Muhammad Mezbah-ul- Islam | University of Dhaka, Bangladesh (original) (raw)
Papers by Muhammad Mezbah-ul- Islam
The scarcity of information on communication channels is a great threat for rural development whe... more The scarcity of information on communication channels is a great threat for rural development where majority of the people are illiterate thus, do not know how to access information themselves. This study was undertaken to identify the use of television among rural communities of Bangladesh which was conducted in three villages of Dinajpur district, Bangladesh. The questionnaire included information on various information needs of the people under study, different sources of information and peoples’ awareness regarding informative TV shows. The study block included 150 households where more than 50% of the respondents had TV with cable connections. The main source of information as per data analysis was radio (83.33%), cell phone(66%); newspaper (64%) and personal contact (68%) followed by television (62%). Only 19% and 18% dwellers in the study area were aware about different health and agricultural programmes on television respectively. People were found unable to access informati...
Now-a-days, while a mature system of preservation and conservation (PAC) technology and methodolo... more Now-a-days, while a mature system of preservation and conservation (PAC) technology and methodology exists world wide to achieve the systematic PAC of world's cultural heritage, the PAC programs of Bangladesh National Archives (the custodian of Bangladesh ...
Introduction Libraries are important social institutions. No community is considered complete wit... more Introduction Libraries are important social institutions. No community is considered complete without a library. The spread of democracy, the extension of education, the intensification of research activities, and the rapid increase in the production of recorded knowledge, have led to the enormous expansion of libraries and the development of their services. The communication of ideas is one of the most significant achievements in the cultural development of the human race. The library one of many means of human communication (Johnson, 1973) and is an important centre for disseminating knowledge. Library development in Bangladesh is closely related to the library movement in the Indian subcontinent. Libraries in India can be traced from the history of ancient Indian libraries furnished by the travel diary of the famous Chinese traveller Fa-Hien, who visited India in 399 AD (Mishra, 1979). The British settled and stayed on for nearly two hundred years, initially for trading. They subsequently started to establish academic institutions and libraries on a small scale (Kabir, 1987).
Hypothesis # H 4 : There is no significant difference between job satisfaction and background var... more Hypothesis # H 4 : There is no significant difference between job satisfaction and background variables namely age, qualifications, designations, tenure in present position, tenure in present organization, number of promotions and number of other organizations worked. Hypothesis # H 5 : Age, discipline, academic status, importance of the library and average library use in the university will not determine the satisfaction levels of library users. Hypothesis # H 6 : The favourable the organizational climate is in the library, greater is the satisfaction levels of library users whereas, the less the favourable the organizational climate is in the library, greater is the dissatisfaction of the library users. Research Site The universities in Bangladesh are categorized into public and private universities. The public universities are autonomous and funded by Government of Bangladesh whereas private universities are funded by non-governmental organizations. However, University Grants Commission of Bangladesh approves private universities. There are total of 40 universities (Public 17 and Private 23) in Bangladesh (UGC, 2001). Out of which, 23 universities (Public 8 and Private 15) are situated in the Dhaka. Since, majority (54%) of the universities are situated in Dhaka, following four university libraries, two from each category were chosen for the purpose of study: Public Universities
Classification structures are useful for organising and finding information. The right use of cla... more Classification structures are useful for organising and finding information. The right use of classification structure in the web information architecture provides a user friendly interface and can serve as an effective tool for information retrieval. This paper defines the concepts related to the recent development in classification and gives an overview with case studies of using classification structure in information description and discovery in Web. The study found that hierarchical-enumerative structure is used mostly in directories, subject gateways and in cataloguing electronic contents. Faceted structure is used in the commercial sites to effectively organise and retrieve the web document through a multidimensional taxonomy. A third approach known as Folksonomy has emerged as a user oriented classification on the Web without maintaining any explicit relationship of classifying document. This study suggests using these three approaches in the appropriate context to ensure th...
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy i... more Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Library and Information Science of North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong-14, India. April, 2003 MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A CASE STUDY OF BANGLADESH
School Libraries Worldwide, 2019
The study explored the ICT facilities and services at rural Non-Government Secondary (NGS) school... more The study explored the ICT facilities and services at rural Non-Government Secondary (NGS) school libraries in Bangladesh. It identified the ICT literacy of NGS school library professionals known as assistant librarians. An exploratory method was used to ensure the best possible outcomes. Based on the interview and literature review in the qualitative phase, a questionnaire was developed for the quantitative phase and collected 86 responses using an online survey. Findings showed, most of the rural NGS school libraries do not have the ICT facilities and of those that do, they are insufficient in number to provide efficient services to library users. There was a lack of ICT skills among assistant librarians and most agreed that ICT literacy would increase the efficiency of their work and regarded it as an essential tool for school libraries. The study provides an analysis of the prevailing situation that helps in planning for policy makers and further in-depth research.
Library Herald, 2008
Information is power and a driving force for all the activities in the society. Information only ... more Information is power and a driving force for all the activities in the society. Information only has a value when it becomes accessible. Community needs information to make the best use of resources available to them and get direct or indirect help in solving their day to day problems. In Bangladesh, majority of population lives in villages. It is experienced that many of government programmes and services do not reach to common people who is living in villages. Sometimes, community people get information through traditional library system. But rural communities do not get the ICT facilities due to absence of ICT features in the traditional library system. This study focuses the problems associated with the provision of community information services through public library and need the establishment of ICT based community information centre. An attempt has been made to assess how the community information Centres are giving modern information facilities and explores how CIC (Communi...
Page 1. The Need for Islamic Information Management in the Information Institutions In Malaysia: ... more Page 1. The Need for Islamic Information Management in the Information Institutions In Malaysia: An Analysis of Problems Mohd Nazir Ahmad Senior Lecturer Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) naziruitm@yahoo.com Mohd Noor Mamat ...
This paper scrutinizes the LIS syllabuses of the last twenty years in all the levels of Banglades... more This paper scrutinizes the LIS syllabuses of the last twenty years in all the levels of Bangladesh. A comprehensive review of literature has been done, and data has been collected through visits to different library education institutions. The library education in all levels has received very little attention, though library needs dynamic personality with proper education to assure its ultimate goal. None of the department or LIS institutions have ever conducted any survey to determine the needs of the country's libraries and information centers for the qualification of personnel required to staff such institutions as well as development of the courses as per true need. This paper identified the strength and weakness, and suggests some measures for forthcoming syllabuses as well as improving the quality of library education for the benefits of future library professionals.
Modern trend of globalization and rapid technological changes have given many challenges to the l... more Modern trend of globalization and rapid technological changes have given many challenges to the library profession. Information technology made a significant impact on knowledge management and knowledge repositories. Today profession has to struggle hard to sustain and survive its status, which was not earlier realized and felt. At the same time advent of technological advances have added prestige to the professional, provided its application are used effectively to benefit the users of information by providing them whatever whenever wherever information is needed. Today’s library has no library hrs, no place and no institution. Online access to large number of resources has resulted into de-institutionalization breaking all boundaries of accessibility and availability. Today’s users have no patience and cannot wait for information. He expects information on a single click on his laptop, iPod or even on mobile. He prefers to search on universal catalogue or on knowledge access syste...
The prime aim of this paper is to discuss the roles of IR to improve higher education and scholar... more The prime aim of this paper is to discuss the roles of IR to improve higher education and scholarly communication. The other objectives are to find out the importance and impact of IR in higher education, to give an idea about the present status of IR in Bangladesh and India, the challenges for sharing higher education repositories. The study reported that IR can play a vital role in 21st century’s higher education and scholarly communication in developing countries. This study also provides some recommendations and a model to develop a better IR in educational institutions.
Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality assessment model for academic l... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality assessment model for academic libraries using SERVQUAL and validate the model surveying teachers, students and researchers. Design/methodology/approach A model was developed, including 28 statements of five dimensions using the SERVQUAL instrument. It incorporated three segments, i.e. minimum service expectation, desired service expectation and actual service performance with a seven-point Likert scale. The minimum service expectation and desired service expectation appear at both ends of the tolerance zone, which represents the range of satisfactory service performance. A performance level upper tolerance zone could delight users, or service performance below the tolerance zone would cause dissatisfaction. A survey was conducted among 552 respondents from ten private university libraries of Bangladesh to validate the model. Findings Several statistical methods like Cronbach’s alpha (0.986), Bartlett’s test (0.001), r...
IFLA Journal
This study examines the present status of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The main aim of... more This study examines the present status of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The main aim of the study is to find out the characteristics of open access repositories, their development scenario and ranking in web repositories as well as to recommend some suggestions for the development of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The methodology includes a quantitative approach. The data were collected from OpenDOAR from 20 to 29 August 2017. The scope of the study is confined to Bangladeshi repositories indexed in the OpenDOAR database. The findings of the study show that the Bangladeshi repositories are embodied in the Ranking of Web Repositories. The study also clearly indicates the very slow progress of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The repositories in Bangladesh listed in OpenDOAR are mostly institutional in nature. The study also reveals that a maximum number of repositories are small in terms of collection. It can be easily summarized that there is a need for pub...
IFLA Journal
This study identified the influential factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries in Ba... more This study identified the influential factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries in Bangladesh. The survey was carried out among 196 library professionals from 14 private and seven public university libraries by a structured questionnaire which was adapted cautiously as per local arrangements after conducting a pilot survey. Factors for adoption of OSILS were analyzed by multiple regressions where overall satisfaction was used as dependent variable, and 14 factors for adoption of OSILS were applied as the independent variables. The entire model of regression analysis was established to be significant and revealed that cost-effectiveness, open source code, supporting community, backup and restore systems, easy to integrate with other software, and freedom from licensing fee significantly influenced library professionals to adopt OSILS. Moreover, an effort has been made for the first time to evaluate significant factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries of Bangl...
Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice, 2015
Knowledge Management (KM) has become a fundamental process for all types of institutions in socie... more Knowledge Management (KM) has become a fundamental process for all types of institutions in society. Academic libraries are also an integral part of the knowledge system, these institutions being one of the forms that contribute to knowledge development. This study aims to find out the challenges and opportunities associated with KM practices in Dhaka University Library (DUL). The specific objectives were to ascertain the understanding of KM concepts among library professionals of DUL, to explore an overview of KM and its role, and to identify the rationale behind not practicing KM properly at DUL. Appropriate methods were employed. The findings indicate that limited expertise and lack of clear guidelines are the major challenges for the implementation of KM in DUL.
This article examines the historical development and current trends of library education system i... more This article examines the historical development and current trends of library education system in Bangladesh, identifies educational institutions involved, and determines the strength of current l
The scarcity of information on communication channels is a great threat for rural development whe... more The scarcity of information on communication channels is a great threat for rural development where majority of the people are illiterate thus, do not know how to access information themselves. This study was undertaken to identify the use of television among rural communities of Bangladesh which was conducted in three villages of Dinajpur district, Bangladesh. The questionnaire included information on various information needs of the people under study, different sources of information and peoples’ awareness regarding informative TV shows. The study block included 150 households where more than 50% of the respondents had TV with cable connections. The main source of information as per data analysis was radio (83.33%), cell phone(66%); newspaper (64%) and personal contact (68%) followed by television (62%). Only 19% and 18% dwellers in the study area were aware about different health and agricultural programmes on television respectively. People were found unable to access informati...
Now-a-days, while a mature system of preservation and conservation (PAC) technology and methodolo... more Now-a-days, while a mature system of preservation and conservation (PAC) technology and methodology exists world wide to achieve the systematic PAC of world's cultural heritage, the PAC programs of Bangladesh National Archives (the custodian of Bangladesh ...
Introduction Libraries are important social institutions. No community is considered complete wit... more Introduction Libraries are important social institutions. No community is considered complete without a library. The spread of democracy, the extension of education, the intensification of research activities, and the rapid increase in the production of recorded knowledge, have led to the enormous expansion of libraries and the development of their services. The communication of ideas is one of the most significant achievements in the cultural development of the human race. The library one of many means of human communication (Johnson, 1973) and is an important centre for disseminating knowledge. Library development in Bangladesh is closely related to the library movement in the Indian subcontinent. Libraries in India can be traced from the history of ancient Indian libraries furnished by the travel diary of the famous Chinese traveller Fa-Hien, who visited India in 399 AD (Mishra, 1979). The British settled and stayed on for nearly two hundred years, initially for trading. They subsequently started to establish academic institutions and libraries on a small scale (Kabir, 1987).
Hypothesis # H 4 : There is no significant difference between job satisfaction and background var... more Hypothesis # H 4 : There is no significant difference between job satisfaction and background variables namely age, qualifications, designations, tenure in present position, tenure in present organization, number of promotions and number of other organizations worked. Hypothesis # H 5 : Age, discipline, academic status, importance of the library and average library use in the university will not determine the satisfaction levels of library users. Hypothesis # H 6 : The favourable the organizational climate is in the library, greater is the satisfaction levels of library users whereas, the less the favourable the organizational climate is in the library, greater is the dissatisfaction of the library users. Research Site The universities in Bangladesh are categorized into public and private universities. The public universities are autonomous and funded by Government of Bangladesh whereas private universities are funded by non-governmental organizations. However, University Grants Commission of Bangladesh approves private universities. There are total of 40 universities (Public 17 and Private 23) in Bangladesh (UGC, 2001). Out of which, 23 universities (Public 8 and Private 15) are situated in the Dhaka. Since, majority (54%) of the universities are situated in Dhaka, following four university libraries, two from each category were chosen for the purpose of study: Public Universities
Classification structures are useful for organising and finding information. The right use of cla... more Classification structures are useful for organising and finding information. The right use of classification structure in the web information architecture provides a user friendly interface and can serve as an effective tool for information retrieval. This paper defines the concepts related to the recent development in classification and gives an overview with case studies of using classification structure in information description and discovery in Web. The study found that hierarchical-enumerative structure is used mostly in directories, subject gateways and in cataloguing electronic contents. Faceted structure is used in the commercial sites to effectively organise and retrieve the web document through a multidimensional taxonomy. A third approach known as Folksonomy has emerged as a user oriented classification on the Web without maintaining any explicit relationship of classifying document. This study suggests using these three approaches in the appropriate context to ensure th...
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy i... more Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Library and Information Science of North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong-14, India. April, 2003 MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A CASE STUDY OF BANGLADESH
School Libraries Worldwide, 2019
The study explored the ICT facilities and services at rural Non-Government Secondary (NGS) school... more The study explored the ICT facilities and services at rural Non-Government Secondary (NGS) school libraries in Bangladesh. It identified the ICT literacy of NGS school library professionals known as assistant librarians. An exploratory method was used to ensure the best possible outcomes. Based on the interview and literature review in the qualitative phase, a questionnaire was developed for the quantitative phase and collected 86 responses using an online survey. Findings showed, most of the rural NGS school libraries do not have the ICT facilities and of those that do, they are insufficient in number to provide efficient services to library users. There was a lack of ICT skills among assistant librarians and most agreed that ICT literacy would increase the efficiency of their work and regarded it as an essential tool for school libraries. The study provides an analysis of the prevailing situation that helps in planning for policy makers and further in-depth research.
Library Herald, 2008
Information is power and a driving force for all the activities in the society. Information only ... more Information is power and a driving force for all the activities in the society. Information only has a value when it becomes accessible. Community needs information to make the best use of resources available to them and get direct or indirect help in solving their day to day problems. In Bangladesh, majority of population lives in villages. It is experienced that many of government programmes and services do not reach to common people who is living in villages. Sometimes, community people get information through traditional library system. But rural communities do not get the ICT facilities due to absence of ICT features in the traditional library system. This study focuses the problems associated with the provision of community information services through public library and need the establishment of ICT based community information centre. An attempt has been made to assess how the community information Centres are giving modern information facilities and explores how CIC (Communi...
Page 1. The Need for Islamic Information Management in the Information Institutions In Malaysia: ... more Page 1. The Need for Islamic Information Management in the Information Institutions In Malaysia: An Analysis of Problems Mohd Nazir Ahmad Senior Lecturer Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) naziruitm@yahoo.com Mohd Noor Mamat ...
This paper scrutinizes the LIS syllabuses of the last twenty years in all the levels of Banglades... more This paper scrutinizes the LIS syllabuses of the last twenty years in all the levels of Bangladesh. A comprehensive review of literature has been done, and data has been collected through visits to different library education institutions. The library education in all levels has received very little attention, though library needs dynamic personality with proper education to assure its ultimate goal. None of the department or LIS institutions have ever conducted any survey to determine the needs of the country's libraries and information centers for the qualification of personnel required to staff such institutions as well as development of the courses as per true need. This paper identified the strength and weakness, and suggests some measures for forthcoming syllabuses as well as improving the quality of library education for the benefits of future library professionals.
Modern trend of globalization and rapid technological changes have given many challenges to the l... more Modern trend of globalization and rapid technological changes have given many challenges to the library profession. Information technology made a significant impact on knowledge management and knowledge repositories. Today profession has to struggle hard to sustain and survive its status, which was not earlier realized and felt. At the same time advent of technological advances have added prestige to the professional, provided its application are used effectively to benefit the users of information by providing them whatever whenever wherever information is needed. Today’s library has no library hrs, no place and no institution. Online access to large number of resources has resulted into de-institutionalization breaking all boundaries of accessibility and availability. Today’s users have no patience and cannot wait for information. He expects information on a single click on his laptop, iPod or even on mobile. He prefers to search on universal catalogue or on knowledge access syste...
The prime aim of this paper is to discuss the roles of IR to improve higher education and scholar... more The prime aim of this paper is to discuss the roles of IR to improve higher education and scholarly communication. The other objectives are to find out the importance and impact of IR in higher education, to give an idea about the present status of IR in Bangladesh and India, the challenges for sharing higher education repositories. The study reported that IR can play a vital role in 21st century’s higher education and scholarly communication in developing countries. This study also provides some recommendations and a model to develop a better IR in educational institutions.
Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality assessment model for academic l... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a service quality assessment model for academic libraries using SERVQUAL and validate the model surveying teachers, students and researchers. Design/methodology/approach A model was developed, including 28 statements of five dimensions using the SERVQUAL instrument. It incorporated three segments, i.e. minimum service expectation, desired service expectation and actual service performance with a seven-point Likert scale. The minimum service expectation and desired service expectation appear at both ends of the tolerance zone, which represents the range of satisfactory service performance. A performance level upper tolerance zone could delight users, or service performance below the tolerance zone would cause dissatisfaction. A survey was conducted among 552 respondents from ten private university libraries of Bangladesh to validate the model. Findings Several statistical methods like Cronbach’s alpha (0.986), Bartlett’s test (0.001), r...
IFLA Journal
This study examines the present status of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The main aim of... more This study examines the present status of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The main aim of the study is to find out the characteristics of open access repositories, their development scenario and ranking in web repositories as well as to recommend some suggestions for the development of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The methodology includes a quantitative approach. The data were collected from OpenDOAR from 20 to 29 August 2017. The scope of the study is confined to Bangladeshi repositories indexed in the OpenDOAR database. The findings of the study show that the Bangladeshi repositories are embodied in the Ranking of Web Repositories. The study also clearly indicates the very slow progress of open access repositories in Bangladesh. The repositories in Bangladesh listed in OpenDOAR are mostly institutional in nature. The study also reveals that a maximum number of repositories are small in terms of collection. It can be easily summarized that there is a need for pub...
IFLA Journal
This study identified the influential factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries in Ba... more This study identified the influential factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries in Bangladesh. The survey was carried out among 196 library professionals from 14 private and seven public university libraries by a structured questionnaire which was adapted cautiously as per local arrangements after conducting a pilot survey. Factors for adoption of OSILS were analyzed by multiple regressions where overall satisfaction was used as dependent variable, and 14 factors for adoption of OSILS were applied as the independent variables. The entire model of regression analysis was established to be significant and revealed that cost-effectiveness, open source code, supporting community, backup and restore systems, easy to integrate with other software, and freedom from licensing fee significantly influenced library professionals to adopt OSILS. Moreover, an effort has been made for the first time to evaluate significant factors for adoption of OSILS in university libraries of Bangl...
Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice, 2015
Knowledge Management (KM) has become a fundamental process for all types of institutions in socie... more Knowledge Management (KM) has become a fundamental process for all types of institutions in society. Academic libraries are also an integral part of the knowledge system, these institutions being one of the forms that contribute to knowledge development. This study aims to find out the challenges and opportunities associated with KM practices in Dhaka University Library (DUL). The specific objectives were to ascertain the understanding of KM concepts among library professionals of DUL, to explore an overview of KM and its role, and to identify the rationale behind not practicing KM properly at DUL. Appropriate methods were employed. The findings indicate that limited expertise and lack of clear guidelines are the major challenges for the implementation of KM in DUL.
This article examines the historical development and current trends of library education system i... more This article examines the historical development and current trends of library education system in Bangladesh, identifies educational institutions involved, and determines the strength of current l