Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence Ghanaian tertiary students’ career choices. The paper explores the dimensionality of the career choice factors within the Ghanaian context and also ascertains their degree of influence on students’ career choices.

The study employs survey method of research and a set of questionnaire was used to examine the factors that influence students’ career choices. A total of 354 undergraduate students from the Ashesi University College in Ghana participated in the study. Factor analysis was conducted on the career choice factors and differences in response between science and business students were ascertained by means of independent sample t-test.

The findings of this study indicate that university students in Ghana place much premium on intrinsic value and employability/financial prospect in their career choice decisions than such factors as prestige and desired working conditions.

The findings of this study are relevant for policymakers and tertiary education providers interested in making the study of science an attractive option for university students in Ghana.

The findings of this paper highlight some of the underlining reasons for the unpopularity of the study of sciences among university students in Ghana.

Sets out to investigate the use of electronic resources by students and faculty of Ashesi University, Ghana, in order to determine the level of use, the type of information accessed and the effectiveness of the library's communication tools for information research.

A questionnaire‐based survey was utilized. It consisted of 16 questions to determine level of use, type of information accessed, assessment of library's communication tools, problems encountered when using electronic resources and ways to improve the provision of electronic information in the community. The questionnaire was distributed to all students, faculty and administrative staff in order to reduce the generalization of the results. The students were made up of four year groups categorized as YearGroupA, YearGroupB, YearGroupC, YearGroupD. The questionnaire was pre‐tested on six students from three different year groups and some amendments were made. A total of 169 questionnaires were therefore distributed and 141 completed questionnaires were returned, giving an overall response rate of 83 per cent. Survey responses were coded and input into Excel for analysis.

The study found that general computer usage for information access was high because of the University's state‐of‐the art IT infrastructure. Usage of some internet resources were also very high, whilst the use of scholarly databases was quite low. The low patronage was attributed to inadequate information about the existence of these library resources. The study recommends, among others, the introduction of information competency across the curriculum and/or the introduction of a one‐unit course to be taught at all levels and the provision of more PCs on campus.

Would be of value to library administrators considering how to determine level of use, type of information accessed, assessment of library's communication tools, problems encountered when using electronic resources and ways to improve the provision of electronic information.

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview and selected annotated bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy across all library types.

It introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2014.

It provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The study stressed the important role of top management in an organization and examined the possibilities, challenges and constraints posed to librarians in the provision of quality service to the university community in Ghana. Using a case study approach, the study concluded that top management were fairly committed but were too financially handicapped to fulfill all the strategies and policies outlined.

Social media allows collaboration, participation and sharing in libraries with users. The purpose of this study is to examine the response of academic librarians in Ghana to the use of social media in reference and user services.

It is a quantitative study that used the Likert type of questionnaire in soliciting the views of academic librarians from six public and private universities in Ghana on their knowledge and use of social media in providing reference and user services.

The findings of the study indicate that majority of academic librarians are knowledgeable and use social media for both personal and work-related purposes. They, however, lack adequate skills to use the array of social media tools to make remarkable difference in service delivery. For this reason, they find the traditional mode of service delivery a comfort zone.

Higher education policy makers in Ghana and elsewhere would find the results useful in decisions on the types of social media tools to use in universities and colleges.

The study provides in-depth analysis of the impact of social media on reference and user services in Ghanaian libraries, which is deficient in literature. It also recommends change in policy direction and training to whip up interest in librarians to use social media.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of information resources in the research papers of the graduate students in Library and Information Science (LIS) at Kuwait University.

The methodology chosen for this paper is the bibliometric method by way of citation count of the references found in the literature review papers of LIS graduate students at Kuwait University by identifying the preferred form of publications, retrieval method, time span, subject distribution, and the most cited journals.

It is shown that the majority of students used journal articles, web pages, and books as the most preferred form of resources. Their preferred method of retrieval was the printed format. Time span of the most used citations is from three to ten years. They mostly used traditional library journals such as Bulletin of MLA, Library Review, The Electronic Library, Library Management, and College and Research Libraries.

The quantity and quality of citations were reviewed and approved by the student advisor, and the sample was drawn from a population of 74 papers based on the availability of original papers.

The findings in this paper provide important insights for the academic library administration to take appropriate measures to achieve a higher level of awareness and skill by the users.

The present study was conducted to find what practices Pune city's management institutes are following for managing their online databases. Essentially, the purpose of the research was to study librarians' awareness about the life cycle of electronic resources and how to manage their life span, so that the data in use do not go obsolete.

This experimentative study was based on a structured questionnaire designed to discover whether librarians of Pune's management institute followed the recommended six-step process in managing the life cycle of institutes' electronic resources as proposed by Jill Emery and Graham Stone in their Techniques in Electronic Resource Management (TERMS).

Our study revealed that the librarians are not following any fixed protocol and are managing electronic resources in an ad hoc manner as per their own discretion. A majority are not even aware of the six steps the TERMS model prescribed for managing electronic databases.

The limitation of the study is to find the current practices of management of electronic resources at management institutes / colleges affiliated to Savitiribai Phule Pune University. Institutes which are not subscribing any database other than databases provided by UGC-INFONET thus got excluded from the study.

A comprehensive literature review revealed that although such studies have been carried out elsewhere in the world, there is nothing specific to the Indian scenario. This study aims to plug that information gap.

The quality of teaching, research and community service of lecturers coupled with their publication in any university system may depend on the quality of the electronic database they use. Electronic database awareness use is very important to the teaching, research and community service activities of lecturers in the Nigerian university system. It has been established that lack of awareness is the main factor militating against effective use of electronic databases. The study aims to investigate awareness and use of electronic databases as determinants of research productivity of academic staff in private universities in South-West Nigeria.

The descriptive survey research design of the correlational type was adopted. Out of the 27 private universities established and approved between 1999 and 2012 in South-West Nigeria, 21 were purposively covered in the study. The stratified random sampling technique based on probability proportionate to size method was adopted in selecting 1,656 (60 per cent) academic staff from the population size of 2,760. The main research instrument used to collect data for the study was questionnaire. Data generated were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Spearman’s rank was used to test hypothesis at 0.05 level of confidence.

There was a significant positive correlation between awareness and utilisation of electronic databases (r = 0.690; p < 0.05).The result of the analysis showed that there was average level of awareness of electronic databases among academic staff in private universities in South-West, Nigeria.

The study selected 21 out of the 27 private universities established and approved between 1999 and 2012 in South-West, Nigeria.

Based on the findings, the paper recommends increased investment in ICT facilities at the surveyed universities in line with the emerging digital trend in universities around the world to raise the level of awareness of electronic databases utilisation by academic staff in research.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the preparedness of academic libraries in Ghana for the use of social media in reference and user services.

A qualitative research approach using interviews was used to solicit the views of Systems/reference librarians from six most highly ranked public and private universities (in Ghana) on their libraries’ preparedness for use of social media to provide reference and user services.

The findings of the study indicate that most of the university libraries lacked policy on the use of social media and that though librarians held the perception that social media was useful, they lacked the competence and motivation to use social media to make a remarkable difference in service delivery.

Academic libraries in Ghana and elsewhere will find the results useful in formulating policies for the use of social media in libraries.

This qualitative approach to the study of social media deviates from the mostly quantitative studies in the literature and has brought out more revealing findings.

This paper aims to establish the level of use of the electronic resources at the University of Venda, which is one of the previously disadvantaged universities in South Africa. It identifies the different electronic resources used at the university, determines the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources and suggests ways in which electronic resources may be enhanced. The rapid changes in the information and communication technology (ICTs) have influenced service delivery in academic libraries in terms of how information is gathered, accessed, retrieved and used. Hence, electronic resources are invaluable research tools in academic libraries in the twenty-first century.

A qualitative research methodology was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant to get in-depth information. The target population was all third-year students registered with the School of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Venda. The third year undergraduate students from this particular school where chosen because statistics revealed that these students where ranked among the top in the use of computers.

The findings revealed that the level of usage of these resources by undergraduate students is elementary and limited to SABINET and EBSCO host. Undergraduate student’s level of awareness of the different electronic resources is low. They confused electronic resources to Web-based internet sources. It also revealed that the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources is still generic, as training is mostly a once off orientation at the first year.

This paper focuses on third year undergraduate students who were using computers because the researchers were interested in finding out whether students using computers were also using electronic resources. It excluded other profiles such as age, gender and computer usage behaviour of electronic resources.

Adequate use and knowledge of electronic resources at universities is instrumental towards realisation of the country’s ICT Strategy and the outcome-based education (OBE) model of teaching movement. Suggestions are made to the university, the university library, university librarians and the Library Association of South Africa on how to enhance the use of electronic resources.

It establishes the level of use of electronic resources in one of South African historically disadvantaged universities, a point of contact to other previously South African disadvantaged universities and make suggestions on how electronic resources may be enhanced. It adds to the body of knowledge on the use of electronic resources in academic libraries in South African universities.