Librarians’ Awareness of Intellectual Property Protection Rights in public universities in Southern Nigeria

Abstract

This study carried out a survey on Librarians’ awareness of Intellectual Property Protection Rights (IPPR) in public universities in Southern Nigeria. IPPR which is a major instrument for the protection of intellectual property of librarians in public universities in Nigeria, is not fully utilised. There are doubts on the actual intellectuality of the librarians owing to the quality of their research outputs which is alleged of not being subjected to intellectual property protection right (IPPR) test. The descriptive survey design was adopted. Five hundred and fifty-five (326 federal and 229 state) university librarians from 36 (18 federal and 18 state) public university libraries in Southern Nigeria were enumerated. A questionnaire with Librarians’ Awareness of IPPR (α = 0.88), was used. In-depth interview sessions were held with 18 senior librarians. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data were content-analysed. Awareness of IPPR (x̅ = 40.3 was high against the thresholds of 34.7, among the librarians. There was significant positive relationships among awareness of IPPR (r = 0.11), the perceived IPPR were mainly the fear of misuse of publications, writers and publishers agreement and publications enforcement. Librarians’ awareness of intellectual property protection rights is importance to the growth of librarians in public universities in Southern Nigeria. Therefore, concerted efforts should be made by various institutions to expose librarians to research and training opportunities on these rights.