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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Thai immigrants who relocated to Auckland, New Zealand, looked for and found the information they needed during their settlement process.

The study used a qualitative methodology through semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions that were conducted with nine Thai immigrants living in the greater Auckland region. Mwarigha’s three stages of settlement and Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology were used as theoretical frameworks for understanding the information-seeking behaviour of the Thai immigrants and their information needs and associated barriers to accessing information at different stages of the settlement process.

The information needs of Thai immigrants in Auckland were diverse based on the stage of each participant’s settlement process. The main information needs of the participants were for employment, English language-learning, housing, health and making connections. Their main information sources during settlement were family, friends and the internet. The participants saw Auckland Libraries as a useful source but did not take full benefit of the library’s services. The main barriers in accessing services were English language incompetence, lack of resources available in the Thai language, lack of time and library staff behaviour.

The results of this study will provide library and information professionals with new insights into Thai immigrants’ information-seeking behaviour and their information needs, which may contribute to providing immigrants with the information tools they need to improve the quality of their lives in New Zealand. As this study is limited to Thai immigrants in Auckland only, there is a need to conduct a study on the information needs and seeking behaviour of Thai immigrants in other locales. It may be of interest to researchers to conduct a quantitative study of a larger sample to further generalise the findings.

There is minimal research that specifically investigates the information needs, sources and barriers to information experienced by immigrants throughout the settlement process. This study is unique in that it focuses on a specific ethnic community of Thais. The findings of this study can be a stepping stone towards further research to gain a deeper understanding of Thai and other immigrants’ information needs, sources, barriers and their perceptions towards public libraries.

Preedip Balaji B holds a masters degree in library and information science from Bishop Heber College, Bharathidasan University, Trichy in 2007. He worked as information professional in different positions at Indian School of Business and IKP Knowledge Park, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, South India. Having received his Junior Research Fellow award in 2009 from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, currently, he is pursuing doctoral studies at Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. His research interests are in natural language processing, faceted analysis and classification. He has to his credit 10 national and international publications, published in journals, workshop manual and conference proceedings.

The purpose of this paper is to discover the criteria upon which selection decisions are made in six mobile libraries in New Zealand.

In this qualitative study data were gathered from interviews with six mobile librarians. The study is guided conceptually by the perceived need for a collection development policy and a selection procedures statement to guide selection, and the needs versus wants debate.

The data suggest that there is no universal approach to the selection of material for mobile library collections; mobile librarians achieve a balance between users' needs and wants to some extent when selecting; and there is no relationship between the nature of mobile library services and the serving of needs and wants. The researchers contend that mobile librarians' selection decisions are influenced by various criteria other than users' needs or users' wants.

This qualitative research is based on the analysis of the selection practices of six mobile librarians in New Zealand. Future research might seek to replicate this study's methodology using a larger population or investigate the lack of emphasis on reference services on some mobile libraries or the management of fixed, floating, and integrated mobile library collections.

Only a slight amount of literature exists about the selection of mobile library collections. This study will be of interest to mobile librarians in New Zealand and elsewhere who wish to obtain a better understanding of current selection practices. It will also act as guiding literature to help mobile librarians to make better informed selection decisions.

The purpose of this study is to assess basic information literacy (IL) competency and the perception of IL behaviour of freshman undergraduate business students of Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).

Freshman business students were asked to fill a set of structured and sample questions which assessed their level of information skills and basic IL behaviour. The questionnaire incorporated different questions concerning their previous experience of information use and access to information sources.

It has been found that IUB freshman business students require more competencies to solve information‐related problems. Before answering the questions and statements of the questionnaire, most of them mentioned that they are aware of IL and they think they have IL‐related efficiencies. But the competency results showed that only one‐fourth of them gave correct answers. Regarding the concluding statement, most of them realized that they need information literacy education (ILE) to solve their information‐related problems.

This assessment related to IL is the first in any private university in Bangladesh, which will foster more research to design valid and relevant curricula of ILE for the students of IUB and possibly the wider higher education community in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this study is to gather some empirical, baseline information on the perceived needs of end‐users of digital cultural heritage resources. The study was funded by the National Library of New Zealand in order to take end‐user needs into consideration more fully in its development and presentation of digital cultural heritage resources.

The study's research design involved a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach; a user survey comprising self‐administered, semi‐structured questionnaires, seven face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews and one focus group.

The findings outline the barriers users face in using New Zealand digital cultural heritage resources. They also highlight the user needs and features and characteristics they most desire in digital cultural heritage resources.

Only a handful of studies exist about end‐user needs with respect to the digitisation of cultural heritage materials and very few are research‐based articles. This research is the first of its kind to describe information needs of users of digital cultural heritage resources in New Zealand, and pays particular attention to the needs of historical researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a research project aimed at gaining an understanding of subject librarians' perceptions and promotion of institutional repositories as an information resource for their clients.

The researchers used the five attributes of innovations and the change agent concept, both drawn from Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory, as the basis of semi‐structured interviews with nine librarians, spread equally across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences at three universities.

The researchers found that subject librarians have varying levels of knowledge about institutional repositories as an information resource and hold both positive and negative perceptions. The librarians perceived institutional repositories to be still underdeveloped, with greatest value for humanities clients and least value for science clients, offering little value to undergraduates, but a good resource for accessing theses.

Due to their current perceptions of the value of institutional repositories, subject librarians are not yet promoting them as an information resource. If institutional repositories are to be successful, library managers must not only ensure that content is being input into the repositories, but also that they are being promoted to library clients as valuable information resources, so that the content is being accessed and used.

While there has been much research in recent years about institutional repositories, the focus has been predominantly on issues related to motivating individuals to input content into them. This research shows that institutional repositories are not yet being perceived or promoted as a valuable information resource by academic subject librarians, who view them as having varying value to their clients.

“Mehr Parkplätze schaffen und die Liftkapazität erhöhen, hiesse das Pferd am Schwanz aufzäumen.” Worte aus dem Munde wirtschaftsfeindlicher Naturschützer, Grüner oder Bürgerinitiativler? Mitnichten! Sie stammen von Hubert Schwärzler, Fremdenverkehrsdirektor der Wintersportgemeinde Lech am Arlberg, geäussert im Februar 1985 gegenüber dem Redaktionsmitglied einer grossen deutschen Tageszeitung.