A PhD class (session 2020-2025) of the Institute of Information Management (IIM), organized a 2nd students-led one-day research conference on ‘Emerging Issues in Libraries and Information Management (EILIM)’ on 15th November 2023 at the seminar hall of IIM, University of the Punjab, Lahore. This was the 2nd student-led research conference, where all the arrangements were made by research students under the guidance of the Prof. Nosheen Fatima Warraich, Director, IIM. To organize this conference, various committees were constituted, and they worked very hard to make this event a success.

All Ph. D. and MPhil students were invited to participate in this conference either as a presenter or attendee. They were invited to present their research work in the form of oral or poster presentation. A call for submission was sent out through emails and WhatsApp group to the current and recently graduated students of IIM with a link to fill an online submission form. The interested students submitted structured abstracts (500-750 words) to present their research work in the conference. There was an overwhelming response on this call and a significant number of abstracts were received for both oral and poster presentations. After scrutiny by the abstract review committee, 13 oral and 12 poster abstracts were accepted to present in the conference.

There were two sessions in the conference apart from inaugural and concluding ones. The inaugural session included the wonderful speech of our invited speakers, Prof. Dr. Abdul Hameed, Distinguished Professor, UMT Lahore, on the topic, “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the LIS Discipline and Across Academia”. Dr. Amy VanScoy, University at Buffalo, New York, USA, presented her speech on “Reference & information service as an emerging issue”.

In two consecutive sessions, 13 papers were presented, while 12 posters were displayed by current and recently graduated research students. In concluding session, the judges, Dr. Muhammad Irfan and Dr. Abdul Jabbar announced the top three papers to encourage and buck up the new researchers of IIM. Here is the detail of the winning papers:

Oral Presentations:

1.

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA) Literature in the Library and Information Science Profession: A Bibliometric Analysis / by Murtaza Ashiq, Shafiq Ur Rehman and Nosheen Fatima Warraich

2.

Assessing the impact of system feature overload on teachers’ job performance: Moderating role of self-efficacy / by Tayyba Rasool, Nosheen Fatima Warraich and Alia Arshad

3.

Effect of Core Technology and Interpersonal Competencies on Work Performance of Academic Librarians / Muhammad Asif Ali, Muhammad Rafiq and Alia Arshad

At the end of the conference, Conference Chair (Prof. Dr. Nosheen Fatima Warraich, Director, IIM) and Guest speakers (Prof. Dr. Abdul Hameed and Dr. Amy VanScoy) distributed the certificates among the conference presenters and shields among the organizing committee.

The main objective of the conference was to provide a forum to current and recently graduated research students of IIM to disseminate their research projects. This was a great opportunity for students and researchers to learn, discuss, think, socialize, share their projects, and the most importantly to get thought provoking ideas from the researchers and guest speaker.

Organizing Committee:

Murtaza Ashiq, Ashraf Sharif, Shahbaz Anjum, Mahmood Alvi, Hafiz M. Adil, Mussarat Sultan, Iqra Tariq, Abeera Sial, Farhat Shahbaz, Mahmood Khan (PhD class-session 2020-2025).