Development of electronic libraries in Nigerian universities

Abstract

With the advent of electronic resources and the approval of Nigeria Virtual Library Project by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) of Nigeria in 2002, Nigerian universities have begun to join their counterparts around the world in developing electronic libraries to enhance the quality of teaching, learning and research. The paper explored the extent to which electronic libraries are being developed in Nigeria n universities . Email survey was used as the research method w ith questionnaire as the instrument for data collection and academic librarians as respondents . The findings of the study indicated that all responding universities in the survey have developed their electronic libraries. Electronic libraries in Nigerian u niversities a re dominantly funded by multinational organizations , university management s, and international organizations/agencies . There are varieties of electronic resources that are accessible in electronic libraries in Nigerian universities, but the popular ones are e -journals and online databases. Furthermore, frequent power outage and poor attitude o f university management s respectively are major factors that affect effective development of electronic libraries in Nigerian universities. The paper makes advocacy for the need to redress these problems as appropriate.

Keywords: Electronic, Libraries, Journals, Resources, Nigerian, University, Libraries, Online, Databases,