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This viewpoint paper aims to propose a digital and research literacy support program for postgraduate schools in sub-Saharan Africa institutions.

The paper reviewed literature on postgraduate students’ skills and postgraduate information literacy programs and proposed one for postgraduate schools in sub-Saharan Africa institutions.

Information literacy programs are not implemented at the postgraduate level in sub-Saharan Africa possibly because of lack of contents for these programs.

The course is only a proposed course that can be embedded into the postgraduate curriculum in sub-Saharan African universities. The effectiveness of the course has not been evaluated in this study.

The proposed information literacy program focused on digital and research literacy, which is still relatively new in sub-Saharan Africa.

The progress of research and development, funded from government sources, during the last three decades is reviewed, together with forms of sponsorship and support. The Office for Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) functioned from 1965 to 1974 and concentrated on developments for bibliographic and information analysis services. When transferred to the British Library (with the title of the R&D Department) the scope was widened. The trend has been to more applied, more commissioned research reflecting national priorities. Current broad areas of concern attracting financial support are: information technology for library and information services, implications of information being treated as a tradeable commodity and the effects of economic and social constraints on services.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of research approaches which information managers may find useful to meet the needs of working in the networked, digitized age.

This is achieved by a discussion of the research paradigms inherent within both information theory and social theory.

The findings work towards a final justification for an interpretist approach as the most appropriate context in which to work, in order to meet the emerging trends and current challenges of information technology management.

The central theme of this paper is that research which deals primarily with people and information in a world of change, competition, and fluid communications technology should take into account and allow for an understanding of human behaviour. This understanding helps to highlight different contexts, backgrounds, and cultures and therefore provides assistance in making appropriate choices concerning research paradigms and information management, which in turn will ensure thoughtful methodology and justifiable research results.

This paper examined questions regarding the choices of research paradigms and the practical application of philosophy to the life of professional information managers.

In this closing chapter the editors review key themes that have emerged through the book. We recognize the varied and dynamic nature of information experience across multiple contexts, and present our own conceptualization of information experience. Finally, we consider possible future directions for information experience research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and an introduction to the papers in the special issue.

A narrative review of the previous research activities and contemporary research environment of the Department of Information Studies.

There is more to be learnt about the future of the research assessment exercise, whether it is moving to a metrics‐based system, or whether the system will look more favourably on departments that attract a range of research funding.

Identifies how changes in the scope of research activities in a department reflect changes in research funding and structures for the information sector, as well as changes in staff interests.

In the era of digital intelligence, individuals are increasingly interacting with digital information in their daily lives and work, and a growing phenomenon known as digital hoarding is becoming more prevalent. Prior research suggests that humanities researchers have unique and longstanding information interaction and management practices in the digital scholarship context. This study therefore aims to understand how digital hoarding manifests in humanities researchers’ behavior, identify the influencing factors associated with it, and explore how they perceive and respond to digital hoarding behavior.

Qualitative research methods enable us to acquire a rich insight and nuanced understanding of digital hoarding practices. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 humanities researchers who were pre-screened for a high propensity for digital hoarding. Thematic analyses were then used to analyze the interview data.

Three main characteristics of digital hoarding were identified. Further, the research paradigm, digital affordance, and personality traits and habits, collectively influencing the emergence and development of digital hoarding behaviors, were examined. The subtle influence of traditional Chinese culture was encountered. Interestingly, this study found that humanists perceive digital hoarding as a positive expectation (associated with inspiration, aesthetic pursuit, and uncertainty avoidance). Meanwhile, humanists' problematic perception of this behavior is more widely observed — they experience what we conceptualize as an “expectation-perception” gap. Three specific information behaviors related to avoidance were identified as aggravating factors for digital hoarding.

The findings deepen the understanding of digital hoarding behaviors and personal information management among humanities researchers within the LIS field, and implications for humanities researchers, digital scholarship service providers, and digital tool developers are discussed.

David Ellis is Professor in the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University. He was previously lecturer and senior lecturer in the Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield. He has a PhD and an MA in Information Studies from the University of Sheffield, and a BA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Durham. His PhD study of the information behaviour of academic social scientists represented one of the first attempts to apply a rigorous qualitative methodology to modelling the information seeking patterns of social science researchers and was subsequently extended to studies of scientists in both academic and industrial research environments. These interests were further developed in the course of the uncertainty in information seeking project carried out in collaboration with researchers at the University of Sheffield and the University of North Texas. Professor Ellis has published extensively in the information studies field, his work has been recognised as representing a distinct, substantive and methodological contribution to the fields of information behaviour and information retrieval research, and is widely cited in both. His current research interests are in the areas of information behaviour, information and knowledge management and information systems. Professor Ellis's professional activities have included service on the UK Research Assessment Exercise, Peer Review Panel for Library and Information Management, and Research Convenor of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review Panel for Librarianship, Information and Museum Studies. He is a member of the AHRC and the Economics and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC) Peer Review Colleges and Research Notes Editor of the International Journal of Information Management.

This scoping review article examined research on information behavior in communities over the past two decades (2000–2023). The review aims to uncover the characteristics and types of communities studied, the featured information behaviors, and the research methods employed.

The PRISMA-ScR guidelines were followed to conduct this review. Five databases were selected to search for relevant empirical research. A total of 57 studies met the inclusion criteria for review. Thematic synthesis was used to analyze the multidimensional findings of included studies.

A steady increase in the number of articles is evident in the past two decades. The review suggests that information behavior in community studies involved collaboration from other disciplines, such as public health and business management. More than half of the communities studied are virtual communities (56.1%), followed by communities of identity, professional communities and support communities, communities of interest, geographic communities, and academic communities. There are overlaps among these categories. Information sharing (63.2%) and information seeking (57.9%) were the most studied behavior of communities, followed by information use, information needs, and information judgment. Questionnaires (38.6%) and interviews (35.1%) were the most commonly used data collection techniques in studying information behavior in communities. It is noteworthy that eleven (19.3%) mentioned utilizing community-engaged approaches.

This is the first scoping review to explore the intersecting constructs of community research and information behavior studies. We call for further research to understand the contextual factors that shape the community’s information environments and to increase awareness of the partnership between communities and researchers.

This project set out to explore information scholars’ perceptions of the influence of their keyword selections and the implications of their linguistic choices on possibilities for and perceptions of the field of Information Science. We trialed a narrative methodological approach to investigate the multiple stories told with specific keywords, how they relate to larger discourses within the field and the impact they have on the lives of information researchers.

This paper draws on Arthur Frank’s narrative analysis to consider keywords as stories, which shape one’s sense of professional identity and belonging. The analysis, which is informed by insights from multi-disciplinary scholars of keywords, employs data from a keywords-oriented workshop with Information School faculty and students, as well as an online questionnaire sent to heads of Information Schools.

We did not find a singular definitive story of information science scholars’ experiences with keywords. Rather we identify tensions surrounding common and contested understandings of discipline, canon and information, engaging the complexity of interdisciplinary, international, intellectual and moral claims of the field. This research offers insight into the experiential factors that shape scholars’ engagement with keywords and the tensions they can create.

A wealth of bibliometric analyses of keywords focuses on finding the “right” words to describe the scholarship you seek or the work you want others to discover. However, this study offers information researchers a novel approach, creating space to acknowledge the generative tensions of keywords, beyond the extractive logic of search and retrieval.

Needs for information literacy, disparities in society, bridging digital divides, richness of information sources in electronic (e-)environments and the value of dictionaries have often been propagated. To improve information sources and information literacy training, information behaviour must be understood (i.e. all information activities). This paper conceptualises new opportunities for information sources (e.g. electronic dictionaries) to all society sectors, dictionary literacy and research lenses such as lexicography to supplement information literacy and behaviour research.

A scoping review of information literacy and behaviour, lexicography and dictionary literature grounds the conceptualisation of dictionary literacy, its alignment with information literacy, information activities and information behaviour and lexicography as additional research lens.

Research lenses must acknowledge dictionary use in e-environments, information activities and skills, meanings of information and dictionary literacy, the value of e-dictionaries, alignment with information behaviour research that guides the development of information sources and interdisciplinary research from, e.g. lexicography – thus contextualisation.

Research implications – information behaviour and information literacy research can be enriched by lexicography as research lens. Further conceptualisation could align information behaviour, information literacy and dictionary literacy.

Dictionary training, aligned with information literacy training, can be informed by this paper.

The value of dictionary literacy for all sectors of societies can be improved.

Large bodies of literature on information behaviour and lexicography individually do not cover combined insights from both.