Grey Literatures Availability and Utilization in Faculty of Engineering in South East, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the Grey Literatures Availability and Utilization in Faculty of Engineering in South East, Nigeria. Bibliometric method was adopted for the study. The population of the study is made up of all the dissertations submitted to faculty of engineering in the universities between 2000 and 2019. Dissertations submitted to the universities in south- east from various departments in Faculty of Engineering in the University Libraries were 481 and professional staff that work in various sections in the university libraries were 178 librarians. A total number of 481 dissertations were studied and 75,290 citations were made. Out of the whole citations made, grey literatures cited were 10,094. Three research questions guided the study and Observation checklist and document analysis were used for data collection. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings of the study showed that some grey literatures were available in the universities visited by the researcher. They were companies report; bibliographies; conference proceedings; experts evaluation; government policy document; manuscripts; official memos; scientific reports; technical reports and projects (dissertations). Grey literatures cited were ten thousand and ninety-four (10, 094). It was observed that grey literatures were poorly cited in various universities. FUTO had the highest citations followed by UNN, UNIZIK, COOU, MOUA and least was IMSU. The findings also revealed that UNN had the highest frequency number of recent grey literatures followed by FUTO, MOUA, UNIZIK, COOU, ESUT and IMSU. These showed that grey literatures cited were published from 2010-2019 which was a bit recent. Implications of the findings were pointed out and some recommendations were made among which that the universities management of both federal and state should look into the development and growth of the grey literature section in the library as a matter of urgency through the process of acquiring grey literature resources like other materials. Through this process grey literature will be available to researchers.