A Survey of the Information Needs, Uses and Seeking Behaviour of Pharmacists in Oyo State, Nigeria

This study sought to know the information needs and seeking behaviour of pharmacists. The study also attempted to know the relationship between the areas of practice and the pharmacists’ preference for the information sources they used. The survey was based on a sample of one hundred and fifty nine (159) pharmacists in Oyo State spread across the various areas of pharmacy practice. The questionnaire was used as the research instrument. The study found that pharmacists have a variety of information needs according to the user and the area of practice. The major need was found to be drug information need. The study also found that the informal sources were more frequently used than formal sources, except for academic pharmacists who used the formal sources more frequently. This implies that the area of professional practice influences the source used. It was also found that there were a lot of problems that prevented the pharmacists from accessing needed information. The predominant problems are difficulty in accessing foreign journals and materials and inadequate current information materials. Key Words: Information Needs, Pharmacists, Information Seeking. JCMRJournal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 2, No. 2, October 2010, 127 – 145. About the authors *Olusola Oyeyinka Oyewo, Ph.D, is a lecturer in the Department of Communication & Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. **Moradeke Oluyemisi Oyewo is of the African Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Full Article Words: 7,519 Pages: 19 To access full article, click on download. Article Citation Oyewo, O. O. & Oyewo, M. O. (2010): A survey of the information needs, uses and seeking behaviour of pharmacists in Oyo State, Nigeria. Journal of Communication and Media Research 2(2): 127 – 145.