Doctrine as Data examines the issues and opportunities around machine acquisition and analysis of legal doctrine. This work sought to treat doctrine as data, as a clump of federal appellate case opinion texts, which could be procured and empirically analyzed with information processing technology. Doctrine is a nimble knowledge structure however, existing as a clump as well as a logic where parameters and understandings in case law are constituted. The subject doctrine for this project, compelling interests of the strict scrutiny balancing test, proved to be a logic where notions of legitimate police power and individual rights are established. That logic is flexible, politically sensitive, and responsive, going beyond opinions from a myriad of cases said manifesting doctrine. Doctrine as Data examines information systems and their practices of indexing and accessing appellate case opinions to explore whether these systems are significant to sustaining, or challenging, conceptualizations of doctrine in cases. The examination consists of defining, identifying, and collecting appellate case opinions exhibiting the compelling interest doctrine using the preeminent hard bound and computer legal information systems (i.e. West's digests and reporters and Lexis/Nexis respectively). The project also introduces a new tool, the InQuery search engine from the University of Massachusetts' Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, to analyze that collection for conceptual coherency attributed to doctrine, i.e. to probe doctrine's presence in, and relationship to, case opinions. It appears however that doctrine exists outside of cases, or rather, is attributed to cases through traditions of legal practice, commentary, and scholarship moreso than in the systems created to manage law's hard data.

Includes bibliography. / The purpose of this thesis is to analyse library programmes, facilities and services for undergraduates at South·African university libraries. Black students who arrive at university encounter a library for the first time and find using it a bewildering experience. Thus libraries must become more aware of undergraduate needs and play an increasing role in academic support, concentrating their services on the undergraduate and particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This concern for undergraduate education prompted an evaluation of library provision for undergraduates. The broad hypothesis· being the better the facilities, the better the library services and the concomitant provision for undergraduates. The thesis examines the literature commencing with an outline of general library facilities (accommodation, collection, staffing, and financial support), as well as determining the role of the university library, and examining established library standards. Library services are identified, with particular emphasis on user education. The literature survey concludes with an in-depth examination of the development of undergraduate libraries and the arguments both for and against such libraries. The scope of the investigation is limited to three university libraries in a contiguous region of South Africa, and data was gathered via a detailed structured questionnaire. The empirical survey focuses on library programmes and attempts to identify specific provision for undergraduates.

Although the precursors of the South African technikons date back almost one hundred years, they became post-secondary institutions as recently as 1967. Their libraries have therefore had to be upgraded recently to meet the required educational level. With the technikon movement being so young, there has been little formal investigation of the information needs of the libraries' users. An investigation was therefore conducted into the information needs of lecturers at the Cape Technikon and the ability of the Library to meet those needs. The literature was examined and models formulated to clarify the concepts involved in (a) information and its communication, (b) users and their information needs, and (c) the evaluation of library services in their attempts to meet those needs. Previous studies were also examined to determine what variables should be examined. Various methodologies for an empirical investigation were considered; the survey method was chosen as most appropriate, and a questionnaire was developed to elicit lecturers' self assessment of the importance of specified information needs and their opinion of the Library's ability to meet those needs. Weighted average and percentage proportions were calculated and were used in producing tabulations of the data, profiles line graphs, histograms and pie charts. The data were then examined for inter-relationships; the results were compared with the results of previous surveys, and conclusions were drawn. The chief findings were that (a) discipline and work activity were the most important independent variables to influence information need; (b) work activity was determined largely by the need for technikon lecturers to change their subject fairly frequently, and by the low level of research at the time of the investigation; (c) the Library was an important source of information to the lecturers, and they were generally satisfied with the Library's services; (d) citation services were being under-utilised; (e) the Library proved to be inadequate in providing for a strong demand for monographs and for very recently published literature, in providing sufficient work and study space, and in providing adequate resources for research purposes. As a result the following recommendations were made: (a) the Library should provide a comprehensive literature searching and current awareness service for the many lecturers who were having to prepare lectures in new subject areas; (b) because of the importance of the Library to lecturers, it must be adequately staffed and financed; (c) attention must be given to the Library's ability to provide recently published literature, which may necessitate a reconsideration of the current collection development pol icy; (d) research must be encouraged, and the Library upgraded to provide the necessary resources for research.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-136). / In this global information age many technological advances have changed approaches to education and the way libraries are managed. The massive increase of unfiltered information has resulted in high demands for information literacy programmes. Therefore, students need to be assisted throughout their learning process. The result of this change is the shift from teacher-centered type of learning to student-centered learning. The gap between the library and the classroom needs to be bridged by insisting on the use of information literacy skills and by promoting cooperation and collaboration of efforts between the teaching staff and the library. The learning organizations need to realize the need to embed information literacy within their curriculum to enhance quality education. The transformation requires libraries to embark on student learning and empower students with necessary information literacy skills. This issue of empowering students with necessary skills had become a motivating factor that drove me to carry out this research in order to find out the status and level of information literacy for postgraduate students of NUL. Information literacy standards were used as a measure. The study used a combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. A questionnaire was used as a main data collection instrument and the results were measured against the American Library Association (ALA) information literacy standards. Interviews were also conducted at NUL to supplement the main data collection instrument. Findings reflect a moderate to poor performance of a group of postgraduate and senior Law students who participated in this survey study. Findings from interviews provided evidence that NUL is aware of the concept of information literacy.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-74). / Electronic resources represent a large portion of many libraries' information resources in the current climate of hybrid libraries where print and electronic formats coexist. Since the dramatic uptake of electronic resources in libraries during the 1990's the topic of usage statistics has been on librarians' lips. The expectations that librarians had of being able to compare resources based on usage statistics were soon dashed as it became apparent that electronic resource providers were not measuring usage uniformly. Given the initial disappointments that librarians had in terms of electronic resource usage statistics the author set out to find the reasons why librarians were keeping statistics for electronic resources, which statistics they were keeping for electronic resources, and what were the issues and concerns with regard to statistics for electronic resources. To get an international answer to these questions a literature review was undertaken. The South African point of view was sought through an e-mail survey that was sent out to the 23 South African academic libraries that form the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC). A 65% response rate was recorded. The international and South African answers to the three questions were very similar. The study found that the reasons why librarians keep electronic resources statistics were to "assess the value of different online products/services"; to "make better-informed purchasing decisions"; to "plan infrastructure and allocation of resources"; and to "support internal marketing and promotion of library services". The study also found that the statistics that librarians were keeping are: sessions, searches, documents downloaded, turnaways, location of use, number of electronic resources, expenditure and virtual visits. The number of virtual visits was kept by international libraries but no South African libraries reported keeping this information. The concerns that were raised by both international and South African libraries were found to be about: the continued lack of standardisation; the time-consuming nature of data collection; the reliability of the usage data; the fact that the data need to be looked at in context; the management of the data; and how to count electronic resources. Clear definitions of the latter are essential. A concern raised in South Africa but not in the international literature is that there exists a lack of understanding amongst some South African librarians of the basic concepts of electronic resources usage statistics. The author concludes with a suggestion that the CHELSA Measures for Quality be implemented so that librarians can see that the collection of usage data for electronic resources has some purpose. Once this is in place one or more training events under the auspices of SANLiC should be organised in order to train librarians in the best practice of electronic resource usage statistics.

Bibliography: leaves 212-223. / With very few exceptions, all libraries, be they national, university, provincial, municipal or special, are funded to a greater or lesser degree by public money. Thus as Malan says, this subsidy presupposes that their services and stock should be used in the public interest. (Malan, 1978:83). In the case of South African university libraries, which constitutes the province of this study, the parent institution currently receives a subsidy according to the provisions laid down in the van Wyk de Vries Commission's recommendations. (de Vries, 1974). Included in this subsidy are formulae designed specifically to enable the university library to operate, i.e. allowances are made both for personnel and for the acquisition of library materials. It is in this latter connection that the present inves- tigation has been made, viz. the allocation of funds received from the State via the university administration to the teaching and research units to enable them to fulfil their basic function.

Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis proposes that the foundations of the library catalogue are not rooted in a coherent, encompassing and comprehensive theoretical structure. Instead, it shows that it rests upon a number of principles that evolved during the nineteenth century from the work done by cataloguing experts such as Panizzi, Jewett and Cutter. These principles are shown to be either principles of access or of bibliographical description, and they still form the basis for the construction of modern catalogues according to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2). The South African National Bibliography (SANB) is then used as an example of an actual catalogue constructed according to the AACR2. A study is conducted of the cataloguing records in the SANB in order to establish how these Rules are put into practice, and how usable a catalogue may be produced according to these Rules and principles. It is concluded that the SANB is a high quality catalogue according to the standards set by the AACR2, but that such a catalogue may not be optimally useful from the point of view of the user. Certain ideas from Artificial Intelligence are then employed to find out to what extent a user is able to utilize the library catalogue as a channel of communication in order to gain maximum benefit from the information available in the catalogue. It is found that the user is indeed not equipped to make full use of the catalogue, and it is suggested that the potential for increased access facilities brought (v) about by computer technology may be employed to bridge the communication gap between the user and the cataloguer. The thesis therefore concludes that the established principles according to which catalogues are constructed, are inadequate for the formulation of a comprehensive theory of cataloguing, but a search for such a theory is shown to be ultimately inappropriate. Cataloguing is essentially a problem-solving pursuit which aims at the production of a tangible object; a usable catalogue. Modern computer technology has brought the library catalogue to a crossroads in its development, and a detailed study of user needs will have to form the basis for the development of additional principles according to which the new technology will most successfully be applied to library catalogues.

Summary in English. / Bibliography: pages 185-195. / The investigation into personal indexing systems consists of (a) a study of the literature and (b) an empirical survey of the indexing needs of academics in the Western Cape. The literature study was used, inter alia, to determine certain ''characteristics" of personal indexing systems. Characteristics are defined as those features of personal indexing systems that are generally agreed upon by most authors and users as mandatory to ensure effective utilisation of such systems. These characteristics are later employed to derive models of personal indexing systems that may have practical applications for academics. The empirical study provides conclusive proof that dissatisfaction with the academic library is not a reason for setting up a personal indexing system and that academics have a need for professional help when they start their own indexing system. Journal articles are of utmost importance in all document collections, but books, conference papers, theses and clippings are also important. The number of documents contained in such systems vary between 200 and 48 800 with an average of 2 492,76. According to Soper scientists tend to keep their documents at the workplace while humanists tend to keep their documents at home. Social scientists fall between these groups and keep some of their documents at the workplace and some at home. For scientists and social scientists Soper's observations were confirmed. Lack of data made it impossible to come to any conclusion in the case of humanists. The main difference between large indexing systems and personal indexing systems is the number of records. The smaller system can be simpler, but it was not possible, with the data available, to state conclusively that a thesaurus is not necessary. Although the advantages of computerised systems were indicated it is acknowledged that many academics would prefer a manual system. An index on a computer should provide for variable length fields. The researcher comes to the conclusion that a combination of a classification system and free search terms would be the most effective method to use in subject searches. He suggests that the main classes of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme may be used as an outline and that for his specialised field of study the user should devise his own scheme.

LIS literature suggests that the information norms of immigrants are situated in information poverty, gatekeeping, and the digital divide—all of which inhibit access to information. The canon primarily addresses how insufficient information leads to social exclusion. However, it is also possible for immigrants to be overwhelmed by the vastness of information. This dissertation explores the ways in which Black immigrants living in the U.S. experience and negotiate information overload. Virtually no LIS studies explore the dynamics of information as a stressor from the point of view of Black immigrants. Although they are hardly homogeneous, attention to the realities of African, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latinx individuals living in the U.S. is missing from the current body of LIS research. This three-part study involves 1.) analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey to understand Blacks immigrants’ information and communication technology (ICT) access and usage; 2.) survey research to further examine information access as well as measure information overload at a community level ; 3.) focus group research to afford additional insight regarding possible linkages between information overload and acculturative stress. Findings support that Black immigrants are digitally included, but face information overload and therefore social exclusion as a result of adjusting to life in the United States. Information overload is both a casual and determinant of acculturative stress. Finally, to be socially included, immigrants must be equipped with information resilience. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / May 29, 2018. / Acculturation, Black immigrants, Information access, Information overload, Information science, Libraries / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary Burnett, Professor Directing Dissertation; Karin Brewster, University Representative; Mia Lustria, Committee Member; Lorraine Mon, Committee Member.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-187). / Library and information science professionals are increasingly taking a keen interest in gaining a better understanding of how university's students are making use of the electronic information services (EIS) in academic libraries. This study investigated the use of EIS by undergraduate nursing students at the University of Namibia's (UNAM) Northern Campus. The study has specifically examined the extent to which these students used EIS, the purposes for which they used EIS, the barriers they encountered in their use of EIS, the benefits they feel they gain from using EIS, the sources they use to acquire EIS skills, and their perceptions of EIS.