Academic literature on the topic 'University of Namibia – Electronic information resources – Case studies'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of e-resources by the Faculty of Law’s academic staff at the University of Namibia’s (UNAM’s) main campus. The study aimed to determine their level of awareness of electronic resources (e-resources) available to them, how useful and effective they found these e-resources, and the challenges they face in accessing them. Design/methodology/approach A convenient sampling technique was used to select a sample of 12 law academics from the population of 17. The study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods using questionnaires and a semi-structured interview guide. Findings Findings revealed that the majority of the law academics were aware of the e-resources subscribed by UNAM’s library, although some were not aware of the newly subscribed international law databases. The findings further revealed that the academics used e-resources for research, publications and teaching purposes, but irregular training, bandwidth problems and limited searching skills hindered their use of e-resources. Practical implications Findings could be used to inform future collection-development decisions, realignment of information-literacy training and promotion and marketing of library services. Originality/value This study has made a significant contribution in the understanding the use of electronic legal resources by law academics at UNAM. The findings and recommendations could also benefit similar academic institutions in developing countries like Namibia.

Libraries acquire and facilitate access to electronic information resources that support core functions of universities they serve. Despite substantial investments by universities in infrastructures and resources to facilitate access to electronic resources, studies have revealed that these resources are at times not optimally utilized as expected. Network literacy is defined as the knowledge of web-based information resources, ability to effectively use ICT tools to access resources available online, ability to judge the relevance of information retrieved, and capability to use computer-mediated communication tools to manage or utilize the accessed information. The purpose of this study was to assess network literacy and utilization of electronic resources among Kabarak University students in Kenya and consequently provide some insight into usage of networked resources at the university. Objectives of the study entailed assessing users’ awareness of internet applications and utilization of electronic resources; assessing users’ awareness of Social Networking Sites (SNS) and utilization of electronic resources, establishing the levels of user awareness of electronic resources available at Kabarak University, evaluating users’ competencies in using electronic resources and establishing challenges encountered in utilizing electronic resources at Kabarak University. The study was anchored on the Digital Library model that depicts users’ interaction with networked environments, taking into consideration the various systems involved. The study was undertaken at Kabarak University main campus library. Stratified sampling was used to segregate students and librarians whose opinions were also sought on matters covered by the study. Simple random sampling was used to select students for the study while purposive sampling was employed to select resourceful librarians for the research. The study adopted a descriptive research design and used an approach where qualitative and quantitative data were gathered using a set of structured questionnaires that contained open and close ended questions based on objectives that guided the study. The questionnaires were first pilot – tested at Moi University Eldoret Town campus to determine their validity and also subjected to Cronbach’s Alpha reliability test to determine that acceptable internal reliability levels were attained. These questionnaires were then directly issued to the selected respondents. Analysis of the collected data was done using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software version 23 and thereafter, responses arranged in themes as appropriate. Frequencies and percentage distributions were used to highlight patterns in the data and facilitate interpretation. Among the findings was that students were aware of existence of electronic resources though some of them were not aware of what these electronic resources entailed specifically, and that among the greatest challenges they faced in using the electronic resources were slow internet connectivity speeds and inadequate points of accessing the internet. The study also established that the library relied majorly on orientation to sensitize students on electronic resources. Reinforcement and regularly conducting orientation programmes were recommended as a means of promoting network literacy at the University.

Purpose – The aim of this article is to describes Sprague Library’s experience in using EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) to market library services and resources in order to draw conclusions for other institutions. Design/methodology/approach – Uses the case study of Montclair State University in developing a strategy for using Discovery Tools as a library promotional tool. Also includes examples from other institutions. Findings – EDS (and other Discovery Services) can be helpful in highlighting library resources and services that may go unnoticed. Studies show a correlation between discovery tools and increased Interlibrary Loan (ILL) activity so it’s important to promote services like ILL within your discovery service. Practical implications – With a reasonable effort, libraries can use discovery tools to provide additional modes of communication with users. Originality/value – Highlights some of Sprague Library’s unique efforts in utilizing EDS to promote library resources and services.

Purpose This paper aims to describe the use of electronic resources and services provided at the social science library of Jimma University, Jimma. The paper is focused to find out the use of those resources by the students of information science and how frequently they are using, from where the information is accessed. Also, they have been requested about their preferences between an electronic and print journal format. Design/methodology/approach The questionnaire method is used for collecting the data from the undergraduate students of information science (2015/2016 batch). The questionnaire was distributed to 182 students, and the response rate 81.32 per cent was encouraging. Findings It has been found that the usage of e-journals is increasing; this is due to awareness among the students of information science about the e-resources and services. Owing to an easy access available at various places in the university, they are accessing these resources at hostels and departments more as compared to the library. Their visits to library have decreased. Research limitations/implications The study has been limited to Jimma University undergraduate students of information science only Practical implications It suggests for future improvised solutions. Originality/value The present paper will help other institutions to understand the need for library electronic resources and motivate them to update their resources in the larger interest of the students. The paper also indicates how a suitably designed survey can show the awareness and use of types of information services, in this case, e-journals. There is a dearth of such studies in India and abroad. The methodology and findings can be applied to other libraries to reveal similar trends, as well as comparisons.

Abstract This paper discusses the implementation of Kanban as the framework for managing electronic resources workflows by presenting case studies from the University of Saskatchewan Library and at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic Library in Saskatchewan, Canada. Librarians at both institutions independently chose to adopt Kanban to manage electronic resources work, applying the essential Kanban framework of lists titled to do, in progress, and done. Examining the similarities and differences in each librarian’s experience and discussing two different software programs used, we have included descriptions of our implementation, in-depth information about the origins of Kanban, and its more recent applications to technical work. We found numerous benefits-including reduced email communication and improved due date tracking-to our implementation of Kanban and no significant drawbacks. Interest in applications of Kanban in libraries is on the rise, and we found there were significant benefits of using Kanban for electronic resources teams when used in conjunction with other tools (e.g., spreadsheets, email, ERMS).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the use of electronic information resources and facilities among Engineering Scholars in Private Universities in Nigeria using Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria as a Case Study. Scientific investigation involves careful and proper adoption of research design, use of standardized tools and texts in identifying adequate sample techniques for data analysis. In this survey a questionnaire was adapted, tested and employed to collect primary data of academics from Mechanical, Mechatronics, Biomedical, Telecommunications, Electrical-electronics and Computer engineering Departments of Bells University of Technology, Ota Ogun State, Nigeria. In all, a total of forty-two faculty members, associate and research staff participated from the college of Engineering. The questionnaires were distributed among forty-two faculty members from the six departments of the college of engineering, out of which 40 were returned and found to be valid, making a response rate 95.23%. Among the 40 respondents, 2 faculties do not use electronic information resources. Thus, response rate is reduced to 38 (95.00%). In addition individual interview and observation methods were also used to collect the required information. The results correspond with previous studies conducted in other countries. The Engineers still stick to the printed information sources, but they pay good attention to electronic resources. Most of them have access to computer and internet at the office and home. They are regular users of a variety of electronic technologies. Although faced with some challenges. Thus, the applied scientists perceive that modern technology made their work easier. The study focused only on the engineering faculty in the first private university of technology in Nigeria. The survey could be replicated among other faculties such as humanities and or in other private universities in Nigeria and on a larger sample for generalization. Keeping in view the positive trend of engineering towards modern technology, universities and libraries should be adequately funded to provide electronic resources and facilities in the science and applied science discipline. Special training programmes for engineering scholars should also be organized. This is the first study on this topic in a private university of technology in Nigeria. The results can also be used to design services and facilities in academic libraries and information centers in private universities and universities of technology in Nigeria and in other developing countries.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the challenges of collection analysis and development in response to a new academic interdisciplinary program in East Asian Studies at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Design/methodology/approach – First, the authors examined the needs of a new East Asian Studies program and its interdisciplinary nature. Next, an automated collection development tool was chosen that provides a snapshot of current monograph holdings and a comparison with other equivalent institutions. Lastly, the authors conduct an analysis of citations in key Asian Studies journals, library holdings in relevant top electronic resources and core journal subscriptions. For future collection building, vendor tools and patron-drive acquisitions are explored. Findings – Traditional methods of collection development can prove inadequate. A variety of tools and methods need to be used to guarantee adequate results. Originality/value – This paper builds on prior research related to developing interdisciplinary collections by using traditional methods of collection development with critical judgments.

With the rapid prevailing of electronic information resources and services, the traditional academic libraries are being declined and gradually deserted. Recent studies highlighted this issue as one of the challenges of the digital era. Responding to this issue, this paper introduces the idea of revitalizing academic libraries through the concept of "Third place" based on the possibility of providing traditional libraries with new interior spaces wherein students, scholars, and faculty can learn and socialize as well as cooperate, without stress. Based on the literature reviewed, there are several factors through which it is possible to enhance the interior spaces to attract more users to traditional academic libraries and make them more vital. This paper discusses the possibility of revitalizing traditional libraries by activating the role of the "Third Place" identity in their interior design. To activate the concept of "Third Place" in local academic libraries that lack such active spaces, this work focuses, in particular, on the academic library of the University of Technology as a major case study, three student proposals are included in this paper. Indeed,

Purpose The REDINGE2 – Reengineering Engineering Teaching, version 2 – project seeks to transform engineering education practices at the University of los Andes (UNIANDES) by using technology-based active learning strategies in courses from different disciplines that are to be reformed using a Big-ideas approach. Studies from this two-year project (2017-2018) seek to solve three main questions: What changes in engineering teaching conceptions, methods, tools and practices could be generated by reengineering courses using a Big-ideas approach? What changes in key conditions of learning environments have the students perceived in courses that use a Big-ideas approach? What lessons can be derived from the initial studies of REDINGE2’s pilot experiences? Design/methodology/approach The REDINGE2 project was conceived as a technology-based educational transformation initiative. It is the Faculty of Engineering at UNIANDES’ explicit intention to move engineering teaching from being content-focused to being big-ideas focused. It also wants to migrate from teacher-centered teaching strategies to student- and group-centered approaches. Additionally, this project intends to enrich engineering education ecologies with digital resources by integrating experiential, flexible and collaborative digital learning environments with traditional classroom/workshop/library/home/work learning settings. To promote this organic change, the project implemented a facilitation-from-the side strategy, which redesigned 14 engineering courses: each was given a two-year grant from the Office of the Dean of Engineering to rethink teaching practices and redesign the course. A cybernetic evaluation system was embedded in the life cycle of the transformation process that could support decision-making through each of the project’s stages (Stufflebeam, 1971). Questions of interest in this study are provided with information using triangulation of data at different times during each course’s redesign process. Findings After a year and half of the two-year REDINGE2 project (2017-2018), it is possible to say the following three research questions are fully solved. Concerning Question #1: What changes in engineering teaching conceptions, methods, tools and practices contribute to reengineering courses when using a Big-ideas approach? Participating teaching staff have demonstrated changes in their teaching conceptions, methods and resources, which can be attributed to their exposure to active-learning strategies supported by digital technologies. In fact, each one has redesigned and pilot tested at least one restructured learning unit for one of their courses according to the proposed Big-ideas approach; in addition, most admit to already having adjusted their teaching practices by changing their mindset regarding learning and how to promote it. Concerning Question #2: What changes in key conditions of learning environments have the students perceived in courses that have been redesigned using a Big-ideas approach? Data collected from students and participating staff members, both before the redesign and throughout this process, have provided teachers and students with feedback concerning perceived changes in learning environments. This has had positive results and provided opportunities for improvement. Concerning Question #3: What lessons can be derived from REDINGE2’s pilot experiences? Lessons from this project are multi-dimensional and there are organizational, pedagogic, technological and cultural considerations. A decalogue of critical success factors was established, which considered the things that must go right to successfully accomplish proposed educational transformations. Research limitations/implications This study is a good case of educational transformations in engineering teaching. No generalizations should be made, but it shows that similar processes of planned change can be made in tertiary science, math, engineering and technology (SMET) education. Practical implications The lessons learned from this experience are very valuable for higher education decision-makers who want to innovate by using learning ecologies in their institutions. In addition, theoretical considerations that illuminate the innovation process become very useful to help provide a foundation to similar interventions. Originality/value A non-conventional approach to integrate digital technologies in higher education teaching is the most significant contribution this experience has made. Its focus has been to transform educational practices with pedagogically sound uses of digital technologies instead of just integrating technologies in current SMET teaching practices. Facilitation-from-the-side and embedded cybernetic evaluation through the transformation process are key ideas that add value to organic change processes.

Objective – This study sought to determine the characteristics of research materials used by history students in preparing their master’s theses. Of which information resources formats did such students make use, and in what proportions? What was the age distribution of resources used? What was the dispersal over journal titles and over subject classification, i.e., the degree of interdisciplinarity? To what extent did the master’s students make use of non-English-language materials? To what extent did their institution’s library hold the resources in question?
 
 The investigator was especially interested in finding quantitative support for what he terms two “hypotheses.” The first of these is that historical research depends to a high degree on monographs, journal articles being far less important to it than they are to research in, especially, the natural sciences and technology. The second is that the age distribution of resources important to historical research is much flatter and longer than that of resources upon which researchers in the natural sciences and technology rely.
 
 Design – Citation analysis, supplemented with comprehensive catalogue searches.
 
 Setting – Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), a mid-sized public university located in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.
 
 Subjects – MA and MS theses (N=47) successfully submitted to the Department of History over the period from academic year 1998/1999 through academic year 2007/2008, inclusive.
 
 Methods – The investigator initially identified the theses through a search of the online catalogue (“Consuls”) of the Connecticut State University system, and retrieved all of them in either electronic or hard-copy form. He then subjected all citations (N=3,498) listed in the references sections of these theses to an examination in order to identify for each cited resource the format, the age, the language, and, in the case of scholarly journal articles, the journal of publication. He carried out bibliographic searches in order to rectify any citations which he had noted to be faulty or incomplete. The study took no account of possible additional citations in footnotes or endnotes or in the text, and did not measure citation intensity (whether, for instance, a thesis referred only once, or perhaps many times, to a given resource). Duplicates “were ignored.” He furthermore performed systematic searches in Consuls and in the Library of Congress (LC) online catalogue in order to establish, insofar as possible, into which assigned LC Classification class each resource fell, and whether it belonged to the holdings of the SCSU library. “Holdings,” as used here, includes physical resources owned, as well as those resources to which the library has licensed access. Not marked as either “held” or “not held” were: resources available online without restriction or charge, items not identified in either Consuls or the LC catalogue, and all government documents. Ages of cited resources were calculated based on the edition or version date actually given in a student’s citation, without any consideration of a possible earlier date of the original version of the publication or document concerned. 
 
 Main Results – Format, age distribution, and journal frequency. The local citation analysis found that 53.2% of all cited resources were monographs, 7.8% were scholarly articles, 5.3% were contributed chapters in books, and 0.6% were dissertations or theses. Non-scholarly periodicals accounted for 15.7%, government documents for 6.7%, and freely available web documents for 4.1%. The remainder, approximately 6.5%, comprised archival papers, judicial documents, directories, interviews, posters, audiovisual materials, and 13 other formats. Cited resources, measured back from the date of acceptance of the citing thesis, ranged from 0 to 479 years old; the mode was 3 years, but the median was “25” (p. 170) or “26” (p. 177) years. Just over 70% (i.e., 2,500 cited resources) were more than ten years old. Almost one thousand of the cited resources were fifty or more years old. The 274 scholarly journal articles included in the references sections were spread over 153 distinct journal titles, of which 105 titles made only one appearance, and 136 titles three or fewer appearances. The mean was 1.8 appearances.
 
 Subject dispersal and language. Of the 2,084 cited resources for which LC classification was locatable, 51.5% had a classification other than history, i.e., other than class C, D, E, or F. Nearly two thirds (66.0%) of the cited scholarly journal articles had appeared in journals with a focus other than history. (Note: table 4 is incorrect, precisely reversing the actual ratio.) Of all cited items, 98.5% were in the English language. Half (27) of the non-English-language resources cited were in Korean, all cited in the same thesis. Books (i.e., monographs plus compilations from which contributed chapters were cited) accounted for 87.0% of foreign-language citations. More than four fifths of the examined theses (83.0%) cited not a single non-English-language resource. 
 
 Local holdings. Of all 3,498 cited items, 3,022 could be coded as either “held” or “not held” by the SCSU library. Of the items so coded (not, as indicated on p. 180, of all cited items), scarcely two fifths (41.0%) belonged to the library’s holdings. The holdings percentage was highest (72.6%) for the 274 scholarly journal articles cited, followed by the 186 contributed chapters (50.0%), the 550 non-scholarly periodical items (49.5%), and the 1,861 monographs (46.8%). For other cited formats, the percentage was much lower, and in some cases, e.g., for the 55 archival and the 44 judicial documents, it was 0.0%. Of the 54 foreign-language resources cited, the institution’s library held only two. 
 
 Conclusion – The investigator concludes that his study’s findings do indeed lend quantitative support to his two “hypotheses.” This outcome will surprise few, if any, librarians; it is in accord with what Koenig (1978) long ago saw as a matter of “intuition” and “all conventional wisdom,” something that many subsequent studies have confirmed. Sherriff accordingly recommends, firstly, that collections which strive to support historical research should, in matters of acquisition policy and budget allocation, take serious account of that field’s relatively strong dependence on monographs. Secondly, the data on age distribution carry obvious implications for librarians’ decision-making on matters such as de-accessioning and weeding, relegation to remote storage, and retrospective acquisitions. This finding should also be considered, for instance, in connection with preservation policy and the maintaining of special collections. He even suggests that librarians “need to teach students the value of reviewing literature historically and showing them how to do so effectively” (p. 177).
 
 Sherriff considers a number of further (tentative) conclusions to be warranted or suggested by the results of this study. First of all, that historical research is now characteristically an interdisciplinary matter, in the sense that it requires extensive access to information resources, including journals, which libraries have traditionally not classified as belonging to the discipline of history itself. For a library supporting such research, this phenomenon “has implications for matters including collection budgets, reference work, bibliographic instruction, and the location of collections and departmental libraries” (p. 168). It also means “that librarians working with history students and history collections need to be aware of the relevant resources in other disciplines. This can improve reference work, research assistance, and bibliographic instruction; it may also help the coordination of acquisitions across departmental lines” (p. 179). Secondly, one may conclude that “there is no ‘core’ collection of journals for history” (p. 178) which will be able to satisfy a large proportion of master’s students’ research needs. Thirdly, the fact that a library such as SCSU’s holds significantly less than half of what master’s students require for preparing their theses “may exercise a narrowing effect on students’ awareness of the existing literature on their topics” (p. 180), “increases the importance of departmental faculty, reference librarians, and subject specialist librarians drawing students’ attention to resources beyond the library’s catalogues and collections” (p. 180), and requires that the library give serious attention to effective document delivery arrangements. Finally, this study’s finding that only a small percentage of master’s students in history made use of non-English-language materials, but then in certain cases used them rather extensively (27 Korean items cited in one thesis, ten Italian in another, nine Spanish in yet another), suggests that acquisition, or at least proactive acquisition, of such materials needn’t be a priority, as long as, once again, the students concerned have easy access to efficient and affordable document delivery services. Sherriff does concede, however, that his finding could indicate “that students are unaware of relevant resources in other languages or are aware of them but lack the language skills necessary to use them” (p. 179).