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The study examined library personnel awareness of the availability of emergency response plans, their forms and roles in safety routine preparedness and control in federal and state university libraries in Southwest Nigeria.

The survey research design alongside a multi-stage sampling procedure comprising purposive, randomisation and total enumeration techniques guided the study. The population consisted of 327 library personnel drawn from 12 federal and state university libraries (i.e., six each). The questionnaire and structured interview methods were used for data gathering. Of the 327 copies of the questionnaire administered, 249 copies, representing 76.1%, were duly completed and found valid for analysis. Whereas the acceptance threshold of ≥90% response rate and a criterion mean of 2.50 were adopted for making judgements regarding the research questions, while the hypothesis was tested using chi-square statistics with cross-tabulation.

The state university libraries in the studied region are extremely lagging behind their federal counterpart in terms of emergency preparedness, judging by the availability of emergency response plan (ERPs). However, documenting the plans for routine emergency response is not widespread among the university libraries; thus, the extent of response preparedness is both simplistic and doubtful. Despite the seemingly proactive nature of the federal university libraries over their state counterpart, librarians in both settings do not perceive effectiveness and preference in either the written emergency response plan (WERP) or unwritten emergency response plan (UERP) as an emergency preparedness and control measure.

The research increases knowledge of emergency preparedness in university libraries beyond the mere availability of ERPs. Through a comparative empirical analysis, the desirability of the WERP as a measure of emergency response preparedness in university libraries has been strengthened.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges affecting disaster training in federal and state university libraries in Southwest Nigeria with a view to finding ways of overcoming them.

Having adopted the descriptive research design, 14 university libraries (seven each of federal and state) were selected from the Southwest geo-political zone of Nigeria. The total enumeration sampling technique was employed. Questionnaire and interview methods were used for data collection. The three research questions that guided the study were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and ranking. Judgments were drawn using real limit of numbers and 2.50 as criterion mean.

Results emanated from the study showed that university libraries in the studied region are more equipped to fight fire disaster than any other emergency which is why fire drills and exercises are the prevailing disaster training received by library staff. It was also found that inadequate disaster facilities and equipment as well as poor funding were the greatest challenges confronting disaster training. The provision of adequate disaster facilities and equipment with the constitution of disaster prevention and response team was found as the most potent strategy for addressing the identified challenges.

The study lends strong empirical evidence for the underlining factors affecting disaster training in federal and state university libraries as well as academic libraries in general. The strategies for addressing the identified challenges are of more significance.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

Academic library consortia activity has become an integral part of academic libraries’ operations. Consortia have come to assert considerable bargaining power over publishers and have provided libraries with considerable economic advantage. They interact with publishers both as consumers of publishers’ products, with much stronger bargaining power than individual libraries hold, and, increasingly, as rival publishers themselves. Are consortia changing the relationship between academic libraries and publishers? Is the role of academic library consortia placing academic libraries in a position that should and will attract the attention of competition policy regulators? Competition policy prohibits buying and selling cartels that can negatively impact the free market on which the Canadian economic system, like other Western economies, depends. Competition policy as part of economic policy is, however, only relevant where we are concerned with aspects of the market economy. Traditionally, public goods for the greater social and cultural benefit of society are not considered part of the market economic system. If the activities of academic library consortia are part of that public good perspective, competition policy may not be a relevant concern. Using evidence gained from in-depth interviews from a national sample of university librarians and from interviews with the relevant federal government policy makers, this research establishes whether library consortia are viewed as participating in the market economy of Canada or not. Are consortia viewed by librarians and government as serving a public good role of providing information for a greater social and cultural benefit or are they seen from a market-economic perspective of changing power relations with publishers? Findings show government has little in-depth understanding of academic library consortia activity, but would most likely consider such activity predominantly from a market economic perspective. University librarians view consortia from a public good perspective but also as having an important future role in library operations and in changing the existing scholarly publishing paradigm. One-third of librarian respondents felt that future consortia could compete with publishers by becoming publishers and through initiatives such as open source institutional repositories. Librarians also felt that consortia have had a positive effect on librarians’ professional roles through the facilitation of knowledge building and collaboration opportunities outside of the home institution.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dissatisfaction of library users and the manager of each federal university library vis‐à‐vis the complaint of the librarians working in those libraries on inadequate funding, lack of promotion, poor condition of service and lack of recognition which affected their career commitment.

Questionnaires were used to gather data from a population of 381 librarians in the 24 federal university Libraries in Nigeria. A total of 363 of them responded and their questionnaires were found to be valid for analysis. The response rate achieved was 95.3 percent.

The study found that job satisfaction has significant influence on career commitment of librarians working in the federal university libraries (F (9; 352) = 11.058, p < 0.05). The study also revealed that demographic variables and job satisfaction accounted for 20 percent (adj. R² = 0.2000) in variability of career commitment of the respondents.

The study ought to have generated data on demographic variables and job satisfaction as they affect career commitment of library paraprofessionals (library officers, library attendants and assistants) since they all carry essential library function.

It is recommended that the library administrators and the managers of the university libraries should consider the demographic variables and job satisfaction of librarians when planning and making decisions on their career commitment.

The library managers and administrators in federal university libraries in Nigeria should formulate job satisfaction policies such as adequate provision of working facilities, provision of conducive working environment, work incentives (car loan, housing loan, study leave allowance, etc) for improving career commitment of their librarians.

The paper provides valuable information on the career commitment of librarians in federal university libraries in Nigeria.

In this digital age, students and researchers are less and less dependent on physical libraries. Any university library without internet connectivity is simply cut‐off from the rest of the world. Because they cannot provide quality and timely services to its users, neither can they communicate or share knowledge with others globally. The purpose of this study is to investigate the availability of internet connectivity in university libraries in Nigeria, and to bring to limelight their readiness to render quality services and communicate with the rest of the world.

The study covered the 104 universities in Nigeria made up of federal, state, and private universities. Out of the number, 86 university libraries responded to the survey. E‐mail and telephone interview methods were used to elicit data from the university librarians and senior library personnel.

The study revealed that despite the laudable directives from the National University Commission (NUC), many university libraries in Nigeria are still operating without internet connectivity. They are mostly the state‐owned and private university libraries. This may be why many programs in the universities are either suffering from partial or no accreditation from the NUC Accreditation Team. Many of the university librarians and senior library personnel interviewed mentioned lack of fund, absence of technical staff to maintain the networks, and lack of maintenance culture as some of the factors hindering internet connectivity.

The paper will help decision makers plan for installation of internet facilities in their libraries.

The paper calls for proactive effort by the library administrators to lobby for fund and the technical staff to enable their libraries get connected to the rest of the world.

With the aid of seed money from a federal grant, librarians at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) developed an online statistical abstract called Colorado by the Numbers (CBN). The last print version of the Colorado Statistical Abstract was published in 1987. CBN provides updated socio‐economic data about the state and its counties on the Web. Librarians have gone beyond the acquisition and maintenance of traditional printed information sources to producing tailor made resources that meet the information needs of their local community. The CBN design and management model is discussed.

This study aims to investigate the extent of adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in university libraries in Nigeria.

Postal survey was the instrument used for data collection. Almost 60 per cent of the University Librarians out of the 29 university libraries surveyed completed their questionnaires.

The results of the survey show that only six university libraries are fully “computerized”, nine are “about to be computerized”; seven of the surveyed libraries have installed local area networks, five have online public access catalogue and only four libraries provide internet service. The major obstacles that influence effective adoption of ICT in university libraries are inadequate funds and the poor state of electricity in Nigeria.

The federal government should increase the present level of funding of Nigerian university to improve the library development fund, which is the major source of funding available to university libraries. The poor state of electricity in Nigeria should also be improved by the federal government for sustainable adoption of ICT by university libraries.

The paper proposes that computer networking of university libraries is feasible and recommends the development of the Nigerian university libraries network and academic libraries network.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

The Government Printing Office (GPO) is authorized by law to act as the primary printer and distributor of U.S. government documents for the federal government. Among its mandates is the operation of the Federal Depository Library Program — one of America's oldest information networks — through which certain libraries across the country and its territories receive government publications. The majority of depositories are designated as official Congressional Depository Libraries by members of Congress for their respective districts or states. Some libraries enter under special legislation, such as most of the law school libraries, and are called “by law” depositories. All of these depositories work closely with GPO to ensure that the public will receive free access to federal publications.