Avatar Technology, the Need and the challenges of its Utilization in Academic Libraries in Nigeria: A Review

The dynamism of the global ecosystem has facilitated the invention and emergence of many technologies in recent times aimed at easing the way things are done and information disseminated.  One such technology is the avatar. This paper to this end takes a look at avatar and why it is needed in academic libraries in Nigeria. The study applied a qualitative research design, utilizing the explanatory research approach to examine the need for libraries to utilize Avatar technology in the contemporary digital ecosystem. A systematic examination of related literature was carried out in the cause of the study, with special reference on articles that gave concise and accurate information on Avatar technology using various search engines and websites such as, Google cloud, Google Search, Google Scholar and ResearchGate, AcademiaEdu and other related websites.  The paper discussed avatar from the conceptual point of view, tracing the root of the concept and why it is needed in academic libraries which has found from the reviewed literature include among others that avatar technology is much better than video conferencing, works well with Intranets that do not support video conferencing traffic, can prevent information bottlenecks due to personality clashes, can express emotion through facial expressions and body posture. The paper also looked at the some ethical issues to be considered in the use of avatar in academic libraries such as identity creation in which case avatars provide users the chance to come up with digital identities that may be different from their real-life identity as well as the challenges of using the technology in academic libraries on the ground that  avatar technology, is a fairly new horizon and there is this mixed reactions as what good or harm is going to have  on the digital ecosystem in this millennium considering the fact, that it is faced with this problem of identity theft, which is a serious ethical challenge. The paper finally made its recommendations which include inter-alia; that there is the need for librarians to be trained and retrained on the intricacies of the art of avatar representations in the library and they in-turn, train the users for effective service delivery and harnessing the gains of avatar technology in a digital ecosystem as well as academic libraries and librarians carrying out vigorous avatar-literacy campaign.