Library consortium in Nigeria.

Abstract

The study was designed to investigate the state of relationship that exists between librarians' ICT competence and the quest to establish ICT based library consortium in University Libraries in Nigeria. The study was carried out with two research purpose, two research questions and two null hypotheses. Related literature was reviewed under the conceptual framework, librarians’ ICT competence and utilization of ICT based library consortium. The study adopted correlation research design, purposive sampling techniques was used to sampled 180 respondents sampled from 18 Federal and 18 State Universities in Nigeria, 3 Federal and 3 State Universities from each of the six Geo-political Zone of the Country. The Researcher used five point Likert Scale Questionnaire which was validated by three experts, two in Prince Abubakar Audu University, Anyigba and one in Federal University Lokoja. The reliability of the instrument was established through internal consistency method of reliability. The reliability test conducted on 15 librarians at the Prince Abubakar Audu University, Anyigba showed an overall co-efficient of internal consistency of r=0.94. The study adopted statistical mean and Pearson Product Moment Correlation to analyze the research questions and test the hypothesis and findings of the study showed that there is significant relationship between librarians’ ICT competence and librarian utilization of ICT based Library consortium in the university libraries in North Central, Nigeria. The relationship between librarians’ ICT competence and the quest to establish ICT based library consortium is a moderate positive (r=0.32). The relationship between library policy and librarians’ ICT competence and the quest to establish ICT based library consortium is a very weak positive relation (r=0.15). The two hypothesis tested were rejected.