PROBLEMS OF SELECTION AND ACQUISITION OF LEGAL MATERIALS IN FACULTY OF LAW LIBRARIES IN NIGERIA: A CASE STUDY OF FACULTY OF LAW LIBRARY BENUE STATE UNIVERSITY, MAKURDI- NIGERIA

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate the problems of selection and acquisition of legal materials at the faculty of law library, Benue State University - Nigeria. The study was guided by five objectives and a survey research design was adopted. Twelve professional librarians from Faculty of Law Library was sampled for the study. The researchers developed a questionnaire which was used as instrument for data collection. Frequency counts, percentages and means were used as statistical tools to analyzed the collected data. The findings of the study revealed that, problems such as lack of funds, absence of collection development policy, high cost of legal materials, lack of technical capabilities and lack of bibliographical control of published legal resources among others are the major problems militating against effective selection and acquisition of legal materials. The researchers therefore, suggested strategies that should be adopted in order to overcome the problems of selection and acquisition of legal materials. These among others include; provision of adequate funding for law libraries, development and implementation of collection development policy, training and retraining of librarians and full integration of ICT in selection and acquisition process of legal materials. Keywords: Problems, Selection, Acquisition, Legal materials, Law libraries