Libraries in Nigeria have long struggled to adequately serve the information needs of visually impaired individuals, particularly those who are literate. Despite this, scholarly research addressing ...these issues in South-Eastern Nigeria is lacking, highlighting the urgency of investigating predictors of user satisfaction among visually impaired students in SLMCs. The research design utilizes a survey methodology across four states in South-Eastern Nigeria, encompassing a total population of 95 individuals. Data collection involves administering questionnaires to visually impaired students and SLMC personnel, followed by comprehensive data analysis using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. Findings reveal a positive correlation between information needs, library accessibility, and user satisfaction, while library services and media-format availability did not significantly influence user satisfaction. Impediments to user satisfaction include inadequacy of media formats, contents, outdated materials, lack of equipment, and recording studios. Addressing these challenges is crucial to improving library engagement and user satisfaction among visually impaired students in South-Eastern Nigeria, ultimately fostering more inclusive and supportive educational environments.
This study explored the outcomes of, and adaptive strategies employed by library personnel in performing afternoon/nightshift in a mega-city like Lagos, Nigeria. The Maslach Burnout Theory was used ...as the explanation framework for burnout concepts such as; emotional exhaustion, cynicism, depersonalisation and individual accomplishment and other matters allied with longstanding, unsolved job-induced stress. The qualitative methodology guided by a phenomenological research paradigm, which is an approach that focuses on the commonality of real-life experiences in a particular group, was used. A focus group discussion among purposively selected library personnel was used as a method of data collection from staff who are involved in afternoon/nightshift. The participants were selected using convenience sampling technique in which all categories of staff in the cataloguing unit involved in nightshift were included in the sample because of their representative characteristics. The phenomenological approach was adopted in conducting the study to enable a deep elicitation of data for understanding the phenomena as it is reasonable and from a broad interpretation of perspectives drawn from individual experiences. The questions posed were meant to shed light on issues relating to the participants' maintenance of a work-life balance in-situ with performance of nightshift duties. The study discovered that library staff experience emotions of fear, insecurity, stress and financial strain over their involvement in the performance of nightshift duty at the University of Lagos library.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review key models of people’s information behaviour (IB) exploring the integration of the concepts of information literacy (IL) and knowledge in their designs. ...Scholarly perspectives portray IL as providing individuals with capacity for good information practices that result in generating new knowledge. It is surprising that this important perspective is not reflected in the reviewed IB models. This paper contributes to the literature base by proposing a new model highlighting IL and knowledge as important concepts within the IB discourse.
Design/methodology/approach
A discourse of the integration of IL and knowledge, which are integral factors, associated with IB, in selected IB models.
Findings
Identifying a need for information and understanding its context is an IL attribute. IL underpins IB in providing awareness of information sources; how to search and use information appropriately for solving information needs and leveraging generated new knowledge. The generation of new knowledge results from using information, in a process that combines with sense-making and adaption. Correspondingly, the knowledge that develops, increases capability for sense-making and adaptation of information to suit various contexts of need, iteratively.
Originality/value
A new model of IB; the causative and outcome factors of information behaviour (COFIB) is proposed. COFIB stresses that IL and knowledge are prominent factors within the general framework of people’s IB. The model emphasises knowledge generation as the outcome of IB, applied in solving problems within specific contexts.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to evaluate knowledge sovereignty and its implication for clearing the mental cobweb through library engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Review of literature
...Findings
Knowledge sovereignty refers to people’s ability and aptitude to control, access and navigate information to enable them make informed decisions and channel their activities toward right choices. Library engagements within the new normal of knowledge sovereignty center on their knowledge-centric approach to create, scale, reframe and disseminate both new and existing knowledge to afford quick and gainful use within organizations and the larger society in a short period of time, thus eliminating the dilemma of digital information overload and its complexities, uncertainties and oftentimes, chaos.
Originality/value
This study comply with copyright requirement.
The fake news infodemic vs information literacy Durodolu, Oluwole Olumide; Ibenne, Samuel Kelechukwu
Library Hi Tech News,
09/2020, Volume:
37, Issue:
7
Journal Article, Trade Publication Article
Purpose
With growing dependency on social media for reportage, coupled with rising media errors with potential to threatening the boundaries of knowledge and reliable information, attention is now ...being drawn to credibility of using social media and other media outlet. This increasing attention is because of the apparent disorderliness in the information milieu as a result of powerlessness to regulate activities on social media coupled with the dilemma of tampering with fundamental right of individual to free speech. Unlike the traditional media houses with specific address and location, identifying the whereabouts of promoters of fake news is challenging as information can be manufactured at the remote locality and the consequence will be felt in all the four compass points of the world. Tracking down individuals peddling fake news for charges of slander, defamation or libel is difficult, as a result of the intercontinental nature of the social network.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a qualitative research design, which is guided by the interpretive paradigm because it relies comprehensively on practical methods of content analysis in which concepts are discussed to convey an in-depth understanding of the topic being investigated and bringing new knowledge.
Findings
Ensuring that the citizenry is adequately information literate is sine qua non for reducing the threats posed by fake news access and use to the barest minimum. Ibenne (2016) notes that becoming information literate is a process that leads to empowerment of the individual to take rationally elevated decisions in information use and knowledge application. The authors may therefore conclude that falling prey to fake news plays majorly on ignorance among the citizenry, and on the other hand, irrational use of information. When citizens possess functional information literacy, they are able to subject the information they receive to critical evaluation to eliminate the undesirable, which fake news squarely fall under.
Originality/value
This paper sheds light on assessing the fake news infodemic as information disorder and a threat to reliable information access and use; therefore, information acquired from this study is imaginative and valuable to better understand how information professionals react to official and personal engagement.
An infodemic can be defined a disproportionate aggregate of information regarding a problem that makes exposure to reality challenging in a manner that compromises logical thinking. It can also be ...categorized as a pervasive and deliberate spread of misinformation geared towards deceitfulness. In the 1st WHO Infodemiology Conference, it was affirmed in the context of the coronavirus pandemic that infodemic had heightened deception to the point that necessitates a harmonized response because of the overabundance of misinformation that the world is inundated with, so much so that finding dependable sources and reliable guidance when urgently needed has become an uphill task. Consequently, misinformation blows out of proportion at a remarkably faster pace and further compounded the complexity to health emergency response. The abundance of information on social media oftentimes without authentic sources leads to a dilemma in distinguishing facts, mere opinions, propaganda, or prejudices. Social media has become an avenue for all sorts of misinformation that initially seems credible but later proves fraudulent. Conversely, by the time the authenticity is confirmed to be false, the damage may be irreversible.
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