Digital Maturity of University Libraries in Nigeria

Abstract

This chapter reports the findings of a survey of the level of digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. Forty-eight university libraries responded to an online survey based on the framework for digital mature schools (FDMS). The findings reveal that the libraries are e-enabled but yet to attain digital maturity. The paper also shows that the dimensions of ICT planning, management and leadership, and ICT infrastructural development statistically predict the digital maturity status of university libraries.

1. Introduction

University education is one sector of national economies tremendously influenced by digital transformation. According to Fosu [1], “the 21^st century global digital and knowledge-based economies evolution powered by the rapid advancement of ICT with its gadgets have brought about a global wave of change in the education sector”. With the current COVID-19 pandemic speeding up the hitherto steady developments, university campuses become more innovative by using virtual learning environments and digital communication platforms for teaching and learning; and applying knowledge and business analytics for decision making.

The incursion of the digital revolution into teaching, learning and research presents university libraries with opportunities and challenges to cope with changing information behaviours, resources and sources of their patrons, majorly students and faculty members. The ICT evolution and revolution, on the one hand, present university libraries with the opportunities of:

• using various gadgets and applications to present information sources and resources to patrons;

• using multiple platforms to communicate, collaborate and cooperate with patrons and other libraries in resource sharing and networking.

On the other hand, university libraries are grappling with how users access and use information which warrants that every library content is on electronic platforms. Such demands require deploying substantial human and capital resources that are scarcely available and accessible to university libraries, particularly in developing countries like Nigeria.

University libraries are organised to support their host institutions’ teaching, learning, and research activities, and to satisfy the ever-changing needs of their patrons fully, they take steps to integrate digital technologies with their operations and services. However, the pace of digital transformation in university libraries varies from institution to institution, country to country and region to region. Hence the libraries are at different degrees of their abilities to respond and take advantage of technological developments in their operations and services, a phenomenon referred to as digital maturity.

This book chapter seeks to interrogate and report on the digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. It attempts to review the libraries’ efforts to adopt digital technologies and techniques for creating and adding value to their services to understand their levels of abilities to respond to the environment created by the evolving digital economy. The whole essence of this adventure is to determine the existence in the libraries of the capabilities, competencies, tools and infrastructure required to understand and respond to the needs and desires of the information user in the unfolding digital environment. In the final analysis, the discourse would establish the reality or fallacy of the digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. It will help the institutions and their owners understand the statuses of their digital compliance and determine how commensurate with their digital technologies investments is their ability to respond to the digital economy’s demands.

Although university libraries were doing amazing things with ICTs, the library and information science literature reports only few of university libraries in Nigeria making deliberate efforts to adopt, deploy and use digital technologies and strategies for the digitalisation of information services and resources to address some peculiar challenges. For instance, Adeleke [2] reported how Tekena Tamuno Library, Redeemer’s University, Ede resolved staff-patron conflicts with digitising past examination questions. The paper reiterates the power of the digital economy to remove interpersonal conflicts and establish peaceful co-existence among members of a community. The dearth of reports about university libraries in Nigeria deliberately implementing digital solutions to address research, teaching and learning issues informs the present attempt to investigate the digital maturity of the libraries.

A digitally mature library uses appropriate information and communications technologies for efficient and transparent management of resources and services, develops the digital competence of its personnel for innovative services, and develops its users’ digital capacity to be life-long users of information in any environment. In short, digitally mature libraries have a high level of integration of ICTs in their routine operations and services and systematically approach the deployment of ICT in supporting the teaching, learning and research mandates of their parent institutions to adapt to the evolving digital environment.

The concept of digital maturity refers to the formation of specific capabilities to manage digital transformation in an organisation. Digital maturity represents the degree of adoption and application of digital technologies in business models. Kane et al. [3] see digital maturity as a systematic way for an organisation to transform digitally. Digital maturity incorporates managerial aspects of ICTs to describe what a company has already done and will do in digital transformation efforts that involve products, services, processes, skills, culture and abilities regarding the mastery of change processes [4]. Westermann et al. [5] assumed that developing specific digital capabilities leads to higher digital maturity.

Digital maturity is a systematic way for an organisation to transform digitally [3]. An organisation can take on digital transformation, not only from the standpoint of digital technology but organisation-wide, including people, culture, and processes, to achieve business outcomes [6]. According to Westermann et al. [5], an organisation’s digital maturity is its ability to use digital technologies to drive significantly higher profit, productivity, and performance. The digital maturity of university libraries will imply the power of a library to use digital technologies to conduct its services and manage its resources to productively engage, educate and empower its users who have different information needs and diverse behaviours. A digitally mature library will excel at developing digital capabilities to work differently and the leadership capabilities required to achieve a vision. Digital maturity is a journey. Therefore, as university libraries realise the power of digital technologies to expand access to collections and enable their wide use for research, teaching and learning, they gradually build capacities and competencies to harness the opportunities in the current technology market to transform their services.

University libraries are not ranked among the most digitally mature organisations in the business technology literature, even in developed countries. Therefore, it is pertinent to understand how technology is adopted and used in university libraries because of its significance in supporting their parent institutions’ teaching, learning, and research activities.

The expectations of today’s library users and the ubiquitous and evolving nature of technology compel university libraries to re-imagine and redesign their operations and services to support the curricula and mandates of their parent institutions. Anuradha [7] asserts that digital sophistication is a criterion for any academic library to remain a relevant part of the educational experience of its ever-changing users.

The National Universities Commission (NUC) is the institution saddled with the responsibilities of licencing and regulating the operations of both public and private universities in Nigeria. The NUC, by law, has in part the burden of establishing minimum standards for all academic programmes that lead to awards of degrees in universities in Nigeria. The Commission also ensures that quality is maintained in the Nigerian university system. Owing to its prime position in achieving a university’s teaching, learning and research mandates, the NUC earmarks a whopping 70% of the total accreditation scores for library facilities as the minimum requirement for an academic programme to attain full accreditation status [8]. Part of the library facilities often assessed by the NUC accreditation teams includes physical library collection or holdings on the programme being visited, seating capacity, subscription to electronic information resources, internet connection, etc.

Recently, NUC accreditation panels emphasise digital collections and connections more before approving a university to proceed with an academic programme. The accentuation of the requirements shows that the Commission acknowledges the necessity of integrating university education with digital technologies. And that the university campus cannot isolate itself from the evolving digital economy. To identify with the digital revolution, the NUC established a digital library project that aimed at digitising information materials and making them available to both public and private universities in Nigeria. The initiative was to encourage universities to build capacities to harness the enormous advantages of the ICT to teaching, learning and research. Meanwhile, university libraries in Nigeria confront with enormous challenges that have hindered them from making the best of the opportunities extended to them by ICT and its applications.

Baro, Oyeniran, and Ateboh [9] identified challenges confronting university libraries deploying ICTs in Nigeria. The problems include unstable internet connection, irregular power supply, poor funding, incompetent personnel, etc. These challenges may hinder the libraries’ efforts to attain maturity in their parent institutions’ digital transformation. Maturity models are used widely in information systems research [10, 11]; and are developed with a particular focus on the conditions and implications of digital transformation [12]. However, applications in educational contexts are scarce [13]. The available models are limited to the management of information systems in educational organisations, which are still at the initial stage of development [14].

Rossmann [15] conceptualised and operationalised a theoretical understanding of digital maturity to develop a scale for analysing digital transformation and continuous control. The framework is an extension of the work of Westermann et al. [5] and others such as Isaev et al. [16] and Poruban [17], and it is more appropriate for business organisations.

Durek et al. [18] developed a digital maturity framework for assessing the maturity level of higher education institutions in Croatia [18]. Using the analytic hierarchy process/analytic network process (AHP/ANP), Durek et al. identified seven main areas and 43 elements prioritised by the framework. The seven areas are 1.) leadership, planning and measurement; 2.) quality assurance; 3.) scientific research work; 4.) technology transfer and service to society; 5.) learning and teaching; 6.) ICT culture; and 7.) ICT resources and infrastructure.

Similarly, Begicevic Redjep, Balaban and Zugec [19] proposed and validated a framework for digitally mature schools (FDMS). The framework recognises five different levels of maturity in the form of a rubric. Begicevic et al.’s FDMS collapsed Durek et al.’s [18] framework into five dimensions namely; 1) planning, management and leadership, 2) ICT in learning and teaching, 3) development of digital competencies, 4) ICT culture, and 5) ICT infrastructure. The framework and the ensuing instrument support educational institutions in assessing, promoting and integrating digital technologies in teaching, learning and organisational practices.

Love et al.’s [20] maturity model for ePortfolios recognises five levels of digital maturity of organisations, with each one providing a stepping-stone for the next one. However, Begicevic Redjep et al. [19] warned that we should not read the different levels as judgemental but consider them as stages of the maturation process since maturity is a journey.

Based on their common characteristics, Begicevic Redjep et al. [21], in their paper: Framework for Digitally Mature Schools, named and described the five levels of digital maturity as Basic, Initial, e-Enabled, e-Confident and e-Mature. Basic is the school that is not aware of the possibility of using ICT in learning and teaching or management processes. Therefore, the school does not consider ICT when planning its growth and development. It does not use ICT in learning and teaching and does not provide ICT infrastructure yet, and computers are used only in a few classrooms in the school. Thus, online communication with the school is generally not possible.

At the initial stage of digital maturity, the school is aware of the possibility of using ICT in learning, teaching and management processes, but it has not yet been implemented. A small number of teachers use ICT in learning and teaching. There is awareness of the need to enhance the digital competencies of teachers and students. However, the system for the professional development of digital competencies still does not exist. The ICT infrastructure is generally undeveloped, with limited access to ICT resources and internet access available only in a few classrooms.

The school that is e-Enabled is aware of the possibility of using ICT in all its activities. It participates in small ICT-focused projects and guides the development of its strategic documents and integration of ICT into these documents. It uses ICT for working with students with special educational needs. Teachers can advance their digital competencies, develop digital content, and introduce innovative teaching methods. The school provides access to different ICT resources in most classrooms and gives special attention to equipment maintenance and the control of software licencing.

Begicevic Redjep et al. [21] described an e-Confident school as recognising the advantages of ICT usage in its activities and integrating the ICT implementation into strategic documents and everyday activities such as ICT projects. Teachers use ICT for advanced teaching and assessment methods and develop their own content and protect the same by copyright. It plans and performs the continuous professional training of teachers to acquire digital competencies. Students are encouraged to develop those competencies. The school provides access to different ICT resources in most classrooms, with shared repositories for all participants and plans the procurement and maintenance of the ICT resources. The school is also very active online in content presentation and communication. It controls software licencing and considers the security aspects of ICT use.

An e-Mature school very clearly recognises and requires ICT in all activities in its strategic documents and development plans. The management practice relies on integrating and obtaining data from all school information systems. The approach to enhancing the digital competencies of teachers and students is systematic, and professional training for teachers and additional course activities for students are available. Teachers use ICT within advanced teaching methods to develop new course content and assess student achievements. The school independently plans and acquires ICT resources available in nearly all classrooms and other rooms in the school. The entire school has a developed network infrastructure. An information security system has been designed, and software licencing is systematically controlled and planned. The school is characterised by varied ICT project activities and cooperation between teachers and students and other schools and stakeholders.

Just as it is uncertain if any university library in Nigeria can claim digital maturity because of the apparent challenges confronting them, no study in the extant literature reported any model or framework used to assess libraries’ digital maturity. The study reported in this chapter attempts to address this gap in the literature using the framework for digital mature schools by Begicevi Redjep et al. [21]. The specific objectives of the study are to:

1. gauge the level of digital maturity in the university libraries in Nigeria;

2. determine the dimensions of the digital maturity framework that predict the level of digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria and

Based on objectives two and three, three null hypotheses are tested in the paper. They are:

1. The dimensions of the digital maturity framework do not significantly influence the level of digital maturity in university libraries in Nigeria.

2. There is no significant relationship between the digital maturity and age of university libraries in Nigeria.

2. Methodology

The paper adopts a quantitative approach to determine the stage attained by university libraries in their digital transformation efforts to be in tune with the realities of the digital economy using an online structured questionnaire to collect data. The questionnaire has seven sections. Section A elicits information about the institution and the responding personnel.

Since university libraries support their parent institutions to achieve the mandate of teaching, learning, and research, this study adopts Begicevic Redjep et al.’s [19] framework to determine the digital transformation status in university libraries in Nigeria in Sections B to F of the questionnaire. The 38 items distributed among the five dimensions of the framework from Sections B to F are re-worded to reflect digital technology applications to library operations and services. Dimensions 1–4 of the framework in Sections B to E have seven times each, while the fifth in Section F has 10 items. The final instrument requests the participants to confirm or otherwise how applicable the questionnaire’s statements the five sections are to their libraries on a scale of five (1 = does not apply to 5 = totally applies). The mean score of the responses represents the level of digital transformation in the library (where 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = moderate, 4 = high, 5 = very high).

The section G requires the respondents to categorically rate the level of maturity of their libraries on a scale of five (5) (1 = basic, 2 = initial, 3 = enabled, 4 = confident, and 5 = mature) based on how well they believed the statements in Sections B to F apply to their libraries.

The researchers used the Googe Form app to prepare the questionnaire and sent it to participants via social media platforms, including Whatsapp, Facebook and Telegram. The researchers sent the link to the survey to the email addresses of some heads of university libraries. The survey was on for four weeks. The study used the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 16 to analyse the data collected, and the results are presented in the results section.

3. Results

Forty-eight universities (64% public and 36% private) responded to the online survey. About 37% and 33% of the libraries are between 25 and 50 years old and 10 to 24 years old. The respondents are heads of the libraries and library personnel in charge of the deployment and management of ICT facilities (59% females and 41% males), most of whom have worked in the libraries for more than ten years (59.6%). The participants are purposively selected for the study because they are believed to implement and drive the digital transformation of their respective libraries.

University libraries, in general, adopt digital technologies for meeting the diverse information needs of clients and creating inspiring spaces and innovative services to support the teaching, learning and research mandates of their parent institutions. The assertion may explain why all the university libraries that participated in this study integrate ICTs into their operations and services. All the universities integrate ICTs with their services and processes at different times but not less than five years ago. Figure 1 presents the history of ICT integration in university libraries in Nigeria. The mean age of ICT implementation in all university libraries is between 5 and 15 years ago; meaning that most of the libraries started integrating ICT with their operations and services less than 20 years ago.

Figure 1.

History of ICT integration in university libraries in Nigeria.

3.1 Digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria

The study’s first objective is to gauge the digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. To achieve the purpose, the survey requests the participants to rank their libraries on a scale of five (1 = basic, 2 = initial, 3 = e-enabled, 4 = e-confident and 5 = e-mature). Figure 2 shows the response distribution of the participants with a mean of 3.25 and a standard deviation of 1.06. The chart shows that most libraries are e-enabled, meaning that they are aware of the possibility of the libraries being e-enabled, meaning that they are aware of using ICT in all their activities. They participate in small ICT-focused projects and use ICT for working with patrons with special information needs. Also, the librarians can advance their digital competencies, develop digital content, and introduce innovative services by providing different ICT-based resources and giving special attention to equipment maintenance and the control of software licencing. The finding supports the report of Makori and Mauti [22]. They noted university libraries in Kenya (public and private) implement various technological approaches to provide for the information needs of their users. Such practices include social computing, internet and web-based services, information portals and digital repositories. Others are modern information environments, social media networks and multimedia applications. Although, the present study did not investigate the types of digital technologies and strategies used by university libraries in Nigeria, one may infer that their experiences are not different from their Kenyan counterparts.

Figure 2.

Level of digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria.

The study’s second objective is to determine the dimensions of the ICT framework that predict the digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. Table 1 presents the result of the Regression analysis to explain the relationships among the level of digital maturity and the ICT dimensions in the university libraries.

Variables	N	Mean	Standard deviation	df	R	R^2	F	Sig
Level of Digital maturity	48	3.27	1.07	5	0.85	0.73	22.68	0.00
ICT planning, management and leadership	48	3.79	0.90
ICT Use in Library operations and services	48	4.06	0.85
ICT competence development	48	3.42	0.93
ICT culture	48	3.75	0.87
ICT infrastructure	48	3.54	0.94

Table 1.

Relationships between the level of digital maturity and ICT dimensions in university libraries in Nigeria.

Source: Data Analysis from the Study.

There is a strong correlation between digital maturity and ICT dimensions in university libraries. The result presented in the Table shows that the five dimensions jointly predict 73% of the changes in the digital maturity of the libraries (R² = 0.73; F = 22.68 at p < 0.05). The study also finds that the dimensions of ICT planning, management and leadership (β = 0.34, t = 2.40 at p < 0.05) and ICT infrastructure (β = 0.55, t = 3.68 at p < 0.05) have significant individual effects on the level of digital maturity in university libraries in Nigeria.

4. Discussions

The study’s finding shows that many libraries have passed the basic and initial stages of digital maturity, and a majority are at the e-Enabled level. This implies that the libraries are aware of the possibility of using ICT for their operations and services. They participate in small ICT-focused projects and use ICT for working with patrons with special information needs. Librarians can advance their digital competencies, develop digital content, and introduce innovative services by providing different ICT-based resources and giving special attention to equipment maintenance and the control of software licencing.

The dimensions of planning, strategy and leadership and building ICT infrastructure are positively significant to the level of maturity of the libraries in their efforts towards digital transformation. The observed statistical relationship implies that the libraries must consciously and deliberately pay attention to including strategic ICT implementation in their organisational planning and development. The libraries also must build capacity for leadership to drive their digital transformation agenda and acquire appropriate infrastructure for its successful implementation.

As illustrated by Table 2, the dimension of planning, management and leadership in ICT integration predicts the level of digital maturity in university libraries in Nigeria by 34% (β = 0.34). This finding suggests that developing leadership capabilities in planning and management is crucial to successfully integrate digital technologies and strategies into library operations and services. The result confirms the significant role of planning, management and leadership in the digital transformation of organisations as espoused in the literature, such as Begicevic Redjep et al. [19]. However, it was uncertain if the university libraries have formal documents stating their vision and guidelines towards digital transformation because the researchers did not include this aspect in the study. It will be worth the while for future studies to visit the physical location of the libraries to review their organisational structures to confirm the existence of actual policy documents, leadership drive and specific roadmap designed for deploying and implementing digital strategies and technologies in the institutions. The researchers’ personal experience shows that implementation of ICTs in most university libraries is always dependent on the ICT strategies of their parent institutions, implying that the libraries do not usually have control over the planning and management of technology infrastructure. The development may take a toll on their efforts towards attaining digital maturity.

Model	Unstandardized coefficients		Standardised coefficients	t	Sig
	B	Std Error
(Constant)	−0.80	0.43		−1.88	0.07
ICT planning, management and leadership	0.41	0.17	0.34	2.40	0.02
ICT Use in Library operations and services	0.16	0.21	0.14	0.85	0.40
ICT competence development	−0.12	0.16	−0.10	−0.73	0.77
ICT culture	0.01	0.20	0.00	0.03	0.98
ICT infrastructure	0.63	0.17	0.55	3.68	0.00

Table 2.

Coefficients.

Dependent variable: Digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria.

In their book, Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation, Westermann, Bonnet, & McAfee [5] assert that “technology can remove obstacles and extend organisational capabilities, but it is not an end in itself.” For an organisation to attain digital mastery, it needs to focus on its business and not the technology to enhance customers’ experience, streamline operations or transform business models. As observed in the study, university libraries in Nigeria are well aware of the possibilities of using ICTs in their activities and management processes and also recognise the immense benefits of digital technologies. However, not many university libraries are at the strategic implementation of ICTs to operations and services. University libraries in Nigeria are still at a level of awareness and appreciation of ICT and not yet taking full advantage of its potential to enhance service delivery and extend operational capabilities. For instance, just about 40% of the survey participants agreed and strongly agreed to the claim that “the library personnel use ICT for advanced services”. The observed response pattern corroborates the work of Idhalama and Ifidon [23]. They found only a few university libraries in Nigeria implementing cutting-edge ICT facilities to manage their library resources and services. This development is very much unlike what is obtainable in developed countries of Europe, North America and parts of Asia.

One of the major problems militating against digital transformation in many developing countries like Nigeria is the shortage of ICT infrastructure and facilities. Several authors across Africa, including Chizenga [24], Oketunji [25], Okiy [26], Gbaje [27], Akanni [28] and Okiy [29], lamented the problem which still lingers to date. The researchers’ personal experiences reveal that many university libraries in Nigeria experience epileptic power supply, which is an essential requirement for the digital transformation agenda of any organisation. University libraries in Nigeria often consider ICT infrastructure as acquiring computer machines, installing library management software, internet access, and subscriptions to electronic information resources. Although many libraries invest in these facilities, particularly the public universities with access to the Tertiary Education Tax Funds (TETFUND), power failure hampers their functionality.

Another significant infrastructural deficit in the digital transformation efforts of libraries in Nigeria is the lack of provisions for physically challenged individuals. Iroeze et al. [30] report in their study of library services for the physically challenged in Nigeria that such services are inadequate, outdated and provided in poorly architectural designed facilities. The respondents to the current study corroborated the gloomy picture painted by Iroeze et al. [30] because only a few believe that their libraries have dedicated digital resources and facilities for unique users such as people living with disabilities. The finding is also similar to that of Lawal-Solarin [31], who noticed that the architectural designs of most academic libraries in Ogun State, Nigeria, did not consider the peculiarities of the physically challenged persons.

The digital transformation agenda of any organisation should be all-inclusive. It must not discriminate against any individual peculiarities. The effort should cater to every community member’s disabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Unfortunately, Martinez and Vemuru, in a blog post at World Bank.org, noted that “persons with disabilities in Nigeria persistently face stigma, discrimination, and barriers to accessing essential social services and economic opportunities” [32]. This assertion might explain why library services usually exclude physically challenged people in Nigeria. Therefore, if Nigerian university libraries would attain maturity in their digital transformation efforts, they need to invest in strategic, all-inclusive and robust ICT infrastructure to drive their operations and services.

A critical indicator of digital transformation is the development of digital competencies; however, it does not significantly affect the level of digital maturity of university libraries in Nigeria. Digital competence, according to the recommendation of the European Parliament on the critical competencies for lifelong learning, is the confident and necessary use of Information Society Technology (IST) for work, leisure and communication [33]. It encompasses a set of attitudes, knowledge, skills, awareness, and values that are of great importance when utilising disruptive digital technologies and tools in an organisation [34].

Digital technologies shape how organisations interact with their internal and external stakeholders. Thus, a new culture that influences organisational values and norms emanates from digital technologies and tools. Digital culture emerged with the process of shared experience in digital environments. Organisations with a robust digital culture use digital tools and data-powered insights to drive decisions and unlock value [35]. In a nutshell, digital culture helps organisations integrate environmental, social and governance commitments and action across the organisation.

The extent to which ICT shapes the environment and experience of work in university libraries is critical to the digital transformation journey of an organisation. According to Akintunde [36], “many libraries in Nigeria still operate in the traditional service pattern where librarians are in charge in main service points of circulation, reference, serials, acquisition, cataloguing and documents without any emphasis on academic disciplines”. Akintunde’s standpoint confirms the embryonic state of digital culture in Nigerian university libraries. The slow pace of imbibing the ICT culture is borne out of a lack of competencies among academic librarians, as Okiy [29] observed in her paper titled Globalisation and ICT in academic libraries in Nigeria: the way forward. For academic librarians to render more effective services in the new digital environment, Okiy submits that they need to brace up to the unique challenges of ICT competencies. Her submission corroborated Okorie and Ekere [37] that if information professionals do not keep abreast of the changing technologies, they will be unable to manage the different types of information resources and cope with the users’ ever-growing information needs in this electronic age.

One limitation of this paper is that the researchers did not visit the libraries to have an on-site assessment of their work environment to understand the digital lifestyle of the community. However, our personal experiences as one-time students and current workers in two of the universities that participated in the survey confirm that ICT culture is underway in Nigerian university libraries. Therefore, assimilating digital culture in Nigerian university libraries is a function of the readiness of academic librarians to build capacities for effective ICT use.

5. Conclusion

This chapter establishes that the journey to digital maturity in Nigerian university libraries is ongoing and at the embryonic stage. For Nigeria to achieve its vision and mission for transformation to a digital economy that will promote prosperity and security, the collaboration between academia and the industry is of the essence. According to Inyene Ibanga,

“academia serves as the centre for generating new knowledge and imparting education to students. Industry focuses on applying skills and efficient management to address solutions that have commercial value. Combining these two can lead to accelerated advances in innovation and entrepreneurship. This will, in turn, yield economic growth, capital formation and other attendant benefits” [38].

Nigerian universities need to continue developing staff and institutional capacities to meet with the fast-changing digital innovations to proffer solutions to societal problems and challenges. For the universities to be positioned for this role, researchers must access current and relevant information resources and services their libraries provide. Therefore, the digital transformation efforts in academia must include deliberate empowerment of the library institutions and personnel if the universities would fulfil their mandates of research, teaching, learning and community development services.

Although, university libraries in Nigeria are deploying various ICT equipment and solutions to render services and enhance their operations, our study’s findings revealed that the majority are yet to attain digital maturity. As Nigeria transforms into a digital economy, capacity building for libraries of higher institutions should occupy a prime position in the country’s digital transformation agenda. The infrastructural deficit in most public universities, particularly irregular power supply, needs urgent attention and fixing to produce the required and relevant workforce for the emerging digital economy.