Personal information management behaviour as a correlate of librarians’ job performance in federal university libraries of North Central Nigeria

Abstract

The study determined the personal information management behaviour as a correlate of job performance of librarians in federal university libraries of North Central Nigeria. Specifically, one purpose, one research questionand one hypothesis guided the study. It adopted a correlational survey research design. The population of the study consisted of one hundred and fifty two (152) librarians from the seven university libraries in the zone. The study used total renumeration sampling technique (that is the entire population).The study used two self-developed structured questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The structured questionnaire was titled: Librarians Job Performance Questionnaire (independent variable) and Personal Information Management Questionnaire (dependent variables); with 10 and 20 items respectively. The instrument (structured questionnaire) was face validated by three professionals; namely a lecturer in the Department of Science Education (Measurement and Evaluation Unit) and two lecturers in the Department of Library and Information Science, all from University of Nigeria Nsukka. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested using Chronbach Alpha statistics to determine the internal consistency of its items. The estimations of reliability co-efficient are as follows for clusters of independent variable (0.70) and dependent variable on research question one(0.73); with an overall estimate of 0.73. One hundred and fifty (152) copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the respondents with the help of research assistants and one hundred and forty (140) of them returned. This represented a return rate of ninety two percent (92%). The data collected were analysed using inferential statistics (linear regression analysis). For the analysis of responses from research questions one items and for the null hypotheses 5% significance level; the study used linear regression analysis. The findings of the study revealed that: there were moderate degree of relationship between personal information management behaviour and librarians’ job performance in the federal university libraries of Northcentral Nigeria. At 5% significant level, the study accepted the proposed null hypotheses that there is no significant relationship between PIM behaviour and librarians’ job performance.With respect to the above findings, the study recommended an efficient and effective use of PIM behaviour to improve librarians’ job performance; not only at the federal university libraries in North-Central Nigeria but other academic libraries in Nigeria and beyond.