Volume 15, Issue 2

A systematic review of literature on the types of information important to cancer patients was conducted. The review included 18 studies. A synthesis of the ranking of the importance attached to various types of information by patients in individual studies showed that information about the disease itself and information about the treatment that follows are the most important types. A review of factors affecting the need for a particular type of information found that younger patients attribute more importance to information about sexual concerns and physical attractiveness than older patients. This type of information, however, was ranked least important by cancer patients overall. Also, the review indicates that highly educated patients may be similar to less educated patients in the types of information they need. As for the impact of patient situations on the need for a specific type of information, patients who prefer to be active in decision-making during illness want more information about their illness. Although some evidence existed to indicate that patients who are closer in time to their diagnosis need to understand the disease by wanting more information about their illness, the stage of cancer does not affect the type of information needed.

The calculation of percentile impact factors and their use are illustrated for all ISI-covered journals published in Africa or carrying the words Africa or African in their title. For each African journal we selected a Western journal (defined as a journal published in North America or Western Europe) belonging to the same journal category in ISI’s Journal Citation Reports® and having a similar ISI impact factor.
For the groups of journals studied here, we did not find a significant difference between any of the studied impact factors for African journals and for matched Western ones. Surprisingly, for these journals we did not even find a statistically significant difference between the average ISI impact factor, the first quartile impact factor, and the median impact factor. These results indicate that for journals with relatively low impact factors there is little difference between the various ways in which synchronous impact factors are calculated.

As part of ongoing research into Library Technician education, statistics were gathered specifically related to Australian participants in the Diploma of Library and information Services Training Package for the year 2002. Data was gathered relating to age, gender, education background and employment status of this student cohort. The profile of the Library Technician student was then compared with the broader training package student cohort to examine any similarities or differences particular to Library Technician students. It is the intention that a further comparison will be made at a future date between the 2002 Library Studies cohort and a group of Library Technicians who have chosen to pursue a Librarianship qualification.