Challenges and Impediments of Providing Library and Information Services for Nation Development

The study examined challenges and impediments of providing library and information services for nation development. The research adopted a descriptive survey design. The area of the study includes the two selected universities in Benue State (JS Tarka University Makurdi and Benue State University Makurdi). The population of the study comprises of 156 given the total number of library staff from the two selected universities in Benue State. A simple random sampling technique was employed. The sample size for the study was 10 from each selected university, given a total sample size of 20 respondents. The instrument used for this study was a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was titled “librarianship and journalism as a social components for ethno religious and cultural development and nation building in Benue State, Nigeria†. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficients for a measure of internal consistency of the instrument. The reliability coefficients achieved was 0.77. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions. The study concludes that professional librarians should benefit from the power of ICTs to ensure that university libraries are reorganized to be ICT-compatible and remain the center of provision, production and dissemination of ICT information. Information specialists must be well informed about new inventions in the field of ICT. The study recommend that training of academic librarians should be a priority. It also recommended that resources for staff training and development should not be manipulated at universities and should be disclosed as needed. Experience has shown that training staff are sometimes absent due to insufficient funds.