Abstract:
The study is on consultancy services in first generation federal university libraries in Nigeria. The study was carried out with these purposes, identifying the nature of consultancy services rendered to university libraries, determining the factors that motivates consultancy services in first generation university libraries, verifying the consultancy firms that work for these libraries, determining the level of satisfaction with services rendered, determining the benefits of offering consultancy services to these libraries, determining the perceived problems involved in rendering consultancy services and identifying the strategies used for improving the services rendered by these libraries. Seven research questions were formulated to guide the study. The survey design was used for the study. The population of the study was 306 and the sample consists of 103 librarians and 22 consultants. Major finding made were that, the nature of consultancy services rendered in university libraries in Nigeria are mostly in the areas of library automation, retrospective cataloguing and retrospective conversion of records, and information and communication technology businesses. That area such as anti theft, indexing, current awareness and digital reference services are not yet fully utilized. The study determined that the factors that motivates consultancy services in university libraries are, demand for information delivery, to improve on services rendered to users, willingness to pay for services as at when due and technical know how. The study discovered that eleven consultancy firm’s work for theses libraries and that most of the libraries are satisfied with the services rendered by consultancy firms. Recommendations made for the study were that, policy makers should help university libraries to render better service delivery by releasing more funds to help them improve on services rendered to users, that libraries on their part should consider the information needs of the users and types of products that they want to buy before engaging the services of consultants, so as to avoid paying for what is not needed.
