Knowledge Sharing, Mentoring Practices and Motivation Among Librarians in Selected Higher Education Institutions in Kwara State, Nigeria

Academic Librarians in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), in many cases are faced by the challenge of inadequate motivation in the work place; most especially in the area of knowledge sharing and mentoring practices in most libraries. In view of this, this paper investigates knowledge sharing, mentoring practices, and motivation among librarians in the selected HEIs in Kwara State, Nigeria. A structured and validated questionnaire was used to collect data from the selected six HEIs in Kwara State spanning across Federal, State, and Private respectively. The sample size for this study constituted 60 academic librarians who were selected using total enumeration method. This study revealed a slight positive correlation between knowledge sharing, mentoring practices, and motivation in the study locale. It further revealed a joint positive influence of the two variables (knowledge sharing and mentoring practices) on motivation. However, in terms of relative contribution, knowledge sharing and mentoring practices made no significant contribution to employee motivation. This study has shown a significant positive but slight correlation exists between knowledge sharing, mentoring practices and motivation among librarians in the selected HEIs in Kwara state. It also revealed that knowledge sharing and mentoring practices did not contribute relatively and significantly to the motivation of librarians in the study area. It was recommended that reward mechanisms should be tied to knowledge sharing and mentoring practices by management of libraries to motivate librarians