CONTENT AND CITATION ANALYSIS OF MASTER THESES IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, MINNA, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study carried out the analyses of contents and citations of 30 copies of Masters of Technology theses produced in the Department of Library and Information Technology (LIT), Federal University of Technology, Minna between 2016 to 2019. The study aimed to achieve four objectives and four research questions and subtitles of questions therein. To achieve this, content and bibliographic details were extracted manually with M.Tech Theses Research Content worksheet (M.Tech TRCW) developed by the researcher. The bibliographic details and contents extracted were presented using tables, frequency counts and percentages. The study revealed that the theses were organised with compliance to standard format of research presentations. The study also showed that journals were the highly cited publications (60%), Reports/Reviews (13%), Books (11%), Links/Blogs (11%) while conference proceedings had 5%. The citation behavior of researchers were positive (3708) out of 4072 citations. The study discovered that most highly cited articles are not available in the collection of the library. Hypothesis tested showed that there is a weak associative relationship between location of mentioning and citation functions in M.Tech theses in Library and Information Technology. The research recommended that library managers adopt the findings of this study to facilitate the availability of necessary resources for Library and Information Technology research. It also recommended that research supervisors ensure the necessary research component and organization of research are maintained in Library and Information Technology research in Federal University of Technology, Minna