Volume 17, Issue 2

Many studies have revealed that appropriate information literacy (IL) skills can improve the learning process, performance, and achievements of students and ultimately guide them in the desired direction of becoming knowledge workers. However, traditional methods of teaching IL have not always been successful due to several limitations, including short-term effectiveness and shallow application of skills and knowledge. Novel ways of teaching IL need to be experimented with and developed so that IL can be taught more effectively with students having enriched lessons and a more holistic learning experience. This paper provides an overview of a quasi-experimental study conducted with two clusters of 13-year-old students who did a project-based assignment. One cluster of students received personalised coaching (experimental) while another cluster did not receive such coaching (control). The findings of the study show that students who received personalised coaching obtained better scores for their project and showed better mastery of the learning and research process through the ability to use various information sources, present more reliable and authoritative information, and include proper citations and a complete bibliography in their project reports.

The geographical and social differences between Spain and Sweden, two non-English language European countries, led to our review of the impact factors (IF) and self-citation rates of scientific journals published in these two countries. The study endeavours to compare the trends of citation rates and impact factors for all Spanish and Swedish journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports during the time period 2000-2005.

This work describes the construction of a conceptual structure, as a result of the domain analysis of the current research on Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), through different techniques based on the citations and semantic analysis. A sample which covers all published articles about the disease in mainstream journals was chosen. A total of 1,968 articles from 2000 through 2004 were retrieved from Science Citation Index. Author Co-citation Analysis (ACA) techniques and semantic analysis were used and the results were represented by different informatic programs. A macrostructure of the domain of the current research on BPH was identified through bibliometric techniques. The text mining techniques allowed validation of the identified macrostructure and the obtainment of the most frequent words in the text. The semantic analysis of the most cited reviews on BPH during the studied period allowed the definition of the categories to be used in the structure. Finally, a conceptual structure to be used as controlled (structured) language in the information retrieval, inside of a specialized information system on the approach of the disease is shown.

Conceptual coherence, which refers to concepts whose contents make sense to the perceiver, has been associated traditionally with the notion of similarity, that is, objects, events, or entities form a concept because they are similar to one another. An examination of traditional similarity-based concept theories suggests that they do not provide an adequate account for conceptual coherence. Library and Information Science needs to explore knowledge-based approaches to concept formation, which suggest that one’s knowledge of a concept includes not just a representation of its features but also an explicit representation of the causal mechanisms that people believe link those features to form a coherent whole.

The Virtual Library provides access to tools such as databases, electronic journals, alerting services, online reference tools, and quality-selected web resources that improve the quality of teaching and research. Unfortunately various virtual library initiatives in Nigeria within the past six years have remained a mirage. This desk study examined the national library virtual project initiatives and identifies the challenges of its implementation within the Nigerian context. Misconceptions of what constitute a virtual library, unavailability of the basic information infrastructure, poor policy implementation and lack of web technologies skilled digital/systems librarians have been identified as some of the challenges in the implementation of the national Virtual Library Project. The study also highlights the process of building a virtual library, collection development, acquisition and access of electronic resources in the virtual library, which are the basic skills required for the deployment and sustainability of the national virtual library.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in 2003, public libraries accepting federal E-rate funds have been required to install technology protection measures on computers with Internet access. Many libraries use Internet filters to fulfill this requirement. Using research by Nancy Willard, which disclosed affiliations between Internet filtering companies and religious organizations, it was found that at least 15.9% of Indiana public libraries used filters with connections to conservative religious groups in 2005. Ethical implications of this research are discussed and recommendations for balancing First Amendment rights with a financial need for CIPA compliance are included.