Information seeking behaviour and reading habits of pharmacy undergraduate students of Afe Babalola University (Abuad)

Counts differ because each database indexes a different set of publications. We treat OpenAlex as the canonical count; Google Scholar is not shown (no API, and crawling it violates its ToS).

Information-seeking behaviour encompasses the purpose of seeking information, the types of information sought, the methods employed in searching for information, and the sources used to obtain it. The study population consisted of 89 students of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), from various academic levels. A census sampling technique was employed to ensure that all targeted participants were included in the study. The findings revealed that the primary information sources used by ABUAD pharmacy students included textbooks (70 students, 78.7%), while 19 students (21.3%) reported otherwise; the Internet (68 students, 76.4%), with 21 students (23.6%) reporting otherwise; friends, colleagues, and lecturers (54 students, 60.7%), while 35 students (39.3%) reported otherwise; and Wikipedia (62 students, 69.7%), with 27 students (30.3%) reporting otherwise. The study also identified several challenges faced by ABUAD pharmacy students in their information-seeking behaviour, including inadequate access to computers (mean score = 2.89), computer viruses (mean score = 2.89), and insufficient librarian skills to effectively support students (mean score = 2.58). Finally, the study found that ABUAD pharmacy students frequently read their books (mean score = 3.03), primarily for personal reasons such as achieving good academic performance, enjoyment, and relaxation (mean score = 2.64).