Staff Training and Career Development among Library Staff in Federal Universities in Southwest, Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract Library personnel development determines service provision, achievement of institutional goals, productivity/development of users and career development of library staff. The study examined the challenges of career development among library personnel in federal universities in Southwest, Nigeria. Four out of the seven federal universities in Southwest, Nigeria were selected. A structured questionnaire was employed for data collection. Total enumeration technique was employed to gather data from 163 library personnel (80 librarians and 49 paraprofessionals) and 129 (79.6%) copies of the questionnaire were found useful for the study. The study indicated that majority of the library personnel in all the universities perceived that library management was highly committed to capacity building, however, at least 50% of the respondents in each of the universities were of the opinion that the capacity building programmes were inadequate. Furthermore, majority of the library personnel in all the universities reiterated that the most important benefit of capacity building was improvement in service delivery. The three major reasons for attendance of capacity building programmes were to get trained in the latest technologies; enhance library service delivery and because they had never attended before. The programme most attended were workshops/seminars 30 (85.7%) and conferences 30 (85.7%); their greatest challenge was irregular sponsorship from their university. It was recommended that library management should put in place more capacity building programmes to enhance effective service delivery and provide funds for the trainings.