AVAILABILITY AND AWARENESS OF VIRTUAL REFERENCING SERVICES IN SELECTED ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN NIGER STATE

Abstract

The study's primary goals were to find out how widely available VRS infrastructure and technologies are, as well as how knowledgeable librarians and library patrons are about VRS. Three hundred (300) VRS users and thirteen (13) library professionals from the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University Lapai (Abubakar Gimba Library), the Federal University of Technology Minna (Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida Library), and the Niger State College of Education (Yahaya Madaki Library) provided data for the quantitative descriptive design. The results revealed that there exists sufficient infrastructure, technologies, and training facilities and programs accessible to both VRS librarians and users. The conclusions of the investigation indicated that a portion of the librarians were cognizant of VRS, however, they exhibited reluctance in becoming involved in the provision of this service. It is advisable that the awareness of both users and librarians be heightened in order to augment the quantity of VRS users, and to enlist more librarians to ensure timely responses to users. Once again, the study proposed.