Information Literacy Skills Required by Blind and visually Impaired Students for Effective Information Access in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka

The work examined the information literacy skills (ILS) of blind and visually impaired students for effective access to information in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The study is a case study, guided by four research objectives which include: ILS’s possessed by the blind and visually impaired students, Method of acquisition of ILS, challenges encountered in the acquisition of ILS and strategies of enhancing their ILS acquisition. The study is a case study. The instruments for data collection were questionnaire and interview. The population of the study comprised 95 visually impaired students of the UNN. Copies of the questionnaire were administered to all 95 visually impaired students, in the presence of volunteered librarians who assisted them in filling the questionnaire. 90 were returned and used for the analysis. Descriptive statistics of frequency mean was used to analyse the data from questionnaire while data obtained from interview was analysed qualitatively. The result revealed that the visually impaired students possess adequate information literacy skills that will enable them to excel in their academic endeavours, though with some challenges, Recommendation were made based on the challenges. These include Incorporating ILS training in the use of library and study skills course taught by Librarians to students, Provision of regular power supply or generating set with automatic change over, provision of scholarship to the people with disability, designing ILS as a compulsory course to all students in the university curriculum, organizing librarians and management information science (MIS) staff, being stake holders, to teach the course and demonstrate the skills to the students with visual impairment and most importantly, creating a sub section of the university library with state of the art facilities and appropriate furnishing, to assist the blind and visually impaired to acquire the IL