Use of search engines for academic activities by the academic staff members of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Jos

Abstract

The research was designed to investigate the Internet Search Engine use behaviour and experiences of lecturers at the University of Jos, using the academics of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in the University as a focal population. The entire population of 148 academic staff members in the Faculty was adopted for the research. Descriptive survey was the research method used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts and percentages were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed among others that Google and Yahoo! Were the most popular search engines amongst the lecturers in that order. However, the academics admitted that they learned how to use the search engines through seminars and workshops organized by the University management. The findings further revealed that the lecturers relied heavily on the search engines for their academic activities. However, only few of the lecturers were aware of the Advanced and Boolean Search Options provided by the engines, the lecturers also indicated that coping with too much information hits and
formulating search terms were some of their major problems in using the search engines. It was therefore, recommended that the University Management through the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Unit in association with the University Library should continue to organize workshops and seminars for the lecturers on how to use the various search engines to effectively access information in the internet.

Key words: Search, Engine, Academic, Staff, Activities, University, Jos, Nigeira.