Development of the African Digital Health Library (ADHL): Experience at the Medical Library, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

The African Digital Health Library, (ADHL) is a collaborative project involving five African institutions namely Bamako University of Science and Technology, Kenya Methodist University, Universities of Ibadan, Nairobi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The University of Ibadan Nigeria component of the ADHL (ADHL-UI) is described in this paper. Funded by the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator of the United States Department of State, the goal of ADHL-UI is to store, preserve, make accessible through an institutional repository, theses and dissertations by postgraduate students of the institution's College of Medicine. The ADHL-UI has over 1000 theses and dissertations accessible on the internet. Creation of the ADHL-UI, a repository of theses and dissertations in the Medical Library, University of Ibadan, is a major contribution to research development and preservation of institutional scholarly heritage. Effective use by students and faculty will help in reducing duplication of research efforts and create visibility for the authors and the institution.

Awareness and use of reference managers by resident doctors in Nigeria

Reference manager (RM) also known as reference management software (RMS) are tools used by researchers to organize and manage bibliographic references. They are citation tools that enable researchers to track the scientific papers they have read, sources consulted, cited and used to generate a reference list or bibliography. This study investigated the awareness and pattern of use of RM tools by Resident Doctors (RDs) in Nigeria. Cross-sectional survey design was adopted for the study and semi-structured questionnaire was used for the data collection. Respondents' age was 35.9 ± 5.0, (53.8%) were males. Most of the respondents (92.9%) had heard of RM, 49.1% had ever used any RM with Mendeley topping the list (49.1%). However, many of the respondents (42.8%) did not use RM due to lack of requisite skills, while only (35.1%) respondents had ever received formal training on use of RM. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that awareness should be regularly created to encourage resident doctors to apply their knowledge of the tools in the management of their references while training should be conducted for those who do not use the tools.