Faculty Of Information Science Research Articles

“The changing same” of whiteness in the US LIS academy: a cathartic testimonial from BIPOC faculty scholars

PurposeThere is little to no empirical research on the phenomenon of ways in which the racism of whiteness transpires within the faculties and classrooms of US-based ALA-accredited library and information science (LIS) education programs. We do have scholars publishing meaningful work exploring diversity-equity-inclusion topics and initiatives to evolve the LIS discourse on these issues (Honma, 2005; Chancellor, 2019; De LaRosa et al., 2021; Gibson, 2019; Mehra et al., 2023; Colón-Aguirre et al., 2022; Hands, 2022). This research substantiates the conceptual research that exists by empirically exposing the ways in which the racism of whiteness functions at the interpersonal level of work culture in LIS programs (i.e. the academy) in the US.Design/methodology/approachAdapting Baima and Sude’s (2020) modified Delphi Method, a focus group of 13 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) library and information science faculty members in the United States were recruited to participate in a one-time 60-min virtual Zoom session. Participants were engaged in three iterative rounds of reflective inquiry to reach a consensus of experience. The study design was embedded with critical race theory-based (CRT) ethnographic methods such as testimony (counterstorytelling), collective affirmation (shared narratives), and silence.FindingsBIPOC LIS faculty (tenure-track and tenured) have similar ideas about whiteness and how it is operationalized as micro- and macro-aggressions in the LIS academic workplace, most significantly inside the classroom. The experience of whiteness was prevalent among all study participants in two areas: workplace meetings with faculty colleagues and classroom sessions (face-to-face and online) with students.Originality/valueThe findings offer empirical evidence to support the prolific conceptual literature in LIS discourse concerning ways in which critical race theory (CRT) interrogates LIS’s socio-professional injustices and inequities (e.g. Gibson et al., 2018; Stauffer, 2020; Leung and Lopez-McKnight, 2021; Jennings and Kinzer, 2022; Snow and Dunbar, 2022). There remains a dearth of empirical research that reports how whiteness is reproduced in the practices, knowledge, and resources that make up the ethos of the LIS faculty meeting and classroom. Documenting the testimonies of BIPOC LIS faculty solidifies the existence of whiteness as a toxic reality in the LIS academy.

Publication Output and Trends of LIS Faculty Teaching Health-Related Courses: Connecting Research, Teaching, and Practice

The publication output of Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty teaching health courses has not been analyzed. The purpose of this bibliometric analysis was to examine publication patterns of full-time LIS faculty that teach health-related courses for library science programs in the United States and Canada. Full-time LIS faculty teaching health-related courses in American Library Association (ALA)–accredited programs were identified by searching course listings, faculty profiles, and syllabi from ALA-accredited school websites and contacting deans and directors of schools. The 29 LIS faculty that were identified and met the inclusion criteria were contacted via email in September 2021 and invited to voluntarily share their curricula vitae (CVs) for analysis. A total of 16 respondents provided their CVs, representing a 55% response rate. This was supplemented by locating five more CVs publicly available online. The final sample of LIS faculty was 21, and the bibliometrics analysis was based on a total of 716 publications published from 2011 to 2021 and reported on the CVs from this group of scholars. This analysis resulted in the identification of several patterns. Journal articles were the most common publication type, followed by conference proceedings. Joint authorship patterns were more common than solo authors, highlighting the collaborative nature of research. While faculty published in a range of LIS and interdisciplinary journals, highly cited papers appeared in health specialty journals. This study represents the first step in examining the research output for this under-explored community of LIS scholars. These findings may be of interest to promotion and tenure committees, newer tenure-track faculty, and doctoral students exploring academic careers in this specialized area.

A Campus-based Chatbot System using Natural Language Processing and Neural Network

A chatbot is designed to simulate human conversation and provide instant responses to users. Chatbots have gained popularity in providing automated customer support and information retrieval among organisations. Besides, it also acts as a virtual assistant to communicate with users by delivering updated answers based on users' input. Most chatbots still use the traditional rule-based chatbot, which can only respond to pre-defined sentences, making the users unlikely to use the chatbot. This paper aims to design and build a campus chatbot for the Faculty of Information Science & Technology (FIST) of Multimedia University that facilitates the study life of FIST students. Before the FIST chatbot can be used, natural language processing techniques such as tokenisation, lemmatisation and bag of word model are used to generate the input that can be used to train the neural network model (multilayer perceptron model). It makes the FIST chatbot comprehends user intent by analysing their questions, enabling it to address a broader range of inquiries and cater to the student's need with accurate answers or information related to the Faculty of Information Science & Technology. Besides, we also developed the backend interface allowing the admin to add and edit the dataset in the proposed chatbot and enable it continuously responds to the student with the latest and updated information.

Equitable Access for Blind, Visually Impaired, and Print-Disabled (BVIPD) Students in Online Learning

Equitable Access for Blind, Visually Impaired, and Print-Disabled (BVIPD) Students in Online Learning

Entrepreneurial skills assessment of library and information science faculty and academic librarians in Nigeria: issues and prospects

Entrepreneurial skills are considered one of the most important competencies expected to be possessed by Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty and academic librarians as information professionals. These skills include technical skills, managerial skills, business skills, personal maturity skills, ICT skills and information literacy skills. The context observation and literature review indicated limited research on the entrepreneurial skills of Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty and academic librarians in Nigerian universities. The need to fill this inadvertently created gap initiated this study. The study aimed to assess entrepreneurial skills level as well as identify entrepreneurship issues and prospects of LIS faculty and academic librarians in South-West Nigerian universities with library schools. This paper was anchored on survey research design. The study employed the total enumeration method to cover all LIS faculty and academic librarians in these universities. An adapted structured questionnaire was administered and responses were analyzed quantitatively using frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Findings revealed lackluster technical, business and ICT skills of these information professionals including unacceptable managerial skills. Furthermore, entrepreneurship issues showed government-centered, institutional and personal subjects such as government policies, economic problems, legal registration, funding, excessive workload and lack of entrepreneurial attitude. The study also uncovered dwindling entrepreneurship prospects. The study recommends premeditated efforts by LIS faculty and academic librarians and universities at entrepreneurial development and the advancement of citizen-friendly entrepreneurial policies and a blueprint by the government.

The aspects of the transdisciplinary cooperation in the training of the specialists in the field of Information Technologies

In the article there is analyzed if the transdisciplinary cooperation influences the students’ learning results, and if such cooperation serves for the training of a specialist, who could work in a new environment of knowledge society that motivates a project work in continually variable commands. There is discussed a 3 year-experience of the application of the transdisciplinary cooperation in the training of students in the faculty of information science at Vytautas Magnus University and at Kaunas Institute of Arts, VAA (Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts). There are also investigated some research results of the transdisciplinary cooperation in training as well as the assessment of the students on their own.

Research collaboration amongst Egyptian library and information science faculty members

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine the potential for research collaboration amongst Egyptian library and information science (LIS) faculty members.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was used, which ran from the beginning of June to the middle of July 2021.FindingsMale respondents made up slightly more than half of the total, with ages ranging from 30s to 40s and the majority holding PhDs. According to all respondents, the most important reasons for collaborating on research authorship were “to gain more experience”, followed by “to gain more knowledge”. More than half of respondents rated the collaborative research as “Good”, with “Very Good” coming in second. Almost all respondents stated the most common types of collaboration amongst the respondents were “a research paper”, “a case study”, “a review” and “a book chapter”. All faculty members stated that challenges such as “The research collaborator does not contribute equally to the same motivation” and “The research collaborator does not do what is expected of him/her to complete the research” were at the very least significant to the respondents.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study have significant implications for higher education research and publishing in Egypt, particularly in terms of encouraging collaborative research amongst Egyptian researchers, particularly in the field of LIS.Originality/valueThis is nearly the first study of the kind in the Arab and Egyptian contexts. This study is described as a pioneer amongst the studies concerned with this topic that were conducted in the field of joint authorship, especially at the local and regional levels, because this study is one of the few studies on partnership and research cooperation amongst Egyptian faculty members in the field of LIS.

Department of Electronics, Faculty of Information Science and Electronics Engineering, Kyushu University

Department of Electronics, Faculty of Information Science and Electronics Engineering, Kyushu University

Preface

The 2022 2nd International Conference on Mechanical Automation and Electronic Information Engineering (MAEIE 2022) was successfully held on September 23rd-25th, 2022 in Guizhou, China via virtual format. MAEIE 2022 expanded channels of international academic exchange in science and technology, promoted scientific innovation on the global scale, and strengthen academic cooperation between China and the outside world.In the conference, we were greatly honored to have Prof. Ning Sun from Nankai University, China to serve as our Conference General Chair. 150 individuals around the world took part in the conference. Divided into three parts, the conference agenda covered keynote speeches, oral presentations and online Q&A discussion. Firstly, the keynote speakers were each allocated 30-45 minutes to address their speeches. Then in the oral presentations, the excellent papers we had selected were presented by their authors one by one.Three distinguished professors were invited to hold keynote speeches during the conference. Among them, Prof. Guanglei Wu from Dalian University of Technology addressed a speech on Path Planning of Industrial Robots for Obstacle Avoidance. In this presentation, the path planning for robotic manipulators was introduced, and by combining artificial potential field method and bidirectional rapidly exploring random tree, a BiRRT-APF algorithm was proposed, aiming to handle the problems of highly possible randomness and low search efficiency. Additionally, Prof. Imane Hilal from Faculty of Information Sciences, Morocco addressed a report on Researches on Artificial Intelligence for a Distant Social Learning: Do intelligent Technologies Beat Face-to-Face Learning? The main objective of this study was to present recent research works which focused on the use of AI technics in social distance learning. Then, he discussed the possibility of replacing teachers with technology as already done in many other jobs and concluded with the open challenges in the current distance learning and how AI could make learning more effective and joyful for both students and teachers. Their brilliant keynote speeches had triggered heated discussion in the conference. And every participant praised this conference for disseminating useful and insightful knowledge.We are glad to share with you that we’ve selected a bunch of high-quality papers from the submissions and compiled them into the proceedings after rigorously reviewing them. These papers feature but are not limited to the following topics: Vehicles and Carriages, Factory Modeling and Automation, Radar Engineering, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Technology, etc. All the papers have been checked through rigorous review and processes to meet the requirements of publication.We would like to acknowledge all of those who supported MAEIE 2022 and made it a great success. In particular, we would like to thank the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, for the endeavor of all its colleagues in publishing this paper volume. We truly believe that all the attendees have had fruitful discussions and gained valuable knowledge, and will enjoy the opportunity for future collaborations.The Committee of MAEIE 2022List of Committee member is available in this pdf

Okamoto Laboratory, Faculty of Economics, Management and Information Science, Onomichi City University

Okamoto Laboratory, Faculty of Economics, Management and Information Science, Onomichi City University

Incorporating Marginalized LIS Educators into LIS Programs Through Remote Work Options

The global pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that people work and learn, and has had a disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) (Marcelin, et al., 2021). Throughout the pandemic, all work (including higher education) moved to a fully remote work model. The goal of this panel is to explore the idea of remote work for library and information science (LIS) faculty in the long-term, and particularly discuss the positive implications that this work model could have for those who are BIPOC and/or otherwise marginalized. This is a critical discussion for LIS programs to engage in as the information professions currently face a moment of reckoning and they must work to bring equity for BIPOC colleagues and address the needs of LIS faculty.

Connecting Research and Practice: Publication Patterns of LIS Faculty Who Teach Health-Related Courses

Bibliometrics studies of library and information science (LIS) faculty scholarly output have explored publication patterns in open access (Grandbois & Beheshti, 2014), health-gender and sexual orientation (Mehra & Tidwell, 2014), and other trends in LIS Research (Wusu & Lazarus, 2018). This study builds upon that literature by exploring the publication characteristics of full-time LIS faculty teaching health courses and the scholarship patterns of this underexplored group. This bibliometric analysis examined the connections between research and practice by examining publications from 2011 to 2021 by LIS faculty that teach health-related courses for library science programs in the United States and Canada. The data sources were located through searching course listings, faculty profiles, and syllabi from school websites and contacting deans and directors to identify full-time LIS faculty teaching health-related courses in American Library Association (ALA) accredited programs. The 29 LIS faculty that were identified through this process were contacted via email in September 2021, inviting them to voluntarily share their curriculum vitae (CVs) for analysis. The final sample of 21 CVs is comprised of the 16 faculty members who responded to the email invitation providing their CVs and five CVs that were publicly available online. The research team used descriptive bibliometrics to explore author, author order, year of publication, source, type of publication, etc. Insight and implications pertaining to connecting LIS faculty research, teaching health-related courses, and practice will be presented, as well as recommendations for future research directions.

Adoption of Visual Programming Environments in Programming Learning

Programming education is gradually integrated into the school and university curricula. Accordingly, studies in the Computer Science education field have highlighted issues such as high failure rate, memorizing, bugs, the complexity of concepts, motivation, and uconfidence faced by students when learning a programming language, specifically object-oriented programming. These issues require specific learning environments to reach the target audience. Therefore, the objectives of this article are to identify the issues based on previous work and to verify those issues by interview feedback conducted with lecturers in the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology at the Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Following that, the theoretical principles underpinning environments were studied to explore the suitability of these environments for university education based on the identified issues. The investigated environments included Turtle Graphics, Alice, BlueJ, Greenfoot, Snap!, and NetsBlox, a co-located collaborative block-based programming, and OOPP were studied and used to teach and learn object-oriented programming. Based on the interviews with experts, we found that students still had issues when learning programming, which involved memorizing, bugs, the complexity of concepts, unconfidence, communicating with students during a calamity (distance learning), and a number of students in labs. We conclude that these environments focus on some issues and ignore others, and no single environment satisfies all these issues, which causes students to be demotivated. In a further study, all these issues will be addressed by developing a learning environment, and its effectiveness shall be tested.

Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation of Librarian Students using Virtual Reality for Education in the Context of Culture Heritage Museums

In this study the effects of intrinsic motivation and learning competency of virtual realitybased learning is compared to traditional text-based learning. In the study 28 students were involved from the second and third years of the library and information science faculty. The application of the fully immersive virtual 3D environment of Wieng Yong House was developed to support the virtual realitybased learning in the context of museums for culture heritage. To verify the hypothesis, the control group (traditional text-based learning), consisted of 14 students, used the course module of metadata for culture heritage in the museum whereas the experimental group (control group), consisted of 14 students, was provided virtual reality-based learning in the virtual museum. The tools of measurement were the pre-test/post-test quiz for learning competency and Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) with interview. The statistical model of paired sampled t-test assumptions was chosen for the statistical investigation for the hypothesis. The results suggest that constructing a virtual reality for learning in the context of a museum for cultural heritage might be a good way to enhance intrinsic motivation but cannot sufficiently and significantly improve the student's learning competency.

Assessing the societal value of a service-learning project in information studies during the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this work is to assess the societal value of a Service-Learning (SL) project carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic by the Faculty of Information Science of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in collaboration with two Senior Centers of the City of Madrid. The aim of the project was to support elderly’s integration in the online activities carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic and to train them in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The analysis of societal value is based on a case study and a varied range of data whose purpose is to provide multiple insights into the experience, emphasizing communicative processes. The results corroborate the educational value of experiential learning for students, although the impact on the community appears limited by the role of consumers of a service that participating elderly ended up playing. The evaluation of the project by the faculty leading the activities was corroborated by the institutional partner and provides evidence of the capacity for societal transformation of higher education institutions.

Department of Electronics, Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University

Department of Electronics, Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University

Dr. Mohammad Kamrul Hasandr. Mohammad Kamrul Hasan (Mieee’13, Smieee’17) is Currently Working as a Senior Lecturer in Thenetwork and Communication Technology Research Cluster, Center for Cyber Security, Faculty Ofinformation Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Ukm). He Completed a Doctor Ofphilosophy (Ph.D.) Degree in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering,International Islamic University, Malaysia, in 2016. Dr. Hasan

Dr. Mohammad Kamrul Hasandr. Mohammad Kamrul Hasan (Mieee’13, Smieee’17) is Currently Working as a Senior Lecturer in Thenetwork and Communication Technology Research Cluster, Center for Cyber Security, Faculty Ofinformation Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Ukm). He Completed a Doctor Ofphilosophy (Ph.D.) Degree in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering,International Islamic University, Malaysia, in 2016. Dr. Hasan

Evaluating the Use of Journal Prestige as a Metric for Academic Research Faculty: A Case of Library and Information Science Faculty in the United States and Canada

This article addresses concerns about the effect of extradisciplinary researchers on recent rankings of library and information science (LIS) school researchers’ productivity by proposing a measure based on Laura Manzari’s 2013 study of LIS journal prestige. Journal ratings from Manzari’s study are assigned to the publications in each of more than 400 LIS faculty-researcher curricula vitae. A cumulative prestige rating for each researcher’s publications is then calculated, and rankings for faculty members and LIS programs are derived. The findings indicate that the cumulative prestige rating is a strong indicator of professor, comparing favorably with early publications of Budd, while diminishing the impact of shifts toward a greater number of extradisciplinary researchers in LIS education on the rankings of top contributors to LIS literature. These findings are important for offering an alternative perspective of scholarly productivity. This approach may prove beneficial for LIS program directors and committees in making tenure and promotion decisions among their faculty.

Research productivity of library and information science faculty in India and the United States : A comparison based on publications, citations and h-index

The present study compared research productivity of Library and Information Science (LIS) faculties working in 61 government universities of India and 55 American Library Association-accredited LIS programs in the United States. A regression model is used to determine the effect of independent variables i.e. number of publications, number of citations per publication, and total number of citations for top-cited publication on h-index value of faculties. Further, k-means cluster analysis (three tier) is performed for each rank of faculties (full, associate & assistant professor) based on their publication and citation. The findings of this study indicate that for both countries h-index value of LIS faculties is related to number of publications and citations per publication, while mitigating the impact of a highly-cited publication. The top tier of Indian LIS faculties by publications, have more publications, citations for most-cited publication, and larger h-index than the lowest tier in the U.S. (though these researchers do have a higher number of citations per publication). The most productive LIS Faculties in the U.S. have about 3.5 times more publications, citations, and h-index than Indian LIS faculties. Finally, for the evaluation of LIS researchers for tenure and promotion decisions in regard to h-index, the study suggests that it may provide more equitable valuation of research productivity than looking at raw number of citation counts, while providing more information about quality of publications than just the raw number of publications alone.

Spotlights: Faculty, Alum, Kaigler Children's Book Festival

Dr. Sarah Mangrum joined the School of Library and Information Science faculty at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Fall 2021. Carlos B. Crockett, Reference Library at the Terrebonne Parish Main Library earned his Master’s in Library and Information Science at The University of Southern Mississippi (2013). A star-studded Virtual 2022 Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival takes place on April 6-8, 2022 with Brian Selznick (Medallion winner), Jen Bryant, Nic Stone and Angie Thomas, Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome, Raúl the Third, Eric L. Tribunella and Donna Washington.