Collaboration on LibGuides in public universities in South Africa
| Pages | 259-275 |
| Published date | 02 July 2018 |
| Date | 02 July 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-11-2017-0099 |
| Author | Siviwe Bangani,Veliswa Tshetsha |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information in society,Information literacy,Library & information services |
Collaboration on LibGuides in
public universities in South Africa
Siviwe Bangani
Department of Library Services,
North West University, Mahikeng, South Africa, and
Veliswa Tshetsha
Cape Peninsula University of Technology Libraries,
Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Bellville, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose –This paper uses co-ownership as a proxy for determining the extent of collaboration on
LibGuidesin public universities in South Africa.
Design/methodology/approach –This is a quantitative study that uses webometrics techniques to
establish collaboration on LibGuidesamong librarians in public universities in South Africa. The LibGuide
pages of all public universities in the countryare visited. Co-ownership of those LibGuides is established by
going through the list of co-owners usually situatedon the right-hand side menu bar. The data are divided
into 16 Excel spreadsheets,each representing a South African publicuniversity with LibGuides.
Findings –The results show that only 8.1 per cent or 95 of 1,166 LibGuides are co-owned, whereas in 9.4 per cent
(109 of 1,166) of LibGuides, the ownership reverts to the host library, as there are no authors indicated. Only 34 of 95
or 35.8 per cent of co-owned LibGuides are cross-campus or inter-campus collaborations suggesting that there is
very little cross-pollination of ideas between different campuses of the same universities in South Africa.
Research limitations/implications –This study will lead to a better understanding of the extentof
collaboration between librariansin Africa, generally, but specifically in South Africa. In addition, it poses a
challenge to library managers to develop strategies that promote and nurture a culture of collaboration
between and among librariansto avoid unnecessary duplication. The recommendationsof this study can be
used to improvecollaboration between and among librarians. Thebiggest limitation of this study is that it did
not look into the attitudes,constraints and impediments of collaborationbetween and among librarians. This
area, however,is recommended for further research.
Practical implications –The implicationof these results is that there is a duplication of LibGuides,effort
and time acrossdifferent campuses of the same universities, as someuniversities have a number of LibGuides
on the same subjectareas across the institutions. There is very little cross-pollinationof ideas between various
universitiesas reflected by a lack of inter-university LibGuides in the country.
Social implications –Duplicationof LibGuides does not assist the users as it only adds to the information
overloadrather than assisting them by streamlining the information.
Originality/value –This study may well be the first study of its nature in the world.It is the view of the
authors that this study will not only close the gap in the literatureon LibGuides but also explain the use of
Web 2.0 tools in librariesin developing countries as collaboration tools. It will add anotherperspective to the
discourse aboutthe collaboration in library and information sciencegenerally. This paper may lead to further
researchon the collaboration efforts of practising librarians.
Keywords Collaboration, co-ownership, LibGuides, library guides, course guides, subject guides
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Collaboration is an emerging theme in library and information science (LIS) research.
Several studies have been conducted in the field in the past ten years by scholars such as
Collaboration
on LibGuides
259
Received20 November 2017
Revised11 January 2018
Accepted19 February 2018
GlobalKnowledge, Memory and
Communication
Vol.67 No. 4/5, 2018
pp. 259-275
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2514-9342
DOI 10.1108/GKMC-11-2017-0099
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2514-9342.htm
Ocholla (2008),Ngoepeand others (2014),Maluleka and Onyancha (2016) and Maluleka et al.
(2016). This underlines the importance of collaboration in librarianship as a discipline and
practice. In the case of academic libraries, there is always a mutual and symbiotic
relationship between these institutions and collaboration. The majority of what academic
librarians do, whether it is collection development, organising book fairs, acquisition of
information resources, providing information resources, conducting information literacy,
attending faculty meetings, defending library budgets, authoring research papers, setting-
up LibGuides and other functions, require collaboration with internal or external
stakeholders (Sacchanand, 2012). It is for this reason that academic libraries and librarians
are always on the lookout for the latest technologies that would enhance their role as
collaborators (Kleinveldt and Zulu, 2016). When Springshare introduced LibGuides in 2007
(Bushhousen, 2009), they instantlybecame popular with academic libraries because, among
others features, they allow for seamless collaboration between faculty and librarians on the
one hand, and among librarians on the other. At the time of writing this paper, there were
537,796 LibGuides published by 140,949 librarians, in 4,756 institutions, from 73 countries
around the world (Springshare,2017).
The rationale for conductinga study of this nature lies in the importance of collaboration
in LIS, but also the fact that Springshare doesnot provide statistics of co-owned LibGuides
at the moment. According to Bower et al. (2017), LibGuides play a role, and have an impact
in supporting research outputs from universities in one of the following ways: through
providing critical information about the research process, leading users to research
completed at a university and by increasing the easy of its accessibility hence a study of
collaboration in LibGuides is a worthwhile exercise. The other motivating factor is the
amount of LIS research conducted on the area of collaboration. Studies on collaboration in
LIS research commonly measure collaboration through co-ownership of published
documents as representedby the names of authors appearing on those documents (Maluleka
and Onyancha, 2016).
2. Overview of LibGuides in public universities in South Africa
South Africa is now home to 26 public universities after the establishment of three more
public universities in the country in 2014 and 2015 (South Africa, 2014a,2014b,2014c). In
terms of their classification,there are twelve traditional universities which in the main focus
on theoretical-based training, six comprehensive universities which offer a combination of
academic and vocational-orienteddiplomas and degrees and eight universities of technology
which in the main offer diplomas in vocational-oriented programs (Raju et al., 2015). The
majority of public universitiesin South Africa own LibGuides as shown in Table I.
There are 16 of 23 publicuniversities in South Africathat own LibGuides, discountingthe
three newly formed public universities that are still establishing themselves. There are 299
librarianswho own those LibGuides at a ratio of one librarianto four LibGuides. The content
of the LibGuidesvaries with some dealing withopen access, reference managementsoftware,
how to access various information resources, undergraduate and postgraduate services,
servicesfor the disabled, special collections,government publications, prescribedbooks, Web
2.0 technologies and services and others. To determine whether there is collaboration on
LibGuidesin the country, its extent and level of collaboration, the ownershipof the webpages
of the 1,166LibGuides was visited and levelsof co-ownership determined.
3. Objectives
The main objective of this study was to measure the extent and level of collaboration in
owning LibGuides in public universities in South Africa. To answer the broad objective,
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