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This study aims to explore the SCImago Institutional Ranking (SIR) 2022 to gain insight into the profile of Sri Lankan universities. Additionally, the study aims to investigate whether there was consistency between Scopus profiles and SIR. Furthermore, the research delves into various factors that impact the research ranking of an academic institution as defined by SCImago, which goes beyond just the number of publications. The data for the study were retrieved from SIR (2022) and Scopus database (2022) and were systematically analyzed. The author chose the following options to extract the data for overall ranking, Universities as a sector, Sri Lanka as the country and 2022 as the year based on all subject areas. The study found that the number of Sri Lankan universities eligible for the SCImago ranking has gradually increased from 2013 to 2022. According to SIR, the University of Colombo is the top-ranked academic institution in Sri Lanka, followed by Rajarata University of Sri Lanka and the University of Jaffna. Out of the fourteen universities in Sri Lanka, eight were ranked by SIR, with six being in the Q1 (first cluster) and two in the Q2 (second cluster). Interestingly, the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka was ranked 1st in SIR 2022 for its research performance among Sri Lankan universities with their 105 publications indexed in Scopus. Analysis of data shows that there is no relationship between the Scopus profile and the SIR. It is also suggesting that having a high number of articles in the Scopus database does not necessarily guarantee a high rank in SIR. The SIR not only depends on the number of publications but also on other factors related to the quality of the publications. Therefore, universities cannot assume their SIR position by considering only the quantity of Scopus indexed publications. SIR mainly considers the quality of the publications to measure the institutional research performance. The SCImago ranking evaluates the institutional whole performance through three of its indicators, and research performance is measured only through Scopus indexed publication. Sri Lankan publications in local and international journals which are not indexed in Scopus and conference papers were not counted for research performance. The findings of this study will facilitate the institutions to compare their position with other institutions, standardize their research practices, improve the international collaboration to uphold the academic benchmark, regulate their research publications and promote their visibility and finally support government bodies and policymakers regarding fund allocations and strategic planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the novel Coronavirus disease from Wuhan, China, in early December 2019, scientists every where in the world have focused on this infection to find a way to deal with it. Due to the rapid growth in the literature on this disease, the WHO took the initiative to collate the emerging publications and created "WHO COVID-19 Database". A scientometric study was conducted to better understand the nature of medical literature on COVID-19 included in the WHO COVID-19 Database, and this article aims to provide an analysis of the coverage of those publications focusing on the twelve months, from December 2019 to November 2020. A total of 35,791 full-text research articles on Coronavirus infections has been published across the world. These publications were originated from 57 countries, indicating the international spread of COVID-19 research. The USA was the largest contributor with 12,989 articles, followed by UK and Netherlands. All the publications mentioned above are written in 15 different languages where English has become the dominant language out of all those languages with 93.25%. According to the findings, the co-authorship network of 3 authors Eric J. Rubin, Lindsey R. Baden and Stephen Morrissey has made the highest contribution with 34 papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med). The journal with the highest number of publications on COVID-19 research was the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health - online). The classification of study type reveals that the maximum number of articles are published on risk factors. This study showed that core journals publishing COVID-19 research are scattered among journals, closely conforming to Bradford's Law of scattering. The Lotka's Law on authorship productivity has been tested to confirm the law's applicability to the present dataset. According to the test, there is a variation of author productivity between the observed percentage and expected percentage of authors as in Lotka's Law. This study will help the research community to get the required information for their research. Further, the information in this paper will encourage the researchers in finding more facts on COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries are institutions that provide access to a comprehensive collection of information and resources for educational, research, and recreational purposes. They serve as repositories of knowledge and offer numerous services to their communities. In this process, libraries play a paramount role in preserving and conserving library materials for future generations. The objectives of this paper were to investigate the significant Preservation and Conservation (PAC) initiatives of library materials from the ancient periods (3rd Century BC to 5th Century AD), the colonial period (1505 to 1948), and the post-independence period (1948 to date), to identify the gaps related to the current practices of PAC in Sri Lanka and to identify the issues related to PAC in Sri Lanka. This study focused on a qualitative research method. Relevant literature was found through secondary sources such as books, journal articles, conference papers, organizational reports and websites based on subject-related keywords. The Department of National Museums (DNM), Department of National Archives (DNA) and National Library and Documentation Services Board (NLDSB) and Sri Lankan University Libraries (ULs), were purposively selected. The published year was not considered during the process, and priority was given to Sri Lankan and foreign-authored publications on PAC of library materials in Sri Lanka. Literature was analyzed based on above mentioned three time frames selected for the study. The study identified growing trends in PAC practices from ancient to post-independence periods. Even though some evidence goes back to King Vijaya's period (483 BC), official writing was started in 103-77 BC. Some writing materials, such as inscriptions, palm leaves, and golden plates, were used during this period. Later, in the colonial period, the Portuguese, Dutch and British developed writing materials and established positions such as Record keepers and Archivists. Then, in the post-independence period, the DNM, DNA, NLDSB and ULs were identified as pioneering organizations that led the task of preserving. It was identified gaps between the literatures and existing literature only identified palm leaves as a main library material to be conserved and preserved. The main issues derived from the analysis were a lack of financial allocations, policies, laws and regulations, training, and research related to the field. The study pointed out the need for a separate PAC unit to handle the preservation activities of library materials in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is of vital importance for the development and growth of a society. Due to the advancement in educational technologies, there have been significant changes in teaching and learning processes. The digital divide has impacted significantly on teaching and learning, at present, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering this transformation, a scientometric analysis of the global literature on the digital divide in education was conducted in this study. The bibliographic data was gathered through the Scopus database for the period 2001-2021, and a total of 1865 publications were retrieved. VOSviewer and Gephi visualization software were used to analyze data and create network maps. The findings revealed that the average number of citations per paper (ACPP) for the study period is 15.51, and the relative citation impact (RCI) ranges from 0.21 in 2003 to 19.81 in 2021. Among published articles, the contribution of co-authors is greater than that of single authors. Furthermore, the United States was the leading country, with 613 publications on the digital divide. With 11 publications on the digital divide in education, Pick, J.B., from the School of Business, University of Redlands, United States, was the most prolific author. It is believed that these findings would benefit researchers worldwide, as scientometric mapping is an exciting method that provides a comprehensive overview of a scientific issue and insights for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Library websites being the virtual or digital facet of any library it is paramount to constantly evaluate and enhance the interface with necessary resources and services. In this regard, this study was carried out to analyze a range of opinions and feedbacks from stakeholders of a university library, which has published the links to subscribed databases, training guides, reference services, and research support services on its website. Due to the restrictions on mobility by economic crisis and Corona pandemic, library users heavily relied on digital interfaces to share and retrieve information. In this regard, a survey was carried out to explore the demand and desire of the library users as whether the library website satisfies them or does it need redesigning. Convenient sampling technique was employed where hundred and fifteen (115) users had responded to semi-structured questionnaires. Data extracted were analyzed using the Pearson Chi-square test, one-way ANOVA, and one sample Wilcoxon sign rank test. Majority (33.3%) of the students of the Faculty of Science were using the library website more frequently than the students of other faculties. Responses showed that the Training Guides (Mean=4.00; SD = ±0.926) and past-paper portals (Mean=3.96; SD = ±0.989) accessed via the library website were useful. The chi-square test revealed a significant relationship of faculties with article requests (p=0.037) and adequacy of website information for academic work (p=0.036). Similarly, the level of students has a significant relationship with Selective Dissemination of Information (p=0.048); usefulness of the training guides (p=0.022); adequate research support (p=0.026); and effective organization of information (p=0.003). Overall responses revealed that the Library website is highly userfriendly (Mean=3.90; SD = ±0.909). One-way ANOVA revealed a significant relationship between the resourcefulness of the website and the respondents' overall satisfaction with the information received from the library website (p=0.021). These results evinced that the library website must comply with users' expectations and needs. Students' opinions and feedback emphasized on the need for updating the website through a benchmark of other library interfaces. FAQ section and Chat bot were a few suggestions made by the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was composed with the objective of engaging in an analytical review of literature related to Library Anxiety in students with special emphasis on academic libraries. This paper extensively covers the spectrums of Library Anxiety theory, scales for measuring Library Anxiety, sources of Library Anxiety, impacts of Library Anxiety on students, and ways and means of reducing Library Anxiety. This analytical review points to the fact that Library Anxiety is a common phenomenon among students that adversely influence their ability to utilize information sources and services which affects their academic performance. Suggestions are also made for strategies to reduce students' Library Anxiety levels and uplift their self-confidence, thereby helping them to become effective library users who are free from unpleasant and uneasy feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an overview of open access and its consequences. This focuses especially on open access for scholarly publishing. This is a review of literature, describing the evolution of open access, recent trend and its growth and adoption at global level. Findings of this study are the philosophy of open access has tremendously grown in all over the globe since 2002 and the benefits have leaded the researchers to alter their practices of scholarly communication. Even the research funders and institutions have mandated open access for the dissemination of research findings for which they grant financial assistance. Limited literature regarding open access status in Sri Lanka indicates that there is room for improvement. This paper proposes the Sri Lankan scientists, to adopt open access for scholarly communication practices to maximize visibility and to earn high impact for their research. Similarly, funding agencies, universities and research institutions can formulate open access policy, establish institutional repositories, and motivate publishing in open access journals and archiving in digital repositories for future development and research. Also, this will help librarians to make a strategic decision to develop open science. This study recommends the researchers in Sri Lanka to do an explorative study to identify the local scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the faculty research performance on the basis of publication output, citations and h- index of professors working in Sri Lankan universities. Six hundred fifty professors from different universities of Sri Lanka served as respondents. Using scientometrics, publications of professors spanning 1980-2014 are analyzed. It found that based on the mean h-index used in this study, faculty of science is the best performer with the mean h-index of 5.55, followed by medicine (5.24), engineering (3.81), agriculture (3.76), management (2.74) and arts (2.62). This study further revealed that, the faculty of agriculture has the highest percentage (97.37 %.) of professors with published output; they have at least one research paper. Study also measured the universities' position in the each disciplines on the basis of the mean h-index. The results showed that out of six faculties, which are grouped in this study, University of Peradeniya (PDN) is found to be the most predominant in agriculture, arts, science and engineering). In medicine, University of Kelaniya is the best on the basis of the mean h-index with 6.85. In the case of the faculty of management, University of Jaffna had the highest mean h-index of 7.75. On the other hand result indicates that the performance of arts among almost all of the universities except University of Colombo and PDN were very poor and similar. It is recommended that research output on arts, social sciences and management across the university faculty must be strengthened and mechanism should be introduced by the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the prevailing competitive environment, libraries seem difficult to survive with traditional information services. Many of business organizations seem to practice multidimensional businesses and expand their profit potentials through diversification. Getting experience from business sector organizations, university libraries need to strategize the service delivery and retain the users through diversification of the product/service. Diversification can be implemented through innovation of directly related library services, indirectly related services and additional services probably not related to the typical library service but would be possible to provide by the library (out of the box). This paper investigates the Sri Lankan university librarians' perspective towards the implementation of such services in their libraries. The study also examines the possible barriers for the diversification. The paper involved the conceptual analysis and sample survey with library practitioners. Findings indicate that university libraries in Sri Lanka are providing diversity of services and have made many attempts to diversify them through 'direct library services', 'indirect library services' and 'additional services'. Relatively higher potential is shown with regard to directly and indirectly related services but the diversification through additional services indicated very low. The librarians face challenges for diversification stretching out through administrative factors, knowledge deficiencies, organizational environment and attitudinal issues of library managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the research productivity of five state universities of Sri Lanka during 2015-2018, using scholarly output, citation impact and collaboration metrics of SciVal, and the contribution of the university libraries towards research excellence. Five multi-disciplinary state universities; University of Colombo (UoC), Kelaniya (UoK), Peradeniya (UoP), Ruhuna (UoR) and Sri Jayewardenepura (UoSJP) were selected as the sample. During the study period, 4723 publications and 3831 authors have been recorded, of which UoC and UoP records the highest numbers. UoR records the highest publications in top journal percentile and highest number of views (72) among the five universities. A total of 33104 citations are reported while UoP depicts the highest citation count (18322) as an individual university, while UoR records the highest h5-index (39). Highest Field Weighted Citation Impact (3.18) and the highest citations per publication (12.4) is recorded by UoP while the highest output in top citation percentile (32.5%) is recorded by UoR. UoR records the highest overall international collaboration (74.4) during the studied period and UoP records the highest academic/corporate collaboration (2.2). University libraries provide collections and conducive environments for researchers, training in searching for information, referencing styles and use of reference management software, plagiarism detection and they maintain Institutional Repositories. The study established that there is much scope for university libraries to expand the services to support research productivity and recommends that librarians should consider on more current support areas like research data management, measuring research impact, and digital curation in order to support their universities to achieve excellence in research productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries gradually integrate technology into library operations to provide an effective service. In this process, Open Source Software (OSS) is a great solution public libraries initiate with existing limited resources. This paper attempts to present an account on major open source initiatives of the public libraries of Sri Lanka, factors affecting the popularity of some OSS, and challenges faced in moving to and adopting OSS by public libraries of Sri Lanka. The study was based on the qualitative research method, and an expert sampling technique was employed. Five national level experts in library technology were identified based on a predefined set of criteria. The findings revealed that 10.7% of public libraries in Sri Lanka have currently automated their functions. Koha Integrated Library Management System (ILMS) is the main OSS used in public library automation during the last ten years from 2011-2021. The study identified factors motivating public libraries to adopt some OSS, mainly Koha ILMS, such as advanced features and functions of Koha, lower funding requirement, its compliance with many international standards, availability of subject experts, Unicode compatibility, high system quality, high user friendliness, and integrating Koha ILMS into the LIS courses. The main challenge faced by public libraries in adopting OSS was the lack of technical knowledge for installation and maintenance, which makes them depending on external sources in implementing open source initiatives. The study suggested the need for a proper national or regional level mechanism to provide continuous support for public libraries in Sri Lanka in technological developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the information seeking behaviour of the agriculture undergraduates in a Sri Lankan university. It established that the undergraduates often use the search engines, Wikipedia, and their own classmates than the other information resources; they use more self-taught methods than standard methods to evaluate the resources and seek help from the classmates in using the information resources. Findings further proved that their uses of various productivity tools are very low and the information-related research tasks are difficult for the majority. The paper concludes that these are the effects of inadequate information literacy (IL) training they receive and the study strongly recommends offering appropriate, context specific IL programmes, to enhance their information resource usage and research skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceylon Medical Journal (CMJ) is the premier and oldest medical journal in Sri Lanka. Bibliometric studies on single journals are useful to find out the research trend in a discipline and publication trend of the journal. The objective of the study was to conduct a bibliometric study of CMJ. The study sought to identify co-authorship pattern, geographical distribution of authors, productive institutions, prolific authors, productive articles and the impact of the research work published in CMJ during the study period. The required data of all the selected articles published from 2003 to 2012, related to the analysis were collected from Scopus database. The collected data were analyzed in terms of bibliometric parameters by MS excel 2007 and Bibexcel. The study revealed multi authored articles occupy prominent position indicating cooperative research work. Three author contributions was the highest ranked authorship pattern. Majority (90%) of the authors publishing articles in CMJ were from Sri Lanka. The most prolific author contributed 18 articles during the study period. The most productive article received 57 citations recorded in SCOPUS data-base. University of Colombo and University of Kelaniya were leading institutions in publishing articles in CMJ during the study period. The study highlighted some research trends in health sciences and publishing trends of CMJ. The country distribution of authors showed that the journal reflects the research and views of health researchers mainly from Sri Lanka. The study provides suggestions to improve the impact of the research articles published in CMJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visibility of online catalogues will contribute data for many aspects such as creating uniform catalogues in libraries and ranking of libraries, authors, publishers, and institutions. The Cataloguing in Publication is the description of cataloguing the record for a book, which is obtained by the publishers just prior to their book publication for printing the same on the verso of the book title page while making them available online. Library of Congress provides online access to its Cataloguing in Publication and other catalogue data. The paper identifies the online visibility for catalogue data for the national publications in the Library of Congress. The finding shows that the coverage of national publications in the Library of Congress database is not satisfactory. A critical decline of online catalogue data from the LC is identified after the year of 2007, and the expected values for online catalogue record numbers for the year from 2007 to 2016 were measured using a fitting curve. Another finding of this study reveals that publications in the social science discipline get more online catalogue data from the LC. Necessary discussion and interpretation for these trends have been made throughout the paper using Tables and Figures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the decline of budgetary allocation for libraries, information is being made available to wider audience through alternative means, such as digital libraries and online repositories. Increasing demand for certain print materials urge libraries to exploit open-source alternatives, which are highly advantageous for libraries with scarce financial resources and voracious demand from their users. An interview survey results justified the establishment of digital library service as both students and academics, amongst other issues, recorded their inability to spare time for accessing certain print collections. In this regard, like other libraries in the country, the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka has initiated digital library initiatives using freely available software. Amongst a number of open-source software (OSS) available to create and manage digital library collections, Greenstone and DSpace are being experimented for developing two different types of repositories. However, these two software have slight merits and demerits over one another. This paper scrutinizes those features corresponding to the needs of and challenges faced by the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL), which is in its initial stage of launching digitized collections representing both its academic works and local publications. The demand for unpublished works of students and past examinations papers is always high, hence, the Library is has started digitizing materials in demand and rare to find. This comparative analysis is solely based on experiences gained by the Library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional repository is a network accessible database, with a set of services to capture, store, index, preserve and disseminates an institution's scholarly output in digital format. The main objective of the paper is to discuss the experiences in developing an institutional repository at faculty of medicine, university of Jaffna and suggestions to overcome the challenges. Further, to encourage the other universities in developing institutional repositories by emphasizing the benefits of an institutional repository in a university and also focuses on some key issues to be considered when developing a repository. The repository of university of Jaffna, faculty of medicine is functioning in the software D-Space with a dedicated server. Formulating collection policy, authority control of bibliographic details, checking the copyright policy and persuading the faculty members to deposit their publications were the major challenges focused in this study. More effort is needed to persuade researchers to deposit their publications. Librarians need to continue to educate them about the importance of institutional repository. Sharing experience in developing institutional repository would be useful to other universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses computer ergonomics related health problems caused by prolonged use of computers in the library staff of the University of Colombo. The heterogeneous population, 60 in total consisted of academic staff, administrative officers and paraprofessional staff including Senior Staff Assistants, Staff Assistants, Management Assistants and Library Information Assistants. A stratified random sampling technique was used to draw the sample (52). A questionnaire was administered to collect data. Data were analysed with descriptive statistics and correlation test using SPSS version 23. It revealed that neck pain was the major (63.8%) musculoskeletal discomfort experienced by the respondents after prolonged period of computer usage followed by shoulder pain (59.6%) and pain in the wrist (53.2%). Pain in the eye (76.6%) was the most persistent visual discomfort experienced by the respondents followed by headaches (72.3%). Major stress-related problem was sleepiness (51.1%) while loss of concentration was identified as the prominent discomfort related to fatigue (27.7%). Prevalence of musculoskeletal discomforts such as pain in the neck and lower arm showed a positive correlation with the height of computer table (r = 0.447, P=0.002 and r = 0.403, P=0.005 respectively), while shoulder pain indicated a weak negative correlation with wrist support (r = -0.317, P=0.03). Data on prevalence of lower arm pain depicted a weak positive correlation with height and distance of the keyboard (r = 0.384, P=0.008) and computer desk height (r = 0.403, P=0.005). As for visual discomfort symptoms developing double vision had a weak positive correlation with glare (r =0.315, P=0.031) and a weak negative correlation with lighting in the workstation (r = - 0.291, P=0.046). Headaches due to extended use of computers showed a significant relationship with view distance (P=0.003) and task breaking (P=0.033). To avoid visual discomforts ergonomic requirement at the computer workstation should be proper lighting, anti-glare filters, and ergonomic positioning of computer monitor and regular work breaks. To reduce health problems, library management should organize workstation ergonomic training sessions to gain knowledge and skills required to optimize the workstation configuration, and provide ergonomically safe working equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present one aspect of the findings of a major study carried out to assess the information seeking and research strategies of the undergraduates of University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and the paper serves four objectives; 1) to explore the student's preferences of information resources, 2) to identify the criteria they use to evaluate the digital information sources, 3) to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their information seeking practices and 4) to make appropriate recommendations to strengthen their information seeking practices. A stratified random sample of second, third and fourth year undergraduates were considered for the main survey and accordingly 10% (40 students) of the final year students of the Faculty of Engineering were considered for this paper. Head and Eisenberg's (2009) survey instrument was used to gather data, bindings established that the tinal year engineering students rely more on search engines, Wikipedia and classmates while scholarly databases are used only by a smaller percentage. It was established that the engineering students have higher preference for some digital resources than the other types of resources. In using evaluation criteria they predominantly use self-taught methods instead of traditional reliable methods. It could be inferred that they encounter problems in selecting the most appropriate digital information resources for their academic research. The study further established that majority of the engineering students have not received any formal training in searching or evaluating of digital resources. They have commented that it would be beneficial to have training in the use of library and internet resources. The present study fills the gap in research about the information seeking behavior of engineering undergraduates of University of Peradeniya and it will contribute to the global body of literature in this aspect. It is also expected that the findings will underpin the development of future information literacy programs to be offered through the library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing relevant information through the determination of priorities for a user request is important as it saves both labour and time of the inquirer as well as the information provider. Therefore, the development of information retrieval models to compute these priorities as numerical representations of their relevancies is becoming a major task of the modern information retrieval arena. This paper introduces a new model for information retrieval. This model appears as a vector multiplication of the distances among the terms in the query with the distances among the same terms in the document. Therefore, it determines the relevancies among the query and the documents by matching the distances between each two terms in the query with the distances between the same terms in each document of the corpus. Also this paper uses an example to show that the new model is able to distinctly identify two or more documents according to the given query which cannot be done by using the vector space model when the documents include same term frequencies and same number of total terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempted to examine the prior school library experiences of new entrants in the field of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science and their pattern of information source usage. Data were gathered by performing a questionnaire-based survey among the study population (N=71) of all the new entrants to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science in 2020.The findings revealed that 93% of the students have been instructed by school teachers to refer additional reading material to complement classroom notes and almost all the students confirmed that they utilized the school library while studying for their GCE A/L exam. It was observed that 73% of the students had visited the school library once a week or few days a week. Regarding the availability of library facilities all the students stated that they had facilities to borrow books while 47% of them had facilities to borrow magazines too. Yet, only 32% of students reported that library catalogs were available in their school libraries. In addition, 90% of the respondents did not have computers as well as internet access in the school library. Findings further demonstrated that most of the students (98%) had borrowed books from the school library while only few students (13%) had used the catalog for information retrieval. It was interesting to note that 95% of the students perceived the need to refer additional material to complement their classroom notes. 95% of the respondents confirmed that other than the school library they gained subject-related material from tuition classes. Inevitably, all the respondents verified that they had an email account and 97% of them stated that they used social media. Moreover, 93% of students ascertained that they preferred to communicate with the library via digital media. This paper renders insight into the adequacy of prior school library usage by university new entrants which can be used as a baseline indicator in designing and planning library instructional programs for students. Library instructional programs could be planned to have more focus on areas (eg. Online catalogs, e-resources) that were revealed to be less experienced by the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic information resources can be either credible or unreliable. Vast majority of information on the Internet is neither authenticated nor having any mechanism to validate its credibility. Thus, it has been a great challenge for any researcher who uses them for their problem-solving. Education and research institutions use and contribute to the development of academic journals that broadly fall under two categories, namely subscribed and open access. In this regard, this paper discusses about the views of academics of Eastern University, Sri Lanka depending on these resources for using and publishing their research work. Particularly, this study investigates about the perception of academics over subscription journals and open access resources in regard to their accessibility, visibility and credibility. Summary of results show that researchers hold high value for online subscribed journals in terms of their credibility, meanwhile accessibility to the same is quite a challenge. On the other hand, open access journals give rise to visibility and affordability. Therefore, authors shed light on the need of making open access resources more credible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the Information Seeking Behavior (ISB) of the Humanities and Social Science (HSS) undergraduates of the University of Colombo with three objectives; to study the information resource usage of the undergraduates, to study the barriers they encounter in seeking and using the information and to study the information seeking process of the undergraduates. A questionnaire and Focus Group Meetings (FGMs) were used to gather quantitative and qualitative data. Convenient Sampling method was used and the response rate was 82% out of 550 questionnaires while 95 attended the FGMs. SPSS (ver. 22) and manual analysis were used to analyze data. Most respondents use Internet instead of library resources and do not use standard criteria to evaluate information. The majority consult their batch mates for help in using information resources. At the same time, most of them have not received any training in using the library resources or Internet. They face several barriers related to library resources, facilities, services and training which prevent them from reaching the library first for their information needs. The processes they follow to search and use information correspond to some other information seeking models. It is recommended that additional research is required to substantiate the gravity of this issue and librarians need to collaborate with the faculty to improve their ISB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), particularly internet, and the increasing development of user education forms and methods, such as new information literacy initiatives have resulted in significant changes in academic libraries. With these unprecedented changes, academic librarians in Sri Lanka have to deal with instructional processes more effectively and efficiently. The primary concern of this paper is to understand the concept 'user education' in the local context and its present practices in university libraries. Even more, this study intends to understand problems encountered, challenges being faced and potential new opportunities available on user education in university libraries in Sri Lanka. The total outcome of this paper is beneficial for researchers, policy makers, university authorities and academic librarians in Sri Lanka to understand the real situation which exists behind instructional activities of university libraries and to design, develop, implement policies and make strategies on pertinent subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the differences in information resource usage among the agriculture students in University of Peradeniya, so that remedial measured could be adopted to address the identified trends. A 10% sample was surveyed and the data were complimented by the information provided by published literature, statistics, faculty members and the library staff. Findings established that the Search Engines, Wikipedia, Classmates, Lecturers and Recommended Readings are used often by all but there is a variation in the usage across the academic years. Use of Recommended Readings, Library Collection, and Lecturers increased across the academic years while the use of their Personal Collections of material, and the use of Classmates, Friends and Family and the Librarians as an information resource decreased. There was no difference in the use of Search Engines across the years but the use of Wikipedia, and Government Websites decreased in the fourth year. The study proved that the students expect training from the library, and that there is a variation across the academic years in the topics they would like to learn about. The study recommends a well-planned information literacy programme for all the students of the faculty irrespective of their year of study. A limitation of the study was that it covered only what and how often aspects of the information resource usage but not why, due to time limitation, but elucidated the why of findings in the light of previous research. However, this paper is the first of its kind, which makes a comparative analysis of the information resource usage of the agriculture undergraduates in Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a survey that aims at exploring the potential of Sri Lankan library professionals for serving the disabled users. Results revealed that the librarians are not adequately knowledgeable and sufficiently skilled to operate an inclusive service for people with special needs, though, they are extremely willing to do so. The paper also discusses the areas that should be strengthened in order to empower the librarians while highlighting the necessity of broadening the boundaries to welcome this very special group of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitization is a tactical way of preservation and it becomes an ultimate need to preserve and conserve a record for future use. Even though, the digital preservation is indeed a very challenging task for the library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL library) and the digitization process has become a practical necessity in this digital era. Hence, the study describes an initiation towards digitization in order to preserve the precious Ceylon Collections of EUSL library which endures the value and importance of Ceylon Collections for the benefit of various users and also to avoid those collections remain ambiguous and hidden. The current research design is a case study and the research instruments such as observation and focus group interview were used. The DSpace open source software was selected for the digitization processes. The focus group interview was conducted to explore the current usage and expectation of the users and it revealed that the Ceylon Collections services are very essential for users. The study was initiated by two professionals (who are also the authors of this paper) without proper training on functioning and technicalities of DSpace. With testing server, researchers could successfully implement the digital collection and today its collection is totaling to 2000 items. Through digitization, the Ceylon Collections move to a much broader audience and therefore the Ceylon Collections could be accessed significantly through the web and preserved for future generations. Even though, there were challenges during digitization process the work has been completed successfully and the digitized Ceylon Collections could be maintained as a digital repository of Ceylon Collections which are capable to access through the library website. Thus, every user would able to access those Ceylon Collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms are very common in modern education system everywhere, especially in Chinese universities. The purpose of this paper was to identify the behavior of use of social media by students at Wuhan University in China. In order to investigate the concerns of students in using social media in relation to personal context, the study was carried out. Major concerns of students in using social media can be categorized into two types of phenomena; socio-economic factors and demographic factors. Accordingly, the research focused on eight socio-economic and political factors related to the use of social media and factors are affecting international students' and local students' cognition of social media. Random sampling methods was utilized for selecting the participants. The questionnaires were distributed among international and local students and 425 responses were received. The 216 international students and 209 Chinese students responded with an effective recovery rate of 86.4% and 83.6%, respectively from each group. The results of the current study endorse a number of previous studies which examine different influencing factors in the use of social media. The research found that there is a huge impact of affecting factors on the use of social media by local as well as international students. Although, all factors mentioned; legal risk etc. seem to have affected both groups of students very effectively. Some factors seemed prominent among local students and some others seemed prominent among international students. On the whole, it was proved by the result that there was a significant influence of all factors on the use of social media. The main concerns in using social media are privacy and convenience. On the contrary, copyright and legal issues are often ignored by both international and local students. The level of concern is affected by the number of years of living abroad, local language proficiency, study level and experience. Among the variables, social media experience obviously inflecting the levels of all related influencing factors. As international students and local students depend heavily on social media for their learning, research needs as well as their daily life in today's digital environment, it is important for university administrators to integrate media literacy education into academic training and professional development programs for both international students and faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A library website plays an enhanced role compared to its traditional physical library while providing a wide variety of library services to its users. Evaluation of library websites is a key to realize the extent of user acceptance of the website and to improve the overall quality of the website. Under such backdrop, this paper provides a framework for ranking university library websites in Sri Lanka based on two standard webometric methods. The proposed framework consists of quantitative web presence measuring attributes namely; size, visibility, rich files and scholars along with simple and comprehensible mathematical calculations. The library administrators can get awareness about whether their website has effectively represented itself on the internet with better performance from the ranking results. The findings of the study will guide to the librarians to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses accordingly with the performance of their library websites. In general, the effective presence of these library websites on the internet can be passed on as the top by having proper number of site pages in the website that impact their perceivability through web search tools and accordingly the quantity of received external links. Meanwhile, libraries having low rich files can publish more rich files on the web to improve their overall rank. The research approach, criteria and their relative impact provide useful information in monitoring the effectiveness of the current websites and provide strategic suggestions to develop enhanced websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web 2.0 is a popular technology that creates new paths in communication, networking, building partnerships and resource sharing. Though Web 2.0 technology helps the libraries to employ innovative web-based services, fewer studies have been conducted to identify the utilization of Web 2.0 tools by Sri Lankan libraries. The aim of this paper is, to explore the types of Web 2.0 applications employed and to identify the purposes of embracing Web 2.0 applications in Sri Lankan university libraries. The Sri Lankan government university libraries which are under the University Grant Commission (UGC) of Sri Lanka were taken as the research population of this study and the total population was considered as the sample. Content analysis technique was adopted in this study for fifteen Sri Lankan government university libraries. The research instrument was a checklist consists of 60 checkpoints based on similar checklists found in the literature related to studies conducted on Web 2.0 applications and their usage. Data collection was conducted by accessing the web pages of these university library websites within a month period. Except for one university library, all the other fourteen university libraries introduced at least one Web 2.0 application with the primary features in their websites. Out of seven Web 2.0 tools considered in the study, Real Simple Syndication and Social Network Services are the most popular applications while Blogs, Vodcast and Podcast are less frequently used. Instant Messages and Wikis have not been implemented by any of them. Sri Lankan university libraries should be more focused on deploying Web 2.0 applications in their library websites to satisfy the needs of today's modernized user and also to be compatible with frequently changing technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper covers a review of evidence existing for documentation systems followed in the pre Christian literary history and during the 19th C. A special attention was given to the evidence of a most comprehensive cataloguing system followed in the Alexandrian library 'the pinakes' which had a great impact to cataloguing, indexing and documentation tradition thereafter. Even though the concept 'documentation' was not introduced at that time during the 1st century to date, many attempts were made to capture the knowledge by scientists, priests, publishers and librarians especially after the printing technology was introduced in 16th C. A special attention was paid to the most versatile and systematic documentation system designed and carried out in 19th C by two visionaries, Paul Otlet and Henry la Fontaine who were creators of the concept 'documentation'. Evidence for this effort still exists in a card based archive in Belgium and its vision and design is now identified by computer scientists as the base structure of the World Wide Web and the base architecture of modern computer networks and search engines. The article provides a brief review of the structure and history of the bibliographic repertory of 18 million index cards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the findings of a study that analyze the content and design of university library websites of Sri Lanka and highlights the points that need to be addressed in order to enhance the quality of websites. Besides, this paper presents a simplified version of an evaluative instrument that was developed by the author. Websites of university libraries of Sri Lanka were assessed in terms of both quantitative and qualitative web presence. A 17-itemed evaluative instrument was used to measure the qualitative web presence. The rating of the websites was carried out during the first week of April 2013. Findings revealed that the quantitative web presence of Sri Lankan university libraries is at a quite commendable level. All 3 parameters - availability of websites, size of sites, location of the link to the library site in the parent institution's website - that measured the quantitative web presence were found to be in high level. Besides, out of the two parameters - content richness and design accuracy - that measured qualitative web presence, the content richness level of websites was found to be at a commendable status. However, majority of websites reported low scores when measured in terms of design accuracy. The evaluative instrument presented in this paper would be useful for library professionals in evaluating the current status of the library websites for institutional or research purposes. The evaluative instrument presented in this paper is an original tool and the results generated based on the tool have added a new set of empirical data to the body of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses about the possibility of incorporating the component of student learning needs (SLN), to the basic Acquisition Formula designed for the Open University of Sri Lanka. The Acquisition Formula was adopted for the distribution of funds allocated to acquire learning materials, among faculties of a university. The learning component indicates mainly the student requests. Although the formulae developed have been with special reference to the OUSL, they can be adopted to any other university library with minor modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main library of the General Sir John Kotelawela Defence University conducted a survey of the first and third-year undergraduates of the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Management, Social Sciences and Humanities, to investigate the use and user satisfaction on library services and resources. The study employed the 455 structured questionnaires to the whole population of undergraduates as the main tool for collecting data. Further, various registers were used to count the number of users. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS Version 20. The major findings of the study revealed that the respondents were satisfied with the library resources and services of the library as a whole. Also, the study found that many of the respondents visit the library for more than one reason, whereas the majority of the respondents visit the library for accessing past papers. Other findings show that the largest proportion of the respondents visit the library once a week. As for resources, the textbooks were ranked first, followed by the newspapers/magazine, and reference sources. The less frequently used resources are CD/DVD/VCD, online journals, databases, and library web links. To meet undergraduate information requirements and make them aware of the available resources and services, it is recommended to conduct information literacy programs as well as awareness programs at regular intervals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to provide useful indicators for library LIS collection development in order to better serve its user community. Core journals utilized by LIS academic researchers in Sri Lanka were identified via the application of Bradford's law of scattering to the Journal of the University Librarians Association (JULA) of Sri Lanka. This study analyzes 46 articles containing 803 citations, published in the open access Journal of the University Librarians Association (JULA) during 2010-2015. The most cited format was determined, and a ranked list of core journals was prepared employing the Bradford's law. Journals were revealed to be the most frequently cited format, which accounted for 51.31% of all citations. Data sets were fit with the Leimkuhler model ot the Bradford s law. Thirteen journals were identified as belonging to the most productive nucleus of journals cited by articles in the Journal of the University Librarians Association (JULA). In the ranked list of core journals, "The Journal of Academic Librarianship" was ranked as first. The chronological distribution of cited material revealed that LIS researchers had mostly used materials published within 2001-2010 time period. Further, the categorization of articles into subject domains within LIS showed that most studies were conducted within the field of "information seeking". This paper provides useful insights for librarians in LIS collection development of libraries in Sri Lanka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological applications have transformed the roles of academic libraries and they provide "higher-end-support" and play key role reforming education in academic institutions in the blooming information society. The paper will focus particularly on ICT based library service facilities and the usage of those facilities in the library. The objectives of this study were to identify the usage of the modern facilities of the main library, to find out the trend of users information seeking behavior in ICT based library facilities and to reveal the major reasons of using ICT based modem facility area of the main library, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka (WUSL). The case study was carried out gathering data on the statistics of the usage or IC1 based modern library and information service facilities. Ihe data were collected for the period from 2010 to 2015 as the application of ICT into library service is still in primary stage. The study found that the usage of modem facility area has gone up significantly more than the latter part of the period. The undergraduate students' trend was to access the modern facilities in the library as the way of building bridges for fulfilling their information needs. The usage of the library has recognized the ICT as fast information generated source. So, the existing space should be expanded and increased number of access points with infrastructure facilities for activating expected targets. In addition to that the library must move and focus by creating good relationship with user community and adopt information management skills in order to provide sustainable library and information services to achieve academic mission of the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to review literature on classical game theory applications in libraries and enable librarians to identify which games may be played in response to various decision-making situations especially in uncertain settings. Also this review paper provides approaches that are helpful for library cooperation. This study is mainly based on works of Hayes (2003), of various game theoretical concepts and applications of those in the library setting and explores the value of game theory concepts in helping libraries deal with management issues and library cooperation which is not widely practiced among libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic books' (e-books) usage of the higher education community is exponentially expanding. There are a significant percentage of university students and staff who prefer e-books to printed books. This comprehensive study is done at Uva Wellassa University to analyze the percentage of undergraduates who are inclined to use e-books and to explore their preferences over e-book format, reading equipment, their purpose and obtaining method. The study also reveals the future preference and predictions of e-book usage in Sri Lankan context. It also discusses the comparative advantages and disadvantages of e-books according to the survey results gained through the open ended questions. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in this study. A survey was distributed among the undergraduates who represent first to fourth years in Management Faculty, Animal Science and Export Agriculture Faculty and Science Faculty in Uva Wellassa University. The sample size is 206. The paper concludes that there is a significant number of e-book uses in the university. The e-book usage is limited due to the limited number of freely available e- books. Most of the tested cohort predicts of increased number of e-book usage in Sri Lanka in the future. Data suggest that with the undergraduate year of the user the usage of e-books is increased. The e-book usage is independent from gender. Yet it is dependent upon the Faculty. Users are inclined to use personal computers and laptops than the e-readers. The main e-book obtaining method of the user is internet and they generally go for free titles. According to the statistics the main e-book reading purpose is education. The study suggests the need of establishing e-book facilities in Uva Wellassa University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the global scientific literature on substance abuse among school children to understand the global research trend on the subject. Bibliographic data of journal articles related to the study topic published during 1991-2021 were retrieved from PubMed database. Data were analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package and MS Excel. The study identified annual growth of publication trends, top authors, leading institutions, Core journals, most contributing countries, and the country collaboration in the research activities on this subject. A total of 3,326 records were selected for the analysis. The annual growth of publications was increasing in trend. Lowry Richard from USA was the most contributing author based on the highest number of publications. The USA was the most productive country publishing the highest number of articles (2408 articles) and the highest international country collaboration with 49 countries all over the world. The University of California was the leading institution (874 articles) in this study. The study identified that the journal titled 'Addictive behaviors' was found to be the top journal with the highest number of publications (118 articles) on this subject. The study provides the current status and development of research in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effectiveness of library user education programmes in enhancing students' awareness and understanding of seven types of plagiarism. The focus was on three distinct groups of students: undergraduates at two different levels (level I and level III) and postgraduates. The methodology employed a structured questionnaire to collect data via a survey approach before and after the library instruction sessions. To facilitate data collection, an online survey was created using Google Forms, streamlining the process of reaching out to participants. Results demonstrate that the library user education programs significantly contributed to the enhancement of students' comprehension of plagiarism. Notably, Word-for-Word and Mosaic plagiarism were well comprehended across all student groups, indicating the effectiveness of the educational interventions for these types. While the majority of plagiarism types indicate considerable improvement following the instructional sessions, the study highlights the importance of tailored approaches for addressing challenging areas. Educators are encouraged to prioritize comprehensive and targeted strategies to maximize the outcomes of plagiarism and referencing in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A healthy life is a wealthy life. To be healthy, everyone has to understand the basic health information that is needed to make appropriate health decisions, which can aid them in avoiding illness and safeguarding their health. In this context, the necessity of health literacy which is a type of information literacy is being considered. Health literacy is the understanding and use of health information effectively to make appropriate decision making. The study aimed to evaluate the health literacy level of undergraduates of Eastern University, Sri Lanka, and the factors influencing health literacy. A cross-sectional study was carried out among undergraduates in selected faculties of Eastern University, Sri Lanka. A validated standard questionnaire called "Health Literacy Instrument for Adults (HELIA)" was adopted to collect online data from 1085 individuals. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. The results revealed that the mean score of overall health literacy is 65.7±13.5% which ranges between somewhat inadequate to sufficient ranks. The analysis considered the five domains of health literacy. Accordingly, a significant proportion (p<0.05) of undergraduates had adequate literacy skills for understanding health information (67.4%), and access to health information (73.7%), while the majority had a limited level of literacy for domains of reading (53.7%) and appraisal (84.1%). However, there is no significant deviation (p>0.05) between adequate and limited levels in the domain of decisionmaking/ behavioural intention. The difference between the proportion of adequate (50.8%) and limited levels (49.2%) in overall literacy is not significant (p>0.05). The binary logistic regression proved that the health literacy of undergraduates is influenced by faculty, alcoholic habits and doctor's advice (p<0.05), while age, gender, family income, family members who work in the healthcare field, academic year, respondents' perceptions of their health, and smoking habits, do not influence on health literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses findings of a survey conducted at the Department of Agriculture to find out how agriculture information is generated and disseminated to the end users. The objectives of the study are to find out the type of research conducted at Horticultural Research and Development Institute (HORDI), Field Crops Research and Development Institute (FCRDI) and Rice Research and Development Institute (RRDI) of the DOA, to find out whether the agricultural research conducted at DOA is relevant in addressing farmer's problems, to find out the main methods used for disseminating new agricultural information to scientific community and farmers and to find out barriers for effective information dissemination to farmers. The data were collected by using a structured questionnaire. The total population taken for the study was 74,The analysis was carried out by taking the entire population together and separately by individual institutions. The survey revealed that the researchers in three research institutes of the DOA are regularly engaged in research focusing on local agrarian problems. The main research areas of the researchers were plant breeding, soil and water resource management, and agronomy and crop science. The research conducted by three research institutes of the DOA are hundred percent (100%) relevant to issues encountered in the agriculture sector of the country. Majority of researchers use, seminars/conferences as the main methods for dissemination information to scientific community. Majority of researchers (34%) at HORDI. thirty one percent of researchers (31%) at RRDI and thirty percent of researchers (30%) at FCRDI send their research output to the extension division in the DOA. According to the data, lack of extension staff has been identified as a main problem for effective transfer of research output to the end users timely, by fifty percent of researchers (50%)at FCRDI, forty two percent of researchers (42%) at HORDI and forty percent (40%) of researchers at RRDI respectively. The weak research/extension linkage has been identified as a barrier by twenty five percent (25%) of researchers both at HORDI and FCRDI and twenty percent of researchers (20%) at RRDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University of Ruhuna is a thriving modern Sri Lankan university with strengths in both research and teaching. Library system of University of Ruhuna provides an enormous contribution to the university in order to provide access to scholarly information through journals (online and printed), books, e-repositories and other means. Library network of the university spend substantial amount of money for subscribing to printed and electronic journals annually. Access to paid scholarly literature is limited depending on the subscription type to the database or journal. There is a renewed trend of searching for open-access (OA) knowledge which break the price boundaries and provide better access to the current knowledge among academic community. Open access repositories provide searching and downloading of scholarly information materials for free of charge. Spending extra time on sorting and filtering of OA-materials by information seekers out of the search results obtained has been a major demerit of using OA knowledge. Finding and searching on different open access repositories separately is also been a difficult and time consuming task. A unified interface for searching on different OA repositories worldwide can facilitates readers by reducing the searching time and effort of different scholarly materials and OA repositories in the world. Harvester System of University of Ruhuna (HaSURu) deployed in order to fulfil the gap of a unified interface that can connect number of OA archives together and search over the internet for OA information. HaSURu keeps OA information of OAIregistered open-access archives worldwide. OAI is an organization that promotes the better dissemination of knowledge among researchers. There are 1944 OA repositories worldwide has registered under OAI as data providers. Present study aimed at acquiring all the OA repository information from OAI and provide access through a unified interface using OAI-PMH driven metadata harvester. This paper discusses the process of installing and customizing PKP OHS Harvester2 as OA information finder carried out at University of Ruhuna. All the Information seekers of Sri Lanka will find this new service as a better source of access to OA repositories worldwide for their future research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tries to analyse the role of the university librarian using a sociological definition for the role. Considers the University as a social institution and how the role of the librarian evolved to meet the changes taking place in the Universities. Elaborates management and functional competencies, qualities, technological and human relations skills they need to develop in order to cope with the modern Information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the results of the user satisfaction survey conducted in the Jaffna University library among the undergraduates of general degree bioscience students in August 2010. The objectives of the study were to assess the library user satisfaction regarding the currently available information sources and services and to identify the unmet needs of the undergraduates for the future developments in the library. Self administered questionnaire survey was conducted among these undergraduates. The study revealed that the library retains as essential component to facilitate the general degree bioscience undergraduates' learning and research activities. The study clearly enumerated that the efficiency of some of the presently available services such as photocopying services, interlibrary loan services, selective dissemination of information and current awareness service were not met the undergraduates' expectations. . The findings of the survey leave plenty of scope for improvement in library activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed at analyzing the publication pattern of highly cited research publications of Internet of Things. Web of Science citation database was used to extract data for the study. The top fifty highly cited publications were considered as the sample of this study. The data were analyzed based on publication year, document type, source title, time cited, usage count, authorship pattern, collaborative coefficient, research collaboration, and research areas. The findings revealed that majority of the publications were research articles and most of them were published in IEEE journals. Research articles written by multiple authors were more prominent than single-author publications. Researchers from USA and China preferred collaborative research and researchers from Italy preferred noninternational collaborative research. The researchers from developed western countries are highly engaging with research in Internet of Things. The most popular research areas under Internet of Things are computer science and telecommunication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the usage of library and information services provided by selected regional centre libraries of the Open University of Sri Lanka. It attempts to find out the needs, expectations and usage of the library by distant learners and their perceptions about library services. The study sample (n=350) was drawn from a population of 1550 students of three selected regional centre libraries of the Open University of Sri Lanka. The study found that the users are satisfied with the overall library resources, services and facilities available, but users are not really getting the full benefit of the library services and some of the services are under-utilized. The major causes or reasons for this problem are the lack of comprehensiveness of the regional library collections, insufficient space for reading area, inadequate training for users in services and the lack of computers and Internet facilities in the library. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the library should order multiple copies of reading material, extend the lending period for a period of one month in regional centres, increase the number of computers for users and provide online access facilities. It is also recommended that a comprehensive information literacy program should be conducted to promote awareness and use of electronic information resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a tendency in reported documents pertaining to school education in Sri Lanka to have literally omitted school libraries and information resources. Teachers and students struggled to gain access to appropriate information resources. After performing a pilot survey to validate the reliability of the questionnaire, a sample of 209 subjects was randomly selected from 459 teachers in select National Schools in Batticaloa Education Zone. A semistructured questionnaire was administered across WhatsApp groups of those teachers and response rate was 77.5%. Data were analysed using One-Sample Wilcoxon Signed-Rank, Chi-Square, and thematic analysis since a mixed method was employed. In this survey, teachers have expressed that school libraries were essential in providing resources to support teaching-learning activities although they have not received sufficient support from school libraries. Study further found that the role of school librarians in educating teachers and students with respect to copyright was underrated. Therefore, as the study results revealed, there was a considerable gap between the need and the availability of resources, which needs to be bridged through school libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The catalogues of the libraries should follow a common standard. While maintaining accepted cataloging standards by libraries, method of searching and retrievals for a book would be uniform, meaningful and responsive. Libraries need to make studies on their catalogue entries to ensure that they are providing such uniform, meaningful and responsive searching and retrievals from the library catalogue. In this scenario, the study is made on the purpose of understanding the deviations of standards that occurs in the original catalogue of Jaffna Public Library. The deviation is measured by using a sample of randomly selected titles of the original catalogue of the Jaffna Public Library for complying with cataloguing standards. The necessary comparison is made against the same title in the library of congress to identify the deviation types and measure the corresponding numbers of edits. The study identifies three major types and eight sub types of deviations (edits) that are required to be rectified to comply with cataloguing standards on author main entry (MARC Tag 100$a). Among the sub-types of edit, the editing of “correctly selecting author entries” (whether personal-name, corporate-name, meeting-name or uniform-title?) is found as predominant edit in the author main entries. Full-stop mistake is found as common mistake for all author main entries. Moreover, the paper extends through discussion on all major and sub types of deviations of cataloguing standards by putting the normalized values of editing percentage in tables and figures, while providing necessary recommendation to systematically rectify all types of deviations that are currently left in the catalogues and maintain accepted cataloging standards during future data entering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore a Revised Web Impact Factor (RWIF) for university library websites in Sri Lanka and the correlations between RWIF with external backlink and page count. The RWlFs were calculated by dividing external backlink counts by the number of pages found in Yahoo, and Google search engines and SEO CHAT application tool for each university library website at a given point in time. Collectively, 6,850 average web pages and 630 average external backlinks were found from studied university library websites. University of Moratuwa library website received the highest RWIF of 0.4415, which indicates that the number of externally linked pages to www.lib.mrt.ac.lk is much higher than that of other universities. It was found that external backlink count and RWIF were correlated and associated and it shown that there was very less difference between the external backlink count and RWIF. Research results found that there was no much association or closeness between page count and RWIF. The main factors that can raised RWIF of a university library website were linking of websites to their affiliate universities, university libraries, international websites, internet guides and search engines and making appropriate information resources, such as getting access to the university's electronic journals, library resources, the news, information from conferences available and easily accessible, and usable for its users audiences and as a result the website will receive more external backlinks. The findings of the study will guide to the librarians to evaluate the strength of their online presence of their library websites and plan to improve their status on the web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budding literature across the world explores the antecedents of Information Professionals in historical societies while there is a paucity of knowledge on them in ancient Sri Lankan context. Therefore, the study attempts to explore the nature of history of Information Professionals in ancient Sri Lanka employing a qualitative approach through content analysis of primary sources such as inscriptions. The study brings to light a silhouette of professionals engaged in preserving information from the early historic period to the end of the Kandyan kingdom. These officials were mentioned as scribes, chief secretaries, registrars and record keepers such as Lapana, Kanapedika, Mahale, Muk-hi, Mukaveti, Sanhas Sivatta Nayinarun, and Sannissiwatte Kulaperumal. Most importantly, they were members of the Royal Council. Duties of these officers involved noting down the orders of the Kings, keeping copies in different formats for future reference, setting up inscriptions/manuscripts/charters, and being accountable for recording, attesting, publicizing and provision of access to the information. The research contributes to the literature on Information Science studies as well as historical literature, while it deepens existing knowledge by focusing on a new-fangled look at ancient primary sources. This novel information provides access to a new arena for further research on the history of Sri Lankan information preservation institutions such as lekamge and badageba etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]