VALUE OR SIGNIFICANCE OF REMOTE ACCESS TO THE LIBRARY’S ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
Chapter ONE
Introduction
1.1 the study’s background
University education is the process of teaching, learning, and training in a higher level education institution where one can get a degree or do research to improve knowledge and skills. University education is also a formal learning, or the obtainment of formal educational qualifications from institutions at the highest level of education where one can study for a degree (krejsler, 2006).
University education includes teaching, research, and social services activities at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In general, university education ends in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, and academic degrees. Universities in Nigeria can be privately owned, state or federal government funded. University education’s objectives include: developing reasoning about perennial questions, mastering scientific inquiry methods, cultivating the intellect, creating positive change agents, developing spirituality, and fostering a democratic society.
University education is essential to national economies as a source of trained and educated personnel for the economy. In their institutions, universities are hubs of knowledge and information services. These hubs require modern technology, which has much advanced. Student information needs have also changed as a result of this progress (chen and wu 2009).
Information is the pivot on which any society’s survival is based. It is still the most important ingredient in making decisions and assisting in reducing the degree of uncertainty. Information and its application are as old as man. Indeed, there cannot be communication without information (olatokunbo and asiru, 2011).
Information can be given in written, documented, or oral format. Information resources are materials such as books, journals, encyclopedias, films, or pictures that provide information for learning, teaching, and research. According to bennett (2003), the information technology revolution is changing information delivery in education.
A diverse set of tools and resources are used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information in information and communication technologies. The adventure in technology has resulted in the proliferation of electronically available information resources.
Electronic information resources are defined as an information retrieval system that operates with computer terminals, communication lines and links, models, disk drives, and databases in machine-readable form and is accessible in an online, interactive mode (harper,2006).
Ekwelem, okafor, and ukwuoma (2009) defined electronic information sources as information sources that are available and can be accessed electronically through computer network facilities, such as online library catalogue, the internet, the world wide web, digital libraries, government portals and electronic information resources are defined as various infrastructures used in the creation, processing, storage, and dissemination of information, as well as various services provided by these infrastructures.
The university sector has changed a lot in the last few years. These changes made electronic resources important in this age, and they include the following: rapid growth in the number of undergraduate students with little or no relative increase in the number of library and
information services staff and printed materials cost inflation fall in library budgets as a percentage of total institutional budgets, changes in teaching and learning methods, towards a greater emphasis on undergraduate students’ centered learning, and technological developments undergraduate students are university students working on a first degree.
Undergraduate students are university students who have not yet received a bachelors’ or similar degree, according to the American heritage dictionary of English language (2007). Undergraduate students require electronic information resources due to their flexibility and dynamic in information retrieval, storage, and processing. Undergraduates need access to timely, accurate, and relevant academic information, so electronic information resources are important (adomi, omodeko otolo, 2004).
Computer services like the internet and other electronic sources have greatly increased the speed of information searching. They have bringed considerable relief to students in universities, as students can conveniently walk into any library that has its holdings on the internet and have access to unlimited information sources (ezeji, 2008). According to brophy (1993), one benefit of electronic resources is that the information required can be delivered to the user from the most appropriate source.
The user can dynamically re-specify his or her needs. The information is obtained when it is wanted, so it is just in time. In addition, the user selects only the information required to answer the specific question, and the information is only stored if the user desires.
Electronic information can therefore provide many benefits over print-based resources. Especially when searching retrospectively, electronic information resources are often faster than consulting print indexes. When wishing to use a combination of keywords open and open the possibility of searching multiple files at the same time, they are straight forward.
Electronic resources can be printed and searches can be saved for repeat use at a later date. Than conventional resources, they are updated more easily and often. Their availability from outside the library by dial-up access is a major benefit, especially for those with limited time to access the library and distance learners. Mobile phones and the internet are seen as easier and more convenient in activity coordination, for example, in planning, seeking information, and communication.
Electronic sources also provide opportunities to find new interests, activities, and friends, all of which may be positive in terms of life quality. Search engines, which are continually being upgraded to provide efficient ways to help users find what they want, provide access to unlimited sources of information through electronic resources.
The electronic equivalent can integrate text with charts, graphs, photographs, sound, video, and other multimedia forms. The use of electronic information resources as an extension of the classroom or as a vehicle for higher education is becoming even more common.
The internet is now used as a powerful supplement to the traditional ways in which students study and learn in lecture halls, tutorials, laboratories, and assignment preparation. These resources could be stored electronically, saving space, reducing the risk of loss, theft, or damage, and significantly reducing costs (dadzie, 2005).
Electronic resources have a lot to offer, but their utility is dependent on users’ attitudes, on how they feel about them. Attitudes are the ways in which people think and feel about something. Attitudes are prejudices or bias, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, and convictions about any specific topic (taiwo, 1998).
Attitudes represent students’ conceptual value of these technologies, not the values of the technologies themselves. Positive attitudes are essential in the administration of new technologies. Students are one part of society who has access to a variety of electronic information resources.
Universities devote significant amounts of their budgets to providing this technology to their students to assist in the learning process. Then the question is, what is the level of use of this kind of resource? How do students feel about various issues relating to electronic resources, which may require the acquisition of new skills to effectively use them, and whether attitude change depends on the availability of these resources?
Little is known about students’ attitude towards this form of information provision, and without a better understanding, service providers can’t know if they are meeting students’ needs effectively. The university of Nigeria is a federal university in Enugu, Nigeria. The university of Nigeria nsukka (u.n.n) was founded in October 1960 and has two campuses in nsukka and Enugu, Enugu state, Nigeria.
With over 40,000 enrolled students and 21,148 registered undergraduate students, it is nigeria’s premier institution of higher learning. 2011 registrars department it is one of Nigeria’s oldest and most prestigious universities. U.n.n. has fifty-five faculties that provide regular, sandwich, and part-time programs.
There have been a few changes at the university of nigeria, including how information is provided to the university community. The university has started electronic information providing to facilitate study programs and research through a number of supported programs.
Apart from resulting in a growth of electronic information, the transition from print to electronic medium has provided users with new tools and applications for information seeking. The university of Nigeria acknowledges the need to provide electronic information facilities to students, researchers, and faculty members through the provision of modern computer laboratories or cyber cafes equipped with advanced computer databases and internet connectivity.
The university’s management information system (mis), a computerized information management innovation initiated and sponsored by the national universities commission, first provided access to eis in 1995. (nuc). As a result, the old university computing center was rehabilitated with advanced modern facilities, including internet connectivity.
The university library has also been digitalized to meet students’ growing access needs. Other privately owned commercial cyber cafes, such as afrihuub and e-network, have also been established to complete the university’s internet access facilities. Students use personal computers as well as computer services provided by various organizations, business centers, and cyber cafes as an alternative to support their academic work for this reason.
In nigeria, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka is also a federal university. Its main campus is in awka, anambra state capital, and it has a second campus at nnewi. It is one of the twenty-five federal universities that the national university commission reviews and accredits.
Nnamdi azikiwe university arised from the defunct anambra state university of technology (asutech). After the split of the old anambra state into anambra and Enugu states in 1991, the awka and nnewi campuses of the former asutech were combined into nnamdi azikiwe university by the Anambra state –edict no.5 of november 26.1991, and which was later taken over b the federal government took over nnamdi azikiwe university (n.a.u.) on july 15, 1992, via decree no.34.
Nnamdi azikiwe university has twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and six (24,706) full-time students and twelve thousand, four hundred and seventy- six (12,476) part-time students (registras department 2011). Arts, sciences, engineering, management sciences, medicine and surgery, social sciences, law, african languages, european languages, and education are all available at the university.
The university also offers quality education, academic stability, and a credible academic culture, as well as a digital library service for the growth of electronic information, as well as new tools and applications for information seeking and retrieval.
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