PERCEPTION OF LIBRARIANS TOWARDS USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR INFORMATION SERVICE DELIVERY IN NORTHWEST UNIVERSITY KANO STATE

ABSTRACT This study investigates how librarians perceive social media in library and information service delivery (A case study of Northwest University Kano). The study consults and review previous research on the use of social media to provide service delivery by librarians by librarians. This research highlighted the opportunities offer by social media to improve service delivery, the study also discuss the categorization of social media, types of social media, applicability of social media, challenges face by librarians when using social media and strategies on incorporating social media when using service delivery. Based on the conceptual review carried out, majority of studies reveals that librarians use social media and ICT in information service library and the most use form of social media is the Facebook, WhatApps and Twitter, but, however, they do encounter obstacles in terms when using the social media. The survey research design was adopted for the study. The populations of the study are the library staffs of Northwest University, Kano State, comprising 66 librarians working in the university library. Table and percentage were used to cover all 66 library staff as for the study. The study concludes that librarians actually use social media for library information service delivery, but yet there is a lot of challenges for proper use of social media in library and information delivery. The study therefore, recommend that; There is need to encourage social media facilities use among staff of Northwest University, Kano State, especially those with least level of relevance as it expected of any library staff to be knowledgeable and able to use any of the platforms for information service delivery. The university management should facilitate job training in this direction for its library staff members as this would improve the level of relevance, awareness and encourage the usage of these social media facilities among the University Library Staffs’. Library personnel should fully apply social media to deliver information services. This will help them reach out to many people at a time as well as improve access to information services delivery. The library management should facilitate and encourage use of social media among library personnel by making available adequate infrastructure that supports internet connectivity in the library in other to resolved challenges encountered in usage of social media. This will encourage the librarians and paraprofessionals to use the social media at work for library service deliver