University Students’ Readiness towards Mobile Learning: The Stages of Change Model

Information seeking modes are changing rapidly due to advancements in portable devices such as smartphones. The functionality of smartphones is helping individuals to enhance their online learning experiences. The study was conducted to assess the readiness level among students towards the adoption of mobile learning at The Islamia University of Bahawalpur. A survey method of research was used to collect data for this study. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed through convenience sampling among the enrolled students of The Islamia University of Bahawalpur. Of the 183 respondents, the majority of 118 (64.5%) were female. Overwhelming, 170 (92.9%) respondents' usage frequency was 'daily' for accessing information through mobile. Stages of change model indicated that most of the respondents were at the 'maintenance stage' indicating that they were regularly using mobile for learning. The main barriers to mobile learning included: 'mobile learning causes sore eyes', and 'mobile screen size makes it difficult to concentrate on contents. The study concluded that a high level of readiness exists among students towards adopting mobile learning as they are regularly using smartphones to access the information from online resources to fulfill the requirements of formal learning. A statistically significant difference was found in the readiness level as female students are more likely to adopt m-learning than male students. The study's findings are useful for librarians, faculty members, IT experts, and policymakers of the participating university in designing mobile-related services for students to enhance learning communications and collaborations.

Information Accessibility for Visually Impaired Students

This research aimed to explore the actual situation of information accessibility for university students with visual impairment at higher academic institutions of Lahore, Pakistan. This research adopted a qualitative research design using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to investigate the proposed phenomenon. The participants were recruited with purposive sampling from higher academic institutions for data collection. Face to face interview of 15 visually impaired students was conducted using an interview guide. The participants were debriefed for data authentication and verification at the end. Each interview was transcribed and analyzed carefully using IPA. The results indicated that these students utilized interpersonal relationships as the primary source of their academic information. The other available facilities for information access included the internet, disability resources center (if available at the institution), and the university library. The major barriers in accessing needed information included: format barriers, navigational barriers, technical barriers, ICTs illiteracy, and financial barriers. The university administration, especially libraries, should consider students with various disabilities while designing information infrastructure for its community. This research can be used as a guide by library staff in designing need-based information services for students with visual imprisonment. This research would be a worthy contribution to the existing literature as only a few studies were conducted in Pakistan.

Ranking Web of Universities: Is Webometrics a Reliable Academic Ranking?

Global university rankings continue to gain growing interest and have high visibility from all stakeholders. Of these, Webometrics Ranking (WR) faces many criticisms about its function. Some people believe WR evaluates only the websites of universities but not their global performance and impact as mentioned by WR authors. This stimulates us to examine the idea of using WR as a reliable academic ranking for the world universities. To test this hypothesis, we apply the WR results with two widely accepted indexes, i.e., the global university rankings and the bibliometrics. Therefore, the WR ranking of the Top 100 institutions are correlated with the corresponding values of six world ranking systems’ 2015 edition (ARWU, USNWR, QS, THE, NTU and URAP) that commonly accepted to evaluate the academic performance of the university, as well as with the objectively bibliometric indicators gathered from the Web of Science (WOS) InCitesTM - Thomson Reuters. The findings revealed that the WR results provide a good correlation with both ranking systems’ results and with 12 bibliometric variables namely: WOS Documents, Times Cited, Citation Impact (CI), Citation Impact: Category Normalized (CNCI), Citation Impact: Journal Normalized (JNCI), Impact Relative to World, % of Top 1% Documents, % of Top 10% Documents, Highly Cited Papers, h-index, International Collaborations, and % Industry Collaborations. The consistency between WR and the studied six rankings increases with increasing the weight percent of the research or bibliometric indicators in these six global rankings. Moreover, the consistency between WR and survey-based rankings (USNWR, THE and QS) increases with decreasing the weight of the subjective reputation survey indicators. The North American, especially USA universities are characterized by the extremely high visibility in WR as well as in the studied seven global rankings. Thus, web-based indicators ranking (WR) offers results of comparable and similar quality to those of the six major global university rankings. Accordingly, they have the capability to rank institutional academic performance. Moreover, the reliability could be enhanced if each university has only one web-domain that accurately reflects its actual performance and activity. We recommend all institutions to apply all ranking systems together since their criteria and indicators complement each other and can form a comprehensive index for covering various HEIs activities/functions worldwide.

Personal and Environmental Factors Affecting the Job Satisfaction of Professionals and Paraprofessionals in Pakistani University Libraries

This study aimed at measuring the job satisfaction of library professionals and paraprofessionals working in the university libraries of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. This study's targeted population was 232 library professionals, and paraprofessionals working in 17 Higher Education Commission (HEC) recognized university libraries. A questionnaire was designed with the help of existing literature and theories. Face validity and reliability was ensured before data collection. A total of 146 respondents willingly responded to the questionnaire, and therefore the response rate was 63%. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied through SPSS for data analysis. According to the results, professionals were more satisfied than paraprofessionals in promotion, technology innovation, and job autonomy. Both groups wanted improvement in fringe benefits. Multiple Regression analysis showed that personal and environmental factors significantly contributed to professional and paraprofessional staff's job satisfaction. Environmental predictors are influential contributors to overall job satisfaction for both groups. This study develops a better understanding of the subject. It supports the authorities to review the policies of salary, promotion, continuing education, technology innovation, job autonomy and fringe benefits to enhance the productivity of the library professionals and paraprofessionals in their organizations. Moreover, this study helps the HEC, library associations, and university authorities in amending job structure policies to better the library profession in the country.

Investigating the Predictors of Digital Library Engagement: A Structured Literature Analysis

Digital library is no longer considered a lavish use of technology but rather a mandatory need for users, especially postgraduate students. Each year, public and academic libraries invest a lot of money to subscribe to various digital resources, such as online databases, electronic books, electronic journals, and electronic magazines. However, many of these organizations have difficulties justifying their digital library investment due to lack of usage among the users. This underutilization of digital libraries is credited to the lack of digital library engagement among the users. Digital library engagement is defined as a deep and long-time use of digital library resources. Some researchers equate engagement to usage; however, engagement goes beyond the generic term of usage and may include multiple dimensions such as affective, cognitive, and behavioral. Previous works on the digital library have mostly focused on the generic definition of use instead of engagement. Researchers believe that the lack of study on digital library engagement causes the underutilization of digital libraries' resources. Despite the rising interest in the digital library, no research has studied digital library engagement predictors. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the predictors of digital library engagement at the conceptual level. A structured literature review methodology was adopted; a total of 135 pieces of literature were included in this study. In total, 30 predictors of digital library engagement were identified, and these predictors were grouped into four factors: technological, individual, organizational, and contextual factors. Grounded on the previous literature on the digital library, the contributions of this paper are as follows: first, this paper identified a list of predictors of digital library engagement from past digital library literature, second, this paper categorized the predictors into four factors, and finally, this paper proposed a conceptual model for further validation of the predictors.

Assessing Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) adoption among Malaysian academic libraries

This study aims to explore the adoption of the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model among Malaysian academic libraries. The study ensues the continuous increase in the proportion and cost of information resources (electronic and print) coupled with the current dwindling budget crushing libraries worldwide. It adopts questionnaires to elicit responses from 111 purposively selected librarians, specifically from Malaysia's academic libraries' acquisition units. This study revealed that some Malaysian academic libraries practice the user-initiated collection acquisition model, with modifications from the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) practiced in the developed world. Malaysian academic libraries adopt the stand-alone user-initiated collection development model instead of integrating the model with either the library OPAC or publishers ‘databases as practiced by other libraries. The user-driven acquisition model is productive considering resource usage, library budget justification, and high return on investment (ROI), according to Malaysian academic libraries.

How Children Gauge Information Trustworthiness in Online Search: Credible or Convenience Searcher?

This study investigates children information search behaviour to inform about their search characteristics. The study uses a qualitative approach by observing and noting the children’s searching process. A total of 30 children aged 7-9 years participated in this study. The unobtrusively observation sessions were video-recorded on children's searching process via the Web. Probing interviews were used to gather understanding on how the children perceive information trustworthiness. The data was analysed using thematic coding approach. The finding highlighted two main characteristics of children search: Credible Searcher and Convenience Searcher. The children in general could gauge information trustworthiness and have confidence with regard to the relevance, reliability and the credibility of the resources. The children do not consider source reputation and currency as an important criterion when seeking information. This study contributes to a better understanding of information trustworthiness as reflected in young children’s information seeking processing.

Exploring Status of Special and Rare Collection: A qualitative examination

This contribution attempts to discuss the current scenario of rare material available in the libraries of Lahore city. Lahore is capital of Punjab province of Pakistan. The study seeks to explore the various aspects such as acquisition, organization, access, preservation & conservation of rare material of libraries of Lahore, Pakistan. The study is qualitative in nature; based on multiple case study design. A multiple case study helps the researchers in finding the differences among cases. Semi-structured interview guide was used as data collection tool. The observation and document analysis of log registers of the cases (libraries) were also done wherever facilitated. It was found that rare collection is underutilized in the libraries of Lahore. Findings also established that separate funds are not allocated to the public libraries of Lahore for acquisition and management of the rare material. This paper identifies the current status and issues in acquisition, management, access and use of rare material at public libraries of Lahore, Pakistan.

The Effects of Social Media on Reading Habits

The study aimed to conduct a quantitative inquiry to understand the effects of social media on the reading habits of the students. The study explored the social media usage patterns and statistically analyzed the effects of social media on reading habits by applying descriptive and inferential statistics. A structured questionnaire was developed by analyzing the related literature and reliability test (Cronbach alpha) testifies that data collection instrument was stable enough to measure the phenomenon. Data collected from a sample of 430 students. The findings of the study revealed the positive effects of social media on reading habits. However, distraction during the time of the study noted as the adverse effect. There was a significant difference of opinion among males and females opinion in terms of certain effects. The study mentioned that Facebook, Whatsapp, Google+ and YouTube were used daily by students. Most of the students were using social media through cell phone. The study has theoretical implications for researchers and practical implications for academia, teachers, policy institutions, and higher education institutions.

Factors Affecting the Motivation of Library Paraprofessional Staff Working in University Libraries of Lahore: An Appraisal

The present study aims at exploring the degree of motivation and professional involvement in the libraries of the universities based in Lahore. The study is essentially quantitative in research involving survey research method for the data collection. The population of the study was paraprofessionals working in the central libraries of thirty-three HEC (Higher Education Commission, Pakistan) recognized public and private universities in Lahore. For the sake of convenience, a selected group of five respondents was constituted from the central library of each university. The available respondents in thirty three university libraries were eighty five. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire using a pre- developed scale MAWS (Motivation at Work Scale) by Gagne et al. (2010). The results proved that the introjections and inner motivational factors proved the key factors of motivation. Furthermore, the results proved that the library assistants had a higher degree level of motivation than those of library clerks. The employees receiving high salary were more motivated than those who were receiving comparatively low salary. Permanent job holders were more motivated than contract-based employees. Similarly, university sector also proved a factor of motivation. The findings of the study are significant to the administration of university libraries that they should consider these factors to keep their staff motivated and committed to their organization and at their workplace.