Volume 60, Issue 4

This paper reports the results of a study into the views of members of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly in the Thirty-seventh Parliament to parliamentary petitions as an information source. It sought to advance the understanding of parliamentary petitions in an information studies context. Research of this nature is necessary because there has been a lack of scholarly interest in parliamentary petitions to date. The study hoped to ameliorate the dearth of literature on the topic. A self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data. The unique and rich dataset generated from the survey results were used to describe how a group of parliamentarians in a Westminster-style parliament perceive parliamentary petitions. The results indicate that over half the respondents believed that petitions are an important information source. Over three quarters of respondents agreed that petitions provide a mechanism to gauge the depth of feeling on an issue in their electorate. The belief that petitions offer an effective means of communicating with constituents was proffered by almost 60 per cent of respondents. Two-thirds of respondents agreed that petitions sometimes influenced their decision-making and that the number of signatures on a petition sometimes influenced their decision-making. Petitions as an information source didn't fare very well when compared to the other parliamentary information sources available to respondents. So while petitions are deemed to be an important information source in their own right, it can be deduced from the results of this study that respondents believe that there are more effective information sources available to parliamentarians.

The library and information science (LIS) market is fast changing, and the LIS curriculum needs to be revised in the light of this changing context and needs. An analysis was therefore made of the perceptions and views of a variety of stakeholders in the market about the capabilities needed among LIS graduates in Kuwait. The stakeholders included LIS students, alumni, faculty, professional leadership, library employers, and corporate managers. This exercise resulted in the identification of competencies around which the curriculum for the Master's program at Kuwait University has been redesigned. A new degree program has been designed, and new names for both the degree and department have been proposed. The curriculum has a new core, three areas of specialization, and facilitates diverse career options. This paper reviews the process of the analysis of market needs, identification of course modules, development of the proposal, and the review process at different levels of the academic hierarchy of the university. The process is complex and prone to resistance and opposition; therefore it must be managed with strategic vision, engagement, and political acumen.

The purpose of this study is to explore the availability and use of printed, audiovisual and electronic information by high school teachers in the areas of Communication, Social Sciences and the Person, Family and Human Relations from a sample of public schools of Lima, as well as to ascertain teachers' perception regarding their information needs and interests. This study was carried out by means of surveys, focus groups, semi-structured interviews and observation of the sites, equipment, library collections and innovative education classrooms. The results of this research may be useful for the educational authorities to determine institutional policies that promote teachers' professional development and ongoing education as well as improving the quality of teaching and learning.

Academic resource sharing among universities is desperately needed for overcoming a national shortage of information resources. However, there is no appropriate evaluation system to reflect the overall performance of resource sharing and joint efforts of library consortia. The Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept is the systemic, strategic coordination of business functions, which includes collaboration with partners for the purposes of improving the long-term performance of the individual companies and the supply chain as a whole. This concept is not yet familiar in the library field, but will be useful to apply a comprehensive evaluation system for academic library consortium performance. This study describes how evaluation systems based on the SCM concept can be developed for academic resource-sharing services. In this study, the meaning and status of academic resource sharing services among university libraries in Korea will be discussed, along with their current performance evaluation systems. Also, the Supply Chain Operation Reference (SCOR) as a supply chain evaluation system will be analyzed to review the corresponding applicability in academic resource sharing services. Based on this information, an evaluation system which includes evaluation factors and methods for the performance of academic resource sharing services will be developed. Based on SCOR performance measurement index level 1, the evaluation factors for academic library consortium were developed. Customer response, flexible countermeasures, partnership, human resource development, and cost minimization were selected as major performance evaluation factors, and 14 sub-indices were proposed. Evaluation methods and some examples of the application which included Likert scale questions in surveys, quantitative analysis using statistics, and quantitative questions in surveys also were proposed

This is the first effort made to assess the service quality of a university library in Bangladesh from the perception of its users. This study assessed the level of service adequacy of the Independent University, Bangladesh Library (IUBL), along with the perceived differences in service quality by user group gender. A survey was conducted among the library users, especially faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. A modified version of the SERVQUAL questionnaire was used for data collection. Mean values for measures of services like minimum, expected, perceived, adequate and superior service were calculated. Mann-Whitney tests were conducted from the gap score of gender groups to see the statistical significance of differences. This has revealed that IUBL meets the minimum expectation of services in all aspects in that users thought that these services were adequate. Finally it has also been shown that there were significant differences in the rating of services by gender; on the whole, females were much more satisfied than the male users.

This paper presents a conceptual framework of space design principles and conditions for learning in academic libraries. The researchers reviewed relevant literature and identified several factors significantly affecting space and learning. Transmutation of the library into a completely digital library appears to be premature. However, the design of academic libraries has changed dramatically in recent decades as a result of digital technology and changes in pedagogy, and will undoubtedly continue to change. Flexibility is considered an imperative of design. The most successful designs have been developed by a collaborative process, involving all stakeholders from the delineation of the vision through to completion of the project, but with a project manager who can coordinate all players and drive the project.

Spanish universities are changing in the face of their full integration, in 2010, into the European Higher Education Area. The library, considered a key factor in this transformation, also needs to make a transition to a new model, called a Learning and Research Resources Centre (LRRC), responding to the new educational needs based in the Bologna reforms. This paper aims to analyze the strategic plans of Spanish universities and to establish whether they consider the library a key element for change and, therefore, a priority. Also, we study whether the emerging library conforms to a traditional model or aims to become a LRRC as proposed and fostered by the Spanish university libraries' network, REBIUN. The analysis is mostly based on the 74 Spanish universities' strategic plans. Each one of them was thoroughly analyzed, creating relevant groups, based on what information they deal with. Libraries, judging by their thin presence in strategic plans, do not exist as agents of change in most Spanish universities. This is an indication that, even nowadays, they do not have the necessary institutional support to become an information system that is basic and necessary in the Bologna reform. Libraries also need to make a transition to a new model, called a Learning and Research Resources Centre (LRRC), responding to the new educational needs.