The public library as a critical institution in South Africa's democracy : a reflection

Article published in the online open access journal LIBRIS, Curtin University, Perth, West AustraliaSouth Africa came out of apartheid rule in 1994. This transition has brought with it its own set of challenges including that of access to information, an essential pillar in upholding a democracy. In this transitional period, South Africa is reliant on every possible institution to contribute to the growth of its fledgling democracy. It is clearly evident from the literature that democratic societies are dependent on such institutions as public libraries to uphold fundamental principles of democracy. This paper reflects on the public library, within the South African context, as an essential institution in the growth and sustainability of democracy through equitable access to information and knowledge. The paper discusses issues such as the public library and its role in equitable access to information, the contradictory environments within South Africa, recreational reading and the public library scenario, lifelong learning, and the public library and the educational system. Other issues such as support for indigenous materials and adult literacy are also addressed in the paper. The authors conclude that the real concern in South Africa today is the gulf between the “haves”, of any colour, and the “have-nots” and the capacity of the public library to bridge that gap via its contribution to the reduction of illiteracy, poverty and unemployment, the scourge of Africa and South Africa. It is a given that public libraries play a critical role in the propagation of democracy, especially in a continent that has been plagued by dictatorships and military rule

LIS Education in the Digital Age for an African Agenda

To provide an exposé of digital-age library and information science (LIS) education for an African agenda, this paper adopts an emergent qualitative research design by drawing on the literature on LIS education in Africa. It also draws on data gleaned from a survey of heads of schools of LIS in South Africa, and from content analyses of LIS school websites in South Africa and selected parts of the continent. The paper locates its narrative within Abbott’s chaos of disciplines theory and concludes that the LIS discipline’s “interstitial nature,” its “fractal distinctions in time,” and the resulting chaos of disciplines should not be seen as a crisis for LIS education in Africa and globally, but as an opportunity for a paradigm shift to broaden the LIS disciplinary domain and to stake an intellectual claim on this extended domain—and so contribute to the growth and development of LIS services in Africa within the context of an African development agenda

Knowledge and skills for the digital era academic library

Technology has altered the traditional academic library beyond recognition. These dramatic changes have impacted significantly on the knowledge and skills requirements for LIS professionals practising in this environment. While there have been studies in other parts of the world which have investigated the knowledge and skills requirements for the digital era academic library environment, to date no comprehensive study has 'drilled' down into this area in the South African context. This paper reports on a preliminary study which is part of a wider study aimed at developing a comprehensive skills statement which would provide an objective framework against which professional LIS practitioners in the modern academic library environment in South Africa may both measure their existing competencies and also identify the need for further skills acquisition. The research question guiding this preliminary investigation was: What key knowledge and skills are required for LIS professionals to effectively and efficiently practise in a digital era academic library in South Africa? The triangulated findings (using content analysis of job advertisements and semi-structured interviews) from this preliminary investigation are used to ascertain an initial picture of key knowledge and skills sets required for LIS professionals in this environment. These preliminary findings also proved useful in teasing out some of the parameters for the wider study targeting the development of a comprehensive skills statement for higher education libraries in South Africa. The study reported here has relevance for the academic library context in other parts of the world as well

To teach or not to teach? The question of the academic librarian’s pedagogical competencies in the digital age

This paper revisits the issue of ‘librarian as teacher’ in the literature and draws empirical evidence on the question of the pedagogical knowledge and skills requirements of academic librarians. A pragmativist paradigm and both quantitative and qualitative philosophical assumptions are used to address this research problem. The paper reports on the outcome of content analysis of academic library job advertisements for professional library and information services positions in South Africa, supported by findings from websites of South African LIS schools and selected data from a 2015 national online survey of academic librarians in South Africa. Such an analysis, framed by Shank and Bell’s (2011, 105) concept of “disruptive innovations” leading to their framework for blended librarianship, is used to ascertain the pedagogical competency requirements of the academic librarian in South Africa in the current digital age. The findings include a list of pedagogical competency requirements for academic librarians and provide a critical narrative, in the context of international trends and the study’s conceptual framing, on the extent to which academic librarians in South Africa meet these requirements

Impact of the digital divide on information literacy training in a higher education context

This paper reports on a master's study undertaken to investigate the impact of the digital divide on information literacy (IL) training of Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). Since 1994 the demographics of higher education institutions in South Africa have changed. Today these institutions comprise heterogeneous groups of students, by race, economic background, digital background, etc. and consequently with different levels of literacy, information and otherwise. The problem that this study addressed was the impact of having both digitally advantaged and digitally disadvantaged students in the same information literacy classroom, expecting them to reach learning outcomes without frustrating students from either group. The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of the digital divide on IL training of ECP students at the DUT and to recommend guidelines for teaching and learning of IL that would accommodate both digitally advantaged and digitally disadvantaged students. The study employed a mixed method approach in its research design. Data was collected from ECP students (of 2010) by means of a questionnaire; an interview schedule was used to collect data from Subject Librarians involved in teaching the IL module to ECP students; a separate interview schedule was used to collect data from the ECP Coordinator. Qualitative and quantitative data collected were prepared for analysis by means of content analysis and numerical coding, respectively and then subjected to statistical analysis via SPSS, which produced percentage and frequency distributions to ascertain findings. The findings of the study revealed that the digital divide does impact on IL training in ways such as: slowing down the progress of IL lessons; basic computer skills need to be taught in the IL classroom; and that digitally disadvantaged students find it difficult to follow online lessons while advantaged students already have the expertise to access online information. Based on these findings the study recommended computer literacy training should precede IL training and that various creative teaching and learning methods such as group work, online tutorials, games and interactive websites should be incorporated into IL education to accommodate both digitally advantaged and digitally disadvantaged students in the IL classroom

Future LIS education and evolving global competency requirements for the digital information environment: an epistemological overview

In the context of an evolving digitally-oriented library and/or information science (LIS) discipline and framed by Andrew Abbott’s (2001) Chaos of Disciplines theory, this paper presents an epistemological overview of evolving competency requirements for a global digital information environment and the implications of this for future LIS education. In doing so it draws from i) an international case study of ongoing research by the IFLA BSLISE (Building Strong LIS Education) Working Group into the development of an international framework for the assessment of quality standards in LIS education, and ii) a national (South African) case study involving the compilation of a LIS competency index in a highly digitally-oriented information environment. The Chaos of Disciplines theory was originally conceptualized to demonstrate the evolution of disciplines in the social sciences. Its core principals of The Interstitial Character of a Discipline and Fractal Distinctions in Time are employed as a heuristic tool to connect the empirical evidence from these two purposively selected case studies to the inherent nature of the LIS discipline and the implications of this for i) competency requirements for professional practice in a highly digitized global information environment, and ii) future LIS education responding to these competency exigencies

Diversity, inclusion, and social justice in the information context: global south perspectives

This is an editorial of the special issue of the International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 4(3/4), 2020 authored by the guest editor (Jaya Raju)

Evaluations of the Characteristics of the Tropo-Strato-Mesopause Height and Temperature Variability over Bahir Dar, Ethiopia (11.60 N, 37.30 E) Using SABER

The height profile of atmospheric temperature data between 12 km and 100 km was obtained from SABER/TIMED satellite instruments during the year 2016 and used to characterize the three atmospheric pauses temporal variability of height and temperature over Bahir Dar, Ethiopia (11.60 N, 37.30 E). The daily, monthly, and frequency distributions of tropopause-stratopause-mesopause height and temperature are investigated. From the frequency distribution, we had found that of the tropopause-stratopause-mesopause height 17 km, 48 km, and 98 km with the corresponding temperature 192 K, 268 K, and 148 K. The decrement (cooling) trend lines of tropopause height 0.7 K/year and its corresponding tropopause increment temperature has been ~1.5 K/year. The stratopause and mesopause trend lines of height are insignificant and the corresponding decrement (cooling) temperatures are ~3 K/year and ~13 K/year respectively. The mean monthly maximum heights of tropopause 19 km in May with a corresponding maximum temperature of 201 K in September. The maximum stratopause height 49.5 km in February and July and its temperature 268 K and 267 K in February and April respectively. The maximum mesopause height 98 km, 95 km, 97 km in March, Jun, and November respectively, and its maximum temperature 196 K and 198 K in January and July respectively

Human adenovirus type 19 infection of corneal cells induces p38 MAPK-dependent interleukin-8 expression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Human adenovirus type 19 (HAdV-19) is a major cause of epidemic keratoconjunctivitis, the only ocular adenoviral infection associated with prolonged corneal inflammation. In this study, we investigated the role of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) in HAdV-19 infection, with particular attention to the role of p38 MAPK in the transcriptional control of interleukin-8 (IL-8), a chemokine previously shown to be central to the initiation of adenovirus keratitis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that infection of corneal cells with HAdV-19 led to activation of p38 MAPK and its downstream targets, HSP-27 and ATF-2, within 15 to 30 minutes post-infection. Infection also induced phosphorylation of IκB and NFκB in a p38 MAPK-dependent fashion. Furthermore, HAdV-19 induced an interaction between p38 MAPK and NFκB-p65, followed by nuclear translocation of activated NFκB-p65 and its binding to the IL-8 promoter. The interaction between p38 MAPK and NFκB-p65 was inhibited in concentration-dependent fashion by SB203580, a chemical inhibitor of p38 MAPK, but not by SP600125, an inhibitor of JNK – another MAPK implicated in chemokine expression by HAdV-19 infected cells. IL-8 gene expression in HAdV-19 infection was significantly reduced in the presence of sequence-specific p38 MAPK siRNA but not control siRNA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results provide the first direct evidence for transcriptional regulation of IL-8 in HAdV-19 infected cells through the activation of the p38 MAPK signaling pathway. The p38 MAPK pathway may play a biologically important role in regulation of IL-8 gene expression in the adenovirus-infected cornea.</p

Error Modeling Radar Rainfall Estimation Through Incorporating Rain Gauge Data Over Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

Accurate and precise measurements of rainfall from weather radar reflectivity data is essential to supplement the limited characterization of spatial and temporal measurements provided by insufficient network and density of rain gauges. While weather radar has high spatial and temporal resolution, it contaminated with various sources of errors due to the conversion of reflectivity to rain rate and the projectile rainfall motion. Error modeling improvement with the application of projectile rainfall motion correction is essential to improve the radar data. However, stile is not well documented for over the world as well as Ethiopia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to generate an error model for weather radar rainfall estimation by incorporating gauge rainfall data over upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia. Projectile rainfall motion correction is considered on the data of reflectivity and rain rate to determine empirical error model parameter values. The model parameter values are found, multiplicative factor (a) was 55, the exponent factor (b) was 1.12, standard deviation of proportional error was 0.08 and standard deviation of random error was 0.07. The value of the total error varied from -0.45 to 1.16 mm and the domain of proportional error was greater than random error. After applying the projectile rainfall motion correction, the total error is reduced by 12%. In general, the assumption of projectile method is quite useful for improving the radar data over upper Blue Nile basin in Ethiopia as well as over the world. Hence, we wish to extend this method for other regions