Influence of Job Motivation, Demographic And Environmental Factors On The Productivity Of Librarians In Colleges Of Education In Nigeria

Abstract

Attainment of high productivity is of primary concern to all employees and management of most organisations, including colleges of education libraries. To achieve maximum productivity, management experts advocate increased staff welfare among several measures to ensure job commitment and satisfaction among the different categories of employee, including libraries. This study, examined job motivation, demographic and environmental factors influencing research productivity of librarians in colleges of education in Nigeria. Total enumeration technique was used to cover all the 356 librarians in the 63 public colleges of education that existed as at 2011 in Nigeria. Private colleges were excluded as they do not have common labour policy. The following instruments were used: Librarians’ Productivity Scale (r=0.71); Job Motivation of Librarians Scale (r=0.87); Librarians’ Job Training Programme Scale (r=0.85); Librarians’ Environmental Scale (r=0.75). These were complemented with 10 sessions of In-depth Interview (IDI) from purposively selected chief librarians. Three research questions were answered and 11 hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using percentages, Pearson Product Moment correlation, multiple regression and qualitative data were subjected for content analysis .Librarians’ research productivity correlated with each of: staff development (r=0.37), job motivation (r=0.28), educational qualification (r=0.25), work experience (r=0.23), collaboration with colleagues (r=0.23), conducive environment (r=0.20), age (r=0.17), job status (r=0.15), and internet connectivity (r=0.14). Job motivation and demographic and environmental factors had significant composite influence on librarians’ research productivity(F(9,228)=7.23, p<0.05; R = 0.47) and jointly contributed 19.1% to the variance of the independent variable.IDI results revealed that there is problem of poor power supply as well as poor internet connectivity, which makes it difficult for the librarians to access electronic information for the enhancement of their research productivity.. There is the need to ensure better power supply as well as Internet accessibility in public colleges of education in Nigeria.