Thesis Abstract

<p> This study is centred on acquisition &nbsp; practices in state university libraries in North Central Zone of Nigeria. The study specifically sought &nbsp; to &nbsp; find &nbsp; out &nbsp; the &nbsp; acquisition polices in state university libraries &nbsp; in &nbsp; the &nbsp; North &nbsp; Central &nbsp; Zone of Nigeria, ascertain the acquisition pattern, ascertain the sources of acquisition, identify current &nbsp; problems encountered in the acquisition practices and finally determine strategies to enhance acquisition process. The study was guided by five research &nbsp; questions &nbsp; directly drawn from the purpose of the study. &nbsp; Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample of &nbsp; 196 &nbsp; which comprises &nbsp; of professional &nbsp; librarians, para-professionals and others who &nbsp; are concerned with acquisition of library information resources in &nbsp; all the state university libraries &nbsp; in &nbsp; the North Central Zone of Nigeria. The instrument for data collection “Acquisition Practice Questionnaire (APQ) was used to collect data from the librarians, library officers and staff in the acquisition and serial sections of the libraries. Other instruments &nbsp; for &nbsp; data &nbsp; collection were interview and observation. The instruments developed were face validated by the researcher’s Supervisor and two experts. The researcher personally with the help of one trained research assistant from each university distributed 196 questionnaires to respondents. One Hundred and Seventy-Seven questionnaires were duly filled and returned. Furthermore, simple percentages, frequencies, tables, and mean were used for data presentation and analysis. The research findings show that this important library activity is still fraught with problems which include- Lack of adequate funds, non-existence &nbsp; of &nbsp; written acquisition policies, lack of skilled acquisition librarians, low level of publishing, lack of book trade, absence of staff motivation. The researcher recommends an increase in government allocation, proper formulation of written acquisition policies, training and re-training of staff, recruitment of skilled professional librarians to enable the state university libraries and similar libraries overcome the problems associated with acquisition practices, among others. <br></p>

Thesis Overview