ASSESSING INFORMATION NEEDS AND DISSEMINATION OF PUBLIC LIBRARY INFORMATION RESOURCES TO HAUSA RURAL COMMUNITIES IN SELECTED LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS OF JIGAWA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the information needs and dissemination of public library information
resources to Hausa rural communities in selected local government areas of Jigawa State, Nigeria. The
paper evaluates the mode of dissemination of public libraries information resources to meet the
information need of Hausa rural communities’. Three (3)research questions guided the study. A
descriptive survey design was employed. A mixed research methodology approaches was adopted
to gather data from 300 rural Hausa dwellers and 20 library staff. Questionnaire was used to
collect quantitative data while interview was granted collect qualitative data Content analysis via
the Vivo software Data was analyzed using descriptive statistic. And inferential statistic. For the
descriptive statistics frequency distributions, percentages, and tabulations were used to summarize
the findings. For the inferential statistic chi-square was used to test hypothesis at 0.05 level of
significance. While for the quantitative data content analysis was used to analyses the data
collected from the interview using interview using vivo. The findings revealed that agriculture,
health, education, religion, politics and livelihood improvement were the primary information
needs of the Hausa rural communities. The findings identified challenges that faced public
libraries in the dissemination of information resources such as as lack of motivations, lack of rural
libraries, inadequate library staff, lack of information dissemination skills among others. This
study concluded that, Hausa rural communities have enormous information needs and public
libraries disseminate different types of information resources to Hausa rural communities. The study recommended that, public libraries should tailor information resources to align with the
specific needs and cultural contexts of Hausa rural communities.