ABSTRACT

The study sought to ascertain the availability, accessibility and utilization of electronic information resources (EIR) by postgraduate students in the universities in Rivers State using survey research design. The study had five specific purposes, five research questions and five null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study was 7,150 comprising 218 librarians and 6932 postgraduate students. The sample of the study is 358 librarians and postgraduate students, representing 5% of total the population. The instrument for the study is a structured questionnaire developed by the researcher and titled “Availability, Accessibility and Utilization of Electronic Information Resources Questionnaire” (AAUEIRQ). The questionnaire contains part A and B, with part A focused on respondents’ personal relevant characteristics and part B dealing with actual answers to the research questions made on 59 items. The instrument was structured using a four-point scale. The instrument was validated by two lecturers from Department of Library and Information Science and one expert in Measurement and Evaluation drawn from the Department of Science Education, all in the College of Education of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The reliability of the instrument was tested using 20 postgraduate students from Imo State University and an internal consistency of 0.71 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha. Two research assistants were used to administer the 358 copies of questionnaire after which 350 were retrieved and analyzed using mean, standard deviation and z- test for research questions and hypotheses respectively. It was found from the study that the availability level of electronic information resources in those libraries are high, but not very high, as they have some e-resources like electronic journals, electronic books, e-reference materials etc. These materials are made accessible to the registered postgraduates’ students in those universities. Some of the postgraduate students access the e-resource units of those libraries, with a greater percentage of them found to be utilizing the e- resources in public universities libraries in River State. It was also found that there are some challenges to availability, like finance, management policies, human factor, etc. Accessibility is also faced with some challenges like inadequate computers, password and user name issues, absence of a good system analyst, etc. Utilization is also faced with some challenges that include poor internet, limited subscription, information overload, unreliable power supply, software issues, etc. Consequently, some strategies like provision of enough funds, adoption of good policies that will allow for more availability of e- resources, individual character adjustment, constant power supply, availability of trained system analyst etc. were outlined for curbing the identified challenges. Among the recommendations made, was that government through her ministry of education should assist in equipping university libraries with more e-information resources to increase their availability, accessibility and utilization amongst students. This is in addition to the need for university managements and the university librarians to ensure that they make policies that will permit compulsory but regulated access to e-information resources to a very high extent.