THE POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC: DEFINING THE ROLE OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN ONLINE TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODOLOGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Though the novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic poses a serious threat to higher education, it has opened the door for online education across the globe. Consequently, universities in Nigeria have adopted the online teaching and learning. Further, University libraries in Nigeria are expected to follow this paradigm shift and contribute meaningfully and positively towards the emerging online pedagogies. This paper is an attempt to articulate the roles university libraries in Nigeria are to play in the online teaching and learning post covid-19 pandemic. This paper identified these roles as using social media platforms for service delivery, maintaining a responsive library website design, providing research guides to the online learners, providing tutorials for the learners or embedding ab librarian in the virtual classroom, and provision of electronic resources. It also highlighted the practical implementations of these roles for library managers and stakeholders. The paper concludes with a call that university libraries should rise to the challenge of covid-19 pandemic and consider open access transformation, funding, skills development and adoption of global best practices as preconditions for the actualization of their roles in the emerging online teaching and learning methodologies.