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Mark Kerr is one of the new generation of information professionals who straddles the dual services of library provision and Internet cafe. This article represents some of his views on the future of library provision in the light of the Internet cafe. He describes the current state of public Internet access, charts the rise of the cybercafe and compares public libraries and Internet cafes as a source of access to electronic public information.

The purpose of this paper is to profile everyday management and business strategies of 30 cyber cafés in Mumbai and contextualize them in the broader and pervasive culture of non‐formal economy.

The paper conducts an ethnographic study of open‐ended interviews of cyber café owner/managers to understand everyday patterns of managing a cyber café. The field observations and literature review aid an understanding of non‐formal economy in Mumbai.

The paper finds three important insights: business with internet technologies, even at the level of a small café, is expensive, requiring reasonable computing skills to maintain or expand business potential; in order to survive expense management several unauthorized practices are routinised and merge with the broader structures of non‐formal economy; and the non‐formality of business practices influence an open, liberal atmosphere to browse the internet and turn in a predominantly youth clientele.

With regulatory discourse on information and communication technologies (ICTs) centered on piracy and ill‐legality, informality of business practices in emerging economies provide an alternate premise to understand its nature and function. These challenge received notions of visualizing ICT as simply piracy and coming to terms with markets shaped and structured by non‐formal processes.

The study is one of the first on cyber cafés in Mumbai using the framework of non‐formal economy to analyse data. This paper presents the connections between a small ICT‐enabled business and the pervasive culture of non‐formal business relations in Mumbai. It also reports on the everyday organizational practices and client usages of internet cafés in India.

The differences between urban and rural Internet capability have emerged as a very important issue in recent years. In Australia, the problem has been addressed partly, through providing support for public regional Internet Facilities such as Internet Cafes. The economic merits of public Internet facilities in regional and rural areas are well promoted. This study explores these economic benefits, as well as some very valuable social benefits not often recognised. An exploratory research design is employed and data from in‐depth interviews with four public Internet facilities is analysed. The study draws conclusions about the balance between economic and social issues in managing the Internet. These findings have implications for the future development of public regional Internet facilities.

Aims to provide an analysis of the introduction of Internet‐based skills into small firms. Seeks to contribute to the wider debate on the content and style of training most appropriate for employees and managers of SMEs.

This study explores the use of the cybercafe at Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. By means of questionnaires, data were collected from 83 users. Findings revealed that a majority of the respondents have not been using the cafe for a long period of time; most of them visit the internet cafe for sending or receiving e‐mail, followed by browsing for academic information; most acquired internet knowledge and skills through practical self‐teaching but a good number of respondents do not spend a long time accessing the net per visit. Yahoo! is the search engine used by most respondents followed by Google. The high cost of internet access is a constraint to a majority of users.

The study aims to investigate the use of cybercafé for internet access by students of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Nigeria.

Using descriptive design, 382 copies of a structured questionnaire were administered to students of the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, who were using the institution cybercafé as at the time of the study.

The findings revealed that 75 percent of the male students make use of the cybercafé compared with their female colleagues, while the majority strongly agreed that they use it for research purposes. Google and Yahoo were the leading search engines used to explore resources, while the students acquired internet search knowledge and skills through teaching themselves followed by computer training programmes. It was also discovered that irregular electricity supply was the leading problem faced while using the cybercafé by the students, among others.

The paper contains an extensive study on the use of cybercafé in an academic environment in Nigeria, which will help in improving the internet access of students of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships between internet connectedness, online gaming, internet addiction symptoms, and academic performance decrement among the internet-dependent young people in China.

A paper-based survey was conducted among the young clients in one of the earliest and largest internet addiction clinics in China. A total of 594 in-patients (mean age=17.76 y) voluntarily participated in this study.

By adopting the concept of internet connectedness, this study explored the internet use patterns among the young internet addicts, for example, internet café patrons and those who use internet with more goals or higher degree of internet adhesiveness had more internet addiction symptoms. Online gaming was found to play a significant role in the development of internet addiction. As expected, the level of internet addiction is significantly linked to academic performance decrement. Consistent with previous studies, males showed higher degree of internet connectedness and online game usage than females. Noticeably, the moderation effect of online game playing and the mediating effect of internet addiction were also tested.

This research is focussed on the internet-dependent group, thus the generalizability of the results need to be interpreted with caution.

This study provides insight for parents, educators, health professionals, and policy makers regarding treatment and intervention for internet addiction among young people in China.

Since very little research has been done focussing on diagnosed internet-dependent group, this paper scores as a pioneering study of its kind in China.

The paper aims to discuss and investigate the prevalence of digital divide in Nigeria, using University of Calabar in Calabar Metropolis as a case study.

Validated questionnaires were administered to internet users at designated cyber café in the University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria.

The findings of the survey show the prevalence of various forms of digital divide such as gender, marital status, age and educational level of the internet users in Nigeria.

The federal/state governments as well as university managements in Nigeria should formulate relevant policies to reduce various forms of digital divide that are prevalent in the Nigeria.

The paper recommends the need to effectively address the issue of digital divide in whatever form in Nigeria towards global integration in the digital economy.

To investigate internet usage in a Nigerian suburban setting – Abraka Delta State.

The study employed a questionnaire to collect data from 150 respondents.

Revealed the personal characteristics of the respondents, different aspects of their internet use such as duration of internet usage access time, motivation for using the Net, search engines employed, internet skills acquisition, frequency of internet use, evaluation of internet information content, problems encountered while using the internet as well as way forward.

The findings will assist the LIS world to know the patterns of internet use in developing world and provide the needed data that will assist policy makers and stakeholders to seek ways of making the dwellers better users of the Net.

This paper sets out to investigate cybercafés' change of internet service providers (ISPs) in Nigeria.

Employs a survey design using questionnaires to collect data from 89 cybercafé entrepreneurs/managers in four states of Nigeria (Delta, Edo, Lagos, and Ogun), and analyses the data using frequency counts and percentages.

The findings reveal that most cybercafés were established between 2002 and 2003. The majority of the cybercafés have ten PCs connected to the net, while a greater number of them are connected to the net via wireless means. A good number of cybercafés have changed ISPs once. The lack of or poor technical support and frequent loss of contact/signals with the ISP were two of the reasons reported for cybercafés changing their ISP. Cybercafés would like ISPs to increase their speed of transmission, etc., to serve them better. It is recommended that cybercafés should obtain adequate information before engaging ISPs, and that ISPs should conduct periodic customer assessment of their service in order to improve on their services.

This research and its findings will assist Nigerian (and other) ISPs to improve their services to their clients. Using the results of this study, cybercafés and other ISP clients will know what to take into consideration before signing up with any ISP.