Evaluation of the Use of Law Libraries Among Legal Practitioners in Kwara State

Abstract

The study evaluates the use of the library by legal practitioners in Kwara State. A descriptive survey is adopted and questionnaire is used to serve as the instrument for data collection. A sample size of 257 participants was selected from the study
population of 772 and only 252 copies of the questionnaire are returned and found useful, constituting a 98% returned rate. The study found that law reports, law textbooks, reference materials, index and abstracts, legal periodicals, legislation and statutes, and digests are the library resources available to legal practitioners. Moreso, majority of the respondents use legal periodicals, law reports, law textbooks, indexes and abstracts, legislation and statutes, and digest daily while the majority of them use reference materials only once in a month. The majority of the respondents purposely use library resources to broaden their horizon on legal issues; for work in progress; to keep informed of the development in the legal profession; to defend
their client in the court of law, and for case preparation. The test hypothesis indicates that there is gender difference in male and female legal practitioners' of library resources in Kwara State. The reason for this is that the t-value is 84.961, and the associated p-value which is 0.000 less than the level of significance 0.05. Upon examining and considering the use of law libraries by legal practitioners in Kwara State, the researchers are stocked by the verdict that the law library remains essential for legal scholarship. The study, therefore, recommends that adequate provision should be made for current legal information resources in the library.