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Abstract
The study is on consultancy services in first generation federal university libraries in Nigeria. to identify the nature of consultancy services rendered to these libraries, determining the factors that motivates consultancy services in the libraries, verifying the consultancy firms that work for the libraries, determining the level of satisfaction with services rendered; benefits of offering consultancy services to the libraries; the perceived problems involved in rendering consultancy services and identifying the strategies used for improving the services. Seven research questions were formulated to guide the study. The survey design was used for the study. The population of the study was 306 and the sample consists of 103 librarians and 22 consultants. The study found that the nature of consultancy services rendered in these libraries are mostly in the areas of library automation, retrospective cataloguing and conversion of records, and information and communication technology businesses. Areas like anti theft, indexing, current awareness and digital reference services are not yet fully utilized. Factors motivating consultancy services are: demand for information delivery, to improve on services rendered to users, willingness to pay for services as at when due and technical know-how and that 11 consultancy firms’ work for these libraries with most libraries satisfied with the services rendered. It recommended that policy makers should help university libraries to render better services by releasing more funds to help them improve, that libraries on their part should consider the information needs of the users and types of products that they want to buy before engaging the services of consultants.