Marketing Strategy: A Tool for Library and Information Services Delivery by Academic Libraries in Southwest Nigeria.

Adoption of marketing concept into information oriented organizations such as academic libraries has become imperative especially with the proliferation of information technology where libraries are no longer seen as the sole custodian of knowledge. This study therefore aimed at investigating the need for marketing strategy as tool for library and information services delivery by academic libraries using the various technology driven facilities. The survey research design was adopted for the study. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 6 libraries from federal, state and private owned universities in South Western Nigeria. Total enumeration technique was used in selecting the sample size consisting of 148 librarians and library officers in the institutions. Data were gathered using questionnaire and the findings revealed that face to face approach and use of the notice boards are the most common methods used in these libraries. Though some marketing strategies are already in use, services like indexing and abstracting which is even an ancient strategy is giving way for new technologies. Likewise, database searching, network and rich site summary, and email alerts which are the commonest of all are yet to be fully embraced. It was revealed that adopting marketing strategies in service delivery has enhanced the image of these libraries and has boosted library professionals’ self actualization. However, challenges such as inadequate skills and lack of funds among others constitute threats to effective use of marketing strategies in library service delivery

Insolvency of Small Civil Engineering Firms: An Examination of Critical Strategic Factors

Construction industry insolvency studies have failed to stem the industry’s high insolvency tide because many focus on big civil engineering firms (CEF) when over 90% firms in the industry are small or micro (S&M). This study thus set out to uncover insolvency criteria of S&M CEFs and the underlying factors using mixed methods. Using convenience sampling, storytelling method was used to execute interviews of 16 respondents from insolvent firms. Narrative and thematic analysis were used to extract 17 criteria under 2 groups. Criteria were used to formulate questionnaire of which 81 completed copies were received and analysed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and relevance index score for reliability and ranking respectively. The five most relevant criteria are: economic recession, immigration, too many new firms springing up, collecting receivables and burden of sustainable construction. The 4 underlying factors established through factor analysis are: market forces, competence-based management, operations efficiency and other management issues and information management. The factors were in line with Mintzberg’s and Porters’ strategy theories. Results demonstrate that insolvency factors affecting big and small CEF can be quite different and sometimes, even opposite. This research will provide a unique resource on the ‘beware’ factors for potential owners of S&M CEF. The criteria are potential variables for insolvency prediction models for S&M CEFs

Construction and demolition waste - a shift toward Lean Construction and Building Information Model

Waste in the construction industry is a devastating dilemma, especially that construction and demolition activities are considered as the highest waste generator globally. Countries have developed regulations: policy-makers and professional associations have provided norms and policies to manage C&D waste. Previous studies, however, have revealed insufficiencies in the current regulations and norms in incentivizing the industry practices toward waste prevention, since its culture is characterized by the gap in technological use, insufficient knowledge, poor planning, and poor information flow. This research provides a literature review on the current research findings and trends in managing C&D waste. Then based on design theory and theory of production, an exploratory research consisting of BIM and Lean construction concepts is provided. Lean can maximize the value of construction by addressing waste within portfolios, projects, and operations; BIM offers an enhanced collaborative platform with improved design practice and information management throughout buildings’ life cycle. The proposed conceptual framework enables economic, environmental, and social benefits to allow practitioners collaborate, analyze, and minimize construction waste throughout buildings’ life cycle.(undefined

MasakhaPOS: Part-of-Speech Tagging for Typologically Diverse African languages

In this paper, we present AfricaPOS, the largest part-of-speech (POS) dataset for 20 typologically diverse African languages. We discuss the challenges in annotating POS for these languages using the universal dependencies (UD) guidelines. We conducted extensive POS baseline experiments using both conditional random field and several multilingual pre-trained language models. We applied various cross-lingual transfer models trained with data available in the UD. Evaluating on the AfricaPOS dataset, we show that choosing the best transfer language(s) in both single-source and multi-source setups greatly improves the POS tagging performance of the target languages, in particular when combined with parameter-fine-tuning methods. Crucially, transferring knowledge from a language that matches the language family and morphosyntactic properties seems to be more effective for POS tagging in unseen languages

Use of CD-ROM MEDLINE by Medical Students of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Use of information technology in information acquisition, especially MEDLINE on CD-ROM and online, has been evaluated in several localities and regions, especially in the advanced countries. Use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM is still very poor among the medical students of the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, due to lack of awareness, insufficient personal computers, nonperiodic training, and the high cost of using the facility. Due to financial constraints, MEDLINE online and sufficiently-networked computer systems are not available. OBJECTIVE: To report on the situation in Nigeria, a developing country, so as to compare the current awareness of searching MEDLINE on CD-ROM among the medical students at the University of Lagos with the awareness of their overseas' counterparts. This is the first step toward setting up an online PubMed search as well as expanding the computer systems and network. METHODS: Essentially based on cross-sectional proportional sampling using structured questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and focus-group discussions among the medical students and library staff. The study involved the medical students in their second year to sixth (final) year of study. RESULTS: Of the 250 students interviewed, 130 (52%) were aware of MEDLINE on CD-ROM searches as a means of information retrieval. Only 60 (24%) had used MEDLINE on CD-ROM — 2% had used MEDLINE on CD-ROM more than 9 times; 4%, 7 to 9 times; 8%, 4 to 6 times; and 10%, 1 to 3 times. Of the students who used MEDLINE on CD-ROM search, 22% used it in preparing for examinations, 24% in research, 6% in patient care, and 26% in preparation of assignments and clinical cases. Lack of awareness (52%) and cost of undertaking MEDLINE on CD-ROM search (46%) were identified as important factors that discouraged the use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM. CONCLUSIONS: Though the above factors were recognized as important, it was concluded that the reasons for the poor use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM are multifactorial. Poor use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM could be attributed to these critical underlying factors: nonavailability of networked personal computers, which should be connected to a central server; lack of mandatory assignments to the medical students that would specifically require use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM; financial constraints on the university management; and infrequent periodic orientation on use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM. It was therefore suggested that the number of personal computers should be increased and that the library staff should periodically train the preclinical and clinical medical students in searching MEDLINE on CD-ROM. These steps would enable the medical students to benefit from online PubMed searching when it becomes fully operational in the future

Deep learning models for health and safety risk prediction in power infrastructure projects

Inappropriate management of Health and safety (H&S) risk in power infrastructure projects can result in occupational accidents and equipment damage. Accidents at work have detrimental effects on workers, company, and the general public. Despite the availability of H&S incident data, utilising them to mitigate accident occurrence effectively is challenging due to inherent limitations of existing data logging methods. In this study, we used a text mining approach for retrieving meaningful terms from data and develop six deep learning (DL) models for H&S risks management in power infrastructure. The DL models include DNNclassify (risk or no risk), DNNreg1 (loss time), DNNreg2 (body injury), DNNreg3 (plant & fleet), DNNreg4 (equipment), and DNNreg5 (environment). An H&S risk database obtained from a leading UK power infrastructure construction company was used in developing the models using the H2O framework of the R language. Performances of DL models were assessed and benchmarked with existing models using test data and appropriate performance metrics. The overall accuracy of the classification model was 0.93. The average R-squared value for the five regression models was 0.92, with Mean Absolute Error (MAE) between 0.91 and 0.94. The presented results, in addition to the developed user-interface module, will help practitioners obtain a better understanding of H&S challenges, minimise project costs (such as third-party insurance and equipment repairs), and offer effective strategies to mitigate H&S risk