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The purpose of this paper is to present findings of the design and implementation of an online information literacy module to first‐year students at the University of Botswana.

The study population consisted of 103 first‐year students in the Department of Library and Information Studies. The population was divided into three equal groups of 34, 34 and 35, respectively, and each assigned a two‐hour slot in the smart computer laboratory weekly for five consecutive weeks, to cover five information literacy topics online. Each group was assigned a tutor who received assignments online and graded them. Each topic was followed by questions for students to answer.

Findings generally revealed that impartation of information literacy through the online mode could improve students' competencies perhaps more than the face‐to‐face instruction approach. Furthermore, respondents preferred a blended instruction approach to a single learning mode. Contrary to expectations, online instruction might not minimise the copying of each other's work among students to a great extent. Finally, online instruction does not necessarily reduce the amount of workload for staff and students, instead more time is needed to design and administer the course.

The study was limited to first year students in the LIS department. A similar study involving all departments in the University of Botswana would shed more light on the level of information literacy competency among first year students from a cross‐disciplinary perspective.

The major outcome of the study is a re‐usable online information literacy module. The study findings could also be useful in developing interventions to improve the design and delivery of online courses.

Information literacy is a key challenge facing educators all over the world. Case studies such as this provide unique and comparative experiences that advance existing knowledge. For the University of Botswana, the study provides a first insight into the impact of e‐learning on information literacy competency since the implementation WebCT in 2002.

The purpose of the present study is to determine levels of computer literacy adequate for searching academic information from electronic resources and databases. The study also examines whether or not student demographics influence this level of computer literacy in a university scenario in India, a developing nation.

The primary data were collected through a questionnaire-based survey on a sample of 329 respondents from three major universities located in North India. The study focused on only postgraduate students and research scholars. The data, thus collected, were analyzed with the aid of the SPSS statistical software package. χ2 test was also applied to determine significant comparability among student demographics and their acquired computer usage competencies.

The study discovered that among the respondents less than half reported that they had acquired adequate computer competence to search for information from electronic resources or databases. However, no significant differences were found for computer skills with respect to students having different demographic characteristics. There were observed significant differences among academic majors and the use of internet and OPAC. Significant differences were also observable between academic use of internet and students varying age groups.

This study is one of the few research studies carried out to examine computer literacy among university students especially in relation to their demographics. The results of the study will prove useful for improving computer literacy in university library systems in India and other developing nations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate computer literacy competencies among rural and urban students in India and its prime objectives are to find out: how rural and urban students use computers, what is the purpose of computers for these students and what problems have the students encountered while using computers.

Scheduled interviews were conducted to collect necessary data from rural and urban students. The interview schedules consisted of various questions designed to elicit details about the students’ use of computers. A total of 600 interview schedules were collected and data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for windows to test the formulated hypothesis.

The findings of the study indicate that the infrastructural facilities varied among rural and urban schools. Another notable finding of the study was that majority (91.33 percent) of urban students used computers compared to a significantly less percentage of rural students (32.33 percent). Most rural students have not used computers mainly because they do not know how to (49.75 percent) followed by lack of support from teachers (48.76 percent) and non-availability of computers in their schools (48.27 percent). Electrical power failure was another major problem faced by both urban students (31.75 percent) and rural students (40.20 percent).

This study attempted to learn about the computer literacy competencies among the students and the digital divide in Indian schools. On the basis of the findings, the study has recommended guidelines to bridge the digital gap. These findings and recommendations will potentially be helpful to school authorities and the government in order to take the necessary measurements to bridge the digital gap between the rural and urban students.

To assess the computer literacy skills/competencies of professional librarians in Nigerian university libraries.

Employs descriptive design using questionnaires to collect data from 57 professional librarians in four Nigerian university libraries.

Reveals the personal characteristics of the respondents, assessment of their levels of computer skills, computer use experience, avenues of computer literacy, software used, library routines computer is used for, benefits derived from computer and problems associated with computer use, recommendations are made in light of the findings.

Its findings will assist librarians and library managers to have insight into state of computer literacy among professionals in Nigerian university libraries and assist relevant authorities to plan how librarians, especially in developing countries, can become computer literate.

The rapid development of eHealth requires the extension of existing health informatics competences sets. These competences are needed not only by health-care professionals but also by health-care consumers. The purpose of this paper is to analyse literature production of health informatics and eHealth competences/skills (EHCS).

Bibliometric analysis and mapping have been used as a form of distant reading approach in the manner to perform thematic analysis, identify gaps in knowledge and predict future trends.

This study shows that the literature production of health informatics and EHCS differs in bibliometric indicators, as well as in research content. Thematic analysis showed that medicine is the most productive subject area in both fields. However, health informatics competencies/skills are more oriented toward education, nursing, electronic health record and evidence-based practice, while EHCS cover health information technology, engineering, computer science and patient-centred care. The literature research production exhibits positive trend and is geographically widespread in both fields.

The use of Scopus database might have led to different results if the authors had used Web of Science or Medline, because of the fact that different databases cover different lists of source titles. The authors used various search strings, and the most optimal one for their study; however, a different search string might result in slightly different outcomes. In addition, the thematic analysis has been performed on information source abstracts and titles only, as the analysis of full texts (if available) could lead to different results. Despite the fact that the thematic analysis has been performed by three researchers with different scientific backgrounds, the results of the analysis are subjective. On the other hand, the bibliometric analyses and comparison of health informatics and eHealth competences have never been done before and this study revealed some important gaps in research in both fields.

The World Health Organization defined four distinct but related components of eHealth: mobile health, health information systems, telemedicine and distance learning. While the research in telemedicine and health information systems seems to be well covered, the skills and competencies in mobile health and distant learning should be researched more extensively.

More research in the skills and competencies associated with so-called connected health, a new subfield in eHealth research, is needed. The skills and competencies of how to better implement and use the services related to the management of chronic diseases, health coproduction and how to implement eHealth in developing countries are currently under research areas and with candidates for future research. For both health informatics competencies/skills and EHCS, we noted that more research is needed for personalised medicine, health coproduction, smart health, internet of things, internet of services and intelligent health systems.

The literature production on health informatics and EHCS has been analysed for the first time and been compared in a systemic way, using bibliometrics. The results reveal that current research directions as well as knowledge gaps could thus provide guidelines for further research.

This paper aims to assess the level of computer literacy skills of librarians in the University of Isfahan, Iran and attempts to examine their avenue of computer literacy, software used, benefits derived from computer and problems militating against effective usage of computers.

The paper uses a survey research approach to carry out this investigation.

The investigation reveals that the majority of the librarians do not yet possess a good level of computer skills and even their long duration experience of computer use has not necessarily improved their level of computer literacy.

The findings can be utilized by library managers in order to organize and offer regular training programmes to train or re‐train librarians with the latest advancement of information technology.

The paper provides insight into the state of computer literacy of librarians in one of the public universities in Iran. This shows the urgent need for the librarians to be adequately equipped with the computer skills to take advantage of all computerized library facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the state of information literacy (IL) education in library schools in Africa. Principally, to understand how prepared the library schools are to take the lead by integrating IL courses into their school curricula.

The survey was carried out in two parts: first, the researcher conducted a survey of web sites maintained by library schools in Africa to identify the IL course offered and also to analyze the course contents. That was followed by sending an e‐mail message containing three research questions to library and information science (LIS) faculty members to ascertain the availability of IL courses in their curricula.

Results from the study revealed that, presently, only a few library schools offer the course IL as a stand‐alone course in their curricula. Many library schools have not yet incorporated “IL” as a stand‐alone course in their LIS curricula, rather, it is briefly discussed as a topic in related courses. The reason being that the LIS departments lack the technological facilities and qualified personnel to teach the course “IL.” Although not all the library schools in Africa were examined due to language barrier, more than 60 library schools were investigated, among them 20 institutions were found offering IL courses or a related area.

The researcher could not examine all the library schools in Africa due to language barriers, as many of the African countries have French as their official language and others Portuguese.

The results from the study reported in this paper will provide important data and insight into the current state of IL education in African library schools, and generate suggestions for educators and policy makers developing and including “IL” as a stand‐alone course in the LIS curriculum.

This paper reports on part of a dissertation project on the relationships between learning methods and students’ information behavior in Finland. In this qualitative study, information behavior is studied in the contexts of a problem-based learning curriculum and a traditional curriculum. In 1998, 16 theme interviews were conducted at the Tampere University Medical School, which applied the problem-based learning curriculum and 15 interviews at the Turku University Medical School, in which the traditional curriculum with an early patient contact program was implemented. The focus of this paper is on the concept of information literacy as a part of the students’ information behavior and its relationships with students’ conceptions of learning. The findings indicate that students’ information literacy is developed, on the one hand, through active use of information and sources in connection with real information needs, and, on the other hand, through an educational context which offers opportunities to get different viewpoints on issues. Following the same tendency, the more developed conceptions of learning were mostly held by the students belonging to the problem-based group with simple or developed skills in information literacy, although there were exceptions from this pattern.

It has been a decade, as the collaboration between the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) and the Ghana Library Authority (GhLA) to extend information and communication technology (ICT) and library services to rural deprived, unserved and underserved communities in Ghana dubbed the library connectivity project. This paper aims to evaluate this initiative from the perspective of relevant key stakeholders and through the lens of the digital inclusion model.

The study adopted a qualitative approach to evaluate the library connectivity project offered to deprived communities in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Interviews were conducted with the head librarians, ICT teachers and school librarians. Focus group discussions were held with pupils from four beneficiary schools of the project. The researchers also witnessed four of the outreach programmes and training sessions and observed the mode of instruction.

The study brought to fore the enormous benefits of the library connectivity project as it aided school pupils to acquire practical ICT skills, which were found to be useful towards their final exam. Despite the enormous benefit of the project, it was bereft with a lot of challenges such as inadequate logistics and personnel thereby restricting the project to very few schools. Low staff motivation and unmotorable roads were also found to be a challenge, which could all be as a result of lack of funds.

The paper underscores the importance of computer and information literacy and reveals how the GhLA is using innovative mobile library services to bridge the digital divide through the library connectivity project.

This paper makes a further contribution to the paucity of literature on the role of mobile libraries in the promotion of computer and information literacy.

The concept of the paper is how the library can be a useful framework for designing nurses' computer skills. The overarching aim of the research is to focus on how the computer skills involved in nurses' increasing access to health informatics can be used to improve nursing practice, consequently leading to better health care delivery. The objectives involved in achieving this aim include: finding out the level of nurses' computer literacy; finding out nurses' quest for electronic information for problem‐based nursing practice; investigating nurses' level of awareness of research‐based nursing practice; and finding out areas of desirability of informatics in nursing practice.

The measuring instrument used was a self‐administered questionnaire to senior nursing cadres in the Teaching Hospitals Complex, Ile‐Ife, Nigeria. There were 230 nurses in these categories, of whom 180 were given questionnaires to fill in. The questionnaire was pre‐tested and validated. A total of 167 copies were returned and found to be usable. Simple percentages and a summation weighted index were used to analyse the data.

The paper provides empirical insight into nurses' computer skills and the library's role. The majority of the respondents did not have knowledge of computers; in the School of Nursing they learned it through various means while practising, while a few could access and retrieve information from the available databases. Some difficulties were expressed, such as workload, lack of skills, location of the library with regard to the hospital, etc. The desirability of the introduction of health informatics to the profession is high.

The study is limited to a teaching hospital and the results may not be generalisable to non‐teaching hospitals, hence the need for further studies.

The impact of health informatics on nurses' computer skills and the library's role will save nurses from routine work, enhance their productivity, and will equip them better for the challenges that information technology presents for health professionals.

This paper fulfils and identifies the need to introduce health informatics to nursing practice in order to improve patient care.