Librarians’ ICT Competencies and Utilization of Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries in Rivers State, Nigeria

The main purpose of this study was to determine the extent of the relationship between Librarians’ ICT competencies and utilization of emerging technologies in academic libraries in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study was carried out using a correlational design. Three research questions, three objectives guided the study and three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study was 55 librarians in four academic libraries in Rivers State. A census sampling technique was used for this study, where all the 55 librarians were used as respondents. A structured questionnaire titled: Librarians’ ICT Competencies and Utilization of Emerging Technologies Questionnaire (LICTUETQ) was used for data collection with 4 point likert scales. The response options on the instrument were: Strongly agree (SD) (4), Agree (A) (3), Disagree (D) (2), strongly disagree (SD) (1). A trial testing technique was adopted to ensure reliability of the instrument. The instrument was administered on seven respondents in Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic Library Bori. Cronbach Alpha was used to analyze the data which yielded coefficient of 0.96. Linear Regression analysis was used to answer and test the null hypotheses at the.05 level of significance with the help of Statistics Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23. The findings of the study showed a significant relationship between basic computer competencies, between information retrieval competencies and web 2.0 competencies of librarians and utilization of emerging technologies in academic libraries in Rivers State, Nigeria. It was recommended that training and re-training of librarians on the basic computer competencies, informational retrieval competencies, competencies and web 2.0 competencies