The literature reviewed in this section focusses on the attitudes of library staff, students and academic staff to the use of mobile phones to deliver and access library and information services. The literature addresses research question number 4: What are the attitudes of library staff, academic staff and students towards the potential use of mobile phones in providing and accessing library and information services?
3.6.1 Attitudes of Students to the Use of Mobile Phones to Access Library Services Studies focusing largely on students have been carried out to determine attitudes towards the use of mobile phones in libraries. These studies were carried out both in libraries that did not offer services through the use of mobile phones but were planning to do so like Jawaharlal Nehru University in India and Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom (UK) (Kumar, 2014; Paterson and Low, 2011), and in libraries that were already offering services through use of mobile phones such as Oregon State University (Bridges et al., 2010). These studies have shown that users were willing to use their mobile devices to access library services although the rate of actual use has tended to exhibit mixed results, with some libraries registering a positive response from users whilst others have experienced low responses. A study conducted by Kumar (2014) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India involving 180 students revealed that 89.44% of the respondents did not have problems if the library reached out to them through mobile phone. The study findings also showed that 81.67% of the respondents were willing to access the library catalogue via mobile phones. Services which the respondents wanted to access included library catalogue (76.84%), book reservations (74.74%), programmes, events, new additions, library news (72.63%), reminders
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(66.32%), downloadable e-books and e-journal articles (68.42%) and booking library training sessions (64.21%).
Another study that examined student attitudes towards the use of mobile phones in the delivery of library services was conducted by Paterson and Low (2011) at Edinburgh University in 2010. This study which initially comprised of an online survey that attracted 1,716 participants, was followed up with two focus-group discussions of six undergraduate and five postgraduate students. Edinburgh University Library was not offering services through the use of mobile phones at the time of this study. However, findings drawn from both the survey and the focus-group discussions revealed that students wanted to be able to search the catalogue, view their library account, check PC availability in the library, book study rooms, and have access to a map or GPS for finding their way around the library building.
In yet another study, Walsh (2010) conducted a series of focus groups in 2009 at the University of Huddersfield to investigate students’ attitudes towards the use of mobile phones in libraries. Results of this study indicate that students’ attitudes towards text messaging from the library were overwhelmingly positive. Particularly, students welcomed the introduction of services such as overdue reminders direct to their phones. On the contrary, students had reservations about using the mobile web because of cost considerations. Based on these findings, Walsh recommended that libraries that were not offering their services through the use of mobile phones should concentrate on introducing text messaging based systems initially, with other services likely to be well received only if students can see an obvious and immediate benefit to using them.
The final study reviewed on this topic is an online survey that was conducted by Pažur (2014) in Croatia. The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of scientists of the Rudjer Boškovic Institute towards the use of mobile devices in library services, and it attracted 240 responses from scientists of the insitution including students and faculty of other Croatian universities. Results of the study indicated that 57% of the respondents had not visited the library website using their mobile device. However, 64% of the respondents wished the library website was optimised for mobile devices, and only 6% stated that it should not.
Respondents to this study identified the following services as important hence wanted them
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included on the mobile phone platform: Online databases (35%), Croatian Scientific Bibliography (30%), e-journals (35%), and library catalogue (34%).
Literature reviewed above indicates that overall university students had a positive attitude towards the use of mobile phones in the delivery and access to library services. Issues of students’ reluctance to use the mobile web (as noted in the study conducted by Walsh, 2010) seems to have been resolved over time as a more recent study by Dahlstrom et al. (2013) had shown that students’ use of the mobile web was on the increase. Although students’ attitudes to the use of mobile phones in delivering library services seemed to be positive, studies conducted focussing on actual usage of mobile phones to access library services present a mixed picture, with others showing mobile phones being succesfully used for the cause (Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014; Dahlstrom et al., 2013; Anbu and Mavuso, 2013) and others failing (Salisbury et al., 2015; Felts Jr., 2014). For instance, an ECAR (2013) study involving 113,035 university students in the USA showed a marked increase in the number of students who were accessing the library catalogue from their mobile phone from 65% in 2012 to 70%
in 2013 (Dahlstrom et al., 2013). The 2014 ECAR study that attracted 75,306 responses (Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014) also noted that close to 70% of the respondents used the mobile phone to access library resources. Both of these studies indicated that students’ use of mobile phones for library-related activities was very high.
Anbu and Mavuso (2012) investigated the possibility of using SMS in the delivery of library services at the University of Swaziland. The project involved sending a list of article alerts in a form of journal articles, table of contents, some important articles, library awareness quotations, library notices and new arrival notices to a selected group of 200 students and staff from the Faculty of Commerce. Findings of the study revealed that full-text downloads increased by almost 150% compared to that of the previous two months. On a year-to-year comparison, results showed an impressive 200% growth rate to that of the previous year. The survey conducted at the end of the project further indicated that 71% of the users who participated in the project indicated that their awareness about the database and various subjects covered during the course of the project increased more because of the SMS alerts.
On the contrary, a number of other studies had shown that usage of services offered through mobile phones was not impressive. One of these studies was conducted by Salisbury et al.
(2015) at the University of Arkansas in the USA involving 489 students. Findings of this study revealed that 66.3% of the respondents never accessed library resources using their mobile devices, 15.1% accessed one resource, 7.8% accessed two resources, and 6.5%
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accessed three or more resources using their mobile devices. Limited usage of library resources registered in this study was blamed on lack of awareness. Simmilarly, a study conducted by Elmore and Stephens (2012) at Loughborough University Library revealed that student usage of QR codes in the library was low. In this study, QR codes were accessed only 33 times over the four-week period in which this project was done.
3.6.2 Attitudes of Academic Staff to the Use of Mobile Phones to Access Library Services
The researcher did not come across studies focussing on the attitudes of academic staff to the use of mobile phones to access library and infromation services. However, a study conducted by Aharony (2013) revealed that individuals use a particular technology based on need hence
“the more respondents perceive mobile technology as useful, the higher their behavioral intention to use [it]” (p. 366). Moreover, literature has shown that university students were willing to use mobile phones to access library services only when it helped them to meet their needs. Consequently, libraries that had made efforts to optimise their websites for mobile phones consulted the potential users (students) to find out what type of content they wanted to access from the mobile website (Paterson and Low, 2011; Bridges et al., 2010). Drawing on these findings, it is suggested that attitudes of academic staff to the use of mobile phones in accessing library services (positive or negative) would be determined by the usefulness of the content that may be offered on the mobile phone platform. If the content and services offered meet their needs, then it is likely that academic staff would develop positive attitudes to the use of mobile phones to access those services. Likewise, if the services do not meet their needs then it is likely that their attitudes would equally be negative. Moreover, creating awareness on the usefulness of mobile phones to access information services could equally help in creating positive attitude to their use.
3.6.3 Attitudes of Library Staff towards the Use of Mobile Phones to Deliver Library Services
Studies focussing on the attitudes of library staff to the use of mobile phones in the delivery of library services hardly exist in the literature. However, the literature shows that the number of libraries that are adopting the use of mobile phones in the delivery of mobile phones is on the increase in many parts of the world (Bomhold, 2014; Jackson, 2013; Aldrich, 2010; Anbu
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and Mavuso, 2012; Villa et al.,2010). A critical analysis of these projects shows that librarians took a leading role in the implementation of these projects. This could be interpreted to imply that librarians have positive attitudes towards the use of mobile phones in the delivery of library services as they see it as a tool that would enable them reach out to their clients. Use of mobile phones have made it possible for libraries to offer services to their clients beyond the normal opening hours hence assist overcome the obstacles of time and space (Malik and Mahmood, 2013), and bring convenience to library users (Ballard and Blaine, 2013).