Making grassroots people and the vulnerable digitally inclusive: the roles of nigerian libraries and librarians in perspectives

ABSTRACT

Introduction:  The population of vulnerable digital excluded are about 50 percent of the Nigeria population.

Objective:  The study examined the perception of librarians on how grassroots people and the vulnerable in Nigeria can be digitally inclusive. Methodology: Through a purely qualitative method, a survey research design was adopted using a sample of 25 librarians selected from five public libraries in five selected states in Southwest Nigeria. Data was collected through an open-ended survey prepared on Google Forms.

Results:  The findings of the study revealed that the grassroots people are the people living in the rural areas of the country while the vulnerable are those whom the governments and society have ignored or sidelined from having access to technologies, e-services, and or mobile services. The results also showed that libraries can play many roles in making the grassroots people and the vulnerable digitally inclusive by championing digital adoption programmes where the socially excluded are exposed to the use of various technologies and partnership with the communities to organise workshops and seminars where those who have been excluded digitally are included. Librarians can also play the role of teachers, teaching and exposing these digitally excluded to the use of technology and services thereby making them digitally included. Contents and language, network coverage and policies, and user barriers like illiteracy were identified as challenges confronting the grassroots people and vulnerable to becoming digitally inclusive in Nigeria.

Conclusion:  The uniqueness of this study comes from its emphasis on a topic that is seldom studied: digital inclusion for marginalised and grassroots communities, particularly in the Nigerian context.

KEYWORDS
Digital inclusion; Digital exclusion; Grassroots people; Librarians; Role of libraries.