The Information Environment of Academic Social Scientists in Some African Universities
Abstract
The study attempted to delineate the nature of the existing
information environment of academic social scientists in African
universities. Data was collected from academic social scientists
in three African universities:- Makerere University, Kampala,
University of Nairobi,and University of Ibadan in the following
disciplin~s: Economics, Geography, Political Science, Psychology,
Sociology, and from Social Science researchers in the Research
Institutes of the respective universities.
It was hypothesised that academic social scientists in African
univereities need and use identical information resources and
services, and generally have uniform information-gathering habits.
The general characteristics of the information needs of, the
evaluation and utilization of various information resources and
services bYt and the information-seeking habits of academic
social scientists were analysed in relation to the selected
independent variables of their academic rank, academic discipline
and the institutional-affiliation.
The statistical analysis of the data indicated that generally
academic. social scientists in African universities have similar
basic information needs, utilise, largely, the same information
resources and library services to satisfy their information
needs, and generally follow the same procedures to locate the
information they need. It was revealed that the academic
rank of the social scientists is a significant determinant of
the nature of the information environment ~f the academic
social scientists in African universities. On the other hand,
it was revealed that the academic discipline and institutionalaffiliation
had no significant effect on the academic social
scientists' evaluation and utilization of various information
resources and services nor on their information-gathering
habits.
It is recommended that African University libraries serving
academic social scientists should give priority to acquisition
of current journals rather than to monographs; that librarylayout
should allow for extensive browsing since most academic
social scientists locate information while browsing; and that
librarians should be more interactive with aondemic social
scientists in order to assist them in effective exploitation
of existing information resources and services.
Citation
Master of PhylosophyPublisher
University of IBADAN