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Considering that research data is increasingly hailed as an important raw material for current and future science discoveries, many research stakeholders have joined forces to create mechanisms for preserving it. However, regardless of generating rich research data, Africa lags behind in research data management thereby potentially losing most of this valuable data. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigate the research data management practices at a Malawian public university with the aim to recommend appropriate data management strategies.

The study is inspired by the pragmatic school of thought thereby adopting quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Quantitative data was collected using a questionnaire from 150 researchers and 25 librarians while qualitative data was collected by conducting an interview with the Director of Research.

Researchers are actively involved in research activities thereby generating large quantities of research data. Although researchers are willing to share their data, only a handful follow through. Data preservation is poor because the university uses high risk data storage facilities, namely personal computers, flash disks, emails and external hard drives. Researchers and librarians lacked core research data-management competencies because of the lack of formal and information training opportunities. Challenges that frustrate research data-management efforts are many but the key ones include absence of research data management policies, lack of incentives, lack of skills and unavailability of data infrastructure.

The study's findings are based on one out of four public universities in the country; hence, the findings may not adequately address the status of research data management practices in the other universities.

Considering that the university under study and its counterparts in Malawi and Africa in general operate somewhat in a similar economic and technological environment, these findings could be used as a reference point for other universities intending to introduce research data management initiatives.

With seemingly limited studies about research data management in Africa and particularly in Malawi, the study sets the tone for research data management debates and initiatives in the country and other African countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences of health information seeking among Finnish and South African university students. The focus is on weight management and on how students utilise various internet sources.

Data were collected with a web-based, structured survey by using convenience sampling. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s χ² test were utilised in the analysis.

Overall, health information was more often encountered than sought on purpose. Passive information seeking was more common for South African students as almost a third of them report encountering it several times a week. As an information source, South African students opted for social networking sites more frequently than search engines, the latter being the first choice for Finnish students. Discussion boards were more popular among South African students, and, on the other hand, web-based health calculators among Finns.

This is a small-scale comparative study. The results are not to be generalised, but may provide clues about the information seeking differences between Finland and South Africa.

Media literacy, digital literacy and health information literacy of young adults should be emphasised so that they would be able to evaluate information for reliability and accuracy in order to help them make appropriate decisions when confronted by health information online.

The implications of the study are that health providers and professionals should be more prominent on social media sites, which are popular ways for young people to discover information.

Comparative studies are rare. This comparison is between Finland, where internet penetration is 94 per cent, and South Africa, where internet penetration is 54 per cent.

More subject tracings. More notes. More added entries for persons, groups, and titles. More up‐to‐date terminology. More specific topical headings. More analytics. More subject access to single literary works. That's what will make online (and most other) catalogs work better. But is our primary cataloging source doing it? Judge for yourself by comparing these Library of Congress and Hennepin County Library records for small and alternative press titles:

The winter 1991 issue of Reference Services Review featured an annotated bibliography of literature on Christopher Columbus from 1970 to 1989. That literature covered such topics as Columbus' ancestry, heraldry, and the locations of both his American landfall and burial site. This annotated checklist focuses mainly on Columbus' legacy, on works that offer a dissenting point of view from most previous writings about Columbus (and on works that react to the dissenters), on material written by Native American and other non‐European authors, and on materials published by small and noncommercial presses.

Randy Pitman, an eloquent critic of librarians' print bias, has publicly noted a fact that should be obvious: referring to audiovisual materials in terms of what they are not (e.g., “non‐book materials”) automatically affords them second‐class status. Another media activist, Don Roberts, asserts that many selectors of multimedia library materials consider them to be “frivolous, secondary, or just plain negligible in content by comparison with printed materials.” In an article published twelve years ago which offered practical suggestions for overcoming “ingrained and inherent ‘printism,’” he listed alternative media producers and distributors, noted review sources outside the standard library literature, and provided other ideas for countering “the mistaken belief that you are required to leave your high‐fidelity, sensory‐aware self at home, or in your car, or at the concert hall, when you go to work at the library.” Today, he still finds “people who continue to specialize in formats, sentimentalize them, and try to perpetuate this or that medium as the pinnacle of consciousness…sometimes denying others access to formats which might be more appropriate to them in the process.” We are all multimedia beings, Roberts says: There is no way that books alone will enable us to “transform, inspire, and enliven.” Compiled with those thoughts in mind, the following annotated list of media producers and distributors which specialize in social issues—ethnicity, labor, peace, environment, and human rights, to name a few—primarily emphasizes independent and less well‐known media productions. Also worth noting are review sources like Angle—a publication covering work by women filmmakers (P.O. Box 11916, Milwaukee, Wl 53211, 414–963–8951; $20 individual, $30 institutional), Black Film Review (P.O. Box 18665, Washington, DC 20036; $12 individual, $24 institutional), and the lesbian/gay‐oriented Out in Video (Persona Press, Box 14022, San Francisco, CA 94114; $10).

This study aims to explore the use of specific innovations in primary care practices. The research seeks to examine whether a relationship exists between environmental factors and organizational characteristics and the level of innovation in primary care practices in Virginia.

The study utilized multiple secondary data sets and an organizational survey of primary care practices to define the external environment and the level of innovation. Institutional theory was used to explain the connection between innovations in primary care practices and institutional forces within the environment. Resource dependency theory was used to explain motivators for change based on a dependence on scarce financial, human, and information resources.

Results show a positive association between organizational size, organizational relationships, and stakeholder expectations on the level of innovation. A negative association was found between competition and the level of innovation. No relationship was found between degree of Medicare and managed care penetration and innovation, nor between knowledge of, and difficulty complying with, payer organization requirements and innovation.

Primary care physician practices exist in a market‐driven environment characterized by high pressure from regulatory sources, decreasing reimbursement levels, increasing rate of change in technologies, and increasing patient and community expectations. This study contributes new information on the relationship between organizational characteristics, the external environment and specific innovations in primary care practices. Information on the contributing factors to innovation in primary care is important for improving delivery of health care services and the ability of these practices to survive.

Members attending a mass meeting at the American Library Associations's 1990 annual conference passed a resolution calling for libraries to “provide Columbus Quincentennial programs and materials which examine the event from an authentic Native American perspective, dealing directly with topics like cultural imperialism, colonialism, and the Native American holocaust.” But have libraries done anything since then to provide alternatives to the likes of Samuel Eliot Morison's purple prose? What attempts have been made to confront the omissions, half‐truths and myths about Columbus?