EFFECT OF CONSORTIUM BUILDING ON INFORMATION RESOURCES IN MEDICAL LIBRARIES IN BENUE STATE

Abstract

The study was designed to ascertain the effect of consortium on information resources in medical libraries in Benue State. User's opinions from five medical libraries were sample and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study was guided by two specific objectives and two research questions. The study was hinged on Technology Acceptance Model by Davis 1989 (TAM) theory. The study adopted survey research design. The study was carried out in Benue State using a targeted population of 956 respondents from Benue State Teaching Hospital Medical Library, College of Health Science Medical Library, School of Nursing Medical Library and School of Midwifery Medical Library. The sample for the study was 282 respondents from the five medical libraries. The sample was drawn from the population using proportionate stratified random sampling techniques. The instrument for data collection was selfdeveloped questionnaire titled 'Influence of Information Consortium building on Information Resources in Medical Libraries (ICBOIRMLQ. The instrument was validated. The reliability of the questionnaire was established using cronbach alpha method, a reliability coefficient of 0.875 was obtained. Research questions were answered using descriptive statistics of frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation. The findings of the study revealed that, consortium building are in existence in medical libraries in Benue State, it has moderate effect on medical series materials in medical libraries in Benue State with a mean of 2.89 the challenges faced in Consorting Building in Medical Libraries in Benue State are inadequacy of existing resources, lack of policies, uncooperative attitude of parent bodies, unstable budgetary allocation and lack of trained personnel for handling new technology, it concluded that all these should not deter medical libraries in participating in consortium building but rather should encourage them to extend consortium building to other resources that are lacking and recommend among others that medical libraries should be ready to put up strong worded proposal to parent institutions in order to be allowed to participate in consortium building, they should be equally ready to lobby at any slightest meeting to convince the medical institutions management committee to fund and maintain financial allocation to the library, and formulate policy on consortium building to make it easy to convince parent institutions on their medical libraries participating in consortium building.