ABSTRACT

This, study was carried out to investigate the visibility of librarians from the federal universities in the national conferences of the Nigerian Library Association between 2010 and 2019. Three objectives of the study guided the research. Document analysis is the research method used for data collection. The document used for this study is the NLA National Conference Attendance list. Data generated through document examination were coded, analyzed, interpreted and presented. The findings of the study revealed thus: the number of librarians that attended the NLA annual national conferences from 2010 to 2019 represents a very low attendance when compared to the number of librarians that were certified/licensed to practice in Nigeria; librarians from the academic libraries (university, polytechnic, and college of education libraries) that attended the conferences were more than the librarians from the other types of libraries (National Library, public library, school library, and special library); amongst librarians from the university libraries/library schools, librarians from the federal university libraries/library schools constitute as much as 45.6% while the remaining 54.4% was made up of librarians from the state universities and the private universities put together. Some of the recommendations of the study included that: the NLA National Executive Committee should liaise with the Librarians' Registration Council of Nigeria (LRCN) for the contacts (mobile phone numbers and email addresses) of all the registered/licensed librarians in Nigeria and send the conference invitations directly to each of them; the NLA Executive Committee at the national and state levels, heads of libraries, and heads of NLA sections should organize advocacy campaign towards sensitizing and mobilizing librarians to attend NLA national conferences through self sponsorship if not sponsored officially; the NLA National Executive Committee should institute an award/prize for the NLA State Chapter, academic library, public library and special library that has the highest number of librarians attending each of the future annual conferences at their categories, and also awards/prizes for two runners up in the categories.

Keywords: Visibility; Librarians; University Libraries; Nigerian Library Association; National Conference