Journal of Librarianship and Information Science

Misinformation, or fake news, has exploded across social media platforms and communities over the past few years, with serious social and political implications. Many library practitioners and organizations have argued that libraries can and should play a central role in educating the public about this emerging issue. However, serious gaps exist in understanding how libraries can create effective community education about misinformation. This article maps out a research agenda that researchers and public library practitioners can use to make libraries more effective sites for combatting misinformation. This research agenda is grounded in analysis of interviews and workshop discussions of public library staff from Washington State. This analysis reveals three areas in which academic partners can support public libraries: through the design of effective programming, through the development of tools that help librarians keep up-to-date on relevant misinformation, and through interventions in the political and economic contexts that hamper the freedom of librarians to engage controversial topics. Our hope is that this article can help to spur more expansive library and information science research across these areas and become the beginning of a longer and more empirically grounded conversation about how public libraries can achieve their potential for combating misinformation.

This study sought to measure occupational stress levels of tenure eligible academic librarians quantitatively and explores the connections between occupational stress and institutional supports. Researchers administered the Job Stress Survey™ to 109 academic librarians in tenure eligible positions. These data were then analyzed and correlated with participants’ responses in an earlier study which measured tenure confidence and access to institutional supports. Findings showed that lack of support contributes to stress more than the pressures of the job and supports that increase librarians’ confidence do not always decrease stress.

The discourses of information literacy practice create epistemological assumptions about how the practice should happen, who should be responsible and under what conditions instruction should be given. This paper employs a discourse analysis method (Potter, 2008) to identify discourses of information literacy and the learner from within higher education focused professional texts. Texts analysed include 4 recent English-language models of information literacy and 16 textbooks. Analysis suggests that within higher education, information literacy is shaped by 2 conflicting narratives. The outward facing narrative positions information literacy as an empowering practice that equips learners with the knowledge and skills that they need within complex and fast-paced information environments. The inward facing narrative positions learners as incompetent or as lacking the ability to operate within higher education. This deficit perception consequently threatens the sustainability of information literacy practice by reframing empowerment as a process of top-down behaviour modification. This paper represents the first in a research programme that interrogates the epistemological premises and discourses of information literacy within higher education.

This study proposes to investigate the knowledge and perception of students in the Department of Library and Information Science at South Valley University in Upper Egypt about the state’s dealing with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 that has been detected in Egypt in February 2020. A quantitative research approach was adopted in the form of a survey. The target population of the study included students (N = 295) of the fourth year of Department of Library and Information Science at South Valley University, of which 253 responded to the study questionnaire, representing 85.8% of the total number. The study found that there is no significant relationship between the students’ gender and other variables of the study according to the statistics used. It also showed that the most popular information sources mentioned by Department of Library and Information Science students to get information related to the coronavirus were social media and the Internet/Web. The publication/dissemination of information and its availability were badly perceived by the students. About one-third of them questioned the government’s ability to deal with the novel coronavirus. They highly believe in the role of information transparency in fighting both administrative and human corruption. The students emphasized the citizens’ right to criticize the government when it does not comply with the transparency, as well as the right to access any information owned by it in any formats at any time. They were dissatisfied with the government’s ability to retrieve information, organize, store, have legislations, and own a good database of citizens, as well as its capabilities, in terms of transparency, competence, benevolence, honesty, accuracy, efficiency/effectiveness, practicality, and confidence, in relation to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Finally, the study indicated that barriers, such as the spread of administrative and human corruption, security restrictions, and the fragility of the freedom to disclose government information, were highly significant by the surveyed students.

Digital skills are necessary to work and manage electronic library infrastructures and services. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for assessing the level of digital skills among librarians at academic libraries in Jordan. It is also important to investigate the influence of digital skills on technology acceptance among librarians in Jordan. A questionnaire was developed and used to collect the required data from university libraries in Jordan. The results indicate a high level of digital skills among the librarians. The result also shows that financial issues are the main challenges that librarians face to obtain the required skills. Most importantly, the level of digital skills positively influences the librarians’ acceptance and use of technology in academic libraries in Jordan. It was noted that factors such as sex, age, experience, specialization, and library type had no effect on the results. Findings of this research will help to explore the skills and competencies needed by information professionals and act as a guideline for competency development and curriculum updates in Librarianship and Information Science schools at an international level.

Building students’ literacy skills is a key educative purpose of contemporary schooling. While libraries can play a key role in fostering literacy and related reading engagement in schools, more needs to be known about school librarians’ role in promoting these goals. To this end, this article seeks to identify the nature and scope of the literacy supportive role required of the school librarian in the United Kingdom. It also investigates how this aspect is situated within the broader competing role requirements of the profession. Using a hybrid approach to content analysis including both qualitative and quantitative methods, this article presents in-depth analysis of 40 recent job description documents recruiting school librarians in the United Kingdom to investigate these research aims. The vast majority of documents (92.5%) included literacy supportive roles or characteristics of a school librarian, and recurring salient components included supporting literature selection, having a broad and current knowledge of literature, promoting and modelling reading for pleasure, devising and supporting reading and literature events, promoting a whole-school reading culture, working closely with students to support reading and literacy skill development, and implementing and supporting reading programmes. This literacy supportive role was found to sit within a potentially highly complex and diverse work role which may compete with the literacy supportive role for time and resourcing in school libraries. This research suggests that the role of school librarians in the United Kingdom is both complex and evolving, and that school librarians in the United Kingdom have a valuable literacy supportive role to play in their school libraries.

The field of digital preservation education is evolving due to the rapid developments in the digital preservation field, and as educators and researchers respond to these developments. One way to understand trends in education is through the examination of course syllabi and through the assigned course readings, as instructors often utilize and integrate core and seminal literature in these courses. This study aims to understand the emerging topics and trends in digital preservation education through the examination of these course readings. This study examines these topics and trends through an analysis of the literature assigned digital preservation courses at North American ALA (American Library Association)-accredited Master’s in Library and Information Science programs through bibliometric analysis, topic modeling, and visual analysis of the citation data.

Research-support librarians have to play an effective role in supporting learning, providing services and anticipating the requirements of academic researchers. However, previous studies revealed that these librarians lacked the competencies to keep abreast of new resources, services and technologies. Although there is a large body of literature discussing the comprehensive competencies required of research-support librarians, very few have attempted to investigate this issue in the Malaysian context. Based on this situation, this study attempts to investigate the self-directed learning traits and competencies of research-support librarians in Malaysian public universities. This study also aims to identify the influence of self-directed learning on competencies. A total of 215 research-support librarians from Malaysian public universities were selected. The findings revealed that the competencies of these librarians are still at medium level. The most noticeable and lowest competency was in information technology skills, followed by research and contributions to the profession and library management. The most prevalent competencies were interpersonal skills, followed by information literacy, entrepreneurialism, foundational knowledge and collections development.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, libraries have been undertaking a number of activities aimed at minimizing their negative impact on the environment. Those that show such activity are called ‘green libraries’. This term appears in scientific, professional and popular science literature, but its definitions are vague and ambiguous. A preliminary analysis of the content of publications dealing with the issue of green libraries shows a modest representation of theoretical and synthetic texts. This article aims to fill this gap. It has three goals: (1) clarification of the term ‘green library’, (2) conceptualization of the term ‘green librarianship’ and (3) determination of ‘green librarianship’ areas. To achieve them, first, an analysis of the environmental discourse on green libraries and green librarianship in library science literature was performed to abstract green library indicators. Then, these indicators were verified. The selection of the sample for research was deliberate. The materials were collected using the Library, Information Science & Technology Abstract (LISTA) bibliographic and abstract database. As a result, the number of green library indicators has been extended, which has made it possible to clarify the definition of this term. The definition of ‘green librarianship’ was then formulated, and the areas of green librarianship were indicated. Conceptualization of the terms ‘green library’ and ‘green librarianship’ constitutes the value of this article. The practical implication of the study is the expansion of the number of green library indicators. These indicators can be used to develop a codebook for the content analysis of documents in the discussed area. This article may also contribute to the development of methods for the evaluation of activities and development of green libraries.

The article examines the strengths and limitations of the analogy of information landscapes proposed by Annemaree Lloyd. The analogy offers a novel approach to the conceptualization of the spatial contexts of information practices. Drawing on the ideas of metaphor analysis, the analogy is scrutinized by comparing the similarities between its source domain, that is, natural landscape, and target domain, that is, information landscape. The study identified three main aspects of the analogy: (1) information landscapes as spaces affording the accomplishment of information practices, (2) information landscapes as spaces entwining physical and imaginary qualities and (3) information landscapes as socially constructed spatial contexts of information practices. The findings suggest that the construct of information landscapes represents a spatial analogy in which the properties of the source domain partially elucidate the nature of the contexts of information practices. The analogy works best with regard to similarities between affordances offered by natural landscapes and information landscapes. The major limitation of the analogy deals with difficulties to map physical features of the source domain onto the cognitive and social qualifiers of the target domain.

In recent years, leading website search engines have abandoned vital search features supporting complex information needs, evolving instead for the marketplace and for users seeking speedy answers to easy questions. The consequences are troubling, for researchers and for information science educators, with concerns ranging from the very relevance of search results and the unknowing of what is missing, to the novice searcher’s waning ability to frame potent queries and to learn ways to refine results. We report on a grounded theory study of search experiences of information professionals and graduate students (n = 20) that contributes a holistic understanding of web searching, using its findings both to frame what is lacking in the design evolution of search engines for complex information needs and to outline a way forward. One goal of the study was to evaluate an established model of web searching, called Net Lenses, a theoretical framework shown to be highly relevant during the study’s grounded theory secondary literature review. The original Net Lenses research used phenomenography to identify variation in the web search experiences of university students (n = 41), evidencing four categories according to the characteristics of searcher awareness, approach to learning, response to obstacles and search outcomes. This study validated the model and led to an expanded version, Net Lenses 2.0, with five categories of search experience, reflecting the complex information needs of more advanced searchers. This resultant Net Lenses 2.0 model is discussed with its implications for search engine design, for advanced searchers and also for learning-to-search modes, much needed by searchers seeking to develop their abilities. The study’s implications coalesce in a call to action for more inclusive search interface design, and an agenda is put forth for how information researchers, educators and literacy advocates can move forward in their intersecting domains.

Health information literacy plays a critical role in self-management practices among patients living with chronic health conditions. However, there are limited studies on information needs among breast cancer patients in Ghana. This paper therefore investigated the information needs of women living with breast cancer in Ghana and how educational status influenced their information needs. The study was conducted in two health facilities in Accra, Ghana (37 Military Hospital and Sweden Ghana Medical Centre). A total of 75 breast cancer patients were conveniently selected from the two health facilities for the study. The instrument used to elicit relevant data for this study was a questionnaire using the survey design. Data was analysed descriptively. The findings of the study revealed that the information needs of the breast cancer patients investigated were centred mainly around treatment and management information and less around preventive information. The patients also ranked diagnostic information as their highest need, followed by physical care information, treatment information, psychosocial information and disease-specific information in that order. Patients with higher education reported higher information need on all the five domains compared to those with lower education. The study therefore recommended that management of health facilities make health information literacy an integral component of their treatment and management of breast cancer.