Developing the rural community is one of the main government agendas. One of the methods used by the government to develop the rural community is by ensuring continuous delivery of information. In tandem with this, many high impact projects for the rural community have been introduced particularly on ICT. Nonetheless, besides ICT, the government also has rural library to rely on. In a number of local and international studies, rural library has been proven to benefit the rural community. The main query of this study is to identify the impingement factors of the rural library usage among rural youth and the findings obtained are expected to contribute to the existing literatures. Using a qualitative method, focus group discussions (FGDs) have been carried out among two groups, one of the FGDs was conducted with six librarians and another FGD was conducted among six rural library users. The FGDs were conducted in Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia. Data gained were later transcribed verbatim and analysed. Based on the analysis done, a total of eight main factors that can impinge their usage of rural library services have been identified. In order to further enhance the usage of rural library services among youth, this study suggests that issues such as relevant sources and activities, youth involvement in the planning process, a better way of promotion and roles of librarians should be highly considered.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reading habit and attitude among rural communities in the low literacy rate areas in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
Multi-stage cluster and simple random sampling were employed and 400 respondents who live nearby the rural library were selected.
Findings
Moderate levels of reading attitude were obtained from the result of the study, in which several variables produced a significant relationship in the reading attitude (education level, household income and time spent in reading).
Practical implications
Better understanding on the reading habit and attitude among rural communities could produce better information on the service provision towards the establishment of rural libraries in low literacy rate areas in Malaysia. This would also increase the utilisation of reading sources and services provided.
Originality/value
The paper provides better understanding on the reading habit and attitude among the rural communities in the low literacy rate areas in using the facilities provided by the rural libraries. The findings may be useful to the rural literacy and library development community in the developing countries.
The swift evolution of mobile phone technology has benefited various groups within communities. Fishermen, as one of the important groups, particularly in terms of their role in ensuring the nation's food security, rely on mobile phones to conduct their fishing routines. While there is an abundance of studies that explore factors influencing mobile phone usage in various groups of communities, less interest has been placed on mobile phone usage among fishermen. This has driven the current study to its focal objective, which is to determine the behavioral factors that influence the usage of mobile phones among fishermen. This study is quantitative, and surveys a total of 250 registered fishermen from Pangkor Island -one of the main fishing areas in Perak. The results demonstrate that most of the fishermen use mobile phones for safety and communication purposes. In addition, due to a number of problems, fishermen are found to use advanced mobile phone applications such as 3G, Internet and GPS at a minimal level. Further analysis confirms that four behavioral factors, namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, behavioral intention and social influence, have positive and significant correlations with mobile phone usage.
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