World Digital Libraries: An international Journal

The present study attempts to evaluate India’s contribution to Ranking Web of World Repositories by making it the main source from data collection to highlight the present scenario of these repositories. There are 334 Universities, 10 Hospitals, 130 Business Schools, and 47 Research Centres repository developed so far in the world. The OpenMED National Informatics Centre–India occupies 118th place in the top 800 world repositories.

The paper presents the need for library professionals to be adept with skills in information and communication technology as library services are more Information Technology (IT) centric, especially in educational institutions. Application of IT in academic environment in Kuwait has increased gradually in the recent decades. This paper is designed to measure the use of IT in the academic libraries of Kuwait with an ulterior objective to establish some correlation between quality in libraries and use of IT. It highlights the use of hardware/software facilities in academic libraries and also the access of networks, information services, and problems in IT applications. The analysis of the data represents the extent and the level of IT application applied by the academic librarians in Kuwait.

Knowledge management (KM) is one of the most engaging subjects in the modern knowledge-based economy, and many academic and professional disciplines have adopted KM education into their course programmes. Library and Information Science (LIS) is another academic discipline that has a lot to gain by incorporating the principles of KM. This paper aims to suggest a modular approach to KM education in the realm of Digital Library (DL) learning. This paper is based on a review of the scientific literature of the field, and a mini-case analysis of the ‘International Master in Digital Library Learning’ (DILL) programme – which includes a module on ‘Information and Knowledge Management’ (IKM). The study describes emerging notions of DL and KM, and explores the current state of DL learning and KM education in Library and Information Science (LIS). It analyses a minicase, and shows that the IKM module of DILL comprises dimensions of content, context, people, process and technology. Finally, this paper proposes a framework of KM specialization in the DILL programme which consists of four modules based on the four major perspectives of KM; information, technology, business, and human.

This contribution offers a brief and broad view on a core function of digital libraries; to support their users in discovering the most relevant information. We consider developers and managers of Information Sources, and Information Services, and examine how they can improve information discovery. The paper is mainly based on experience, published literature and empirical research, in the context of academic and scientific information services. The following aspects of digital libraries are considered: from print to digital, disintermediation, the online catalogue, digital search, federated search, merging of databases, link generators, advanced commercial discovery services, the importance of freely available discovery services, open access, enhancing subject retrieval, searching via images, web and search engine optimization, the social web, and information literacy of users. Many relations exist among these topics. As the information landscape continues to evolve faster than ever, continual adaptation is a must for (digital) libraries.

Higher educational institutions have realized the importance of virtual space to cater to the information needs of digital natives. They have now extended their physical boundaries towards the design of virtual space to support teaching and learning. This paper reports study that aimed to find out as to how BA Communications (Major in Information and Media) undergraduate students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia use a virtual learning environment. It aims to identify the students’ perceptions of the usefulness of VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) in relation to one of their major subjects Information Cultures. A simple open-ended questionnaire was designed and distributed among students to gather information about the features of UTS Online, a VLE used at UTS, in relation to the subject. This paper only focuses on students’ feedback on the usefulness of UTS Online with regard to the subject. UTS Online is a platform where the learning process becomes more interactive and engaging as the students and lecturer can interact constructively with each other through the digital content in a specifically designed learning environment.