PERCEIVED IMPACT OF DIGITIZATION ON THE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY OF LIBRARIANS IN NIGERIA.

Abstract

This work is focused on establishing how digitization of library information materials 
affects the research productivity of Librarians in Nigeria. The descriptive survey 
research design was adopted for the study and the purposive sampling technique was 
employed in selecting 20 libraries that have digitized their information resources. Ten 
librarians, each from the universities were randomly selected for the study, making the 
sample size 200. Self-constructed questionnaire was the instrument used for data 
collection.  Data collected was analyzed using SPSS software. The outcome revealed 
that the types of information resources digitized by the libraries include theses and 
dissertations, research works published in local journals, conference papers, and 
inaugural lectures. Opportunities presented by digitization that impact the research 
productivity include; enhanced access to existing local scholarly works, giving visibility 
to individual and institutional research output, making researchers discoverable, and 
exposing them to the knowledge of other researchers in their areas of interest for 
collaboration purposes, etc. The perceived impacts of digitization on the research 
productivity of librarians are; enhanced quality of research, enhanced research output, 
high citation impacts, created room for multi-disciplinary, national, and international 
collaborations, and made them visible to grantors and funding bodies. The major 
challenges hindering the effective utilization of these resources include; irregular 
Internet access, limited awareness of the availability of the resources, infrastructure 
limitations, and erratic power supply.