Students’ awareness and use of serial materials in the federal polytechnic library, Ilaro, Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined students’ awareness and use of serial materials at the Federal Polytecnic Ilaro, Ogun State. The population was 16,639  students. Due to the high population, 10% of the population in each of the six schools in the institution was drawn using proportionate stratified sampling technique. This gave  a sample size of 1,663. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The findings revealed low level of awareness of serial among the students as majority of the respondents used serial materials occastionnally. The major constraints to  students use of serial materials at the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro Ogun were outdatedness of the materials, lack of indexing and abstarcting of serial materials, unstable Internet, inaccessibility of the serial, unstable power supply, inregular supply of dailies, lack of professional personnel, inadequate facilities, lukewarm attitude of the staff and mutilation of library resources. The study recommended that the library management should make current materials available. Students should be introduced to the different sections of the labrary during library orientation in order to create more awareness of the serial section and the management should increase Internet bandwidth and invest on solar system to ensure accessibility of electronic serial materials.