Kabiru Dahiru Abbas, Abdulkarim Abdullahi and Musa Abdu Auyo

Keywords: Search engines, Information retrieval, Lecturers, Universities, Bauchi state, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the trends in the use of search engines for information retrieval among lecturers in Universities in Bauchi State, Nigeria; Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University and Bauchi State University, Gadau. The quantitative approach was adopted in the study to randomly administer questionnaire on the sample of two hundred and eighty six (286) lecturers in the two Universities. The findings show that the lecturers were using search engines such as Google scholars, Opera, Google chrome, Yahoo and Mozilla firefox on daily basis for their research and teaching activities; it was discovered that majority of the lecturers were competent in the use of the identified search engines; while user friendliness of the search engines, easy to use, easy access to information and easy access to wide range of information as some of the factors influencing their choice of each search engines in the Universities. The study also reveals the availability of the following ICT infrastructure to support the use of search engines in the Universities; computers, Internet service, hardware components, network bandwidth. The study concludes that search engines provide e-print in details and other types of digital works by authors in an academic department, schools or institutions which comprise of electronic thesis and dissertations and presentations by authors of different institutions. Hence, the study serves as a springboard for the Universities and Lecturers in Nigeria to re-evaluate, re-asses and re-strategise the present scenario of ICT adoption in order to improve upon the availability and accessibility to the global network of information resources and information superhighway for improved teaching and research in the Universities. The study recommends the provision of constant electricity, training and retraining of lecturers on the use of other search engines such as Bing, Alta vista, Ask jeeves, Dog pile etc. for information retrieval in the Universities.