Recent articles: Health literacy; Nurse evaluation skills; IL education in Pakistani universities; Information access in Ghana

- Naughton, J., Booth, K., Elliott, P., Evans, M., Simões, M. and Wilson, S. (2021), Health literacy: The role of NHS library and knowledge services. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 38, 150-154. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12371 [open access]
- Schvaneveldt, N, Diekema, AR, Hopkins, E, Patterson, B. (2021). New nurses apply only basic source evaluation criteria but realize their skills are lacking: More sophisticated approaches to teaching evaluation skills are required. Health Information and Libraries Journal. [Early online publication: Priced] https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12395 "A questionnaire asked recently graduated nurses from four institutions in the Intermountain West (USA) to rate their confidence in evaluating information and to provide examples of evaluation criteria they typically applied. The quality of these criteria was rated by nursing librarians, then compared with reported confidence in evaluation, years employed as a nurse and highest degree level.... While nurses’ self-reported confidence levels about source evaluation largely matched their ability, their evaluation criteria showed a low level of sophistication and did not match the recommended criteria by professional organizations. Graduate education, not years of work experience, was predictive of the quality of criteria used by nurses, suggesting the importance of more instruction on source evaluation for nursing students."
- Iqal, S. & Idrees, H. (2021) The Current Status of Information Literacy Instruction in University Libraries of Pakistan. New Review of Academic Librarianship, https://doi.org/10.1080/13614533.2021.1964547 [Priced publication.] "The purpose of this study was to explore the current practices of information literacy instruction in the libraries of universities in Pakistan. The research method consisted of a quantitative approach using a structured questionnaire for empirical data collection, which was sent to the universities and degree awarding institutions recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. The collected data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software ... The findings of the study show that 63% of the responding university libraries offer information literacy (IL) education mostly to new students and this ranges from basic to advanced skills. Face-to-face delivery is the most popular IL delivery method. The IL instruction appears to take place in library training rooms."
- Adjoa Yebowaah, F., & Sanche, S. (2021). Information Literacy, an Investigation into Students’ Access and Use of Information in an Academic Institution in Ghana. Open Journal of Educational Research, 1(1). https://www.scipublications.com/journal/index.php/ojer/article/view/109 [Open access.] The authors administered a questionnaire to students in (mainly) departments in the faculty of Education, studying at the University for Development Studies in Tamale, Ghana. They investigate students’ access to, and use of, information and the library, including their use of information literacy training. [not sure how reliable this journal is - this is the only article so far - but I still thought the article was worth noting]
Photo by Sheila Webber: One white rose, August 2021.