This paper discussed the concept of computer competency and investigated the relationship between students’ computer competency and their perception of enjoyment and difficulty level of web-based distance-learning courses. Participants were 237 entering graduate students in library and information science from a mid-southwestern state university in the United States from year 2001 to 2003. Comp...

Introduction The advent of the internet and the quick and easy access it provides to vast amounts of digital information sources have greatly affected the ways users interact with information sources and have make them more independent information savvy users. Libraries, once having a monopoly on the delivery of information were now considered by users as a very small piece of the information p...

Science, Part 2” edited by Joanne Gard Marshall, Susan Rathbun-Grubb, Deborah Barreau, and Jennifer Craft Morgan), pp. 67–87. © 2010 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois Abstract This article discusses the development of Knowledge River, a program at the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science established through several Institute of Museum and Library...

This paper reports on a study that explored the needs and challenges with respect to the creation of a collaboratory for li­ brary and information science practitioners. To identify needs and challenges interviews were conducted with practitioners at a variety of institutions. The results suggest that there is a need for a collaboratory to facilitate on-demand, personalized knowledge sharing. T...

This review examines the basic tenets of qualitative or naturalistic methods in terms of their original grounding in the basic social sciences and their value to library and information science research. Examination of the five key points provides the understanding needed to move from contemplation to use of these methods: the research problem, data gathering, content analysis, theory developme...

The author describes factors facilitating web-based instruction in library and information science; advantages and limitations, an overview of web-based instruction in library and information science in Thailand in the case of a distance education university, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU). Implications of web-based instruction to the library and information science program are i...

Web links have been studied by information scientists for at least six years but it is only in the past two that clear evidence has emerged to show that counts of links to scholarly Web spaces (universities and departments) can correlate significantly with research measures, giving some credence to their use for the investigation of scholarly communication. This paper reports on a study to inve...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to advocate and contribute to a more nuanced and discerning argument when ascribing a democratic role to libraries and activities related to information literacy. Design/methodology/approach The connections between democracy and libraries as well as between citizenship and information literacy are analysed by using Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. One example is pr...

Introduction Database systems are computerized systems for managing large amounts of data. Their principal function is to process requests from users to retrieve or alter the data they store. Traditionally, such requests must be expressed in a formal query language. Requests that are well defined are performed promptly; other requests are declined. Processing requests for information is also a ...

IN 1986, THE AUTHORS PROPOSED a taxonomy of theory for library and information studies research. The purpose of this paper is to propose a revised model for theory building, called Circuits of Theory, that includes both the taxonomy and the critical contextual modules researchers consider in their work. These modules surround the taxonomy and encompass the concepts of individual as well as soci...