Knowledge Sharing Behaviour by Librarians in Federal Universities in Nigeria

Abstract

The ongoing debate in the international community’s is on the evaluation of knowledge sharing and its impact on organisational effectiveness. Librarians play a pivotal role in helping the university to realise the objective of teaching, learning and research. Librarians provide access to information resources and services to support the vision and mission of their parent institution. Knowledge are being created daily in organisation, hence, they should be shared. Although, there have been researches on knowledge sharing by librarians in Nigeria but the focus have always been on sectional part or on one or two geo-political zones, without national study as scope of study. This study therefore investigated knowledge sharing by librarians in federal universities in Nigeria. The population of study comprised 654 librarians from 40 federal universities in Nigeria. A total enumeration technique was used to cover 654 librarians. The descriptive statistics was employed for data analysis. 518 respondents filled and returned the questionnaire, given a response rate of 79.2%.  The results revealed that the level of knowledge sharing by librarians is high ( =98.47. SD =11.54). The channel of knowledge sharing by librarians varies significantly from face-to-face to the use of social media. Significant difference exists on knowledge sharing by librarians based on the universities. The study concludes that librarians are not only knowledge managers but also knowledge disseminators. Therefore, library administrators should establish as well as formalised knowledge sharing hours in the library so that the culture of knowledge sharing can be maintained among the librarians. Recognition and incentives be given to librarians who share knowledge so that they can share more knowledge.

Keywords

• Knowledge sharing,Channels,Levels,Librarians,University libraries

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