Search results

The use of mobile technologies and learning devices has been increasing in every field of life, and library and information sciences are no exception. This study aims to explore the perceptions of library and information science (LIS) students regarding mobile learning (m-learning) along with their primary purposes, social media applications, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impact and overall satisfaction with using these devices.

A survey method was used, and data was collected from the students of 12 library schools in Pakistan for a total sample of 250 students.

Their main purposes of usage, their needs, advantages, disadvantages, barriers, impacts and the level of overall satisfaction were also identified. The inferential statistics (t-test and ANOVA) also identified the difference of opinion on the basis of gender, programs, types and number of m-learning devices. Overall, the findings highlight the need for academic libraries to give mobile access (launching mobile applications) to better use library services. To ensure this, libraries must keep an eye on new advances in mobile technology, researchers’ needs and related electronic library services and observe how these services are being used.

Theoretical and practical implications have been highlighted to understand the perceptions of LIS students about m-learning devices.

The mobile library service providers and management need to improve their services by offering services that fit the diverse needs of their users and should know how to attract modern library users.

The library and information science (LIS) profession experienced drastic changes in its job requirements due to emerging digital scholarship trends, especially the growth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). As a result, there is a discrepancy between the job market and the LIS curriculum. This study addresses this gap by looking into incorporating digital scholarship into the LIS school curricula in South Africa. This may have implications for other contexts as well, because digital scholarship is becoming pervasive.

The study adopted a constructivist paradigm using a qualitative approach and a multiple case study design. Primary data using semi-structured interviews were collected from 10 academics at LIS schools and 10 librarians from both academic and special research council libraries in South Africa.

The study revealed that LIS schools did not have content on digital scholarship such as research data management (RDM), digitisation, metadata standards, open access, institutional repositories and other related content. Stakeholders who needed to be consulted included librarians, information technology (IT) and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists, computer scientists, humanists, the South Africa Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and LIS professional bodies. There were gaps and redundancies in the curriculum as far as digital scholarship was concerned. Digital scholarship presented opportunities for librarians and academics to acquire emerging jobs and to collaborate more in the digital space.

The article advances knowledge on the importance of incorporating digital scholarship in the LIS curriculum in South Africa. Furthermore, it provides guidance regarding stakeholders to be consulted when incorporating content into the LIS curriculum with the intention of closing the gaps and curbing or removing discrepancies between job requirements and graduates’ skills and competencies.

The necessity for continuous advancement in library education and practice requires research collaboration among library professionals. This study aims to investigate research collaboration among lecturers in the department of library and information science (LIS) and librarians in university libraries in Nigeria.

A descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The quantitative study employed a close-ended questionnaire for data collection. The study covered all the librarians in academic libraries and lecturers in the department of LIS (LIS professionals) in public universities in Ekiti, Ondo and Osun States, Nigeria. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. The criterion mean of 2.50–2.99 was used for the research questions.

It was found that librarians in academic libraries and lecturers in Nigeria rarely engage in research collaboration. The reasons for the research collaboration are to increase the quality of research in the library profession, make research in the library profession more in-depth and cross-fertilize ideas for generating novel insights.

It is the engagement of librarians in academic libraries and the lecturers in the LIS department in the exchange of knowledge at national and international levels through research collaboration that can enhance the quality of research that emanates from the library profession.

Promotion of the library profession requires the integrated effort of library professionals in academic libraries and lecturers in the department of LIS through research collaboration.

Promotion of the library profession requires the integrated effort of library professionals in academic libraries and lecturers in the department of LIS through research collaboration.

This study aims to assess the scholarly communication competence of Zambian library and information science (LIS) professionals by evaluating their awareness, knowledge and practices regarding scholarly publication.

Applying a quantitative research approach, the study used a specially designed questionnaire. Responses from 57 professionals across universities and colleges in Zambia were gathered using convenience sampling. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation calculations and t-values and p-values to understand respondents’ perceptions and knowledge of scholarly communication and publication.

The findings revealed significant gaps in respondents’ knowledge and awareness, particularly regarding predatory journals, journal selection factors, open-access models, publication challenges, reference management software (RMS) usage and research obstacles. The study underscored the necessity for increased training and capacity-building initiatives among Zambian LIS professionals to enhance their scholarly communication competence.

This research contributed to the field by highlighting deficiencies in scholarly communication awareness among Zambian LIS professionals. It emphasised the need for targeted interventions, awareness programs and educational support to improve academic literacy and scholarly publication practices. Additionally, the study suggested future research avenues, such as longitudinal studies and strategies for enhancing RMS adoption, to advance scholarly practices among Zambian professionals further.

This study aims to explore first-year engineering students’ perceptions of the engineering librarian as an instructor in multimodal environments related to Information Literacy (IL) topics, teaching strategy, content evaluation, organising, planning and support.

A quantitative approach was used through a survey instrument based on an online questionnaire. Questions were adopted and modified from a lecturer evaluation survey. A simple random sampling technique was used to collect data from first-year cohorts of engineering students in 2020 and 2022.

Respondents perception of the engineering librarian as an instructor in multimodal learning environment was good. Findings revealed students’ learning experiences were aligned with IL instruction even though the environment changed from blended to online. However, an emerging theme that continuously appeared was a lack of access to technology.

These findings may help in developing and strengthening the teaching identity of academic librarians as instructors in multimodal learning environments.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is novel in that it evaluates the teaching abilities of an academic librarian in multimodal environments through the lens of students.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications organized thematically and detailing, study populations, results and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for academic library practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 340 English-language periodical articles, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2022. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Elsevier SCOPUS and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Sources selected were published in 2022 and included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, subject terms, or author supplied keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations were made summarizing the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was then thematically categorized and organized for academic librarians to be able to skim and use the annotated bibliography efficiently.

The paper provides a brief description of 340 sources from 144 unique publications, and highlights publications that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions. Further analysis of the sources and authorship are provided.

The information is primarily of use to academic librarians, researchers, and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy published within 2022.

Celebrate Michael Buckland's impressive legacy to LIS by showing his humanity, generosity and versatility.

This article is walk through a scientific career in LIS. Through personal anecdotes and life history and building upon Michael Buckland's legacy, it summarises the author’s own work seen through the prism of her interactions with Buckland, leading to scholarly contributions articulating significant statements about the field of LIS as well as pointers to past relevant publications.

Michael Buckland has a unique way of putting an end to thorny LIS issues as well as being a documentator extraordinaire.

It is a personal account, as such cannot be evaluated through the classical norms of empirical research as there is no ground truth. This account shows how chance encounters with fellow scholars can have a lasting influence on one's academic career as well as wider impact in a field.

The research on social media-based academic communication has made great progress with the development of the mobile Internet era, and while a large number of research results have emerged, clarifying the topology of the knowledge label network (KLN) in this field and showing the development of its knowledge labels and related concepts is one of the issues that must be faced. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

From a bibliometric perspective, 5,217 research papers in this field from CNKI from 2011 to 2021 are selected, and the title and abstract of each paper are subjected to subword processing and topic model analysis, and the extended labels are obtained by taking the merged set with the original keywords, so as to construct a conceptually expanded KLN. At the same time, appropriate time window slicing is performed to observe the temporal evolution of the network topology. Specifically, the basic network topological parameters and the complex modal structure are analyzed empirically to explore the evolution pattern and inner mechanism of the KLN in this domain. In addition, the ARIMA time series prediction model is used to further predict and compare the changing trend of network structure among different disciplines, so as to compare the differences among different disciplines.

The results show that the degree sequence distribution of the KLN is power-law distributed during the growth process, and it performs better in the mature stage of network development, and the network shows more stable scale-free characteristics. At the same time, the network has the characteristics of “short path and high clustering” throughout the time series, which is a typical small-world network. The KLN consists of a small number of hub nodes occupying the core position of the network, while a large number of label nodes are distributed at the periphery of the network and formed around these hub nodes, and its knowledge expansion pattern has a certain retrospective nature. More knowledge label nodes expand from the center to the periphery and have a gradual and stable trend. In addition, there are certain differences between different disciplines, and the research direction or topic of library and information science (LIS) is more refined and deeper than that of journalism and media and computer science. The LIS discipline has shown better development momentum in this field.

KLN is constructed by using extended labels and empirically analyzed by using network frontier conceptual motifs, which reflects the innovation of the study to a certain extent. In future research, the influence of larger-scale network motifs on the structural features and evolutionary mechanisms of KLNs will be further explored.

Through a review of the literature, this article seeks to outline and understand the evolution and extent of user–participant involvement in the existing library and information science (LIS) research to identify gaps and existing research approaches that might inform further methodological development in participant-oriented and design-based LIS research.

A scoping literature review of LIS research, from the 1960s onward, was conducted, assessing the themes and trends in understanding the user/participant within the LIS field. It traces LIS research from its early focus on information and relevancy to the “user turn”, to the rise of participatory research, especially design-based, as well as the recent inclusion of Indigenous and decolonial methodologies.

The literature review indicates that despite the reported “user turn”, LIS research often does not include the user as an active and equal participant within research projects.

The findings from this review support the development of alternative design research methodologies in LIS that fully include and involve research participants as full partners – from planning through dissemination of results – and suggests avenues for continuing the development of such design-based research. To that end, it lays the foundations for the introduction of a novel methodology, Action Partnership Research Design (APRD).

This study aims to explore the status of collaborative research productivity, major library and information sciences (LIS) research trends and the level of research among the LIS academicians as principal authors in Pakistan during 1975–2021 (47 years).

A quantitative research method was adopted to collect the required data using bibliometric patterns. The data of all faculty members working in LIS schools of Pakistan was collected from the official website of their employers/institutions. Different strategies were used to acquire respondents’ bibliographic/publication records such as faculty members’/employers’ official websites and faculty members’ Google Scholar profiles; advanced searching techniques were also used to retrieve their bibliographic records.

The results revealed that a total of 74 regular faculty members comprising 78.38% males and 21.62% females are working in 12 LIS Pakistani schools. A total of 1,787 papers were produced by LIS faculty, among which 702 were written by Pakistani LIS faculty as principal authors during the selected period. The results revealed that 60.72% of the principal authors’ work was produced in collaboration. The collaboration between faculty members and other faculty was 81%, while two authors' work productivity was on the top. No attention has been given to produce research in collaboration with international/foreign LIS experts, especially from developed countries.

The findings of this study are useful for faculties to have a richer understanding of the various elements of collaboration at national as well as international levels, and then discover the ways to begin and maintain effective partnerships to research emerging trends in LIS.

This study is a unique bibliometric study that systematically and quantitatively combined the research productivity of LIS academicians in Pakistan and provided a holistic sketch of the literature produced on various themes of LIS during 1975–2021.