Librarians’ digital skills: a precursor for effective information service delivery in federal university libraries in South-South, Nigeria

The landscape of information service delivery in university libraries is continually in transition as a result of information technology thereby requiring the digital upskill of librarians in providing effective and efficient information service delivery.It therefore becomes necessary to look at the digital skills of librarians in improving information service delivery.The study determined the influence of librarians' digital skills (computer skills, online communication skills and social media management skill) on information service delivery in federal university libraries in South-South, Nigeria.In pursuant of this, three objectives with corresponding research questions and hypotheses were raised to guide the study.Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study.The population and sample size of the study comprised 105 academic librarians in all the federal university libraries in South-South Nigeria using the total enumeration sampling technique.An instrument titled: "Librarians' Digital Library Skills and Information Service Delivery Questionnaire, face validated by three lecturers with a reliability coefficient of 0.86 obtained using Cronbach Alpha reliability statistics was used to collect data for the study.Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the research questions while dependent t-test was used in testing the hypotheses at .05 level of significance.The findings of the study showed that computer skills, online communication skills and social media management skills have significant influence on information service delivery.Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that librarians' digital skills influence information service delivery in federal university libraries in South-South, Nigeria with particular reference to computer skills, online communication skills and social media management skills.Consequently, it is recommended among others that university library management should organize training and re-training of librarians through workshop and seminar to improve the levels of computer skills of librarians so as to enhance information service delivery also, library management should incorporate more social media platforms for service delivery by librarians to enable the provision of round the clock library services to library users and that librarians should be trained on social media management skills.