Volume 67, Issue 1 -

Since the year 2000, the world has witnessed an increased call for improved access to scholarly information. The cost of scholarly content is a major barrier in accessing needed research information. In order to fully contribute to the global knowledge economy, African scholars need to access both global information resources and locally published works. Few studies have focused on the African knowledge production vis-à-vis access to scholarly research information in Africa. This paper examines access to scholarly research information in sub-Saharan Africa. The review focuses on available published works on access to scientific literature in Africa and seeks to understand Africa’s scholarly publishing scene. In the process, challenges and opportunities regarding access to scholarly research information are explored. Three approaches in addressing these issues emerge in literature – namely (i) open access, (ii) donor-funded schemes and (iii) negotiated access schemes for scholarly content. This review shows that these approaches have leveraged information access to the African researchers who now have almost the same levels of access to scientific literature as their peers in the developed world. African governments, institutions, researchers and librarians still need to exploit the potential of open access. There remain, however, infrastructural issues that need to be addressed to ensure that the African scholar enjoys access to current scientific information.

Consortia are widely used by academic libraries worldwide to support the most cost-effective means of acquiring digital content and services. Some developing countries, however, have been slow to benefit from consortia due to a range of obstacles and challenges faced by their academic libraries and higher education sectors more broadly. This paper investigates the current state, and future prospects, for consortia in one developing country, Vietnam. A questionnaire survey was distributed to all academic libraries in Vietnam. Valid surveys were received from 99 respondents (34.37 % response rate). The survey results address a number of issues, including current levels of engagement in consortia; identification of drivers for, and obstacles to, the use of consortia; the support required by libraries for future participation; and the need for a supportive legal and administrative framework. The paper concludes that there is a willingness by Vietnamese academic librarians to engage with consortia, but there are also considerable obstacles to be overcome to make this possible. The conclusions are presented as a series of 11 recommendations aimed at improving the operating conditions for consortia in Vietnam.

University students in Zimbabwe lack immediate access to accurate health information. There is lack of explicit and integrated structures for disseminating health information to students in Zimbabwe. Informed by the salutogenic theory of health, the study assessed the health information needs of students and evaluated existing health information dissemination methods at National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Zimbabwe, in developing a framework for disseminating health information. A case study strategy was used to gather data within the pragmatic paradigm of grounded constructivism. The findings reveal that students need health information on a wide range of health topics and prefer mobile electronic media, workshops, qualified health professionals and peers for their health needs. There are significant gaps between the strategies that are being used by NUST to disseminate health information and the health information needs of the students. Therefore, this paper proposes a needs-based, integrated information dissemination framework for promoting health amongst students. The proposed framework emphasizes utilization of synchronous information and communication technologies, the need for integration of activities, a viable policy, health information literacy training and the use of a mix of persuasion techniques as an effective health promotion strategy.

Some studies have investigated participants’ information-seeking practices from the perspective of mutual collaboration experience and level of domain knowledge. This study provides insights into collaborative academic information-seeking (CAIS) behaviour. The article explores whether groups with different levels of domain knowledge and mutual collaboration experiences had different CAIS behaviour. It also asked whether domain knowledge level or mutual collaboration experience had an impact on CAIS behaviour. We describe a user study with 18 participants in nine pairs with an experimental collaborative information-seeking tool, the participants categorized into three types of groups: high domain knowledge level and few mutual collaboration experiences (Group 1), low domain knowledge level and many mutual collaboration experiences (Group 2), and no domain knowledge level and no mutual collaboration experience (Group 3). Quantitative and qualitative data analysis were used to analyse the user data collected. The results showed that compared with members of Group 3, participants in Groups 1 and 2 had a better understanding of search tasks and were aware of the ways of completing the tasks successfully. They did not depend on the information-retrieval system when constructing search queries, and adopted diverse cooperation strategies. They were more likely to recommend information to their partners. Domain knowledge had greater impact on CAIS behaviour than collaboration experience. The findings help us to understand social interactions among community members and help CAIS researchers to understand user interactions and inform information system designers as they design collaborative systems to facilitate social communication in the information-seeking process. Our work was limited by the group types we chose and the small group size, which could affect the generalizability of our findings and should be addressed in future studies.

Creativity/innovation of librarians is imperative for the continuing relevance of academic libraries. However, for that to happen, the organizational climate of academic libraries has to be supportive of librarians’ creativity. This study investigated the organizational climate of four academic libraries in Nigeria in relation to creativity. Using a questionnaire as the instrument for collection of data, the study sought to know from a sample size of 103 librarians their perception of the organizational climate of their libraries as it relates to creativity. Six dimensions of organizational climate were investigated: organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement, work group support, freedom, sufficient resources and challenging work. The findings revealed that work group and organizational encouragement were perceived to be highly positive for creativity. On the other hand, the least supportive dimension for creativity was sufficient resources. These findings reflected the problems/challenges which hinder creativity/innovation in these libraries and the strategies to enhance them as well. The study has implications for management and practice. Limitations of the study were captured and some recommendations for the way forward and for further studies were made.

The two key concepts of information literacy and self-efficacy are of the utmost importance in information searches, especially in new information and media environments such as the web. As a result, the sense of efficacy related to the information literacy skills of users should be regarded as a real concern. The article reports on research regarding Information Literacy Self-efficacy dimensions in a sample of post-graduate students at Shahed University, Tehran, Iran. A survey-descriptive method using a highly validated 28-item scale developed by Kurbanoglu, Akkoyunlu and Umay (2006, “Developing the Information Literacy Self-Efficacy Scale.” Journal of Documentation 62:730–743) in English was considered as the research methodology. The reliability and validity of the measurements assessing the proposed factor structure were examined via CFA, while the strength and direction of the hypothesized causal paths among the constructs were analyzed via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results from the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirmed a different and four-dimensional model than the six-dimensional model proposed by the original authors. The scale in the new version was validated according to the structural and overall goodness of fit showing a high quality on measuring the variable in the context studied. Iranian post-graduate students feel a high degree of self-efficacy related to different information literacy dimensions. There exists, however, differences among the dimensions. As the first research to explore the concept in Iran, the current research is a response to the lack of such a tool in related literature.