Content analysis of medical college library websites in Pakistan indicates necessary improvements

Khusro

2022

ITAL

Library and information science has been at an infant stage in Pakistan, primarily in resource management, description, discovery, and access. The reasons are many, including the lack of interest and use of modern tools, techniques, and best practices by librarians in Pakistan. Finding a solution to these challenges requires a comprehensive study that identifies the current state of libraries in Pakistan. This paper fills this gap in the literature by reviewing the relevant literature published between 2015 and 2021 and selected through a rigorous search and selection methodology. It also analyzes the websites of 82 libraries in Pakistan through a theoretical framework based on various aspects. The findings of this study include: Libraries in Pakistan need a transition from traditional and limited solutions to more advanced information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, user-friendly, and state-of-the-art systems to produce dynamic, consumable, and sharable knowledge space. They must adopt social semantic cataloging to bring all the stakeholders on a single platform. A libraries consortium should be developed to link users to local, multilingual, and multicultural collections for improved knowledge production, recording, sharing, acquisition, and dissemination. These findings benefit Pakistani libraries, librarians, information science professionals, and researchers in other developing countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind providing insights into the current state of libraries in Pakistan through the study of their websites using a rigorous theoretical framework and in the light of the latest relevant literature.

Section: Adherence To New Standards Practices and Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Library Management Practices in the Libraries of Pakistan

Khusro

2022

ITAL

J Fatima Jinnah Med Univ

“…Students are continuously being assessed with oral, written and practical examinations that spans the whole year followed by the final Professional Examination, lasting more than a month, conducted by the University of Health Sciences in Lahore. 8 The rationale of this study is to evaluate the correlation between the sleep disturbances and academic performance and the relative stress caused by it. The study aims to determine the prevalence as well as the relationship of academic stress and pattern of sleeping problems among medical students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prevalence of Indices of Stress with Degree of Insomnia and Academic Performance in Undergraduate Medical Students

Nasir,

Zafar,

Hussain

et al. 2023

Background: Studying medicine is quite challenging as medical students have to work hours and hours which leads to continuous psychological stress and as a result decrease in sleep duration and quality. This study aims to determine the prevalence as well as the relationship of academic stress and pattern of sleeping problems among medical students. Subjects and Methods: In this cross-sectional study,128 non-obese medical students (18 -23 years old, BMI=18.5-24.9) are included and they are divided into 2 groups as non-stressed (K10≤19) and stressed (K10>19) medical students. We have used Kessler Psychological Distress Scale(K10), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Scale (PSQI) and percentage of Professional Examination Result to assess stress, sleep quality and academic performance, respectively. Results: PSQI scores were less in the stressed[8.5(3─17)] as compared to non-stressed [6(1─17)] subjects (p=0.000) while academic score (percentage) in stressed [70.9(59─77)] was lesser than that of non-stressed[76.7(57─86)] subjects (p=0.000).Within the non-stressed subjects,K10 scores were positively correlated to PSQI scores (rho=0.294, p=0.018) and negatively correlated to academic score (rho= -0.319, p=0.010).Similarly in the stressed subjects there was a positive correlation between K10 and PSQI scores (rho=0.435, p=0.000) and a negative correlation between K10 and academic scores( rho= -0.251, p=0.045) Conclusion: This study suggests that both sleep quality and academic performance reduces with increase in stress among non-obese medical students. Keywords: stress, non-obese, medical students, sleep quality, academic performance.

Analysis of content, services, and resources available and accessible on websites of academic libraries

Dei

2024

DLP

Purpose This study aims to review the content of academic libraries’ websites with specific reference to the general information, services, information resources, features and functionalities, instructional tools to support teaching, learning and research for the patrons and users, and the visibility or activeness of the navigational tools on the websites. Design/methodology/approach The study focused on six categories of tertiary institutions: public universities, technical universities, chartered private universities, university colleges, colleges of education and nursing and midwifery schools. From each category, the researchers purposively selected five different institutions with library websites. Thus, 30 library websites were reviewed and analyzed for this study. Findings The review disclosed a generally low content and information on the websites in terms of the availability of information resources and collections; the types of services available at the libraries via the websites; the features and functionalities of the websites; the instructional tools to support teaching, learning and research for the patrons and users; and the visibility or activeness of the navigational tools on the websites. Despite this, the public universities displayed more and above average information, services, information resources, instructional tools and navigational tools on their library websites, followed by the technical universities, chartered private universities and university colleges. Conversely, the colleges of education and nursing and midwifery schools were to a large extent unable to provide information relating to electronic resources, instructional tools and navigational tools. Research limitations/implications The study was limited to 30 library websites from all six categories of tertiary institutions in Ghana. From the study, the management of the universities and the libraries must appreciate the significant role of websites in providing information and resources in support of teaching, research and learning at the institutions. In this regard, they need to provide the necessary support and resources for the effective deployment and operationalization of websites. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind as no study seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the content of academic libraries’ websites with specific reference to the general information, services, information resources, features, functionalities, instructional tools to support teaching, learning and research for the patrons and users, and the visibility or activeness of the navigational tools on the websites.