Volume 57, Issue 4

The Association for College and Research Libraries' Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education speak of new challenges for individuals in evaluating and understanding information available through multiple media, such as aural material. However, little has been published discussing specific evaluation criteria for online audio media, specifically podcasts. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not evaluation criteria used to assess print material transfer to podcasts. The author surveyed eleven library graduate school students and one library graduate professor over a four-week period. Respondents listened to either Nature Podcast or Science Talk and filled out a two-part questionnaire. Analysis of the data demonstrated respondents experienced difficulty in assessing audience, bias/point of view, scope/coverage, and accuracy in podcasts using print evaluation criteria. The results of this study indicate additional research is needed to clearly define evaluation criteria for podcasts.

This article contributes to what we hope will become a vigorous debate on Internet surveillance and privacy issues, ensuring that privacy issues will not be neglected in the future when political propositions on state surveillance are made. The relevant question to ask is not how to protect privacy at all costs, but how a balance can be found between the need of the state to know about its citizens and those same citizens' need for privacy from state intrusion. This paper explores the future role of the library pertaining to the issue of state surveillance. After a short introduction, we present the procedure and theoretical background for the article. The latter is grounded on Foucault's theory on discourse, power and the modern state. We then discuss our two main findings, and finally we relate those findings to the library and its future roles, and to library and information science research and teaching. We find one of these roles to be as instigator of and facilitator and forum for a healthy debate on surveillance and privacy issues.

A usage-based categorisation of the library collection, in both print and electronic formats, into four categories is proposed. The concept of errors of inclusion and exclusion is applied to the collection and this forms the basis of a model of the relationship between the university and the collection. The model is based upon a theoretical profile of both the university and the collection. This reveals the problematic nature of the relationship between library and university in terms of the ability of the library to provide the required resources.

This paper identified 17 known issues that university and/ or college libraries are often faced with in cataloguing operations and investigated them by surveying 73 technological university and college libraries in Taiwan in May and June, 2006. The feedback from the different institutions was compared and tested by T-test and ANOVA to examine the difference in frequency of occurrence of these issues among the libraries in different types of institutions. Some significant findings in this study are: (1) lack of manpower, accumulating backlogs, high turnover rate of student assistants, difficulty controlling the quality of cataloguing and limited chances of on-the-job training are the five most frequently occurring issues on cataloguing operations of the technological university and college libraries in Taiwan; (2) private technological institution libraries face more cataloguing operations issues and face them more often than do their public counterparts; (3) technological two-year college libraries on average face cataloguing operations issues more frequently than technological four-year college and technological university libraries. The results of this study indicate that the challenges are minimized with more financial resources and that libraries become quality-oriented as they evolve.

This study uses co-word and factor analyses to identify and measure country collaborations between Kenya and South Africa and their respective country collaborators. Using the widely accepted indicator of research collaboration, co-authorship of papers, the study used three measurement indicators, namely, the Eigenvectors/scores, the collaboration coefficients (CC) and the strengths ( S ) of term association to identify key collaborators and evaluate their degree and strengths of collaboration over time. The influence of research collaboration on research impact in Kenya and South Africa was also explored. Results indicate that the two countries largely collaborate with foreign countries, with the USA emerging as the strongest collaborator. Kenya exhibited stronger links with foreign countries while South Africa had much of its papers published through internal collaborations. There have been shifts in research partnerships in the two countries. From the standpoint of impact, Kenya's papers produced a higher average impact than South Africa's papers. Co-authored papers yielded a higher average impact than the single-authored papers, thereby providing a strong argument for encouraging research collaboration not only within the countries but internationally.

This article reports on an exploratory study on the provision of information about low-cost housing to the residents of the Tamboville housing project in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. These residents were selected because they were the beneficiaries of a government low-cost housing subsidy. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires from a convenience sample of 53 respondents who were homeowners of low-cost housing. Data was also collected from the Built Environment Support Group (BESG), a non-governmental organization managing the Tamboville project. The purpose of the study was to find out what information on low-cost housing had been provided, how it had been provided and the extent to which the information assisted the homeowners in making housing decisions. It was found that interpersonal communication, backed by practical demonstrations, was the main method of information dissemination. The findings also indicated that the BESG, through its on-site housing support centre, provided essential low-cost housing information to assist the homeowners in making appropriate housing decisions. It was observed that not all the respondents understood and/or accepted the concept of incremental housing, which underpinned the subsidy scheme. The low levels of education and high unemployment rate among the respondents made it more difficult for some homeowners to consolidate their starter homes. One recommendation is that the subsidy scheme be part of an integrated community development programme with a well-articulated information component.