Perceived Effects of Professional Networking on Career Growth of Librarians in Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

Professional networking has become an important skill for librarians because of the ever-growing nature of information practice. This makes this study investigates the perceived effects of professional networking on career growth of librarians in Kwara State. Descriptive-survey design was adopted for a population of 183 librarians who registered with the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Kwara State chapter. Sample size was 80 respondents who were conveniently selected based on their willingness to fill the online questionnaire sent to the chapter’s WhatsApp platform. Response rate for the questionnaire was 73.75%. Data collected were analysed in simple percentages, frequency tables, mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed that that majority of the respondents (84.7%) perceived that the strategies of networking for career growth are engaging in skills development/acquisition to meet new people, reading current literature to connect with trending researchers, getting mentors and reviewing books, monographs and journal articles. This study concludes that librarians in Kwara State perceived networking to be an instrument for their career growth and engaged in its different forms for career enhancement.