EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE INFORMATION RESOURCES: A COMPARISON OF LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS IN SOUTH EAST NIGERIA

This study examines the fundamentals of effective management of cultural heritage information resources. Three research questions were developed to guide the study and a descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consists of all the staff of public libraries and museums in South-East, Nigeria. A total sample size of 379 respondents was selected using a simple random sampling technique. The researchers developed a questionnaire entitled “Effective Management of Cultural Heritage Information Resources Questionnaire (EMCHIRQ) for data collection. The instrument for data collection was trial-tested for reliability. A total 379 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the respondents, out of which 361 were returned and found usable by the researchers. This gave a response rate of 95%. The data collected were analyzed using mean (X) and standard deviations to answer the research questions. Also T-test was used to test the hypotheses. Three null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study and were tested at 0.5 level of significance. Based on the data collected and analysed, the major finding of the study revealed that there is need for the proper management of cultural heritage information resources using basic management principles to achieve these goals. These principles of management are narrowed down to the basic functions of organizing, staffing and controlling as discussed in this study.