Relationship between computer anxiety and electronic library use among LIS undergraduates in universities in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between computer anxiety and electronic library use among library and information science undergraduates in universities in Southern Nigeria. One research question guided the study while one research hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The correlational research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 10,345 library and information science (LIS) undergraduates from ten federal, seventeen state and eight private universities in Southern Nigeria. The study adopts purposive and quota sampling technique to determine the sample size of 1, 017 used for the study. Two instruments: “Undergraduates‟ Computer Anxiety Questionnaire (UCAQ)” and “Undergraduates‟ Electronic Library Use Questionnaire (UELUQ)” were used for data collection. The overall reliability indexes for the two instruments were .90 and .89 respectively using Cronbach‟s alpha. Pearson‟s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) and simple linear regression was used to analyze the data. The findings indicated that there was a very low positive relationship between LIS undergraduates‟ computer anxiety and their electronic library use. The study further exemplified that there was a significant relationship f (df; 1,981) = 34.44, p<0.05 between computer anxiety and electronic library use among LIS undergraduates. However, it was recommended that LIS undergraduates should engage themselves in computer skills training regularly in order to have the needed proficiency in the different aspects of computer as this will ensure a continued and more effective utilization of electronic library resources. Also, university library management should have a well – structured electronic library use training and retraining for LIS undergraduates regularly through seminars, workshops, conferences to acquire and improve on the needed skills towards electronic library information resources usage.