Evaluation Of Librarians Acceptability Levels And Use Of Cloud Computing For Library Services In Tertiary Institutions Of Kaduna State, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

This study focused on the evaluation librarians’ acceptability levels and use of cloud computing for library services in academic libraries. The study was narrowed to only academic libraries of Kaduna state, Nigeria. The background covers the levels of acceptance of cloud computing from the global, regional and national perspectives. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the librarians’ acceptability and use of cloud computing for library service in academic libraries. The objectives of the study were to explore the perceived need for adopting cloud computing in academic libraries of Kaduna State; to explore librarians’ perceptions of cloud computing in the academic libraries of Kaduna State; to evaluate the extent of use of cloud computing in academic libraries of Kaduna state and to identify the challenges of the adoption of cloud computing in academic libraries of Kaduna State. In the study Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used for its theoretical framework and compliments the model with a conceptual framework for the study. The study has applied descriptive research using survey approach and both quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied in the study. The location of the study population for the study was tertiary institutions owned by Kaduna state in North-West Nigerian. There are total populations of 130 librarians across the 3 academic libraries. The sample size for the study will be 97 across the libraries. Both questionnaire and interviews schedule will be used as instrument for data collection. Piloting will be conducted in a library with similar characteristics but, outside the study area thereby to establish validity and reliability of the instrument which was tested accordingly to ensure internal consistency. All data collected will be sorted and coded for easy handling. Descriptive and inferential statistics methods will be used for data analysis and presentation of results. The key findings from the study were that librarian have adopted cloud computing based specific need attached to their institutional mission and vision, that the benefits derived prompted the need to accept the technology and they believe it can provide a solution to a number of challenges facing their academic libraries. The study also found out that the major bottlenecks were the issue of trust between cloud service providers and consumers which ranges from data integrity, data ownership, data privacy and absence of legislation that guide and guard deployment of cloud. The study concluded that these challenges have significantly influence their level of acceptance. The study recommends that government should make policies to regulate the activities of cloud service providers. Librarians should be train at regular intervals to update their knowledge about cloud services which will give them an insight to carefully study “terms of service”. The study proposes further research in other types of libraries with aim of assisting librarians to make informed decision about which platform of cloud computing to be adopted based on their aspirations to serve their user community.