Scholarly Publications of Librarians in Universities in Nigeria: 2000-2012-A Bibliometric Analysis

Introduction Scholarly publications are those documents published through peer-review process and accepted in the form of recorded sources such as books, chapters in books, conference papers and proceedings, articles in refereed journals, creative works and visual arts among others. Publications, according to Okafor (2011:1), is a means by which academics contribute new knowledge to the existing body of knowledge and are usually made public in the forms of journal articles, technical reports, books, chapters in books and other scholarly publications. Furthermore, Yusuf (2005), opined that research publication is a major index of an academic quality and is the determinant of his/her advancement in academic career. One of the ways of analyzing the research outputs or publications of individuals, organizations, institutions or countries is through bibliometric analysis. The term "bibliometric" was coined by Pritchat in 1969 and defined as the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication. The aim of bibliometric analysis is to reveal the extent of research output, publications, activities, preference and nature of literature produced (Kasa, 2015). Librarians in Nigerian University libraries got academic status like their teaching counterparts via a circular from the National Universities Commission NUC in 1993. Statement of the Problem Demand for academic status by librarians in Universities was a universal phenomenon. According to Onohwakpor and Tiemo (2006), the struggle started in the United States in the 40's and spread to Britain and Canada in the 80's. In Nigeria, the struggle came to its climax in 1993 following an agreement reached between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government of Nigeria (NUC, 1993). This development though desired, came with it a lot of pains as many librarians became stagnated in their career positions (Idiodi and Bozimo, 2002). Furthermore, publishing and creating information has not hither-to been part of the librarian's responsibility. According to Sitienei and Ocholla (2010:2), people generally, believed that librarians confined themselves to shelving, checking books in- and -out, classifying and cataloguing of books and other information materials in the library, in addition, to reporting for duty as early as 8.00am and closing as late as 4.00pm daily including weekends to carryout routine library services. This strenuous nature of librarians' work combined with workload sometime make them to be at a disadvantage regarding the amount of time available for them to make meaningful scholarly research and publications. Similarly, personal discussions with colleagues in the study area and common knowledge gathered by the researchers through conferences, workshops and seminars over the years, had shown that many of the librarians have not make significant progress in research and publications. It is in the light of these discussions and observations that this research was deemed necessary by the researchers. Objectives of the Study The objectives of this study were to: 1. Determine the reasons motivating librarians in the area to publish. 2. Determine the publications of librarians in the area. 3. Determine the publication of individual librarians in the area. 4. Determine the publications of librarians by gender. 5. Determine the publications of librarians by rank; and 6. Identify the constraints in their publication efforts. Hypotheses The following hypotheses were tested. Ho 1. There is no significant difference in Number of publications between the male and female academic librarians. Ho 2. There is no significant difference in Number of publication among academic librarians of various ranks. Methodology Descriptive survey method was used in this study to analyze the publications of librarians in Universities in Nigeria. …