REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The paper aims to explore the status of information literacy skills of students of universities of Punjab & Chandigarh, their information seeking strategies and ability in acquiring, organizing, evaluating and using the information effectively. A well-structured questionnaire was designed to collect data for the present study. Responses were gathered from 908 students and research scholars of five universities. The results of the study reveal that information literacy level of the students and researchers in the universities under study does not comply with Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education formulated and reviewed by the ACRL Standards Committee. On the basis of the findings, some suggestions have been put forth. The assessment of information literacy competency of students will go a long way towards creating an information literate society. It will also provide some insight to researchers for future evaluation and planning.

Library Philosophy and Practice, 2013

This study assessed the information literacy (IL) instruction perceptions and practices of faculty at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania. An online survey was distributed to all faculty members in five schools and one institute at MUHAS (235 in total) from 2011 to 2012, with a response rate of (34.5 percent). The study findings show a general support for IL development, and its importance in enabling students to do librarybased research. To a large extent, faculty believed that the IL competencies of students, including their ability to find, use and evaluate information, was average at the lower levels (first and second year students), and improved at the upper levels (third year undergraduates, and all postgraduates). Although faculty usually asked their students to conduct library research for their course assignments, students did not make sufficient use of library due to inadequate IL skills. Although faculty did not often collaborate with librarians in teaching IL, faculty believed that IL should be an independent, mandatory and credit earning course, and it should be taught by either a librarian only or undertaken collaboratively by both instructors and librarians. Faculty also indicated having seen some impact on the improvement in their students’ research process after receiving library instruction. Based on the survey results, the study recommends the following: Universities should embed IL programmes into institutions, and librarians should include IL in professional development courses for teaching IL to faculty, use more proactive and interpersonal marketing strategy to promote IL, conduct regular IL needs assessment, use a flexible pedagogical approach and participative, student centred methods in teaching and developing IL curricula, and expand the sources in which IL articles are published.

The purpose of the study is to show how a collective knowledge management effort was undertaken in a low-tech environment yields outcomes that benefit all participants of the effort-students and staff of a medical school, the medical profession in the community, paramedics, and the community at large. It also demonstrates that acquainting students with knowledge management skills early and improving their information literacy. If they can effectively manage their knowledge resources in close connection with all members of the society around their school, the benefits will be improving academic efficiency, diagnostic effectiveness, and feedback from medical institutions and patients. The study descends from the Medical Library Association's definition of health information literacy. It uses a survey at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, Ghana, to examine the information and literacy skills of its medical students. Also, it explores the level of awareness of the various databases to which the university library is subscribed, the benefits of information literacy skills, and the challenges that students face in identifying and using information sources. From there, the paper explores avenues for improving the situation of the students of which the optimal is conjoining resources in and outside the medical school. Linking faculty, students, and medical professionals in the university's local environment in a collective endeavour for enhancing the literacy skills proper can result in a shared inventory of tools that help to discriminate, which information is needed and which is redundant. From this foundation, students would develop abilities to understand knowledge management and know how to apply it in their specific field of professionalization. The sample was selected from doctoral students in a single institution in the field of education. Also, the sample was self-selected and relatively small. There is a caveat, therefore, for generalizing the findings to other doctoral student populations. This study is useful to health administrators and faculty members, because issues concerning the importance of information literacy skills do not only apply to UDS, Tamale, but to other medical institutions in Africa as well. The study provides university libraries with reliable data on the need for and the effectiveness of information literacy instruction and it enables the librarians to strategize how to improve the instructions they provide. The medical profession highly depends on the adequacy of diagnosis and therapy selection, and for this, any medical professional must be capable to access and use state of the art information sources. There are only a few studies around the topic of medical literacy and almost none for developing countries. But the results of the other studies corroborate the findings of this paper to a great extent.

 The purpose of the study is to show how a collective knowledge management effort was undertaken in a low-tech environment yields outcomes that benefit all participants of the effort—students and staff of a medical school, the medical profession in the community, paramedics, and the community at large. It also demonstrates that acquainting students with knowledge management skills early and improving their information literacy. If they can effectively manage their knowledge resources in close connection with all members of the society around their school, the benefits will be improving academic efficiency, diagnostic effectiveness, and feedback from medical institutions and patients. The study descends from the Medical Library Association's definition of health information literacy. It uses a survey at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, Ghana, to examine the information and literacy skills of its medical students. Also, it explores the level of awareness of the various databases to which the university library is subscribed, the benefits of information literacy skills, and the challenges that students face in identifying and using information sources. From there, the paper explores avenues for improving the situation of the students of which the optimal is conjoining resources in and outside the medical school. Linking faculty, students, and medical professionals in the university's local environment in a collective endeavour for enhancing the literacy skills proper can result in a shared inventory of tools that help to discriminate, which information is needed and which is redundant. From this foundation, students would develop abilities to understand knowledge management and know how to apply it in their specific field of professionalization. The sample was selected from doctoral students in a single institution in the field of education. Also, the sample was self-selected and relatively small. There is a caveat, therefore, for generalizing the findings to other doctoral student populations. This study is useful to health administrators and faculty members, because issues concerning the importance of information literacy skills do not only apply to UDS, Tamale, but to other medical institutions in

The study was conducted to assess the information literacy competencies of pre and fi nal year undergraduate veterinary students and their attitude towards e-learning. The 120 pre-fi nal and fi nal year veterinary students studying at Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana were selected randomly and data was collected with the help of a structural questionnaire consisting of 25 items with respect to concept identifi cation, search strategy, document types, search tools, use of results and e-learning. The study revealed that only 12.5% of the veterinary students belonged to high knowledge level category whereas majority of them 68.3% (P<0.01) possessed low knowledge towards information literacy competencies. A high percentage of veterinary students lacked the necessary knowledge and skills to identify main concept and signifi cance of words (52.5%), to opt appropriate search strategy (83.1%), to select required document types (42.1%), to utilize effi cient search tools (73.8%) and to evaluate and use results (68.8%). Only 18.3% students had ability to use computer as experts. About 62.5% respondents used search engines as e-learning tool. About 87.9 and 89.7% male and female respondents possessed favourable attitude towards use of e-learning tools. Gender and OCPA had no signifi cant association with knowledge level as well as e-learning attitude of veterinary students. The study revealed notable gaps among students towards information literacy competencies and e-learning, hence, teaching of credit bearing Information Literacy courses is imperative to enhance undergraduate veterinary students' knowledge and information seeking skills.

The purpose of this study was to investigating the information literacy librarian of public universities in Kerman. Information literacy "is a set of skills necessary for search, retrieve and effective use of various information sources. The study was descriptive-survey. The population consists of 93 librarians of payamenoor university, Shahidbahonar University and university of medical sciences. A data collection instrument is included researcher-made questionnaires. Data analysis included Test t, chi-square test and ANOVA analyses and SPSS software (package of Spss / pc + + ver21). The results of this study show the most familiarity the study population belonging to the periodicals. According the results, librarians of Shahidbahonar University and university of medical sciences were more dominant in the software library. The results of this study show there is not a significant relationship between information literacy and gender. But there is a significant relationship between information literacy with age, degree and field of study. According to the findings holding training courses for information literacy skills, equipping the libraries with suitable hardware and software, personal motivation of librarians to keep their information literacy skills updated, and official attention of libraries and universities to their staff information literacy level is the factors that involved in information literacy level of study population librarians.

Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (Impact Factor: 0.22). 05/2014; 9(1):1-17, 2014

This study assessed whether first year undergraduate students are applying the research skills taught in an information literacy (IL) module in course IT 100 to their work in other classes and for anything unrelated to classes at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Tanzania. A total of 275 students took part in a printed questionnaire survey which was distributed to all second year undergraduate students at MUHAS, a return rate of 77.2 percent. The study demonstrated that students continue to use the skills gained during the IL course both in other classes and for purposes unrelated to the class. However, there was low use of scholarly databases and the library catalogue for academic and non-academic activities. These findings show a need to address some issues concerning the information literacy module (IT 100.2), such as an increased emphasis on teaching topics related to search strategies, information sources, and evaluation of resources as a practical and useful skill. The study findings further showed that issues related to facilities (internet connectivity and electrical power) will also need to be addressed. This study is based on self-reports by first year undergraduate students, which may not be a precise predictor of their actual health information competencies and their actual use of skills in courses other than IL and for anything unrelated to the class. Further research is needed to validate differences between students' self-reports of their IL competence with their actual competence as measured by a strenuous post-test.

This study investigated library instruction methods, effect and the challenges in academic libraries using the Federal University of Petroleum Resources Effurun (FUPRE) students as the target population. Library instruction is a core activity of the academic libraries that entails educating, enlightening, guiding and helping the library users to identify, understand and utilize library information resources effectively. A survey research design was adopted for the study. The population consists of seven hundred and seventy-three 100 level students who registered for Use of Library (GSE 112) course in the first semester of 2015/2016 academic session. The questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. Using a consensus sampling technique, all the 773 students participated in the study during a seminar organized for the 100 level students at the end of the second semester by August 2016. All the questionnaires were retrieved while 643 were found usable representing 83 percent. The finding showed that classroom teaching, library orientation and library guide (X = 3.00, SD = 000) were the methods mostly used while guided library tour (X = 2.53, SD = 667), library and one-on-one mentoring (X = 2.48, SD = 716) were also used to instruct the library users. It also reveal that Ask a librarian, FAQ, library Blog, library Website, Text messaging were not used to instruct the users. The finding also shows that library instruction was effective for identification of books on the shelves (X = 3.78, SD = 416), access and retrieval of information materials in the library (X = 3.67, SD = 471), enable students to cite and reference books with ease (X = 3.11, SD = 874) and turned users into regular library users (X = 3.45, SD = 497). It however, shows that library instruction has no effect on students’ academic excellence (X = 3.44, SD = 687). The findings however reveal some of the challenges facing library instruction including non-expository of the program (X = 2.78, SD = 785), inadequate time for library orientation (X = 3.00, SD = 815), non-utilization of information and communication technology (ICT) for library instruction (X = 2.78, SD = 787) and students’ lack of interest in library instruction programs (X = 3.56, SD = 684). The study, therefore, concluded that library instruction is an effective means of educating users and creating awareness of available information resources in the library. Librarians should ensure that library instruction impact students’ academic excellence while viable methods of engaging and instructing the users in making them effective users and life-long learners be encouraged and explored.

International journal of Innovative Research in Management, 2013

The study looks at information literacy skills (IL) among postgraduate students of Babcock University. It identified some IL programmes that were of utmost importance to enhance research skills of postgraduate students (PG). The instrument used to elicit response from the respondents was a structured questionnaire. The population of the study comprised a total of 253 PG students of 2012/2013 academic session. A total enumeration sampling technique was used to select the sample. All the respondents were sampled and a total of 243 questionnaires were retrieved given a return rate of 84% which were found useful and used for the analysis. Findings show that most of the respondents had their IL skills through seminar, user education (library instruction), orientation, one-on-one discussion and tutorial. It further indicates that majority (90%) of the respondents could identify information in their study area; 55.6%, 50% and 50% of the respondents respectively agreed that orientation, tutorial and seminar did not significantly help them to select and use wide range of sources in their discipline from the library. The study further revealed that information literacy skill pragramme (briefing by librarian) organized by PG school was not well attended where 209 (86%) of the respondents were absent. Based on these findings, the researchers conclude that postgraduate students should be mandated to attend information literacy skill programmes organized by library such as briefing by librarian, computer-aided instruction, online courses, and workshops to enhance students’ research ability in the emerging information age.

Journal of Information Knowledge Management, 2014

The study investigated the awareness and use of Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) by Faculty Members of Babcock University, Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. Questionnaire was distributed to 240 (60%) faculty members at various schools in August 2013 during the annual colloquium workshop. One hundred and nine-six (196) copies of the questionnaire was retrieved and used for the study. Data collected were analysed using percentage and frequency. It will be recall that prior to the introduction and use of OPAC at Babcock University Library, traditional methods of information retrieval hold sway. Also, despite its acclaimed usefulness, most faculty members tend to prefer traditional methods to OPAC. Findings revealed that majority of the respondents (71.4%) were not aware that OPAC can be used to retrieve materials before coming to the library. Also, 65.8% of the respondents were not aware that they can access/browse Babcock University library web-based OPAC with their mobile phones before coming to the library to borrow materials; while, 59.2% of the respondents were not aware that the materials available in Babcock University library can be accessed outside the library building. Only 26% of the respondents used OPAC independently to retrieve library information resources. Majority of the respondents retrieved library information resources by perusing through the shelves and seeking the assistance of library staff. It was obvious from the findings that majority of the respondents were not aware hence the need for the study. Lack of orientation from library staff/librarians also constitutes major factor that militate against awareness and use of Babcock University library OPAC. This study therefore recommends that Librarians should organize orientation and sensitization programmes in order to create awareness, and encourage the university community and especially faculty members at various schools to effectively use OPAC to ensure maximum utilization of library information resources.