Assessment of Library and Information Professionals’ Perception of COVID-19 and Its Impacts on Libraries in Nigeria

1. Introduction

The corona virus induced pandemic otherwise known as COVID-19 pandemic has in no small measure disrupted life as we used to know and live it across the world. From academic activities to economic endeavors, the pandemic has maintained a biting effect on virtually every aspect of human life. This has warranted significant challenges for world economies and global health (Conti & Younes, 2020). Breaking out in “Wuhan” city of the Hubei region of China in December 2019, the corona virus, scientifically referred to as CoV19/SARS-CoV-2, an extremely pathogenic organism, is responsible for the disease condition known as Corona Virus Disease 2019 or COVID-19. This highly contagious severe acute respiratory disease with high morbidity and mortality rates has so far, January 18, 2021 at 10:38pm CET, affected 93,805,612 people out of which 2,026,093 deaths have been recorded globally (World Health Organisation, 2021).

Notwithstanding the harsh reality of the pandemic, there seem to be differing opinions as per the outbreak and spread of the virus. In fact, little did many know what was initially thought to be a Chinese epidemic could become the pandemic that it has become. Yet, the disease seems to be perceived in various ways by different people across different professional, societal and cultural settings. This is further aggravated by the novelty of the corona virus of which little is known in the scientific community. In the same vein, scientific claims and counter claims have emerged from established authorities such as the WHO and many national governments and scientific institutions on the management of the virus especially in relation to its mode of transmission. Even among the generality of the populace, people seem to have divergent opinions on the pandemic and its disruptive impact on the society and communities of practice, including libraries, and library professionals in Nigeria. This explains the rise of misinformation which falls into the realm of COVID-19 conspiracies (Allington, et al., 2020).

In line with the rise of misinformation, libraries were affected and reshaped in many ways. According to Martzoukou (2020), the pandemic has become a catalyst for resifting priorities and change for libraries. Connaway (2020) asserted that this change and adaptations for information, services, and resources provision in libraries, lead to OCLC’s identification of a new model library. However, assessment of information professional’s perception of COVID-19 and its impact on library is an area that has not been sufficiently researched. Thus, this study therefore finds it imperative to assess the self-reported perception of LI professionals on COVID-19 so as to ascertain what LI professionals feel about the pandemic, and its effect on libraries.

2. Literature Review

3. Research Method

Descriptive survey research design was adopted in the study. The study population comprises Library and Information Professionals in Nigeria and sample size selected through purpose sampling technique given the peculiarities of the time when the survey was carried out. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire designed and administered online by the researchers using Microsoft Forms. The link to the questionnaire was circulated to Library and Information professionals in Nigeria through social media platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook (examples of professional platforms used are National Library Association, NALISE, etc.) and listserv for a period of 3 months, between May and August, 2020. A total response rate of 101 was recorded and data collected were analyzed using “Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 23”. Descriptive analysis of demographic data of respondents and their perception of COVID-19 were presented in tables through frequencies and percentages while multivariate regression technique was used to test the significance of relationship between the independent variables: gender, educational qualification and type of library and respondents’ perception of Covid-19 at P < 0.05. The Multivariate regression was used based on its merit as a powerful test of significance when considering the effect of multiple variables simultaneously.

4. Results

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of Respondents

A total of 101 LIS Professionals responded, out of which 42.6% were male while 57.4% were female, giving a ratio of 0.7:1. Most respondents (50.5%) were Master’s degree holders and 27.7% Ph.D. holders in LIS respectively while 3% had National Certificate in Education (NCE). A large percent of the respondents were academic librarians (80.2%) followed by those who worked in special libraries (5.9%), LIS educators (4.9%), and school librarians (4%).

Table 2.

Respondents’ Perception of COVID-19

The results reported combined the Agree and Strongly Agree and Disagree and Strongly Disagree responses in percentages. This approach was used in a past study (Nwakaego, 2017). The result shows that most respondents (79.2%) disagreed that COVID-19 was a mere power play by world political forces while some respondents (61.4%) agreed that COVID-19 is real but have their personal reservations. Interestingly, 28.7% and 18.8% accounted for aggregate of 47.5% that both agreed and strongly agreed that COVID-19 is a scientific invention.

Table 3.

Respondents’ Perception of the Impact of COVID-19 on Libraries, Librarians and Library Services

Finding above shows that 72.3% of the respondents agreed that COVID-19 is a game changer and will greatly change the practice of librarianship in the coming years, 57.9% agreed that COVID-19 will reduce the use of library print resources while 60.4% agreed that COVID-19 will negatively affect library patronage d 54.5% agreed that library budget will rise significantly as a result of COVID-19. Also, 90.1% agreed that library will rely more on e-resources to stay relevant in post COVID-19 and 85.1% agreed that library space will be reconfigured to safely operate in post COVID-19. Moreover, 83.2% agreed that library rules and regulations will change in post COVID-19 and 93.1% agreed that library will create new services to address the changes caused by COVID-19. However, 56.5% disagreed that library will lay off staff to adjust to life after COVID-19 a perception to which 24.8% of the respondent were neutral.

4.1 Hypotheses Testing

Before the test of significance, the dataset was examined for multi-collinearity using the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) diagnostic check. The results showed that multi-collinearity was absent among the independent variables with VIF equal to 1.058, 1.074 and 1.037 for gender, educational qualification and type of library, respectively. Hence the three variables were qualified for the test of significance.

The Multivariate regression model was used to test the hypotheses based on its merit as a powerful test of significance when considering multiple dependent and independent variables simultaneously.

Table 4.

Respondents Demographic Information and their perceptions of COVID-19

H₀ : The demographic information of LI professionals does not have a significant influence on their perceptions of COVID-19

The level of significance) is set at 0.05. The null hypothesis (H₀) is rejected in favor of the alternative hypothesis (H₁) for each construct when the P-value indicating significance.

The third construct shows that educational qualification of respondents significantly influenced respondents’ perception that COVID-19 is real but I have personal reservations (P-value = 0.03, B: 0.335, [95% CI: 0.034 – 0.636]).

H₀ : The demographic information of LI professionals doesn’t have a significant influence on their perceptions of COVID-19 on libraries, librarians and library services

The second and last constructs in Table 5 show that educational qualification of respondents had a significant impact on respondents’ perceptions that COVID-19 will reduce the use of library print resources (P-value = 0.005, B: 0.38, [95% CI: 0.115 – 0.646]) and that library will create new services to address the changes caused by COVID-19 (P-value = 0.016, B: 0.302, [95% CI: 0.059 – 0.545]).

Table 5.

Respondents Demographic Information and their perceptions of the Impact of COVID-19 on Libraries, Librarians and Library Services

5. Discussion

The result reveals that females responded more than the males, giving a ratio of 1:0.7. According to Ikenwe, Adegbilero-Iwari and Adegbilero-Iwari (2021), in most research, females respond more than their male counterparts. Most respondents possess Master’s degree followed by Ph.D. This corroborates the study of Ishtiaq, Sehar and Shahid in 2020, when they averred that 65.5% of their sampled population was Master’s degree holders. More percentage of the respondents was devoted to academic librarians; preceded by special librarians and LIS educators while school LIPs had the lowest score.

Finding reveals that most respondents disagreed that COVID-19 was a mere power play by world political powers, while many of the respondents agreed that COVID-19 is real but have their personal reservations. In other words, most respondents perceived COVID-19 as real. However, 28.7% and 18.8% accounting on an aggregate of 47.5% for agreed and strongly agreed that COVID-19 is a scientific invention. This result lends credence to the fact that the pandemic was not perceived as real by some people, and resulted to the issue of conspiracy theories. This is progressively consistent with Uscinski, et al. (2020) who found that “31 per cent agree that coronavirus was intentionally created and spread”, a claim they classified as conspiracy theory in their study and corroborated by other works. In fact, Allington, et al. (2020) reported that laboratory origin for the coronavirus as the most commonly held conspiracy perception. Studies have shown an inverse relationship between “COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and health-protective behaviors intended to mitigate the spread of the virus” (Allington & Dhavan, 2020; Freeman et al., 2020).

On the impact of COVID-19 on libraries, the finding shows that most respondents agreed that COVID-19 is a game changer and will greatly change the practice of librarianship in the coming years; COVID-19 will negatively affect library patronage and reduce the use of library print resources. Also, libraries will rely more on e-resources to stay relevant in post-COVID-19 era, library space will be reconfigured to safely operate in post-COVID-19, library rules and regulations will change in post-COVID-19 and library will create new services to address the changes caused by COVID-19 and library budget will rise significantly as a result of COVID-19. Although, reduced library budget has been going on for years, most library directors that took part in Scholarly Kitchen survey reported constrictions in their budget for year 2020 and potentially for 2021 (Frederick, Schonfeld & Wolff-Eisenberg, 2020). However, these cuts do not mean new expenses are not going to be incurred. Lisa Peet in a September 24, 2020 article in Library Journal reported the experiences of directors of public libraries on “unexpected expenses” associated with operations during COVID-19. For Multnomah County Library in Oregon, United States, Teet quoted the Library Director, Vailey Oehlke, that “new expenses relating to the crisis have surfaced,” which involve “shifting in-person services to virtual, instituting a book mailing system, moving programs like summer lunch and computer labs outdoors, and supporting Portland’s largest school district, which will conduct all classes virtually at least through November”. This supports the perception of our respondents that libraries may have to spend more except budget control or cuts are implemented. It also corroborated the findings that new library services will be created to address the changes caused by COVID-19. The study of Fasae, Adekoya, and Adegbilero-Iwari (2020) confirmed that libraries in Nigeria modified their services in an attempt to comply with innovations brought about by the pandemic. Further corroborating the finding, Connaway (2020) referred to the post-pandemic era of library as “The New Model Library” where library in the next five years will discard more investment in print resources in favor of online materials, as reported by some library directors (Frederick, Schonfeld, & Wolff-Eisenberg, 2020).

Finding shows that educational qualification of respondents significantly influenced respondents’ perception that COVID-19 is real (P-value = 0.03, B: 0.335, [95% CI: 0.034 – 0.636]). Although, the result does not show the kind of association, it does align with Prickles, et al. (2021) that found that misinformation is associated with low educational level. It however disagrees with previous works by Cassese, Farhart and Miller (2020) and Prickles, et al. (2021) which reported gender significance in particular, that “men are more likely to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy theories or misinformation than women”.

The study also found that educational qualification of respondents had a significant impact on respondents’ perceptions that COVID-19 will reduce the use of library print resources (P-value = 0.005, B: 0.38, [95% CI: 0.115 – 0.646]) and that library will create new services to address the changes caused by COVID-19 (P-value = 0.016, B: 0.302, [95% CI: 0.059 – 0.545]). Whereas no research was found to have been done in this regard, finding of this study consistently reveal the association of educational qualification with respondents’ perception of the impact of COVID-19 on libraries. Studies have reported that many libraries switched to more usage of digital resources while others created new services to meet their patrons’ needs during the restrictions occasioned by the pandemic (Peet, 2020; Connaway, 2020; Frederick, Schonfeld & Wolff-Eisenberg, 2020).

6. Conclusions

In Nigeria, most Library and Information professionals as information disseminators and knowledge gatekeepers perceive COVID-19 as real though, some still have their reservations that it’s an invention. This is a pointer to conspiracy theory issues. In line with the findings in the study, educational qualification of respondents had impact on their COVID-19 perceptions, and COVID-19 has impact on libraries, and library services. Thus, the study concluded that COVID-19 will change library space and introduce new services as well as generate more reliance on e-resources. The study therefore recommends that libraries should take advantage of the present circumstance to innovate with new services. Also, public health institutions should continually educate people on corona virus to disabuse people’s mind of conspiracy theories. Future studies with larger sample size is recommended. It is also recommended that new study be carried out on the perceptions of librarians since the invention of vaccines more so that the virus has stayed longer than when this study was conducted.

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