Volume 66, Issue 1 -

This is a very brief summary of a study that focused on the development of education for library, archive, and information services (LIS) in Iraq, where significant progress seemed to have been made before the Second Gulf War, despite the country’s increasing economic problems and political isolation in the last decades of the twentieth century. It drew evidence from the published literature, previously unexplored archival material, and discussions with some of the participants. The study examined professional education for librarianship, documentation, information and archives work against the background not only of the evolution of LIS, but also in the broader context of the country’s national, economic, and social development. It examined trends in international assistance for library development, and briefly reviewed parallel developments in other Arab countries to provide a benchmark. Based on this wide ranging examination, it drew some tentative conclusions about the issues that fostered the development of LIS education in Iraq, including: the attitude of government and university officials; the organisation and allocation of state finance; the development of literacy and the education system; the duration and nature of external support; the activities of foreign experts; the development of the cadre of teachers of LIS; the role played by advocacy and opportunism. The study also identified a number of factors that have held back development, including: the pressures on the state budget; the absence of a comprehensive government strategic plan to develop a culture of reading and independent learning; and a lack of flexibility in the management of the state education system. An understanding of these factors, and the approach to identifying them, may contribute to strengthening the foundations of LIS education in both developing countries and those that have an established infrastructure.

Using bibliometric indicators from InCites TM database of ISI’s Web of Science, the present study examines the publication productivity and collaboration of Saudi Arabia (KSA) researchers over the period 1980–2014. The data cover 24 (with at least 500 publications) out of 65 KSA organizations that have bibliometric indicators at InCites TM . The 24 most active KSA organizations accounted for 85.48 % (74,767 out of 88,506) of all KSA publications. The analysis shows that 60,639 documents were multi-authored publications indicating the collaboration ratio of 81.1 %. Various collaboration patterns (single, domestic and international) were investigated. The international collaboration has increased from 56 publications in 1980 to 9,859 publications in 2014. This increase corresponds to 10 times increase in percent of KSA share in the Worldwide international collaboration. KSA is ranked the first and second among the 50 most productive countries in % international growth in collaboration and % overall international collaboration over the 35-year period. Around half of the collaborative articles (49.2 %) were published by two or three authors. The collaboration of KSA researchers in the six disciplines according to the Global Institutional Profiles Project – GIPP schema is examined. The top 20 collaborating countries belonged to five continents and the United States and Egypt were the most collaborative countries with KSA. The highest citation impact came from collaboration with developed countries and all are higher than the world overall citation impact (12.01). Egyptian and US organizations dominate in the top 20 international collaborative organizations. Accurate prediction of the total publications and citations are proposed using the total number of international collaborations of KSA. The findings revealed that collaboration had a positive effect on scientific productivity and quality, since the collaborative publications received more citations and were published in journals with higher impact factor, thus they characterized high quality. Accordingly, developing national research policies are needed to foster and support collaborations among researchers, organizations and countries.

This qualitative study reports on teachers in the Western Cape as they attempt to embed information literacy in their classrooms. It explores how teachers come to understand information literacy and the extent to which they change their beliefs about guiding research projects in a more concerted way. The research questions were: (1) how do teachers understand information literacy education? (2) how do teachers make their information literacy explicit in the classroom? and (3) at what level are teachers’ web knowledge and skills? The teachers, who were part of an information literacy education course, formed a purposive sample. The data for this study emanated from solicited, reflective journals which participants kept over a period of eight to 10 weeks. Information seeking and use theory and an inquiry-based approach to learning frame this research. Motivation for the study is rooted in a curriculum which embodies information literacy characteristics. Traditionally, information literacy has been the domain of the school librarian. Only 16.82 % of South African schools have a stocked library. With so few school libraries and no official position in schools for a qualified school librarian, the onus for teaching information literacy thus rests on the teacher. This article provides the context for South African education and a review of the information literacy literature with an emphasis on South Africa and teachers’ information literacy. The results show that, despite many obstacles in these teachers’ paths, they express a fairly sound understanding of information literacy education by the end of the journaling exercise. However, fewer teachers can competently mediate information literacy in the classroom. One of the major barriers to information literacy is the teachers’ slow adoption of the World Wide Web. Recommendations for further study include examining teacher education programmes for their inclusion of information literacy education; for awareness of plagiarism and the ethics of information use in the school environment; and the effect of information and communication technology on learners’ information literacy.

Prior to1994, South Africa’s education system was influenced by racial dynamics which had implications for the development, provision and distribution of human, financial and material resources. This paper presents the overview of segregated development in South Africa and its implications for the provision of school libraries, to support teaching and learning in selected schools in KwaZulu-Natal. It sets out to describe the understanding and the extent of segregated development in the provision of library resources at Gilonki Secondary school and to establish the perceptions of educators and school management for the importance of teaching and learning. This paper seeks to establish the policies/measures which were being put in place to redress these anomalies. Furthermore, this paper observes that development was retarded as evidenced by the poor provision of important resources such as school library services, resulting in poor learner performance, limited ability to excel in reading and mathematics, lack of appropriate study areas, and difficulties in providing extended tasks on class exercises, among other factors. The study concludes that segregated development has had negative implications for the provision of school libraries, and subsequently for the teachers’ and learners’ performances. The study recommends a swift rolling-out of processes to redress challenges of the past.

This theoretical paper uses Bolman and Deal’s (2013) Four Frames Analysis to define the information world of families of children who present symptoms associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD is explored here as an information challenge imposed by fragmented views of an ADHD information world. This call to action explores and organizes the transdisciplinary literature about ADHD experiences into a guide that informs the social justice efforts of public libraries/librarians, who can serve as intermediaries between information stakeholders and the vast array of information resources about ADHD. These intermediaries can develop collections and services to support shared decision making among various ADHD stakeholders. To support these efforts, we identify information resources needed by users. More importantly, however, we help libraries/librarians recognize the frames they use to interpret users’ information needs for collection development.

This study explored information seeking anxiety among 31 Pakistani university research students using the critical incident technique. Face to face interviews were conducted for data collection by visiting the participants in their departments. The results indicated that information seeking anxiety among Pakistani research students manifested in eight dimensions, namely: (a) procedural anxiety, (b) information overload, (c) resource anxiety, (d) library anxiety, (e) competence anxiety, (f) ICT anxiety, (g) language anxiety, and (h) thematic anxiety. These participants also exhibited certain avoidance behaviours, search avoidance, task avoidance, and even research avoidance, along with inferiority complex. The results provided useful insights that could be used as a guide by information professionals, especially those engaged in managing information literacy instruction. In addition, this research would make a worthwhile contribution to the existing research on information behaviour in general and information seeking anxiety in particular.