This study assessed an information literacy skills course that has been running over two decades at the University of Cape Coast. The study established the usefulness of the course using data from questionnaires administered to 278 final year students mandated to conduct research projects at the end of their four-year programme. The results showed that irrespective of students’ competence in IL, they are sometimes confronted with information behaviour challenges in accessing relevant information for academic work. Based on this revelation, it is recommended that advanced hands-on training be introduced to enhance students’ skills in using search strategies to ensure low recall and high relevancy in the information retrieval process.

Hermetic grain storage (HGS) bags are simple and appropriate to effectively protect stored grains against pests and aflatoxins in areas where effective facilities are lacking. This study assessed farmers’ knowledge and perceptions associated with current practices, awareness-facilitating agents, and HGS bags in interior southern Ghana. The main objective was to provide information that can be included in sensitization and awareness creation programs to increase adoption of HGS bags for sustainable production of grain crops, food security, income-generation, and livelihood improvement across farming communities in selected areas in southern Ghana. Therefore, 925 smallholder farmers were randomly selected and interviewed across three districts (or municipals), which included West Akim Municipal, Ayensuano District, and Suhum Municipal in southern Ghana, using a semi-structured questionnaire for data collection and analysis. The results showed that 95.24% of farmers were still using ineffective grain storage approaches to store grains. Average awareness level about HGS bags among farmers was ≤30%, whereas adoption of HGS bags was very low (4.76%). However, awareness and adoption were mostly observed in West Akim Municipal. Although awareness was significantly dependent on numerous demographic and farming factors, it had significant positive correlations with ‘female farmers’ and respondents’ age-range (36–50 years) only; it suggests that if these two factors are considered in sensitization programs, they will increase awareness about HGS bags. The most performing awareness-facilitating agent was the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, followed by famers’ neighbors. Nonetheless, farmers (who were aware of or adopted HGS bags) were facing challenges or limitations. Hence, the need for training smallholder farmers has been discussed.

The use of IT has seen great success in the private sector and is now beginning to fill a similar role for non-profit organizations (NPOs) as well. The use of IT in fundraising activities in NPOs has been studied in the past. But applying this concept in the case of Buddhist temples, which make up the majority of NPOs in a Buddhist country like Thailand, has never been done before. Using the national survey of 16,895 Buddhist temples in Thailand and econometrics modeling reveals that using IT in temple management has a statistically significant effect on generating higher income from fundraising activities. Using the Internet and computers can boost temple donations and fundraising by promoting religious activities. And temples that use websites and social media seem to receive more government subsidies. In addition, other variables, such as location, number of monks and staff, pro-social activities, and temple age, also represent strong determinants of fundraising performance. Therefore, we find that Buddhist temples in Thailand would do well to use the Internet and social media to develop content, provide advice, and preach online, as these technology-enhanced activities play an important role in increasing fundraising efficiency. Thus, training in such current communication technology should be provided to monks so that they can take advantage of such tools to not only increase their productivity, but also to equip themselves with other, up-to-date skills to enhance the religious education of their congregations that they currently provide through traditional preaching.

The ubiquitous use of information technology in modern life leads to many problems of financial information security. Such security issues could be due to users’ insecure behaviors during their financial transactions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the university teacher's financial information security behavior (FISB) and to examine the factors that influence their FISB. By using a survey method, the study collected primary data quantitatively. A closed-ended questionnaire based on IMB Model (Information Motivation Behavioral Skills Model) was developed. The population of the study comprised teachers from six faculties of University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. A simple random sampling technique was used to collect the data from the teachers via a print-format based questionnaire. The structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the proposed model by using ADANCO (2.1). ADANCO is a software that is used for SEM analysis. The results exhibited that a majority of the teachers are frequent users of online banking. The findings confirmed that measures familiarity and self-efficacy have a direct impact on the financial information security behavior of the respondents and self-efficacy mediates the relation between threat awareness and financial information security behavior. The study concludes that online banking users can perform secure behavior during online transactions if they are familiar with security measures and are confident to perform different online banking-related tasks. It is, therefore, suggested that individuals may be familiarized with the financial information security measures so that they may believe in their selves and develop secure financial information behavior. This can be done through awareness seminars and hands-on training by the Federal Investigation Agency in liaison with banks and educational institutions. The present study has contributed to the domain of financial information security behavior in the local context.

The COVID-19 epidemic has hastened the growth of Virtual Communities and is affecting virtually every part of work in the public and business sectors. Virtual communities, popular forums for communication and entertainment, increasingly affected the users’ decisions. Though many technology adoption models/theories are available, a distinctive model for decision-making in a virtual environment is scarce. This research developed the virtual communities’ decision model and empirically tested its performance. This study examined 16 well-established theories/models of information technology, social science, marketing, and behavioral finance and extracted nine constructs from 58 identified constructs considering theoretical cohesiveness along with the three-stage method proposed by Moore and Benbasat. A unified model for virtual communities’ decisions (VCDM) is developed and validated using the data collected from individual capital market investors in Bangladesh. The structural equation modeling technique is used to analyze the data. The upshot implies that VCDM performs adequately and explains the maximum variances in intention to decision and investment. VCDM also outperforms the majority of the related theoretical models. The acceptance levels of fit indices and all significant relationships among different constructs are also empirically validated. The moderating effect of the virtual group use experience is also confirmed. Future research can use VCDM in marketing, behavioral finance, ecommerce, information systems and social science context. VCDM thus facilitates a beneficial tool for managers, service providers, and other users to assess the likelihood of effectiveness for decisions in a virtual environment.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the trend of digital transformation have created many changes, brought many values, and also posed many challenges in formulating and perfecting policies on culture in general and policies to develop reading culture in particular. Through the analysis of secondary data, especially current policies on the development of reading culture, analytical research assesses the compatibility between current policies and the requirements of cultural development, people orient creating a learning society in the context of the fourth industrial revolution and the trend of digital transformation; Research to identify and analyze 03 trends in developing policies to develop reading culture in Vietnam, assess the content and inadequacies in current policies, thereby, propose approaches and solutions to policy implications to promote a reading culture to develop towards creating a learning society in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the trend of digital transformation.

In information security context, social engineering is defined as malicious activities caused by cybercriminals by means of human interactions. It is mainly a psychological manipulation technique which gets benefit of human error to reach private information. This study used machine learning algorithms to predict individuals’ susceptibility to be tricked by social engineering attacks. Simulated scenarios were presented to study participants, and they were asked to identify whether each scenario was a social engineering attack or not. Different kinds of attacks related to various industries were integrated to social engineering simulations. For each participant, different types of social engineering scores were calculated according to their responses. Besides simulations, questionnaires related to demographics, technology usage, and personality traits were filled out by the participants. All of these collected data were used in building predictive classification and regression machine learning models. Through regression and classification models, it was aimed to proactively predict individuals’ social engineering risk levels and classify them into different risk groups in terms of different attack types. This research revealed that it is possible to predetermine the social engineering risk levels of individuals. This important finding means that possible attacks can be prevented by raising awareness before the attack occurs. Within the scope of this study, a social engineering risk detection mobile application has also been developed to give practitioners and policy makers an idea of what kind of systems can be developed in order to determine the risk levels of individuals and then to educate them about various attacks. The ones who need to take action against social engineering attacks will get benefit from findings of this research.

The study assessed the research pattern of postgraduate students in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) in Tanzania. Covering a span of 17 years, the study used content analysis to study and identify research areas postgraduate students studied. In all, 269 dissertations were evaluated for the 2000–2017 period. Most of the dissertations (n = 247; 92%) were for the Master's degree and the least (n = 22; 8%) for doctoral studies, with the majority of LIS graduates being male. The study findings show that user studies accounted for the most researched upon (n = 67; 24.9%) area by postgraduate students in Tanzania followed by information industry economics and management (n = 45;16.7%), information/learning society (n = 37;13.7%), diffusion studies (n = 36;13.3%) and finally, information technology (n = 32; 11.9%). The least covered research areas were methodology, information ethics and law. Implicitly, the students preferred user-studies centred research followed by technology. The study concludes no direct association between gender, level of education, year of study and students’ choice of research themes except for information technology. It is recommended that students ought to be exposed to new LIS global research trends for enhanced and broadened research areas to materialise.

This study assessed how journalists in Nigeria are aware, knowledgeable, and use the FOI Act (FOI law). The study was anchored on libertarian press theory. The study population was all the journalists registered with the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) Taraba State branch, out of which, a sample of 101 was selected using cluster and convenience sampling methods. The data collected were analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages. It was found that most journalists (82.8%) are utilizing the law. In addition, this study identified fear among journalists, media ownership patterns, and poor attitude of government officials as challenges militating against the utilization of the law among the journalists. Among several recommendations made, the study call on the legislative arm of the government to address the issue of conflicting laws affecting the use of the FOI law. Professional bodies like the NUJ are called upon to educate and support the journalists to engage FOI law in their practice, especially as it relates to investigative journalism.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to bring to light the obstacles to collecting contents from faculty members in universities in Nigeria and South Africa. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a survey research design. OpenDOAR database search, online questionnaire, and IRs investigation methods were used to collect data from 41 institutional repositories in universities in Nigeria and South Africa. Findings: The study found that the most popular content submitted to IRs in Nigeria and South Africa are electronic theses and dissertations, journal articles, special items (Africana collections, images, artifacts, paintings), conference and workshop papers, and research and technical reports. The comparison of institutional repository development between the two countries revealed that, South Africa is far ahead of Nigeria in terms of institutional repository development using contents emanating from the universities. South Africa is a leading African country in terms of Open Access (OA) policies and South Africa embraced open access movement earlier than Nigeria. The study identified some factors such as: lack of awareness of the existence of institutional repositories by faculty members; lack of mandatory self-archiving policy by institutions or funding bodies; considering copyright and intellectual property issues; some faculty members are skeptical on the principle of open access; some faculty members are not interested in IR; some faculty members believe it is too risky to submit their research work to IR; lack of technical skills for some faculty members to self-archive as obstacles which are peculiar to collecting contents from various contributors in both counties. Research Implication: The findings will inform University Librarians, University management and policy makers on possible ways to overcome the obstacles to recruiting content to IRs. Originality/value: The study reported on the obstacles of recruiting content from faculty members in universities in Nigeria and South Africa and the findings will inform stakeholders by designing strategies to overcome such obstacles and populate the IRs with different contents.