Indian Journal of Library and Information Science

The current plethora of technologies has been driving the state and citizen relations as well as ways of connecting with the crowd. Not only implementation of governance but the safety aspects of citizens are also being supported by technologies. The paper has been an effort to understand the current status of contributions of Geospatial Technologies and Geographic Information System (GIS) towards various components and levels of services, and e-Governance aspects at global level. The literature has been reviewed to catch a glimpse of the multifaceted technologies and their invading attributes in different areas of the world. The role of library and information services (LIS) has been woven along with these technologies, services and creating awareness among public.

Data Management is becoming increasingly important to researchers in all fields. The different types of data are explained with the need for management and planning of data. It explores the process of research data management and the services. The research data services and the components like research data planning, meta data service, storage, sharing, and reference service and data literacy are discussed. Libraries have been providing services to researchers, academicians and students for many years. Changes in research and the creation of data have given opportunities for libraries to be more involved in the context of research data management. The capability of the librarian, the need for staff development and skills that are needed to manage research data are discussed.

It is seen that many scientometric portrait studies have been carried for different scientists/professionals working in different fields but almost no major study is conducted for library & information scientists. Dr. Anil Kumar Dhiman, who has contributed 22 books and 172 papers/articles in library field, is a rising information scientist in the field of library & information science. This paper presents a scientometric portrait of Dr. Anil Kumar Dhiman by analyzing his contribution in library & information science field.

Senior academics in universities need various kinds of information resources for teaching and undertaking high profile research. The aim of this study was to examine availability, accessibility and utilization of e-resources by senior academics in MAUTech, Yola. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The study was guided by 5 research objectives. The population of the study consists of all the 172 Professors, Associate Professors and Senior Lecturers in Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola. The entire population was used for the study. Questionnaires was used to solicit data for the study. A total of 144 questionnaires were filled and duly returned, this indicates 84% response rate. The collected data in this research was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings of the study include unavailability, poor accessibility of some major E-Resources and unavailability of internet infrastructure among others. Recommendations were also made.

Reading habit is a lifelong, continuous and regular performance of the act of reading. However, habit of using libraries means continuous and regular use of a library by the individual with the purpose of meeting his/her intellectual requirements. The present study is an attempt to analyze the reading habits of library users including postgraduates, research scholars and faculty members of the University of Jammu, Jammu. The data were collected with the help of a standard questionnaire distributed to 500 users. The result of the study revealed that library users of the University of Jammu have good reading habits. It is noted that post-graduates mainly visit library for studying course material (69.2%) followed by newspaper and magazine, reading both 59.5%. Research scholars and faculty members mostly visit library for consulting research materials (70.9%) and (52.2%) respectively. Post-graduate users mostly read books (91.1%) and newspapers (76.5%) while the research scholars and faculty members read doctoral dissertations which form (87.4%) and (91.9%) respectively.

Open access ensures equal access to knowledge and enables everyone to contribute to enriching human knowledge. This survey attempts to understand the awareness and use of open access journals among postgraduate (PG) engineering college students and faculty members. A well–structured questionnaire was used to elicit the data from the respondents. Total of 180 questionnaires has been distributed and 163 filled-in questionnaires were received back with a response rate of 90.56%. Further, the study suggests that for an effective use of open access journals, the libraries have to arrange awareness programmes.

This paper has made an attempt to analyze the nanotechnology research productivity which was retrieved from SCImago website during the period between 2001 and 2015. This paper tries to focus the various parameters such as country-wise distribution, year-wise output, citable documents, citations, and self-citations and many more characteristic features were analyzed during the period of study. The findings of the study revealed that the minimum output (6655), maximum output (45236), mean (24664.14), median (24337), standard error (3540.879), standard deviation (13248.76), sample variance (1.76E+08), kurtosis value (-1.42297) and skewness (0.128334) were identified using SPSS version 15. Further, the detailed findings of the study on Nanotechnology have also been illustrated.

Self citations which are the referencing of own previously published works in any article or research work is of common occurrence in the world of scholarly publication. Whether, self citations should be included or not? It is a complex question which depends on discipline to discipline. But more commonly self-citations to a certain extent are a legitimate practice. How LIS professionals react with self citation is studied in this paper. This study is based on 20 issues of 5 volumes of PEARL Journal of Library & Information Science. It is noted in the study that comparatively LIS professionals self cite less as compared to other fields of study.

Context: In Western Tamil Nadu, 36% of all faculty in engineering colleges are women. These engineering colleges had contributed many engineers to the globalized corporate Information Technology (IT) industry. Women faculty using IT for teaching of Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics, (STEM) subjects, formed the social and technological context. Aims: The study framed 12 Null hypothesis (H0) statements related to their opinion on information technology in their research and teaching: and 36 Null hypothesis (H0) statements related to their self perception in specific information literacy (IL) skills. Settings and Design: The study methodology used a questionnaire instrument, to investigate attitudes towards Information Literacy (IL) and its use for classroom teaching and research. Methods and Material: The Cronbach alpha scores of the instrument, of five sections and 13 constructs, were moderately high. 41 engineering colleges affiliated to the Anna University, Chennai, located in nine Western Tamil Nadu districts, formed the study population. Of the 1476 women engineering faculty, 103 women responded. The study used the non-probabilistic “snowball” sampling methodology. Results: Women engineering faculty perceived themselves to have specific (IL) skills in information seeking, including the skills related to internet use. Their self perception regarding information retrieval skills (IRS) using printed sources, was positive. Their self-perception regarding IRS using internet sources was low. They found minimal benefits of changing information into action for research and classroom teaching. The reasons stated were lack of facilities and lack of orientation in pedagogy. Conclusions: Their selfconfidence needs to be supplemented with skill building and incentivising the applying of IL/IRS skills to the classroom.