Assessment of Nigerian University Library Web Sites/Web Pages

ADETOLA, AYOTUNDE KEHINDE and ADEYINKA, TELLA (2012) Assessment of Nigerian University Library Web Sites/Web Pages. New Review of Information Networking, 17. pp. 1-25.

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Abstract

Academic libraries, the world over, have designed and developed Web sites to advertise their resources and services to the outside world. In line with this, many universities in Nigeria have provided their library with a Web site while more are developing Web sites for their library to meet the new information superhighway’s challenges. However, in-depth studies on the assessment of these Web sites have not been undertaken and the studies have been especially neglected or ignored by the Nigeria researcher. The available existing study only focused on the rating of the Web sites on the basis of the number of hits. In view of this, there is a necessity to research the aspects of in-depth assessment of selected academic library Web sites in Nigeria, especially in view of the accelerating rate of university establishment in the country. This study is an attempt to fill this currently identified gap. Hence, the study assessed the university library Web sites in selected university libraries in Nigeria. The study uses content analysis as the research design. A total of 30 Nigerian university library Web sites were selected from the three categories to represent 110 universities in Nigeria using a purposely stratified sampling technique with a checklist as the research instrument. The criteria for the checklist were drawn on an assessment of library Web sites for Web 2.0 tools, access to electronic materials, and links to the National University Commission (NUC) virtual library. Four research questions were developed and answered and the result revealed low level of the integration of Web 2.0 in most of the universities’ Web sites. The study concluded that the use of the current web development technologies for deploying mainstream web information services is not widespread as web information services are yet to take off widely in academic libraries as regards to web 2.0, electronic resources and links to NUC virtual library. The majority of university libraries are found to be working in the conventional library settings and the diffusion rate of web information services is relatively low. Based on the conclusions, the study recommends that Web 2.0 tools should be used as part of the accreditation criterion for university libraries and that the NUC should embark on a national university virtual campaign. Additionally, librarians need to adapt to the revolutionary changes in technology that lead to changes in scholarly communication. Further studies can be conducted as to the choice of libraries in integrating Web 2.0 tools.

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