This quarterly column of news, views and snippets from the international literature of books, libraries, and information, appears in LIASA-in-Touch, the newsletter of the Library and Information Association of South Africa.

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Lost to local colleagues?

Many scholars in the Global South prefer to publish their work in what were seen as prestigious ‘international’ journals rather than locally. In many countries, having work published in prestigious ‘international’ journals is a precondition for career advancement (Abrahams et al. 2008, 25; Meneghini, Packer, and Nassi-Calò 2008). Such journals can set very high standards, rejecting a large percentage of article submissions. But for an ambitious author, this makes it even more desirable to get published in them even though this may take much time and effort. Non-native English speakers face a further obstacle (Amano et al. 2023). There may be other impediments (Lor 2023).

By publishing in an international journal, South African authors can reach colleagues world-wide who can appreciate their specialist contributions, but this comes at a cost.

Such an article may be difficult for the author’s colleagues to access because their institution cannot afford to subscribe to it (Abrahams et al. 2008, 39; Omekwu 2003), and the article will in many cases be locked up behind a paywall. Similarly, it may be inaccessible to colleagues at other institutions in the author’s home country and in other less affluent countries in the Global South. In such a case, some transfer of knowledge may have taken place from South to North, but South-South transfer – transfer to where that knowledge could be most relevant and needed – is impeded (Lor 2019, 440–56).

Even if it is possible to gain access to international journals such as those that appear in the list of references below, most of what is published is not obviously relevant to library praxis. Often the articles are spun off from dissertation research. The abstracts published with the articles often say more about the methodology used than about the findings. In addition, the academic language and terminology used may please thesis examiners and journal reviewers, but discourage casual reading, adding to a growing divide between academic researchers and librarians at the coal-face. In this edition of “Global Gleanings” I draw attention to ten contributions published overseas in 2022 by South African authors and others connected to South African universities, which came to my attention and might otherwise escape notice.

Academic libraries and librarians

Academia is where we find most researchers. It is convenient and relevant for them to conduct research in that environment. In this participatory action research project, three researchers at UNISA applied the UTAUT model as a conceptual framework for their study of social media use by academic librarians in Zimbabwe (Chiparausha, Onyancha, and Ezema 2022). UTAUT stands for Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, a model widely used for studying and predicting the acceptance and use of technology (Marikyan and Papagiannidis 2023). They reported that the academic librarians found social media useful in providing services.

The adoption and use of information technology also featured in a study of extension services provided to users during the Covid pandemic by academic libraries in Gauteng, South Africa. (Dube and Jacobs 2022). They used the Standards for Distance Learning Library Services of the Association of College and Research Libraries as a framework and assessed the positive and negative impacts of the technology that was introduced during the pandemic. These ranged from the traditional, such as a physical drop box for returning books, and e-mail attachments, to innovative technology. A chatbot called BOTsa was implemented to serve as an online library app to answer library-related queries and relay those it could not handle to the appropriate staff members. There were both positive and negative outcomes. Among others, it was found that library users were affected by the high cost of Internet data bundles and poor Internet connectivity.

Academic library leadership came under the spotlight in a quantitative survey of “transformational leadership traits” in three academic libraries in Gauteng (Kunene and Mapulanga 2022). Although the sample was quite small, quite sophisticated inferential statistics were applied to quantify aspects such as academic libraries’ ability to learn from the best practices of others in the profession, perceptions of transformative versus traditional management styles, talent identification and succession planning, and perceptions of leadership responsibilities. An earlier article by the same authors had used a qualitative approach in the form of case studies of three academic library directors, each of whom proposed a rather different set of leadership qualities (Kunene and Mapulanga 2021).

User education

Also from an academic context we find a quantitative study on first-year student perceptions of the user education programmes at one of the three campuses of North-West University, South Africa (Chiya, Onyancha, and Ezema 2022). It used a structured questionnaire to examine, among other aspects, the types, quality, and effectiveness of user education there, as well as attendance at the programme. Results, presented in many tables, were insightfully discussed. Student responses were found to be generally positive, indicating that the programme had been moderately to very effective in helping them to use the library catalogue, search for journal articles, and correctly reference their sources in assignments

Further afield

Casting my net a bit wider than libraries, I found a study of document flow at the South African Council for Social Science Professionals employing the strategy of participatory action research (Chauke and Ngoepe 2022). The authors found that the outdated procedures using paper and email were inadequate, resulting in poor data quality and failure communication failures. They proposed a new electronic workflow, tailor-made for the Council. Three social media sites are the focus of an article on the sharing of information relating to the Kruger National Park on (Schellnack-Kelly 2022). Such sharing enables Parks Board staff and visitors to the Park to share their encounters with wildlife, thereby contributing to public awareness and education.

Intellectual property

Finally, I should mention three articles by authors from outside our profession, all of them relating in some way to a theme of concern to our profession:  intellectual property. They deal with the impact of open access on public health, as highlighted by the Covid pandemic (Strydom et al. 2022), the need to “recalibrate” the copyright system in Africa from the perspective of human rights law in light of what we learned from the pandemic (D. O. Oriakhogba 2022); and the highly unsatisfactory state of most reproduction rights organizations (RROs) in Africa (D. Oriakhogba and Kawooya 2022). RROs (such as SAMRO and DALRO in South Africa) are responsible for the collective management of copyright, which includes collecting royalties and distributing them to copyright holder.

References

Abrahams, Luci, Mark Burke, Eve Gray, and Andrew Rens. 2008. Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities. Study Series. Johannesburg: SARUA Southern African Regional Universities Association.

Amano, Tatsuya, Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, Israel Borokini, Shawan Chowdhury, Marina Golivets, Juan David González-Trujillo, et al. 2023. “The Manifold Costs of Being a Non-Native English Speaker in Science.” PLOS Biology 21 (7): e3002184. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002184.

Chauke, Tshepo Arnold, and Mpho Ngoepe. 2022. “End-to-End Digital Transformation for Document Flow at a Professional Council in South Africa.” Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0145.

Chiparausha, Blessing, Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, and Ifeanyi Jonas Ezema. 2022. “Factors Influencing the Use of Social Media by Academic Librarians in Zimbabwe: A UTAUT Model Analysis.” Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-09-2021-0151.

Chiya, Katlego Petrus, Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, and Ifeanyi J Ezema. 2022. “Students’ Perceptions of the User Education Programmes at a South African University.” IFLA Journal, November, 03400352221130775. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352221130775.

Dube, Tinyiko Vivian, and Lorette Jacobs. 2022. “Academic Library Services Extension during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations in Higher Education Institutions in the Gauteng Province, South Africa.” Library Management ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-04-2022-0039.

Kunene, Nokuphiwa, and Patrick Mapulanga. 2021. “Adoption of Transformational Leadership Qualities for South African Academic Libraries in Gauteng Province.” Library Management 42 (8/9): 561–83. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-06-2021-0052.

———. 2022. “A Survey of Transformational Leadership Traits for South African Academic Libraries in Gauteng Province, South Africa.” Library Management ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-04-2022-0025.

Lor, Peter Johan. 2019. International and Comparative Librarianship: Concepts and Methods for Global Studies. Global Studies in Libraries and Information 4. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter/Saur.

———. 2023. “Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review in the Global South: The Role of the Reviewer.” JLIS.It 14 (1): 10–29. https://doi.org/10.36253/jlis.it-512.

Marikyan, Davit, and Savvas Papagiannidis. 2023. “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology: A Review.” In TheoryHub Book, edited by Savvas Papagiannidis. https://open.ncl.ac.uk/theories/2/unified-theory-of-acceptance-and-use-of-technology/.

Meneghini, Rogerio, Abel L Packer, and Lilian Nassi-Calò. 2008. “Articles by Latin American Authors in Prestigious Journals Have Fewer Citations.” PloS One 3 (11): e3804. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003804.

Omekwu, Charles. 2003. “Current Issues in Accessing Documents Published in Developing Countries.” Interlending & Document Supply 31 (2): 130–37. https://doi.org/10.1108/02641610310477206.

Oriakhogba, Desmond, and Dick Kawooya. 2022. “The Status of Reproduction Rights Organisations (RROs) in Africa.” Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series, November. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/research/81.

Oriakhogba, Desmond O. 2022. “The Right to Research in Africa: Making African Copyright Whole.” Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series 78 (August): 52.

Schellnack-Kelly, Isabel Stella. 2022. “Information Sharing on Social Media Pages Related to Wildlife Conservation in a South African National Game Reserve.” Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-04-2022-0078.

Strydom, Adéle, Juanita Mellet, Jeanne Van Rensburg, Ignatius Viljoen, Anastasios Athanasiadis, and Michael S. Pepper. 2022. “Open Access and Its Potential Impact on Public Health – A South African Perspective.” Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics 7 (December). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frma.2022.975109.