Assessment of areas of coverage of undergraduate research in library and information technology at Federal University of Technology (FUT), Minna, Nigeria

Abstract

The Department of Library and Information Technology like other Departments in Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria requires final year undergraduate students to write and submit research report as part of the requirements for the award of the Bachelor of Technology (Library and Information Technology). Thisempirical paper focuses on the undergraduate research output (productivity) in line with the content of the research methods and projects write-up as six credit unit course in library school.The variables for this study were those of: subject areas, organizations studied and geographical coverage by the research output. Data was analysed by simple tabulation, frequency counts and percentages. Variables on tables were arranged by rank order from highest to lowest frequencyusing numeric filing system and to some extent used letter-by-letter alphabetical system of filing in case of having group of variables with equal frequencies. Results showed that a total of 572 completed research outputs were physically examined and analysed for this study. The undergraduate research report/output covered different subject areas within and outside the field of librarianship with majority concentrating on Application of ICT in libraries and user studies. Research reports also covered different states/organisations and majority of researches were on universities followed by academic and public libraries. The study further revealed that organisations studied were covered by different geographical zones and majority were conducted in Niger State. The study recommended that for sustainable library information technology curriculum particularly in the areas of research methods and projects, the library school should endeavour to inject the essential ingredients into these two aspects of curriculum to adequately include subject areas of research, organizations to be studied and wider coverage of geographical areas of the study as well as statistical element.

Keywords: Curriculum, FUT Minna, Nigeria, Library and Information Technology, Undergraduate Research output