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The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study of library anxiety among a group of Arab students in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The paper also investigated the factors that affect the students' level of anxiety while using academic libraries. The study tried to compare the difference in the level of anxiety in the two countries using a scale (LLPB) developed by the researchers which fit the culture in the Arab region. The study adopted a mixed methods approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with several students in Saudi Arabia and Egypt to determine the main factors that lead to having a level of anxiety in the libraries. In the second stage, a questionnaire was sent to students to measure what factors have a greater impact on the level of anxiety. The data showed that Egyptian students are more anxious about using the libraries than the Saudi students. The results also indicated that there is a need to train students on how to use the libraries and also change students' perception regarding the library to reduce the level of anxiety. This study was conducted in Egypt and Saudi Arabia the level of library anxiety and the factors that may affect the students may vary in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to report the findings of Saudi researchers' academic performance on the topic of COVID-19. In addition, the paper explored the contribution of Saudi Arabia in the area and how Saudi Arabia is doing compared to other Arab countries The study adopted bibliometrix R to map the literature on the topic published by Saudi scholars. A total number of 3242 documents were retrieved from the Web of Science database and examined Using the software to mine information about journals, articles, authors, citations, keywords and countries. The analysis revealed that Saudi scholars had published a fair amount of COVID-19 studies in a small timespan. Scholars from Saudi Arabia have initiated a strong collaboration with other researchers worldwide. The data revealed that Saudi scholars have collaborated with scholars All over the world. Overall, Saudi Arabia had its share of global contribution on the subject (19th place). Contribution from Saudi Arabia was found to be affiliated to other countries, especially the USA and Egypt The study focused only on Saudi scholars' productivity in the field of COVID-19. More research needs to be done in order to find how Arab scholars are progressing with COVID-19 research. Additionally, the study only used the Web of science to retrieve the data. Using Scopus might give us more understanding of the scholars' productivity in the field. Despite several studies on the field, this is the first study covering scholars' productivity in covid-19 in the Middle east. The results of the study are hoped to help in understanding the research progress in this area and how scholars collaborate in COVID-19 research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the findings of a study on open data usage among Saudi scholars. It investigates the sample's perceptions of open data and open data portals. The study reported the factors affecting the participants' decision to use open data and aimed to understand Saudi researchers' practices and perceptions related to the use and sharing of open data. It adopted a quantitative approach and a questionnaire was distributed to and collected from 190 Saudi academic staff to measure their perceptions, their open data usage, the benefits of open data, and the factors that significantly impacted their open data utilization. The findings reveal that 42.1% of Saudi researchers used government open data portals and regularly visited open data portals provided by the university and the government mainly for research purposes. The results also indicate that open data portals enabled Saudi researchers to obtain useful data for their research while giving them the tools to visualize and understand the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the information seeking behaviour of scholars working at Shaqra University in both Arabic and English languages; to investigate if there are differences in the way scholars seek information while using different languages; to identify challenges while seeking information and to describe the approaches followed by the scholars to seek information. The study deployed a quasi-experimental approach. The sample of the study consisted of 20 participants who are affiliated to Shaqra University. Each participant was asked to solve five tasks, which were designed to capture participants' information seeking behaviour. Think aloud protocol was also used to gather more data from the participants to enrich the collected data and to fully understand scholars' behavior. The study found that the participants' information seeking consists of four main stages: identifying the information needs, selecting the keywords, examining the results and filtering the results. The data revealed that there is no difference between information seeking in Arabic and English languages. However, participants who are from a non-Arabic background were more accustomed to searching information in the English language. There are few studies investigating information seeking behavior of Arabic language speakers. Additionally, fewer studies have tried to explore differences in information seeking behavior while using different languages. The value of the current study lies in being the first study that focuses on investigating information seeking behavior at Shaqra University. Additionally, it is one of a few studies that examine cross-language information seeking practices of Arabic language speakers and the obstacles that face them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]