AWARENESS AND USE OF LIBRARY ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOGUE (OPAC) AMONG STUDENTS OF TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN OYO, OYO STATE,

Abstract

This study investigates the awareness and use of Online Public Access Catalogue by students in higher institution libraries of Oyo township, Oyo State, Nigeria.  A survey design was adopted using a self-developed instrument. The population of the study comprises 3,500 students across the three institutions namely, Federal School of Surveying, Emmanuel Alayande University of Education and Federal College of Education (Special) all in Oyo. However, a sample size of three hundred and fifty (350) respondents was chosen among related programs of study across all the three (3) institutions based on Boddie (2021) sample size reduction. The contents of the instrument were found very relevant to the research constructs while Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for the variables ranged from 0.73 to 0.85. The retrieved 300 instruments represent an 85% rate of return. Analysis involved mainly descriptive statistics of the SPSS Version 21.0 using frequency counts and percentages. Findings revealed that majority of the students 223 (74.3%) were aware of OPAC services while about 77 (25.7%) were unaware. 286(95.3%) across all the three institutions attested to the use of OPAC while 49(16.3%) were the most frequent. Similarly, 133(44.3%) which constitutes the largest of respondents used OPAC most often. A total number of 39(13%) used the Author Search, 106(35.3%) regularly apply the Title Search, while Author/Title search recorded 103(34.3%) responses. The management of the libraries are implored to improve on their sensitization programme and ensure that more users adopt the services so that they could access the library more with ease. It is recommended among others that more efforts should be geared towards assisting the library to ensure that OPAC is well implemented and maintained so as to enjoy its full benefit.