Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the digital literacy skills possessed by librarians working in university libraries in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was developed using SurveyMonkey to collect data from 111 librarians working in both public and private universities in Nigeria.
Findings The study revealed the digital literacy skills that the librarians rated as very high and high, and those that they rated as moderate and low. The study also revealed the knowledge and competencies that they rated to be highly competent and competent, as well as also those that they rated to be neutral and not good. The librarians rated their knowledge of network and system security; ability to apply security software firewalls, filtering routers and ability to protect access to digital content by providing password or IP base access as neutral and not good. Overall, the study revealed that almost half of the librarians rated their level of digital literacy skills possessed to be moderate. Only few librarians rated their digital literacy skills to be excellent.
Practical implications The findings will be helpful to librarians, information professionals, libraries and library schools. The results will inform librarians on the skills and digital competencies that are essential for developing and managing digital resources and protecting digital contents.
Originality/value Findings will be helpful to explore the skills and competencies needed by information professionals and to act as a guideline for competency development and curriculum update in library schools in developing countries.