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Acquisition of books, serials and other educational materials by libraries involves a complex decision process; especially when there are many books to choose from and the resources are meager. Attempts have been made in the past to take decisions concerning library acquisitions using structured information such as cost, availability of funds, and number of copies needed by the library, author and year of publication. The purpose of this research is to provide a framework for the combination of both structured and unstructured information in the library acquisitions decision process.

The research methodology involves the design of a knowledge‐based system, which is powered by the classical method of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which carries out a pairwise comparison (PWC) of acquisition decision variables.

The results of the study show that decision variables involved in library acquisitions can be grouped and hierarchically structured. The application of the pairwise comparison matrix produces eigenvectors that aid in stepwise refinement of the results of the conventional acquisition process in order to achieve some level of optimality in the decision process.

The framework provided in this study could be useful for library professionals and information scientists as a veritable library decision support tool that applies both structured and unstructured information in the acquisition decision process.

The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative approach that is proposed for developing e‐libraries with metadata to meet the need of training observation and classification skills in a mobile learning environment.

A knowledge engineering approach is proposed to assist teachers in defining metadata of e‐libraries to meet the need of training observation and classification skills. Based on the innovative approach, an e‐library of butterfly and ecology has been developed. Moreover, an experiment was conducted from March‐April 2007 on the science course “Butterfly and Ecology” at an elementary school in Taiwan. There were two teachers and 35 students participated in the experiment.

Experimental results showed that the e‐library developed with the innovative approach is able to effectively support the training of observation and classification skills for elementary school students.

Currently, the innovative approach has only been applied to the training of observation and classification knowledge. Further studies will be needed to assist teachers in defining metadata of e‐libraries for other educational objectives, such as “analysis” (the ability to separate material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood), “synthesis” (the ability to put parts together to form a new whole) and “evaluation” (the ability to judge the value of material for a given purpose).

With the innovative approach, personalized supports can be provided as a guide for students' learning. Moreover, students are allowed to face the real objects with technology‐rich supports during the learning process.

This paper aims to propose an innovative approach to assist teachers in using electronic libraries to develop learning activities for context‐aware ubiquitous learning, in which the learning system can detect students' behaviors and guide them to learn in the real world with personalized support from the digital world.

An electronic library with context‐awareness metadata for supporting learning activities conducted in real‐world environments is presented. Furthermore, a systematic procedure for guiding teachers in employing the electronic library to develop learning activities is proposed based on an innovative approach.

From a practical application conducted on an elementary school, it is found that, with this innovative approach, electronic libraries not only have the potential in supporting traditional in‐class or online learning activities, but also can assist teachers and digital content workers in developing high quality learning activities and related digital learning materials to support outdoor learning.

The findings of this paper imply that, to promote the utilization rate of electronic libraries for more specified purposes, more features of the application domains need to be considered while designing the database schemas of the electronic libraries.

From the feedback of teachers and digital content workers, it is found electronic libraries have high potential for supporting outdoor learning activities for “Science” and “Social science” courses with proper database schema design and the provision of user guidance.

An electronic library for supporting context‐aware ubiquitous‐learning is presented and an innovative approach for guiding teachers to design learning activities is proposed.

This paper aims to present a methodological framework for the identification of a hierarchy among the three categories of intellectual capital, i.e. human, organizational/structural and relational capital, with respect to their contribution to the objective of improving a library's performance. It also seeks to provide a case study of Greek central public libraries.

The framework is based on an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) application including utilization of a Delphi method and ISO 11620 international standards. Finally, empirical evidence is produced for the Greek central public libraries.

The proposed framework may be employed for prioritizing intangible assets in libraries. For the Greek central public libraries it has been indicated that human capital contributes more than the organizational/structural capital and this in turn more than the relational capital.

Although the proposed methodological framework is intended to be widely applicable, the case study results cannot be directly generalized due to the uniqueness of the Greek public libraries environment.

A hierarchy may be an invaluable tool for the library's management in order to better utilize the intangible resources and effectively allocate investments to human, organizational and relation capital assets in order to improve the library's performance

The paper shows that the framework for building a hierarchy of intellectual capital in libraries is based on a rather challenging research approach for prioritizing intangible assets with respect to predefined management objectives.

This study proposes a mobile learning model that employs digital libraries to support investigative learning activities. A student‐centered mobile learning activity with self‐guided exploration for physical ecology observation has been conducted to demonstrate the benefits of using digital libraries to support investigation‐based ecology learning activities.

An investigation‐based mobile learning model is proposed and an experiment is designed to show the effectiveness of the learning model, in which the students are asked to answer a series of questions by observing the real‐world learning objects and searching for supplemental materials from a digital library.

The instructional experiment conducted in an elementary school with 64 sixth grade students shows that the innovative approach is able to improve the learning achievement, learning effectiveness, as well as the learning attitudes of the students.

The findings of this paper imply that the use of the investigative learning model will significantly promote the utilization rate of digital libraries.

An investigative model for using digital libraries to support mobile learning is proposed in this paper. It provides good guidance to teachers for designing learning activities with digital libraries, and a good way for students to learn, utilizing the materials in digital libraries.

Against a milieu of fragmented research that documents indigenous practices related to food security, and the heterogeneous settings from which the studies have been conducted, this study aims to synthesize the evidence of indigenous knowledge-food security nexus to strengthen the call for the revitalization of indigenous knowledge (IK) as part of the mechanisms to manage food security challenges being aggravated by climate change.

Drawing on insights from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this study reviews 122 articles accessed from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, which covered indigenous methods used for producing, gathering, processing, preserving and storing diverse food sources that indigenous people deploy in securing their food systems.

The surge in attention to focus on IK-food security nexus tends to be influenced by the growing acknowledgement of climate change impacts on food systems. Essentially, the IK-based practices adopted address all the four food security pillars that are specified by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) as availability, accessibility, utilization and stability. The main motivation behind the continued use of IK-based ways relates largely to the interest to be food secure against climatic shocks and partly to the desire to maintain people’s food cultures and food sovereignty.

This study deploys the food security pillars provided by the FAO (2012) to demonstrate that IK-based ways of food management are capable of addressing all the four food security dimensions, a critical observation toward revitalizing IK in managing growing food security challenges that are intensified by climate change in SSA.

The study investigates the effectiveness of an adaptive reflective framework that shifts the learning process toward a student-centered approach within an interdisciplinary learning environment. It aims to promote the learning process within an interdisciplinary learning environment that could promote the students’ design competencies.

The experiment was conducted at Basic Design studio, investigating three concepts of basic design principles: harmony, repetition and rhythm. A total of 80 first-year architectural students were enrolled in this study and placed into two equal groups: the “control group” received the traditional learning method and in contrast, the “experimental group” received an interdisciplinary reflective learning method using music as a relevant discipline.

The results showed that utilizing “Music Animation Machine” in the learning process significantly promoted students’ cognitive skills, engagement and design competencies. In addition, there was obvious evidence of excellent progress in learning basic design principles using the proposed reflective approach within a student-centered learning environment.

Many researchers focus on the importance of using music as a design tool. However, there is a crucial demand for investigating it as a learning tool. This research raised music effectiveness in the learning process of design principles. Thus, it incites to test more disciplines interconnected with architectural design. Other researchers could utilize this approach to ensure its effect on enhancing design competencies in the basic design and other architectural design courses.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the information needs and accessibility for fish farmers in the Southern high lands of Tanzania.

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 240 fish farmers in six selected districts from three regions in Southern high lands of Tanzania. Focus groups and key informants’ interviews were also used to collect qualitative data from 54 fish farmers in the selected districts.

Findings indicated that fish farmers highly needed information related to water treatment (management), spawning operations and fish preservation and processing. However, it was found that access to these categories of information was very low. In addition, findings indicated that age, education and income have a statistical significant and positive relationship with farmer’s information accessibility at p < 0.05. On the other hand, age, amount of fish harvested, education and farming experience had statistical significant and negative relationship with farmer’s information at p < 0.05.

The study provides a deep understanding of information needs and accessibility for fish farmers in the in Southern high lands of Tanzania, which will be assisting in in designing focused, need-based and user-oriented information infrastructure in fish farming.

Women’s entrepreneurship has become an essential movement in developing economies and is accepted in all working areas. This study aims to propose the effect of institutional support (IS) and entrepreneurial knowledge (ENK) on women’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy (WESE) and venture performance (VP) in a developing country, namely, Pakistan.

The constructive theoretical framework comprises of an extensive review of current literature. In this study, the researchers used a deductive approach that used cross-sectional data collected through women entrepreneurs completing a questionnaire. Consequently, this study comprised 324 usable samples.

The structural equation model reveals that formal institutional support (FIS), informal institutional support (IFIS) and ENK have a positive and significant effect on WESE that is concerned with the VP. Finally, WESE is a potent construct that mediates the association between FIS, IFIS, ENK and VP.

This study’s findings provide policymakers and government with guidance so that, by providing entrepreneurship and technical courses to develop more entrepreneurial self-efficacy, they focus more on women’s entrepreneurship. Ultimately, this improves VP. Finally, this study’s findings would provide guidelines for allocating financial assistance or funds for women. By using these funds, they can start their businesses to tackle miserable conditions, i.e. poverty and unemployment.

This study’s findings help to support the creation of self-employment opportunities and starting a business to improve well-being and socioeconomic conditions.