INFORMATION NEEDS AND INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOUR OF ARTISANS IN NSUKKA METROPOLIS OF ENUGU STATE.

ABSTRACT

The study is on the information needs and information seeking behaviour of artisans in Nsukka metropolis of Enugu state. The specific objectives of the study are to determine the information needs of artisans in Nsukka metropolis,  to find out the extent to which their information seeking behaviour helps in meeting their information needs, to identified the sources used by the artisans in meeting their information needs, to asses the obstacles facing artisans in their search for information, to determine strategies of enhancing their information seeking behaviour for the satisfaction of their information needs and to assess the influence of selected demographic characteristic (gender, age and educational background ) on satisfaction of their information needs.  The survey research design was used while six research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study consists of all registered male and female artisans in Nsukka metropolis and ten percent of the population was sampled. The instrument used for study was a questionnaire titled Information Needs and Information Seeking Behaviour of Artisan’s Questionnaire (INISBAQ). Percentages which was presented in a bar chart was used to analyze the demographic characteristic of the respondents, weighted mean was used to analyzed the data collected from research questions 1-5 while mean and standard deviation was used to analyzed research question 6 A one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for the computation of responses with regards to the hypothesis 1 while mean was used for the computation of hypothesis 2 The findings of this study were: that, artisans in Nsukka metropolis of Enugu state have many information needs and have various ways of seeking information and there are many barriers to meeting their information needs. The implications of the study for government, libraries and artisans were discussed. The recommendations based on the findings were that government should provide continuing education programmes for artisans in their various vocations to enable them to perform their duties effectively and artisans should be encouraged by the government to take advantages of distance education programmes and evening classes. There is also need to provide quality and properly trained information agents to assist in identifying information needs of special groups like artisans and providing the required information. Community outreach programmes could be organized by government and other information agencies and public libraries should be proactively involved in the provision of information to artisans.