This paper investigated the information search patterns of the academic staff and students of the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria with the aim of drawing the implications for library services. The study was guided by three objectives which were first, to determine the hierarchy of the library among various information channels used by academic staff and students, second, to know the information service preference patterns of the respondents and third, to determine the most predominantly used information source(s) by the respondents. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation.
The study found out that the information needs of both staff and students were orientated towards satisfying mainly academic needs. The research however, concluded that: (i) the University Library had not been able to occupy the foremost position as an information channel as personal collections and colleagues were preferred by staff and students respectively; (ii) information service preference patterns revealed that subscription to electronic journals was preferred by staff and current awareness services by students and (iii) it was found out that formal information sources were preferred by both staff and students.
Finally, recommendations made include information repackaging for specific user-groups, acquisition of current books and journals, improvement on automation and virtual library project; improved user-library relationships within various subject user groups and systematic and periodic user opinion surveys among others.