Information Development

The study aims at probing the information seeking behavior of educational administrators in Pakistan. It also explores their administrative responsibilities for which they usually seek information, their use of the Internet, their preferences for format of reading material and language, etc. and the problems they face while seeking information. To achieve these objectives, a review of related literature, a questionnaire survey and personal interviews within Punjab province and Islamabad Capital Territory in Pakistan were carried out. In total, 297 (99 percent) responses were received and analyzed quantitatively. Recommendations and conclusions are also drawn in the light of findings of the study. The study reveals that educational administrators’ information needs and seeking behavior largely depend on the type of job and the level of decision making they are involved with. Most of the findings of the study correspond with the reviewed literature. The results of the study can be useful to design information services and facilities for educational administrators, not only in Pakistan but in other developing countries of the world as well.

This paper describes the perception of rural communities in the use of Mobile Enabled Social Hub (MESH) that was field tested in several villages across Sivaganga district in the southern part of rural Tamil Nadu, India, during May 2010 to December 2010. The present study was conducted through well structured pre-tested questionnaire with 90 users who took active participation throughout the project. The survey results showed that the rural communities perceived the MESH platform favourably, in terms of its usefulness and ease of use in exchanging information within their communities. Mann-Whitney U tests confirm that gender played a significant role in the perception of MESH as a means for effective communication. The Kruskal-Wallis test analysis also substantiated that people have perceived the MESH platform in an equal way, regardless of age group, education level and type of occupation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogic features of university websites in Ghana and their potential for interacting with existing students while wooing potential students. This study was executed via a content analysis of university websites in Ghana. The results of the study show that Ghanaian universities adequately utilize the dialogic principles as proposed by Kent and Taylor (1998) in designing their websites. The findings show a preponderance in use of the dialogic loop principle by the sampled institutions in Ghana. However, the results also show poor performance by the sampled institutions on return visit principle. The research paper contributes to the scarce literature on dialogic potential of websites in a developing country context.

Although it seems that Government 2.0 will finally deliver the promise of a truly transparent government, many practitioners around the globe (particularly those in the developing world) are reluctant or unable to develop strategies and allocate resources to Government 2.0. As a result, governments around the world ignore or mishandle the opportunities and threats presented by Government 2.0. The primary reason underlying this behavior is the lack of understanding regarding Government 2.0. The purpose of the study is to address this gap in knowledge and understanding by presenting and illustrating fundamental concepts of Government 2.0. A web survey of 200 government websites from 40 countries (20 each from advanced and developing countries) and 45 Web 2.0 initiatives across the globe was used to present and illustrate fundamental concepts of Government 2.0. We suggested a three stage Government 2.0 Utilization Model (GUM) starting from information socialization (stage 1), and then moving on to mass collaboration (stage 2), and social transaction (stage 3). Based on the web survey, we also suggested three Government 2.0 implementation scenarios (i.e., standalone, nested, and hybrid implementation). The study will help researchers and practitioners in understanding the Government 2.0 phenomenon and the opportunities presented by it.

This paper proposes an integrated, ontology-based agricultural information system (AIS) to provide all-round and precise information for efficiently guiding farmers and agri-professionals to conduct agricultural processing. Since the existing independent AIS platforms can only offer specific but incomplete agricultural information service, aiming at this issue, the newly proposed AIS system employs ontology techniques, including RDF-based representation and semantic reasoning, to integrate the index information provided by all involved independent agricultural information platforms. As a result, this newly proposed AIS system can provide users with integrated and accurate response information. Through a realistic case study and relevant experiments, it is clear that the accuracy ratio and integrity ratio of response information offered by this ontology-based integrated AIS can be enhanced to a great extent. In summary, not only agri-professionals, but also farmers, who might not understand information retrieval skills, can benefit from this newly proposed AIS to conduct activities in agricultural production life cycle.

Enterprise information systems (IS) are systems that integrate and streamline business processes that involve volumes of data. They also assist managers in making better decisions across organizations. In these ISs an upstream action has a bullwhip effect on downstream activities. The knowledge required to conduct operations with IS includes system interface navigation and tacit business processes. Although short-term training has been an essential part of implementing IS, it has been difficult to convey the cross-functional process knowledge required to operate an IS when errors occur. On the other hand, mentoring has long been employed by organizations to transfer and propagate tacit knowledge. Notwithstanding that no research has been done on the impact of mentoring on IS successful adaptation, the present study examines the mentoring theory used in successful organization and IS success models in a second-order modelling to argue, and verify, that mentoring plays an important role in IS adaptation through users’ perceived usefulness, satisfaction, and continuous intention.

The study sought to ascertain the factors influencing knowledge application in Ghanaian industries. The study employed a survey technique as the research design. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select 300 respondents. Questionnaire was the main data collection tool. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. The study found that organizational culture, trust and absorptive capacity are the factors influencing knowledge application in Ghanaian industries. The strategic implications of the findings are discussed in the paper.

This commentary is based on the keynote address delivered at the Golden Jubilee of the Department of Library and Information Science, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. It is one of the oldest LIS programmes in the region, and was inspired by the late Professor SR Ranganathan who envisaged the information sciences as an engine to growth and development. Alas, information science programmes have not made the intended impact in India that the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have. This has been the case with most developing economies. Why? The following commentary attributes this to an era of missed opportunities.

Paul Zurkowski coined the term Information Literacy in 1974, since then it has evolved into a dynamic research area within library and information science, with many milestones achieved in Europe and the United States, reflected in English-written literature. This issue of Developing Latin America traces an alternative route, exploring the arrival of information literacy to the region and its main developments.