Accessibility and information technology

Lawson (2010:137) argues that librarians struggle to maintain and expand accessibility in an increasing complex environment. Bazillion and Braun (2000:24) state that “librarians with traditional skills have suffered a relative loss in status”. Webb et al. (2007:125) acknowledge the impact of new information technology changes in institutional communication. Rowley and Roberts (2009:197) advocate that information professionals, including mainly librarians, should change and adapt with technological changes as we have in today’s research environment. De Bruyn (2007:114) notes that technology change goes hand in hand with changes in access to information. Doraswamy (2010:5) asserts that “modern libraries adopt modern information techniques to render its services more differently”. Niu and Hemminger (2012:336) concede that electronic resources such as electronic journals, online databases and digital libraries focus largely on the content of their resources rather than simply on physical buildings. Tenopir, Hitchcock and Pillow (2003:36-37) discuss a number of advantages with the use of online information sources, including access to adequate technology and users being well-equipped with the required information technology skills. The advantages cited by them include convenience, timeliness, the ability to search across a wide range of journal articles, the ability to search within an article and interact with multiple levels of information objects, the

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possibility of downloading or printing the desired document or segment, the currency of information, the speed of access and the ability to send articles to colleagues instantly. In addition, Herman (2001:453) mentions that the use of online databases purposefully enables users to gain access to many sources of information.

Heath, Kelleher, Sangwand and Wood (2010:165) maintain that digital collections positively influence researchers’ information-seeking needs and habits. With the use of electronic resources, it is possible for the libraries to make information more accessible to users than ever before (Okeke 2008:12). However, Campbell (2006:18) outlines that even before the web was introduced, libraries, including research libraries have started to create digital libraries of trustworthy information. Brophy (2005:52) notes that the print-based model and digital model are still complementary to each other and they both create benefits for libraries. Woodward (2010:1) underlines that no matter how technology changes, it is still the role of the librarian to have a positive impact on providing access to available resources.

In terms of web-based information, researchers face many challenges in accessing them.

Hoggan (2002) recalls that high-quality information may be difficult to access because of poorly designed websites or associated fees and each web-based resource seems to hold such a vast quantity of information that it is easy to assume that one has conducted a comprehensive search, when, in fact, other resources contain unique, relevant information. Hoggan (2002) lists some of the major challenges that research scientists face when accessing web-based information. They are:

 Information overload - the volume of available information is more than any one information retrieval system can index, more than any library can purchase and more than any scientist can read (Belefant-Miller & King 2001:100-104). The lack of central organisation and indexing on the web makes the information overload even more confusing because the precision of search engine results is often low (that is, many irrelevant documents are retrieved). At the same time, no search engine can index the entire contents of the web, so searches also have poor recall with respect to all relevant information on the web.

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 Website navigation - to retrieve electronic journal articles, users must navigate a vast number of websites and each publisher structures its website differently. This can be very challenging because the websites are not always designed for easy navigation. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine which link on the crowded homepage leads to the right article content. Often the links to “subscribe today”

are much more prominent.

 Preprints - scientific research is very competitive, and researchers must keep up to date with the latest developments in their field. Preprints on the web can be very difficult because they are poorly organised and because most of them are in PDF or PostScript format and therefore are not indexed by most search engines (He &

Hui 2001:278).

 Financial concerns - peer-reviewed articles are available on the web, but they are usually published in fee-based e-journals. Researchers access these resources via personal online subscriptions or, more commonly, institutional online subscriptions paid for by their libraries (Tenopir & King 2001:180). For researchers not associated with an institution, such as retirees or independent consultants, these fees are barriers to information access (Line 2001:175). Some private-sector online services offer free content, but they are much more likely to go out of business than the fee-based services (Tenopir & King 2001:181). Thus, financial concerns can limit a researcher’s access to scholarly information.

 Loss of browsability - another challenge for researchers is the loss of browsability of today’s electronic journals. However, researcher’s interest in electronic journals has increased dramatically in recent years, largely because of their convenience advantage and the improved quality of figures which are now available in PDF format. The emphasis that today’s researchers place on electronic journals may come with a corresponding loss of coincidental readings (Schevitz 2002). Electronic journals are not as browsable as print journals and this may have a marked impact on the range of articles read by researchers, who have traditionally depended on browsing to find most of the articles they read.

 Reliability - print journals do not experience technical difficulties. However, when a publisher’s server goes down, access to electronic content is temporarily

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lost. Compounding the problem is the fact that access to many electronic resources is rented rather than owned, so if the institution cancels a subscription - access to backfiles is lost. With a print journal, on the other hand, the previous volumes of the journal would still be available after a subscription has been cancelled. Because of these issues, librarians and researchers cannot rely completely on electronic resources.

 Scholarly misconduct and misinformation - scholarly misconduct includes plagiarism, fabrication of results and manipulation of data (Calvert 2001:234).

Researchers have been known to manipulate numbers and even publish lies (Woolston 2002). In addition, many publications include incorrect bibliographic citations and other errors. It is already difficult for editors of print journals to detect scholarly misconduct and other errors, and the chance for misinformation to slip past an e-journal editor is even more likely given the faster turnaround time of online-only journals (Calvert 2001:236). Online journals may actually attract dishonest scholars who want to pad their resumes with quick, fabricated publications (Calvert 2001:234). In addition, scholars can publish results and papers on their personal websites without peer review. Online discussion groups often contain biased information or information taken out of context (Calvert 2001:237). Thus, the potential for misinformation on the web is a real concern for research scientists.

2.5 FACTORS AFFECTING THE INFORMATION-SEEKING BEHAVIOUR