How instructors and librarians at African universities cope with confusion resulting from ever-changing software applications

In this article, we report on instructors and librarians working at African universities and their experiences of confusion while using software applications needed to assist their patrons, students, or colleagues. We note that even though the software applications they use have changed dramatically over the past decades, the work of instructors and librarians using those software applications has not changed much. To establish a rich picture of the situation we employed two methods, a scoping literature review, and an online survey. We identified certain software applications that seemed to cause people relatively less confusion than other software applications. We note the reasons that participants provided to account for confusion and the way that people resolve their confusion. We recommend that university libraries become hubs for knowledge sharing as to how to learn new software and how to cope better with confusion resulting from ever-changing software applications.