The Influences of Top-management Support and Training on Mobile Technology Adoption by Librarians among Universities in South-west, Nigeria

Mobile Technology (MTech) is one of the technologies that have transformed academic librarians’ service delivery by providing instant, concurrent and remote access to information resources and services. Despite the growing trend of MTech, low adoption had been reported in Nigerian university libraries. Hence, the study investigated the influences of top-management support and training on MTech adoption by librarians among universities in South-west, Nigeria. The study: identified the various library services provided via MTech; assessed the extent of adoption of MTech; determined the relationship between top-management support and MTech adoption; and examined the influence of training on MTech adoption by librarians among universities in South-west, Nigeria. The study adopted the quantitative research methodology using descriptive survey design of correlational type, with a population of 476 librarians from universities in South-west, Nigeria. Questionnaire was the data collection instrument and validated by experts, and Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.89 obtained. The research questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the hypotheses tested with Pearson Product Moment Correlation at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that library service mostly provided through MTech was mobile online public access catalogue (65.8%,x̄=0.48), while mobile augmented reality was the least (13.6%,x̄=0.34); there was a significant relationship between top-management support and MTech adoption (r=0.092, p<0.05); and training significantly influenced MTech adoption (r=0.445, p<0.05). The study concluded that top-management support and training significantly influenced MTech adoption by librarians among universities in South-west, Nigeria, and recommended that the library management and the university management should organize constant training and re-training on mobile applications.