CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The academic libraries have been described as the “heart” of the learning community providing a place for students and faculty to conduct their research and advance their knowledge. In the education system, an academic library is the centre of academic life. A university library or any library attached to an institution of higher education exists to support the goal of its parent organization, since university libraries are an integral part of the higher education system, they should provide support services for the formal educational programs as well as for facilities for research and for generation of new knowledge. It is important of any information professional working in an academic or any other library to know the real needs of the user community. Understanding the needs of the target group will help to develop the diverse strategies that are appropriate to obtain effective results. Since the university library is committed to provide excellent resources and services, it has to develop an ongoing dialog with its user community. On the other hand academic libraries have to improve the quality of their service to survive in this volatile competitive environment.

Therefore it is crucial to evaluate the library service from customer’s point of view at the same time order to set up user centered service, the library needs to know the user and user needs. One of the main tools that can be used to evaluate and assess the library services is the user survey. It is impossible to assess the changing needs of the clientele unless user surveys are conducted to determine user needs and their reading interests. A library, strives to play a leading role in the teaching, learning and research activities of its parents institution, it should be aggressively dynamics in the provision of its services and manned by personnel of the highest quality, who possess adequate background, appropriate professional training and experience and the proper orientation to meet the challenges of modern university academic, use expectation from any information system is to make available directly or remotely and in real time the needed information, formal notwithstanding, in the university environment the library a major information providing system support’s teaching learning and research with information materials of various types (Anunobi and Edoka 2010). The advents of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have however drastically changed the nature of traditional library services. Perhaps in any discussion of application of modern technology in the library, as revealed by Ukoh (1984) the first thing that comes to mind is the computer, the computer has made such a tremendous impact on the organization management and dissemination of information that it readily commends itself to any library ready to accept it when computers first made their impact on libraries especially with the automation of house-keeping routines, recourse managers had expected financial savings as machine took over the work of human.

However, in higher education, the real result has been that automation has enable institutions to cope with great increases in demand without increases in staffing and how they are able to provide a much wider ranges of services, to improve the quality of work performed by students, simultaneously saving them time when searching for information. Computers in libraries have proved useful in assisting the information processing aspect of traditional library, operations like acquisitions, registration of readers, circulation functions and keeping track of reading and research interests of user. Thus repetitive and untie data processing tasks which characterized most library, are eectively and eiciently handle by computer. The computerization of students library services brings with it many benefits meant to improve the quality of services that the library renders to its users some of the benefit of library facilities includes, enhanced productivity, increased output, more productive tasks. In documentation and information processing, network enhancement and perfect control of records management and retrieval. The facilities of library, therefore, therefore, lead to a change in the way the library oers services to its clientele. Change is a natural phenomenon in growth and envelopment. Humans being are known to respond dierently to changing situations thus, reflecting in their attitudes towards the object of change fear of change is similarly a natural human reaction every human being develops control over familiar situations and in most cases, feels comfortable with the familiar than the unfamiliar. A computerized library comprises not only facilities and formats’ but cuso the essential human elements users and staff, the success of any library system, after all, rests not on how well the design work on paper in abstract, but on how effectively they can use it. And it is the users of the library that embrace or reject the new technologies, fulfill or frustrate, the intentions of system designers and experience anxiety and disorientation, as a result of their use attitudes are ending patterns of belief, believed to be predictive of behaviour reflecting people’s biases inclination or tendencies that influence their response to situation, activities, people or programme goals. Students varied in their information needs and their seeking attitudes, they constitute a part of society who is fortunate to have access at little or no cost themselves a variety of computerized services in their institutions library.

This is made possible because universities use considerable proportions of their budgets to provide these technologies for their students to assists in the teaching, learning and research processes. One of the major barriers is implementing new innovation in libraries is only technical but also attitudinal as positive attitude towards; technology contributes to the better performance in a technologically advanced environment. However, little is known about student’s attitude towards computerized services in their institution libraries and without a better understanding, it remains difficult for these libraries to effectively provide these services for their users.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The use of library facilities cut’s across all professions in any society. Awareness of the need for the use of libraries facilities has become very popular. In the library, a computerized cataloguing system enable the use of centrally produce bibliographic records other such services offered to users in library include e.mails, online database/electronic journal access co-non-technology and OPAC . The role of the information providers to understand, the need of the users their attitudes towards seeking their needs only then can users optimize the benefits that such services tend to offers. However, not much is known about the attitudes of students of College of Education Ekiadolor towards the facilities in the institutions library, it therefore becomes imperative to take closer look at those attitudes, which have an effect on how students make use of the facilities and will in turn affect the overall success of the library’s facilities and programme.