The roles of librarians in the protection of copyright in Nigeria

Abstract

This study explored the role of librarians towards the protection of copyright in public universities in Ogun and Lagos State, Nigeria. The study was descriptive in nature where structured and validated questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. The study population comprised of consists of 65 librarians in five selected public universities in Ogun and Lagos State. In all, 50 questionnaires were retrieved out of 65 targeted for the study through total enumeration sampling techniques which gave 76.9 % rate of return. Primary data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and standard error). The result of the findings indicated that copyright materials available within the study areas include textbook, journals, thesis and dissertation, electronic databases among others. Equally, findings of this study indicated that the professional librarian were highly aware of copyright and that it is their duties and responsibilities to protect both author and user right towards violation. Findings further indicated that user should not be allow to make more than certain no of pages of materials in the library. Likewise, the agreement between libraries and database providers should be made available to users. Based on the findings, it was recommended that library users and librarians should be more vigilant towards copyright protection and to ensure that users do not violate such while utilizing library resources of any kind.