The submission of thesis or research project is one of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Library and Information Science in many universities, somewhere it is compulsory and somewhere it is optional. The University of Karachi, Pakistan (UoK) is no exception. The university offers a research project or thesis as an optional course in lieu of a course MLIS-672 (Comparative and International Librarianship). The course/thesis carries 100 marks and spread over a semester only. This study investigates and identifies research trends of the MLIS students' theses for the past sixteen years at UoK. The theses were analyzed in terms of total number of theses by academic year, areas of librarianship covered, the type of library focused, method of data analysis, the popular methods of research and the language adopted by the research students at master level. A total of 105 theses approved from 2000 to 2015, by the university, were analyzed. Findings showed that surveys of different libraries, is the most popular research area (31.42 per cent) among MLIS students. Second most covered area in research, is Automation including IT and ICT. Other areas such as information needs, indexing and abstracting, library education, library management, library resources etc. received low attention by the students. While none of the students explored the history of libraries, cataloguing and classification, publishing industry cooperation or documentation, censorship or copyright issues. On the other hand, most of the theses, about 52 percent targeted universities or academic libraries, 53 percent researchers used survey method for their study and 62 (59.0%) theses were written in Urdu language and remaining 43 (41.0%) are in English language. None of the theses was written in Sindhi or other local languages.
BT - Pakistan Library & Information Science Journal IS - 1 LA - English N2 -The submission of thesis or research project is one of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Library and Information Science in many universities, somewhere it is compulsory and somewhere it is optional. The University of Karachi, Pakistan (UoK) is no exception. The university offers a research project or thesis as an optional course in lieu of a course MLIS-672 (Comparative and International Librarianship). The course/thesis carries 100 marks and spread over a semester only. This study investigates and identifies research trends of the MLIS students' theses for the past sixteen years at UoK. The theses were analyzed in terms of total number of theses by academic year, areas of librarianship covered, the type of library focused, method of data analysis, the popular methods of research and the language adopted by the research students at master level. A total of 105 theses approved from 2000 to 2015, by the university, were analyzed. Findings showed that surveys of different libraries, is the most popular research area (31.42 per cent) among MLIS students. Second most covered area in research, is Automation including IT and ICT. Other areas such as information needs, indexing and abstracting, library education, library management, library resources etc. received low attention by the students. While none of the students explored the history of libraries, cataloguing and classification, publishing industry cooperation or documentation, censorship or copyright issues. On the other hand, most of the theses, about 52 percent targeted universities or academic libraries, 53 percent researchers used survey method for their study and 62 (59.0%) theses were written in Urdu language and remaining 43 (41.0%) are in English language. None of the theses was written in Sindhi or other local languages.
PY - 2019 SP - 47 EP - 54 T2 - Pakistan Library & Information Science Journal TI - Research Trends in Library and Information Science at Master Level at the University of Karachi, Pakistan VL - 50 ER -