Influence of Environmental Factors on the Productivity of Librarians in Colleges of Education

Abstract

Provision of conducive work environment is fundamental to the productivity of all employees (including librarians in colleges of education) in any organisation. To achieve maximum productivity, management of all organisations, including college libraries must accord prime attention to the work environment of the employees. This is because, high productivity might become elusive to an organisation, even if employees are offered attractive salaries with little or no attention devoted to their working condition. The study, therefore, examined environmental factors as they influence the research productivity of librarians in colleges of education. The study adopted correlational research design. The population for the study comprises 63 colleges of education libraries (21 federal and 42 state owned) and the 356 librarians that are found in the libraries. Two instruments- Questionnaire on Job Motivation and Librarian Productivity (r= 0.97) and in-depth Interview (IDI)for college librarians only were used for data collection. The data were analysed using simple descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regression. Findings from the study revealed that majority of the sampled librarians are not productive in terms of research productivity . Moreover, Internet connectivity, collaboration with colleagues and ownership of institution had significant influence on the productivity of librarians with values ( r = 0.137; p < 0.05) and (r = 0.229; p< 0.05 ) (r = 0.249; p < 0.05) respectively. Since librarians are not productive in terms of research productivity , there is need to provide them with better working environment such as connecting their offices with Internet amongst others.