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This study presents a situated and context-bound model of electronic media reports by exploring their detailed information practices within the workplace actions. It further investigates the information sources they usually consult for news or story-making process and barriers that hinder them to acquire required information.

The data were collected through semistructured, face-to-face interviews of electronic media reporters from the top news channels of Pakistan. These reporters had international exposure while having 7–20 years of work experience with different news channels.

In relation to information practices, the model also highlights the seven steps involved in news-making process of electronic media. Initially inspired from Mckenzie's (2003) model of information practice, which was developed within the everyday life context, this model attempts to see the information practices of electronic media reporters situated at their workplaces and might be seen as an extension of previous works.

This study is a unique attempt to find patterns of information practices situated in their workplace actions. The results of this study would be helpful for librarians and information specialists, who are working in media house libraries for the planning and designing of library services.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-07-2020-0308

This study aims to highlight the issues and concerns specific to information professionals (IPs) in academic libraries of Pakistan. It identifies the problems that academic libraries face in attracting and hiring competent IPs along with the strategies to be used to recruit and retain them in the dynamic environment of academia. Moreover, it provides a list of required skills that employers would look for while hiring IPs in academic settings.

Semi-structured interviews of 20 library leaders involved in hiring process were conducted from 16 public and private sector universities.

Findings identified interpersonal skills as the most desired followed by the subject knowledge and IT orientation while hiring IPs for the present and foreseeable future. Good salary package, conducive work environment with opportunities for learning and continuing professional development and speedy promotion were significant perceived factors to attract and retain the talented professionals in university library settings.

The study would be helpful for policymakers and administrators to hire and retain the IPs capable of developing user-centered services in academic libraries.

Practical suggestions made for hiring, retaining and developing IPs in academic libraries would be beneficial for other developing countries with similar context. It addressed an unexplored area in the context of a developing country and reported original research that will assist policy and decision-makers to hire and retain competent human resources.

Reporters are considered unique in terms of their information needs and seeking from other groups of masses. As they are running information business, the purpose of the study is to know about their skills of seeking, evaluating and engaging with information effectively and efficiently.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with electronic media reporters from 20 news channels to assess their information literacy skills (IL) and personal information management practices (PIM).

The results indicated that the study’s participants considered themselves as information literate. They perceived themselves competent and confident in IL skills for the overall scale and on its all sub-dimensions as well. Interestingly, the study findings show that IL skills affect PIM practices positively. However, they were less competent in advanced searching techniques (i.e. use of Boolean logic, truncation etc.) and cloud-based storing tools and applications.

The study has inferences for information professionals, educators, media owners and other stakeholders. Policymakers in electronic media, particularly media libraries should offer training opportunities by organizing workshops, seminars etc. to enhance their advanced IL as well as PIM skills at workplace.

Very few studies investigated the IL phenomenon beyond its skills and assessment aspects. The present study uniquely identified impact of IL on PIM practices of working electronic media journalists.

Social media is a popular source for information sharing in the contemporary world. Social media allow individuals to create, publish and diffuse contents directly. This openness has increased the risk of running into misinformation and raised questions about credibility of information shared. This study aims to examine the credibility of social media through the perceptions of university students. It also intends to see the difference in opinions based on their gender, academic disciplines and programs of study.

The study was based on a cross-sectional survey; a structured questionnaire was developed by consulting the relevant literature. Students were selected on convenient basis from all the programs of four universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Four hundred students were selected randomly from each university.

The findings indicated that students considered social media partially credible. Currency, community wellness, understandability and completeness of information were the highly rated facets, while factual and unbiased information was the low rated aspects. The perceived credibility of social media among the university students was the same across genders, programs of study and academic disciplines.

The study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility.

This study may likely benefit faculty members, researchers, librarians/information professionals and digital libraries to understand the students’ concerns about social media credibility from a developing country’s perspective. Such understanding will enable them to better address, educate and train university students at how to evaluate the quality of information on social media by offering information literacy programs. It is direly needed that university libraries should train the students to be proficient in assessing the quality of information by offering information or digital literacy programs. Moreover, the study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility.

Misinformation on social media has become a great threat across the globe. Therefore, the authors aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of social media users' misinformation combating behavior, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the authors merged the uses and gratifications theory, social cognitive theory and theory of prosocial behavior into one theoretical framework (e.g. information seeking, status seeking, entertainment and norms of reciprocity) to understand their effect on users' prosocial media sharing experience and misinformation self-efficacy to combat misinformation.

The authors collected data from 356 social media users through “Google Forms” during the third wave of coronavirus in Pakistan. Further, the authors applied structural equation modeling for hypotheses testing.

The authors noted that entertainment and perceived norms of reciprocity positively affect social media users' prior experience and misinformation self-efficacy to enhance their misinformation combating intention. However, information seeking positively affects social media users' prior experience and insignificantly affects their misinformation self-efficacy. Similarly, status seeking was noted to be insignificantly associated with social media users' prior experience and misinformation self-efficacy.

The authors tested this model of misinformation combating intention in a developing country during the COVID-19 pandemic and noted that entertainment and status seeking motives are context-specific. Therefore, this study may likely benefit researchers, academicians and policymakers to understand the causal relationship between motivations and the behavior of combating misinformation on social media within a developing country.

In this study the authors merged three theories (e.g. uses and gratifications theory, social cognitive theory and theory of prosocial behavior) to understand information seeking, status seeking, entertainment and norms of reciprocity as the main motives for social media users' misinformation combating intention.

This study aims to explore the nature and extent of collaboration among library and information science (LIS) departments, faculty members and practitioners. It also intends to identify the challenges and future prospects of collaboration in Pakistan.

Face-to-face and telephonic semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 faculty members (professors, associate professors and assistant professors) from eight LIS departments. A thematic analysis approach was used to answer the research questions.

A thematic analysis of the participants’ opinions reveals a weak and informal collaboration among LIS stakeholders. However, high level of awareness among faculty members regarding the potential benefits of collaborative activities was observed. Their urge for developing liaison and collaboration with stakeholders is a positive indication that requires visionary leadership and committed efforts to ensure long term success.

The study aspects discussed may provide guidelines for creating future planning and growth of professional collaboration in Pakistan. The scope of this study may be extended to groom national, regional and international collaborative activities in other countries with same conditions. Though this study is conducted in Pakistan, the findings may be extended to other parts of developing countries with similar context.

It will serve as a guideline for further research, as it has addressed an untouched area and reports original research.

Public library’s core function is to meet the changing needs of challenging users by providing access to library collection and services. This study aims to explore the current status of public libraries’ collection, services, users, staff, physical facilities and IT infrastructure in Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan. It further investigates the problems faced by these public libraries and puts forward practical solution.

This is a quantitative study based on questionnaire survey. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed to collect data. In total, 21 Library and Information Science graduates were employed to ensure the physical visit of all 176 public libraries in 36 districts of the province.

The findings revealed that with a few exceptions, public libraries were mostly in a poor condition. Absence of professional staff, out-dated collections, dilapidated library buildings and lack of IT infrastructure were the major issues prevailing in the libraries. Furthermore, little interest of political leadership and higher authorities is observed in the development of public library system.

This data will be helpful for policy and decision makers to plan and develop human resources, physical facilities and IT infrastructure in libraries. Findings may facilitate higher authorities for designing better services and strengthening public library system in the province.

This is a baseline study on public libraries’ status in the province. It aims to fill the gap by identifying total number of existing public libraries and exploring their current status along with the problems faced by these libraries.

This study aims to explore the university students’ usage pattern of Wikipedia information and its effect on their learning.

A structured questionnaire was designed to collect data from the students of master programmes at University of the Punjab, Lahore. Proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to select the sample from the population of “Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences”. In total, 225 masters’ students from eight departments participated voluntarily in the study.

Findings revealed that the majority of the respondents used Wikipedia information regularly for both academic and leisure purposes. They usually did not edit/add content in Wikipedia entries though they observed incomplete contents in it. Overall, the respondents perceived Wikipedia as an easy and understandable source of information that enhanced their understanding about a topic and enabled them to accomplish tasks more quickly.

The sample of this study was social sciences students from one university. The findings may not be generalizable across other groups of students and universities.

These findings suggest that students have a positive behaviour towards Wikipedia and regarded it as a good source of information. They use Wikipedia information for academic and leisure purposes. So, the academics and librarians need to provide better guidelines for using Wikipedia, rather than prohibiting its use altogether.

This paper provides useful information on the use of Wikipedia among university students from a developing country’s perspective and thus contributes to the tendency of increasing acceptance of Wikipedia in academia. Furthermore, understanding how gender plays a role in differentiating the using behaviour of Wikipedia information could benefit both academics and library practitioners.

This study aims to explore the current and future employment opportunities for library and information science (LIS) graduates. It identifies future employers and emerging competitors in the information landscape. The strategies that may be used to respond to and capture the future job market are also presented for LIS schools in the light of the study findings.

The qualitative approach coupled with the interview technique was used for collecting insight into the phenomena. Face-to-face and telephonic semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 faculty members (professors, associate professors and assistant professors) from 8 LIS departments. A thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the data to present the participants’ opinions regarding various aspects of the job market in the country.

It was found that the job market was still traditional (library) and would continue to be so for the next five to seven years. However, the findings also indicated the emergence of a non-traditional job market in the country. New job titles and functions relevant to the emerging job sector other than libraries in the information environment were noted.

Findings may have a direct impact on the future orientation, survival and sustainability of LIS programs in the country. The study may inform curriculum revision and updating efforts to make it more relevant and responsive to future needs.

This study investigated the impact of conspiracy beliefs on fear of Covid-19 and health protective behavior of university students in Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire was conducted at three universities in Punjab (e.g. two public sectors and one private sector) with permission from concerned authorities for data collection. A total of 374 responses were received that were analyzed by applying both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicated the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and fear of Covid-19 among university students of two public sector universities and one private sector university. Furthermore, the conspiracy beliefs of university students predicted their fear of Covid-19. However, conspiracy beliefs did not predict the health protective behavior of university students.

These results had serious implications for public health in Pakistan demonstrating the critical need for health education and promotion as individual preparedness along with system preparedness is essential to combat Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic. These results are useful for policymakers, healthcare professionals, university administration and library staff for making evidence-based decisions toward health education and promotion related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is hoped that the present study would make an invaluable contribution to existing research on promotional health in general and the role of conspiracy beliefs in putting public health at risk in particular as limited studies have been published so far.