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This paper reports on the assessment of construct validity and reliability of an instrument used to measure librarians' adoption and implementation of Evidence-based Librarianship (EBL) in the acquisition decision of electronic resources. The instrument is developed based on well-established theories/models of Technology Organization and Environment (TOE), Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), and a Concern-based Adoption Model (CBAM) with a newly added construct, user needs, and preferences. The instrument was evaluated using the Partial Least Squares (SMART- PLS) software applications using structural equation modelling (SEM) to determine its validity and reliability through) analysis of the measurement model (outer model) and ii) analysis of the structural model (inner model). A total of 278 participants were identified from the 1040 research population. This research applied probability sampling using proportionate stratified techniques to gather responses from librarians in library and information center management. The results of both analyses indicated that the construct validity and reliability of the instrument were acceptable and moderate, respectively. The internal consistency reported a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.718 to 0.956, composite reliability of 0.70 and 0.90, average variance extracted value above 0.50. The model prediction accuracy and relevancy revealed R2 (adoption: 0.300, implementation 0.399) and Q2 (adoption 0.213, implementation 0.227), which were acceptable and moderate, respectively. The model has also been reported to be free from collinearity issues. Thus, the instrument is ready for use in e-resource and evidence-based library acquisition research.

The current study aims to analyse the trend in yeast research within the domain of biopharmaceutical sciences. Bibliographic information of the 1,000 most cited publications on yeast research in biopharmaceutical science was retrieved from the Scopus database. The data was then analysed by using bibliometric approaches. The data indicated a steady increase in publication numbers. The United States, Japan and China were among the highest research output countries. A total of 25 top core journals were identified. The keywords with the highest frequency included production, study and activity. To conclude, the current bibliometric analysis provides information that may be useful in locating research hot spots and gaps in the research area of yeast in biopharmaceutical science.

This study aims to explore the adoption of the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model among Malaysian academic libraries. The study ensues the continuous increase in the proportion and cost of information resources (electronic and print) coupled with the current dwindling budget crushing libraries worldwide. It adopts questionnaires to elicit responses from 111 purposively selected librarians, specifically from Malaysia's academic libraries' acquisition units. This study revealed that some Malaysian academic libraries practice the user-initiated collection acquisition model, with modifications from the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) practiced in the developed world. Malaysian academic libraries adopt the stand-alone user-initiated collection development model instead of integrating the model with either the library OPAC or publishers ‘databases as practiced by other libraries. The user-driven acquisition model is productive considering resource usage, library budget justification, and high return on investment (ROI), according to Malaysian academic libraries.

The research field of culinary and medicinal mushrooms has been well developed since the first relevant publication in 1966. However, to date, there has been no bibliometric analysis published specifically for this field. This study aimed to assess the most influential publications as well as the research trends and important drivers in the field of culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Scopus was used to identify relevant publications and the 1000 most-cited publications were identified and analyzed. Bradford's law of scattering shows one-third of the papers were published in 14 core journals, with a total of 102 papers published in International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms. There is an insignificant negative correlation (Pearson's correlation coefficient, r = -0.355) between the journal impact factor and publication count. VOSviewer was used to generate a country network. China represents Asia's research center in this field, having contributed 20% of the 1000 most-cited publications. A term map was also created to visualize the co-occurrence of key terms in the domain. Different biological activities such as antioxidant and antitumor properties of mushrooms appeared to be a recurring topic in this field. Wasser (2003) showed the highest citation count (n = 1282), which is almost double the second most-cited publication (n = 611). There is a weak positive correlation (r = +0.237) between the years since publication and total citation count. In conclusion, this bibliometric study will assist researchers to comprehend the current status of the research on culinary and medicinal mushrooms, and to visualize the future impact of such an important field.

This study aims to explore caregivers’ perceptions of the public library's role in supporting early literacy and family engagement in the digital age in Asia. Family engagement is important from birth through young adulthood, and public libraries matter for family engagement. However, this topic has been little explored in Asian countries. Structured interviews were conducted with librarians, followed by a survey approach to understand what caregivers of five- to 12-year-old children think about the scope of family engagement practices in public libraries in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. In total, 454 valid questionnaires were collected. Findings show that caregivers value the importance of public libraries’ role in promoting family engagement in the digital age in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. In order to reap the rewards of family engagement practices, public libraries are suggested to build relationships with families through proactively understanding families’ interests and needs, involving families in the library decision-making process, and engaging families in both print-based and digital literacy programmes.

This study investigates children information search behaviour to inform about their search characteristics. The study uses a qualitative approach by observing and noting the children’s searching process. A total of 30 children aged 7-9 years participated in this study. The unobtrusively observation sessions were video-recorded on children's searching process via the Web. Probing interviews were used to gather understanding on how the children perceive information trustworthiness. The data was analysed using thematic coding approach. The finding highlighted two main characteristics of children search: Credible Searcher and Convenience Searcher. The children in general could gauge information trustworthiness and have confidence with regard to the relevance, reliability and the credibility of the resources. The children do not consider source reputation and currency as an important criterion when seeking information. This study contributes to a better understanding of information trustworthiness as reflected in young children’s information seeking processing.

This paper reports on a small part of a larger research work on critical thinking practices among students when they seek for information. Critical thinking is a metacognitive process which an essential skill in education particularly in the 21st century. It is imperative when students need to find relevant and trustworthy information. The aims of this paper are twofold: i) to investigate the level of critical thinking among postgraduate students; ii) to investigate critical thinking practices among students when they seek for information. The study employed a quantitative research design. Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal-UK (WGCTA-UK) edition was used to examine the level of critical thinking of postgraduate students. Another survey was conducted to investigate critical thinking practices of students during their information seeking process (ISP). Questionnaires were distributed on a random basis among postgraduate students in a pilot test. A total of 45 responses were gathered. The findings from the study revealed that postgraduate students had the highest score in “recognition of assumptions” and the lowest score in “inference” in the critical thinking practices. About 71 percent of the respondents scored below average and average in several areas of CT. The findings demonstrated when students seek for information, they use several CT skills (CTS) and CT dispositions (CTD) such as inference, recognition of assumption, deduction and evaluation of arguments.

This paper describes a study investigating the performance of Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) research work using bibliometric analysis covering the period 2003---2013. The study focuses on the distribution and growth of publications across journals, titles, and fields over the period, and collaboration network patterns among scholars and scientists. A total of 1737 articles were gathered from the IEEE ICES EMF Database. Among these, a 29,047 citation count was reported from 432 journal titles. The most cited journal title and the one with greatest number of publications was the journal Bioelectromagnetics. Most of the cited articles focused mainly on radiation risk and biological effects of EMF. The fields of Engineering & Physics produced the highest number of articles while Epidemiology journals showed the most outstanding performance across all fields. 95 % (1651) of the articles were identified as co-authored publications, indicating involvement in a collaborative network. Only 20 % (341) of the publications involved international collaboration, the majority of these among European---European and Europe-North American countries/regions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the third of three inter‐related experiments investigating the use and usability of e‐books in Higher Education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde. This study has looked in greater detail at user interactions with e‐books for reference purposes by focusing on searching and browsing tasks using three search tools: back‐of the‐book index (BoBI), table of contents (ToC) and full text search (FTS).Design/methodology/approachThis study was carried out by subject‐specific users and using a between‐subjects approach. The target population was MSc and research students in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, at the University of Strathclyde and involved a total of 45 responses.FindingsThe study found that a BoBI was more efficient compared to a ToC and FTS tool for finding information in an e‐book environment. A BoBI was found to perform the best for accurately finding relevant content in e‐books. The usability evaluation also found that a BoBI was more useful compared to a ToC for finding information in an e‐book environment.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was focused only on the usability of e‐books, and in particular on retrieval performance, user satisfaction and preferences regarding BoBI, ToC and FTS, and not on other features such as the user interface. The e‐book usability evaluation was constrained in so far as the e‐books used were: non‐fiction; in the domain of information retrieval; e‐books that already had BoBIs with hyperlinks from the BoBI to the text; e‐books that had ToCs with hyperlinks; e‐books that had FTS tools; and e‐books that were available in PDF format.Practical implicationsThe study is important in gaining a better understanding of the retrieval performance of three search tools (BoBI, ToC and FTS) for browsing for relevant, and searching for specific, information in e‐books. This will be of value for designing better e‐books and access systems.Originality/valueThe strengths and novelty of this study are the methodology that was used, the comprehensive inter‐comparison of tools, and the size of the population. The findings have supported empirically – through an assessment of the performances of BoBIs and ToCs – the need for an enhanced library catalogue system in order to improve users’ browsing and searching capabilities for relevant book content.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the second part of three inter‐related studies investigating the use and usability of e‐books in higher education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde.Design/methodology/approachThe research discussed here involved two analyses: an analysis of two e‐book collections in the libraries of the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow and an analysis of a follow‐up study to a web survey into user interactions with e‐books in one of the library's collections.FindingsThe follow‐up study found that in general students found that interacting with e‐books in the library collection was easy. Students indicated that their preferred book formats varied depending on the context of their information need. Despite their positive reaction and attitudes towards e‐books, students commented that e‐books needed to be promoted more strongly and that there were limitations with respect to their use.Research limitations/implicationsThe study presented here was a small‐scale study based only on e‐book collections from one supplier (NetLibrary) and involved only 18 respondents. While this is considered sufficient based on the discount usability testing concept, generalisation of the results should be made with caution.Practical implicationsThe findings should be of value to academic libraries in terms of improving e‐book collection management. This study highlights current attitudes of students towards e‐book in terms of how they interact with them, the features they value and their preferences between e‐books and paper books in a university library.Originality/valueThis paper provides useful information on students’ attitudes towards e‐books.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the first part of three inter‐related studies investigating the use and usability of e‐books in higher education based on experiments conducted at the University of Strathclyde.Design/methodology/approachA self‐selected sampling method was employed from undergraduate and postgraduate instructional students registered with the University of Strathclyde for academic year 2005/2006. An announcement email was posted to the student web portal for a period of three weeks inviting them to participate in the survey.FindingsThis survey found that e‐book awareness and the level of e‐book usage amongst students was lower than anticipated: 57 per cent of students were not aware of the availability of e‐books from the library and 60 per cent of them had not used an e‐book. Non‐users commented that e‐books were not widely advertised or promoted. Despite the low levels of e‐book awareness and usage non‐e‐book users indicated their desire to learn more about e‐books.Research limitations/implicationsThis survey was dependent on self‐selection and, therefore, there was no central control over the sample profile (e.g. gender, level of studies, academic discipline); hence, generalisation of the results should be treated with caution.Practical implicationsThis survey is beneficial in terms of obtaining a better understanding of e‐book usage among students and the reasons why students do, and do not, use e‐books. The findings should be of value to academic libraries in terms of emphasising the need to increase e‐book awareness and usage amongst students.Originality/valueThe findings should be of value to academic libraries in terms of emphasising the need to increase e‐book awareness and usage amongst students.

This paper reports on a study of e-book usage amongst students with an university library collection. The main objectives of this study were to: (i) investigate how easy or difficult students found it to use e-books by giving them the opportunity to interact with e-books in an operational environment; (ii) determine whether any differences existed in ease of use ratings between students that had and had not used an e-book before the survey; (iii) investigate which e-book features users valued in terms of shelf browsing and content browsing; (iv) measure students' preferences between e-books or printed books given several scenarios; (v) establish whether any differences existed in terms of book format preferences between students that had and had not used an e-book before the survey; (vi) explore students' perceptions and impressions regarding specific features, such as browsable and searchable book indexes and table of contents, in an online library catalogue. The respondents were selected using a systematic random approach from a list of respondents from a previous web survey who had agreed beforehand to participate in this study. A total of 18 participants consisting of undergraduate and postgraduate instructional students completed the study. The findings indicated that in general students found that interacting with e-books in the collection was very easy. Students indicated that their preferred book formats varied depending on the context. In general students were positive about incorporating certain additional e-book features into an online library catalogue. Despite their positive reactions and attitudes towards e-books, students commented that e-books needed to be promoted more strongly and that there were limitations with respect to their use.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the use of social media tools to enhance inclusion and outreach activities in libraries. The study also examined the existence of policies that encouraged the use social media and the challenges that libraries faced when integrating social media into their services. Invitations to participate in a survey were sent to 110 libraries in Greater China, Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand to investigate the use of social media tools in their inclusion/outreach programmes and librarians’ perceptions of their usefulness. From the 110 libraries that were invited to participate in the survey, 28 responses were received and analysed. Among these, academic libraries made up 68% of the respondents, and the remaining 32% were from public libraries. The findings indicated that the libraries had already incorporated social media tools into their services, and, to some extent, for inclusion/outreach activities. In general, participants in this study indicated an acknowledgement of the benefits of using social media and an inclination to apply social media in the future, although the libraries and librarians faced the challenge of equipping themselves well in order to keep abreast of these technologies. The study highlighted the lack of specific policies that clarified the responsibilities of libraries in promoting social inclusion. Institutionalising specific policies on the use of social media tools in libraries could be done either using a top-down and/or a bottom up approach. ----------------------------------------Dr. Noorhidawati bte Abdullah, Senior Lecturer, Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Email: noorhidawati@um.edu.my Dr. Samuel Kai-Wah Chu, Associate Professor and Head of Division of Information and Technology Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Email: samchu@hku.hk

Critical thinking is one of the main goals of higher education to ensure that students are competent in the future. The growth of information technology and internet access among students is effective factors to improve the instructional approaches for fostering critical thinking in online environments. Although many researchers have studied on cultivating critical thinking, many do not consider the relationship between critical thinking and Information seeking behavior of students in e-learning environments. This paper focuses on the relationship between critical thinking and information seeking behavior of students in e-learning environments and the role of information seeking behavior of students to cultivate critical thinking.

Philology studies are often associated with traditional methods of teaching and learning. This study explores the possibility of e-learning adoption amongst Malay manuscripts learning community. The Soft System Methodology (SSM) is used to guide the investigation. SSM emphasises on understanding the problem situations faced by Malay manuscript learning community and expresses the situations in rich pictures. The manuscript learning community comprises lecturers, students and researchers in the field of philology. Data were gathered from interviews, focus group discussions and observations. Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya is the case study setting, focusing on lecturers who teach and students who enrol in a philology course as well as doctoral students researching on manuscript studies. The findings highlight problems faced by the various stakeholders and propose solutions in the form of a conceptual model for a collaborative electronic platform to improve teaching and learning as well as utilizing digitized manuscript surrogates held in a digital library of Malay manuscripts.

Speech recognition has provided limited converted speech into text as query for cross language information retrieval (CLIR). Therefore, in this study, speech recognition to be integrated with cross language information retrieval system to investigate the Quran system results performance using semantic and stemmers as stemming semantic spoken query (SSSQ). The query however is based on the speech to be input and converted into text. Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate the integration speech, semantic and stemmers approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that SSSQ is most important process in CLIR. It also found that semantic speech approach with stemmers contributes to better approach in using speech instead of keyboard to investigate its performance for Quran document results.

The single query has a lack of words reference to provide more related words for documents result retrieval. The study covers those available words in the dictionary which related to the single word. Therefore it also means that single word is assigned for many words from single query as multi-relevant queries in the dictionary. Hence, the single query is speech query to be converted to words in the query. Cross language information retrieval (CLIR) system investigates the Quran system results performance using looping referred semantic words and stemmers are known as stemming looping semantic query (SLSQ). The query however is based on the speech to be input and converted into text. Therefore, this study is conducted with the purpose to introduce the framework which covers speech, semantic and stemmers approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance SLSQ based on total retrieve and relevant to maximize words than single word. It also found that looping semantic words technique in dictionary contributes to better approach in using looping referred words in the dictionary for its better performance for Quran document results.

Students may seek information for various reasons such as to understand a specific subject matter or to conduct a research. In this digital age, they may not have a problem to find information. However, they are having problem to find scholarly information that suits their learning needs. This is because they are having difficulties to find the scholarly information that suitable for their learning styles. The objectives of this research are (a) to investigate information retrieval tools that students use to find scholarly information; (b) to compare the tools in terms of access, search techniques, and search facilities and (c) to propose architecture of information retrieval tool for learning needs. Therefore, this research investigates several information retrieval tools such as Online Public Access Catalogues (OPAC), Internet search engine, online databases and digital libraries. Survey questionnaire was conducted on 129 postgraduate's students of Faculty of Science Computer and Information Technology, University of Malaya. They were chosen because of their level of education and their proficiency in using IT infrastructure. The quantitative data were analyzed using statistical program SPSS. The result shows that postgraduate students having difficulties in finding information that suitable to their learning style using available information retrieval tools.

The query-based on the result is less relevant documents results. In this study, a query has been improved in order to retrieve more relevant documents across language boundaries, a mechanism for query translation with semantic which is applied on as semantic query (SQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate semantic approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that semantic approach is most important process in cross language information retrieval (CLIR). It also found that semantic approach contributes to better performance in retrieving more relevant and related Quran document results.

The query-based on the result is lack of limited relevant documents in retrieval results. Therefore, query performance is considered to retrieve more relevant documents across language boundaries by applying semantic and stemmers which are more significant as stemming semantic query (SSQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate the integration semantic and stemmers approach against the queries and vice versa. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance query based on total retrieve and relevant. The retrieval however, included the irrelevant documents because of the translation polysemy. Results from the experiments suggest that SSQ is most important process in cross language information retrieval (CLIR). It also found that semantic approach with stemmers contributes to better performance in retrieving more relevant and related Quran document results.

The information visualization results are retrieving lack of information to meet user's speech query even though there is presenting information and results in visualization. Hence, in this study, visualization of retrieving relevant documents through cross language information retrieval (CLIR) system needs to across language boundaries, a mechanism for query translation with semantic and stemmers are required well-known as stemming semantic query (SSQ). Therefore, this study is conducted with the purposes to investigate visualization approach against the queries and vice versa using SpaceTree. Furthermore, it is also conducted to investigate the performance of visualization to present normal listing results. The retrieval results however, focus on how SpaceTree is beneficial to represent them in a good manner. Results from the experiments suggest that SpaceTree is most friendly to display results to the users in CLIR. It also found that semantic approach with stemmers contributes to better performance in visualizing more relevant and related Quran document results.

Currently WWW is the first solution for scholars in finding information. But, analyzing and interpreting this volume of information will lead to researchers overload in pursuing their research. Trend detection in scientific publication retrieval systems helps scholars to find relevant, new and popular special areas by visualizing the trend of input topic. However, there are few researches on trend detection in scientific corpora while their proposed models do not appear to be suitable. Previous works lack of an appropriate representation scheme for research topics. This paper describes a method that combines Semantic Web and ontology to support advance search functions such as trend detection in the context of scholarly Semantic Web system (SSWeb).

Critical thinking is one of the main goals of higher education to train dependant and reasonable thinker as an efficient citizenship in modern society. Researchers and instructors in the world attempt to assess the level of students’ critical thinking in order to foster it as a vital ability. Also, researchers use different learning approaches and theories along with the technological progress to nurture critical thinking of students. On the other hand, the advent of e-learning in education facilitates the difficulties through the learning and teaching paths. Researchers provided models and strategies for developing critical thinking by e-learning tools with their specific characteristic and applications. This paper presents a review on e-learning approaches and models which are used to cultivate critical thinking with the aim of highlighting the importance of critical thinking and the role of e-learning. We also present a taxonomy of existing e-learning models based on their applications and efficiencies as well as presenting similarities and differences in such approaches and discuss open research issues.