Browsing by Author "Bernard, Ronald"

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Dual function national libraries: A SWOT analysis of the Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzania
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2013) Sife, Alfred S.; Ernest, Ester; Bernard, Ronald
A SWOT analysis was conducted for the Sokoine National Agricultural Library (SNAL) in order to understand its strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities and how these affect its performance as a dual function library. This SWOT analysis was achieved through authors’ experience and review of existing documents. The analysis revealed that the strength of the library was on its staff, collection, ICT services and training programmes. SNAL’s weaknesses include limited financial resources, lack of user education programme, inadequate library security, insufficient library facilities and space, underutilization of e-resources and dysfunctional printing unit. A serious weakness is the low attention given to the library’s national mandate, implying that SNAL has not adequately played its role as a national agricultural library. Available opportunities for SNAL include ICT development, legal deposit legislation, joining library consortia, funding opportunities, and outreach activities whereas budgetary constraints and changes in technology are the library’s threats. The library could build on these strengths and opportunities to overcome its weaknesses and threats. Several recommendations have been made based on the SWOT analysis.
Persistence and decay of web citations used in theses and dissertations available at the Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzania
(International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT),, 2013) Sife, Alfred S.; Bernard, Ronald
A study was conducted to examine the persistence and decay of web citations in theses and dissertations available at the Sokoine National Agricultural Library. Specifically, the study assessed the accessibility status of cited URLs, identified error messages and top level domains of inaccessible URLs, and calculated the half-life of web citations. Eighty-three theses and dissertations that were dated between 2007 and 2011 were stratified according to their years of publication and randomly selected for the study. These gave a total of 15,468 citations of which 1,487 (9.6%) were web citations. The findings show that a total of 862 (58%) web citations were inaccessible. The 404 File Not Found error message was the most (92.7%) encountered and the .com domain had the greatest number (28.2%) of missing URLs. The average half-life for the URLs cited in theses and dissertations was 2.5 years. The study findings therefore indicate that many web resources cited in theses and dissertations available at SNAL had disappeared fromn their original locations. Collaborative efforts are thus required from various stakeholders in order to reduce the problem of URL decay.
Research productivity and scholarly impact of forestry researchers at Sokoine University of Agriculture: A bibliometric Analysis
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2014-02-14) Sife, Alfred S.; Bernard, Ronald; Ernest, Ester
A bibliometric analysis was conducted to understand the research productivity and scholarly impact of forestry researchers at Sokoine University of Agriculture for the period of 1998 to 2013. Data were obtained using the Publish or Perish software that uses Google Scholar to retrieve scholars’ publications, citations and related metrics. A total of 1031 publications were recorded for all forestry researchers, giving an average of 64.4 publications per year and an annual growth rate of 6.3%. The year 2008 had the most (12.7%) publications followed by 2007 with 9% of all publications while the year 2003 had the lowest (3.2%) number of publications. Majority (88.1%) of the publications were multiple-authored and the degree of collaboration was 0.88. The top ten ranked forestry researchers contributed nearly half (46.3%) of all publications; hence corroborating to the Lotka’s Law of scientific productivity. However, these top ten scholars showed considerable variation since no single scholar maintained the same rank in all nine metrics. These findings suggest that many factors should be considered in combination when evaluating research performance. The study findings call for a paradigm shift for scholars to focus on the scholarly impacts of their publications.
Using mobile phones for teaching and learning purposes in higher learning institutions: the case of Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2012) Mtega, Wulystan P.; Bernard, Ronald; Msungu, Andrew C.; Sanare, Rachel
The study investigated how mobile phones have been used for teaching and learning purposes in higher learning institutions in Tanzania. Specifically the study assessed how mobile phones facilitated the teaching and learning process, identified the mobile phone applications used for teaching and learning, determined the types of learning activities facilitated through mobile phones and assessed the common limitations of m-learning in at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA). The study employed a survey where teaching staff and students from faculties and institutes hosting academic programmes were involved. A total of 30 teaching staff and 40 students were randomly selected and included in the study. In-depth interviews, observations and questionnaire were used for data collection. It was found that majority of the respondents used their mobile phones for teaching and learning process. It was found that most respondents reported to use traditional mobile learning applications including text messages and calls. Few respondents had smart phones with a number of m-learning applications most of them being teaching staff. These were able to create upload, download and share academic resources through their smart phones while others recorded and stored files in their phones. It was also found that among teaching staff many were not aware of the capacity of their mobile phones such that they underutilized them. Costs associated with downloading multimedia content was another constraint which limited some respondents especially students from using phones for learning purposes. More than that, users were forced to use SMART/VISA cards for buying online mobile applications of which most respondents were not aware of.