Digital literacy of Unversity students as a pointer to use of Library Database E-Resources in Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated digital literacy of university students as a pointer to use of library database e-resources in Nigeria. Two objectives and two hypotheses where formulated which are: Find out the relationship between digital literacy and use of library electronic resources, to find out the relationship between digital literacy of undergraduate students in federal university and their use of library electronic resources, there is no significant relationship between digital literacy of undergraduate students and their use of library electronic resources and there is no significant relationship between digital literacy of undergraduate students in Federal university and their use of library electronic resources. The design of the study is correlational survey. The population of this study is 18,862 undergraduate students who are registered library users of the three selected universities for this study. The sample for the study comprised one thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven (1,887) undergraduate students. Purposive sampling was used to select one federal, state and private university in Edo state. Descriptive statistics (frequency count, percentages and pearson coefficient, weighted response average) was used to answer all the research questions and Pearson correlation was used in testing the hypotheses. The null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The decision rule was: reject null hypotheses if probability value (Sig-value) is less than 0.05, otherwise, do not reject null hypotheses. Findings show that … There is a significant low positive relationship between digital literacy of undergraduate students and their use of library electronic resources and there is a significant low positive relationship between digital literacy of undergraduate students in Federal university and their use of library electronic resources. Recommendations are… Orientation services should be organized for fresh students on how to effectively access the available electronic digital resources in the university. The orientation should be aimed at improving students’ digital literacy and helping them to acquire the requite abilities needed to effectively use e-resources and librarians in Federal universities should guide students and other library visitor in the use of library electronic resources. Standby librarians should be allotted to the digital section of the library for such purpose.