ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to examine reference services delivery and students’ satisfaction in Abia State University Library, Uturu. The study was guided by four objectives. Based on the four purposes, four research questions were poised for the study and three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted descriptive survey research design, the population of this study was 3,128 which comprises 1508 male and 1620 female students. The sample of this study was 313 respondents comprising 151 male and 162 female students representing 10% of the total population using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was the researcher designed questionnaire titled “Reference Services Delivery and Students’ Satisfaction in University Library Questionnaire (RSDSSULQ)”. The instrument was validated by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was 0.84 using Cronbach Alpha statistic. The data for the study was collected through the administration of 313 copies of the questionnaire to respondents, 301 copies were retrieved completely filled and used for data analyses. 301 represents 96% rate of return 146 male and 155 female respondents. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviations while the null hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistic. The result of the data analyses revealed that: The reference services available for students in Abia State university library include: user instruction service, current awareness service, indexing service, abstracting service, bibliographic service and referral services. The reference services are utilized on high extent by students in Abia State university library. The reference services accepted to be highly satisfied by students in Abia State university library include: user instruction service, current awareness service, indexing service, abstracting service, bibliographic service and referral services. The reasons for non-satisfaction of the reference services delivery to students in Abia State university library are: poor reference service policy, insufficient reference materials, outdated reference materials, poor infrastructures, inadequate trained personnel, poor reading environment, poor library orientation and lack of reference service skill. Based on the findings it was recommended that: regular evaluation of reference services should be carried out in the library, this would result in an improved service delivery.