User’s Perception about Orientation Program of Academic Library

Abstract

This study examines the awareness of the orientation program of the academic library towards the attainment of performance of undergraduates. The research exposes the facts to both students and academic staff on the importance of the library orientation towards understanding the right information usage to aid performance and also create awareness of the image to the social, economic, and educational value of library orientation in Nigerian universities. Five Research objectives were formulated; they are: to know the perception of users about the library orientation programs, to find out how orientation programs are designed towards helping the need of students on proper information utilization, to find out how orientation program impacted to student's academic performances, to examined the challenges occurring in academic library orientation, to formulate solutions to challenges occurring in academic library orientation. The instrument was subjected to face and content validation by three experts, from Library and Information Science, requesting to examine the clarity of expression used as well as the appropriateness of the language used in the instrument. Cronbach alpha method was used to determine internal consistency of the questionnaire items and a coefficient of 0.978 was obtained. With this reliability coefficient yielded, it was deem fit for the research to be conducted using the questionnaire designed for the data collection. The study took a survey of orientation programme of Federal University of Lafia using a descriptive method to analyse data collected, selecting one hundred and thirty-nine (139) research instruments distributed out of which 132 copies were collected for analysis. The population was sampled using simple random sampling technique, and questionnaire was distributed to the selected sampled respondents. The findings of the results obtained from the analysis are that user orientation has an impact vividly on students' academic programs. The orientation has introduced students to libraries around the University for the Information Resources and services provided therein, including the way of accessing and uses. It particularly enhance and improved the use of the library for students in pursuance of their education 100(75.8%) opine that Orientation confirms students access, while 108(81.8%) posits that it creates awareness on how to use the library. It also finds out challenges associated with the exercise; such as unqualified personnel to handle the program, inadequate time to treat all programs, more alarming the lack of collective curriculum amongst universities, uncooperative attitudes of some staffs 86(65.2%) indicated inadequate time to treat all programs. 96(72.7%) considered the use of unqualified personnel. In conclusion, user orientation and instruction has become important in all the tertiary institution in Nigeria, more so it’s assist patrons to know how to maximize the use of our libraries for self-motivated and self –reliant clientele.