Reviving the Reading culture: School Library Programmes in Promoting Voluntary Reading amongst Students: the Case of Imo State, Nigeria.

Considering the poor state of the Nigerian reading culture, this paper went to look into the how school library programmes could be used to promote free voluntary reading thereby reviving the dilapidated reading culture. The main objectives of the study were to find out the school library reading programmes employed in promoting free voluntary reading of secondary school students and examine the influence of school library reading programmes on free voluntary reading. The study was a survey; the population comprised of 36 secondary schools from where 27 were sampled with about 1000 student users of the school libraries. Questionnaires and interview (for the teacher librarians) were used to collect data which was analyzed using frequencies, percentages, averages, and presented in tables and pie chart. Multiple Regression analysis ( at 0.05 level of significance) was used to test the null hypothesis. Major findings showed that access to reading materials, lending of books for personal reading, debate and assistance in selection of books for personal reading were programmes employed by school libraries; there is a strong positive correlation between school library programmes and free voluntary reading of secondary school students and hypothesis testing showed that there is a relationship between school library reading prograrmmes and free voluntary reading