Publications

This paper aims to disseminate the lessons learned from the African Library Project (ALP), which has worked in collaboration with more than 1,500 partners to stock 3,762 community and school libraries in 13 African countries with more than 3,883,082 books. Hopefully, these lessons will help other decision-makers and practitioners in different contexts.

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Plagiarism has been on the rise, mainly because of increased access to the internet and digital sources. To combat the threat of plagiarism, various universities have implemented countermeasures such as capacity building, anti-plagiarism policies and the purchase of anti-plagiarism software. In Kenya, there appears to be a lack of cohesion among universities in combating plagiarism, a situation that threatens teaching, learning and research if not addressed adequately. This paper aims to review and identify anti-plagiarism practices in Kenyan universities; it further proposed various best practices and policy actions that ought to be adopted to win the fight and the misperception of plagiarism.

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Effective research data management (RDM) is essential to modern scientific investigations. As the volume and complexity of research data increase, researchers, research institutions, and countries are pressured to improve data management practices to ensure transparency, reproducibility, sharing, and reuse of their findings. Researchers and institutions in Kenya, like those in many other developing countries, have begun to adopt the practice. This review examines the early indicators of improved research data management practices in Kenya to identify leaders who would drive the culture of RDM and thus improve research output.

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Library anxiety is the uncomfortable emotional feeling experienced by library users when they anticipate, imagine or attempt to use a library or library resources. Many library users worldwide experience library anxiety at one time or another. This paper explores the personal and library-related causes of anxiety among undergraduate university students in Kenya. A cross-sectional quantitative survey was used to conduct the study. The study population was 200 undergraduate students from two private and two public universities in Kenya. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data, which were analysed descriptively using SPSS. The findings established that personal factors such as technical skills and library-related ones such as librarians’ friendliness and approachability, the library outlook, and the resources within it, among others, cause library anxiety among undergraduate students in Kenya. Librarians can assist users in overcoming library anxiety to feel more comfortable and confident in using the library’s resources and services by creating a welcoming environment in the library, offering library tours and orientations to help users become acquainted with the library and being approachable, friendly and helpful to users.

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With the increasing recognition and emphasis among stakeholders on practical research data management practices, understanding the production and archiving patterns is critical for countries like Kenya, which is still in the infancy stage of adoption. This study aimed to gain insights into Kenya’s research data production and archiving patterns to identify early adopters of data management and act as benchmarks.

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