Social media use as a determinant of librarians’ perceived job performance in universities in South-West, Nigeria.

Abstract

Job performance is an important index that predicts probable success or failure of any university library. Studies have established that librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria have not been able to deliver quality library services which has manifested in low patronage by members of the university community. This development may be attributable to non exploitation of social media for job related tasks and services. The study investigated social media use as a determinant of librarians’ perceived job performance in universities in the South-West Nigeria. The study adopted the survey research design. The population of the study was 393 academic librarians in the forty-two (42) universities in South-West, Nigeria. Total enumeration was employed. A structured and validated questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for the constructs ranged from 0.90 to 0.96. The response rate was 94.2%. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that social media use influenced job performance of librarians in the universities (R2 = 0.111, β = .375, t(327) = 6.380; p < 0.05). The study also found that librarians perceived their job performance as high, and that they use social media for outreach and marketing services. It was also revealed that facebook is the most used medium by librarians in the universities in their deployment of library services. The study concluded that Social media use impacts on librarians’ job performance and the flexibility of the media which encourages instant posting, updating, sharing and dissemination of information online with opportunities for feedback and contributions makes the media a good marketing and outreach platform for libraries to reach their diverse users. The study, thus, recommends that library managements should take stock of their libraries’ use of social media for library tasks and services, and see the existing gap with a view to addressing the weakness observed. University libraries should also design a documented policy on their intended use of social media for library services. University library managements should initiate continuous in-service trainings for librarians on the use of social media for their services; as ICT platforms will continue to evolve, as such the need to keep librarians abreast of developments should be a major concern for library managers.