Research trends in library and information science at the International Islamic University Malaysia Available to Purchase

Many universities require students enrolling in masters programmes to submit a thesis for the completion of the programme, and the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is no exception. This study investigates and identifies research trends of the MLIS students’ theses for the past nine years at IIUM. The study also investigated features and characteristics of MLIS students’ theses. A total of 20 theses approved from 1994 to 2000, by the university, were analyzed. Findings showed that, information technology (OPAC, CD‐ROM and the Internet) was the most popular research area (50 per cent) among MLIS students. Other areas such as information needs, library management, library use, and publishers/publishing only received one research each, while none of the students explored the history of libraries, cataloguing and classification, indexing and abstracting, cooperation or documentation. On the other hand, a majority of the theses targeted universities or academic libraries, faculty members, job design and reference services, while a small number of the students targeted other areas such as Islamic economy, biomedical scientists, copyright, etc.