Factors Influencing Perceptions and Attitudes of Nurses Towards the Use of ICT in Patient Care in KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa

This paper presents the results of a study to determine factors influencing perceptions and attitudes of nurses towards the use of ICT in 16 hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, South Africa. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire and factor analysis performed to extract relevant variables. Overall, results revealed positive dispositions of nurses towards the use of ICT. Results further revealed self-efficacy, adoption of computers to improve nursing care, confidence in using computers; usefulness; interactability and knowledgeability were major factors influencing perceptions and attitudes of nurses towards use of ICT at the work place. Findings may inform institutional and provincial ICT infrastructure development decisions to improve nursing services in hospitals. Theoretically the study provides an understanding of factors influencing attitudes and perceptions of nurses’ in the use of ICT at work place from a developing country context such as South Africa and also in vast rural province such as KZN

Ethical aspects of doctoral-research advising in the emerging African information society

This paper discusses the ethical aspects of doctoral-research advising in the emerging African information society from an African perspective. It addresses the following research questions: What is the status of information ethics in Africa? What theoretical frameworks are available to illuminate the ethical dimension of the emerging African information society? To what extent are ethical aspects of the emerging African information society integrated into doctoral research advising in library and information science in Africa? What are the roles and obligations of the supervisor and supervisee in doctoral research? How is information and communication technology (ICT) being used to enhance doctoral-research advising? The paper is underpinned by various ethical theoretical models, such as the Trust Model, Hayward Power Relations, classical and contemporary ethical traditions, and game theory. It relies upon a literature survey to address the research problems. Results reveal, among other things, the milestones achieved by African scholars in promoting information ethics through curriculum development and research. However, there is a need for the evolving information society to take cognizance of African cultural contexts. The results also reveal that supervisor–supervisee relationships are constrained. The ethical dimension of the emerging African information society should be infused into the doctoral-research process to improve the relationships of supervisor and supervisee. This should be supported by responsible use of ICT, taking into account the Africa cultural context and African values to facilitate the doctoral-advising process. All these should be buttressed by an enabling policy framework at the institutional level to promote harmony and productivity in doctoral research.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Information Management as a Nexus to Promote the use of Indigenous Medicine and Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis

This paper uses a bibliometric analysis to explore the citations trend in ethnomedicine and information management. A text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) was conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The first objective was to analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trends and establish if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Secondly, the study sought to establish if there is already a link in information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promote indigenous use of herbal medicine and enhance public healthcare delivery systems on the African continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size was 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications output was n= 8,333, while the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggest that researchers have yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within public healthcare to promote its efficacy

Bibliometric Analysis of Citation Trends and Publications on E-government in Southern African Countries: A Human-computer Interactions and IT Alignment Debate

Due to technology adoption, many countries are embracing e-government. This study presents the growth and pattern of research on e-government articles and conference proceedings internationally, by scholars in the Southern African countries. It presents research patterns, trends and current gaps in e-government, as well as the most prolific authors and the level of outputs’ prominence. This paper uses bibliometric tools to present the analysis of articles on Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases. R computational programming for big data analysis was used to generate summarized metrics. The citation sample size was (n = 33,689), µ = 625, and the outputs impact based on total link strength of citations were; min =11.0, max = 1,686.0 and µ = 118.2, showing the Southern African scholars outputs visibility and prominence on e-government research. The findings present the most prolific authors in the Southern African region and the prominence of their outputs on e-governance. The study, through the computational synthesis of the data, also reveals some of the missing links in e-governance research designs and implementation. Furthermore, the study indicates that the service-oriented design of e-government platforms are still lacking, and the integration of Information Technology (IT) alignment, which is necessary to successfully implement e-government is lacking. The use and integration of mobile technology to enhance citizen-centric and participatory public governance platform and e-government implementation is not sufficiently addressed. Therefore, there is need to measure the maturity level of e-government IT deployment, its user-interfaces, as well as the design of an e-government that is able to respond to often embryonic and heterogeneous needs of citizens

Information Management as Nexus to Promote Indigenous Medicine Use to Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis

The paper uses a bibliometric analysis explore citations trend of ethnomedicine and information management, and text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) were conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The objectives of this study were to first, analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trend and to find out if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Second, to establish if there is an already link in the information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promoting indigenous use of herbal medicine to enhance public healthcare delivery systems in the continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and VOS bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size were 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications outputs were n= 8,333 and the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and it’s citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggested that researchers were yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within the public healthcare delivery to promote its efficacies

A Review of Information Behaviour Literature on Professoriates across Disciplinary Fields

This paper reviewed empirical literature on information behaviour of academic faculty across disciplinary fields with particular reference to studies whose demography included the professoriate in the context of their information needs, purposeful information seeking and use of information for teaching and research. Paucity of literature focusing on the professoriate prompted this study. Literature focusing on the professoriate will provide a rich theoretical and contextual background for researchers embarking on studies that focus specifically on the professoriate in related information context, besides filling the knowledge gap in library and information science literature. The scope of the literature review covers scholarly journals in major electronic databases and search engines such as EBSCOhost, ERIC, Social Science Citation Index, ProQuest, Google and Google Scholar. In reviewing the empirical literature, attention was given to literature with professoriate in their population. The outcome of the literature review revealed the general information needs of the professoriate are for teaching and research. Literature on purposeful information seeking revealed the professoriates’ use of print and electronic information resources varied across disciplinary fields, and is influenced by age, environmental and individual characteristics. Use of electronic information resources is context-dependent and prevailed more in research settings and in studies conducted in the West relative to those carried out in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. The paper concludes that in-spite of the continued relevance of print information resources, electronic information resources usage continue to increase in academic environment that is fast embracing information technology

A Framework for Integrating Information Ethics (IE) in the Curricula for Africa

The debate about embedding information ethics (IE) in the curriculum in Africa is gaining momentum as scholars from developed and developing world engage on the subject. Some research publications are starting to emerge on information ethics in Africa but so far they have been confined to addressing the extent to which information ethics is necessary, who should offer information ethics and why, who should be taught and at what levels, the duration of offering the course/program and the content that should be included in the curriculum. Little attention has been placed on the theoretical framework that should underpin IE curriculum for Africa as well as the sources of IE content for the curriculum. This paper therefore addresses the following issues: rationale for integrating information ethics in the curricula in Africa; theoretical and institutional framework for IE curriculum; potential sources of content for information ethics curricula, challenges of integrating information ethics into the curricula in Africa and prospects for integrating IE into the curricula in Africa.</jats:p

Copy cataloguing in the online environment: Do we still need qualified cataloguers?

The paper examines copy cataloguing in Cape Town Metropolitan Public Libraries. The study was necessitated by the fact that cataloguing is a critical aspect of the library work without which there would be total chaos in the organization of library materials, making location and use of such materials almost impossible. The following research questions were formulated: What skills do the cataloguers of Cape Town Metropolitan libraries possess? To what extent do cataloguers in Cape Town Metropolitan public libraries adhere to international standards when creating records in the online catalogue? How copy cataloguing is done in Cape Town Metropolitan public libraries? Mixed methods and case study design were employed. The population of the study was made of 6 cataloguers and 500 000 OPAC records. A census of 6 cataloguers was applied. The sample of 384 was used for OPAC records. Focus group interview and document analysis were used to collect data. Findings indicated that the records that cataloguers were copying from OCLC were of low quality and consumed more time when editing than creating original cataloguing. The study among other things recommends that copy cataloguing should be carried out by professionally experienced cataloguers. Furthermore, policies concerning adaptation of copy catalogue records should be established. Keywords: Cataloguing, Copy cataloguing, Catalogue records, Cataloguing skills, Online catalogue

Policy gaps and technological deficiencies in social networking environments: Implications for information sharing

Background: With the growing adoption and acceptance of social networking, there are increased concerns about the violation of the users’ legitimate rights such as privacy, confidentiality, trust, security, safety, content ownership, content accuracy, integrity, access and accessibility to computer and digital networks amongst others.Objectives: The study sought to investigate the following research objectives to: (1) describe the types of social networks, (2) examine global penetration of the social networks, (3) outline the users’ legitimate rights that must be protected in the social networking sites (SNS), (4) determine the methods employed by SNS to protect the users’ legitimate rights and (5) identify the policy gaps and technological deficiencies in the protection of the users’ legitimate rights in the SNS.Method: A literature survey and content analysis of the SNS user policies were used to address objective four and objective five respectively.Results: The most actively used sites were Facebook and Twitter. Asian markets were leading in participation and in creating content than any other region. Business, education, politics and governance sectors were actively using social networking sites. Social networking sites relied upon user trust and internet security features which however, were inefficient and inadequate.Conclusion: Whilst SNS were impacting people of varying ages and of various professional persuasions, there were increased concerns about the violation and infringement of the users’ legitimate rights. Reliance on user trust and technological security features SNS to protect the users’ legitimate rights seemed ineffectual and inadequate

Growth of the Digital Economy

As pointed out in the previous chapter, the concepts ‘digital economy’, ‘information economy’, ‘information society’ and ‘knowledge society/economy’ are inextricably intertwined and are often used interchangeably. However, the concept ‘information society’ is increasingly being seen as a unifying term. In defence of why this is so, Schienstock et al. (1999) have argued that the notion of an ‘information society’ is presented as a strategic aim meant to overcome current social stagnation. The central argument is that the information society would create and secure millions of new jobs; guarantee economic competitiveness; bring ecological advantages; intensify democracy; and revolutionize our ways of living and working with the help of new communication technologies.</jats:p