SOCIAL MEDIA: ACCESS TO REFERENCE SERVICES BY STUDENTS IN A UNIVERSITY LIBRARY IN SOUTH-EAST, NIGERIA

The general purpose of the study was to ascertain the use of social media by students to access reference services at the Federal University of Technology Library, Owerri. The survey research design was used for the study using questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The research adopted both the proportionate/stratified and simple random sampling techniques to investigate a sample of 288 students in Federal University of Technology Library, Owerri. Self-constructed and validated questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was used to collect data for the study. Four research questions and one hypothesis were framed for the study. The hypothesis was tested using chi-square (x2) statistical analysis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings show that there are core different types of social media platform in reference services available to the students in Federal University of Technology Library, Owerri; students use social media to retrieve information and conduct research. The hypothesis tested shows that there is no significant difference between the challenges experienced by students in accessing reference services to that encountered by other students in Nigeria university libraries. The study recommends that more contents should be made available on these social media platforms, in order to meet the information needs of the library users. The study also recommend that both the library staff and library users should be made aware of the social media platforms