Information Seeking Behaviour of Administrators in Tertiary Institutions: Evidence from University of Port Harcourt

This research paper has looked through the information-seeking behaviour in tertiary institutions through the lens of the administrators of the University of Port Sultan in a bid to understand how they find, receive, and use information in achieving academic and administrative goals. The research design used was descriptive survey design, which included all the 116 administrators in units of the University, thus using census technique. The data of six key areas was gathered using a systematic questionnaire, which included: selecting resources, using the search method, evaluating the sources of information, narrowing the sources of information, referring to the information and competitive activities. The descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation were used to examine the data and the findings were presented in tables and charts. The findings indicated that the administrators put the foremost emphasis on the perfecting of information sources and selection of resources. This indicates that they were approaching it in a very pragmatic way by ensuring that the content they collected was practical and applicable. The researcher concludes that the administrators of the University of Port Harcourt placed the practical and functional aspects of information searching in front of the regulatory ones. The research recommends that access to pertinent electronic and print resources must be enhanced, informational search and assessment skills should be better trained and regulating frameworks incorporated more deeply into the information seeking process, that administrators and librarians should collaborate more, and ICT infrastructure must be more robust to facilitate efficient information utilization.