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The paper comparatively investigates the relation between controlled vocabularies assigned by the experts in Library of Congress and tags assigned by users in Library Thing database in three subjects, Economics, History and Sociology under Social Science domain. Based on Term matching (S= 14.80 %, E= 12.77 % and H= 8.06 %) and Jaccard similarity coefficient (E= 0.15, S= 0.15 and H= 0.11), we found little matching between both vocabularies. We also found that experts mostly use double-word and multi-word specific topical terms (S= 73.14 %, E= 72.89 % and H= 61.05 %), whereas social taggers mostly use single-word general non-topical terms (E= 54.88 %, H= 54.21 % and S= 48.55%) and little topical and few personal terms. While comparison with LCSH subfield, we found that experts prefer topical terms for all subjects, whereas, taggers only prefer it for Economics and geographic subdivision terms for History and Sociology, but they don’t prefer chronological terms for tagging. Even, experts prefer little title-based terms (H= 196 terms, S= 195 terms and E= 175 terms) but taggers mostly prefer title-based terms (H= 673 terms, S= 564 terms and E= 444 terms) in three subjects. However, the study concludes that both vocabularies are different, but libraries can exploit those uncontrolled vocabularies and can introduce ‘hybrid metadata ecology’ which combines controlled vocabularies, classification and folksonomies for better subject access and retrieval of social science documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying trends in research through co-citation or content analysis of journal contents is quite a common practice in LIS research. In this study, however, we proposed the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a popular topic-modeling approach for identifying research trends of published articles in three scopus-indexed Indian LIS journals. A total of 1213 titles & their abstracts published between 2011 and 2022 have been considered. From these data, a corpus of frequently used 15 key phrases was identified from each journal using Count Vectorizer and then ten topics having higher coherence scores were extracted from each journal corpus using LDA techniques to understand to what extent these topics are different in these journals. The analysis of the study indicates that 'Library users' studies' especially in academic libraries; and 'bibliometric indicators for measuring research growth are a few common topics in these journals and, technological innovation; utilisation of electronic and print information resources; library management; or network analysis are some of the topics that are journal specific. From the t-SNE visualisation and pyLDAvis diagram, it was seen that the topics of DJLIT are significantly unique with discrete distributions than the other two journals. On analysing the growth of the top ten topics longitudinally, it was seen that research on digital libraries, analysing the global output, online search strategy, ranking universities, etc. are concurrent interests of research among researchers while academic library resources, including electronic resources and its use, open access are among diminishing research interests of authors. Since the topic-modeling approach can provide results devoid of bias, it can be used to identify research land scape longitudinally as well as obsolescence of topic in a domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic hampered the availability of information sources and services in most academic institutions around the world. Making information available during major crisis reveals the long-standing position of the library in helping its patrons. This post COVID-19 study that took place between February 2020 and January 2021 investigated the availability of information sources and services during the COVID-19 pandemic in university libraries in Nigeria. Using a descriptive design, the study used 240 students who were purposely selected from 30 universities including federal, state and private universities in South-South geographical zone of Nigeria as sample. The study revealed that information sources such as: e-books, print journals, e-journals and electronic databases and services such as: Circulation, interlibrary loan, remote access, SDI, online reference services among others were available to the patrons in university libraries in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings showed that the inhibiting factors against the availability of information sources and service in university libraries were poor telecommunication network, closure of some library sections, lack of preparation, unavailability of library policy on pandemic/disaster management and poor coordination among others. The study recommended some areas for improvement to ensure the availability of information sources and services to the library patrons during major crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessing the library's subscribed electronic resources remotely by users has always been a challenge for the library. KMC Health Sciences Library, Manipal relied on proxy-based authentication to remotely cater its e-resources to library users. To enhance the secure usage of electronic resources and to provide user-friendly authentication, the library has considered a Single Sign-On (SSO) remote access through OpenAthens. The article demonstrates the setup process of OpenAthens and the various steps involved in the transformation of the library from proxy-based authentication. The single sign-on setup at the library has benefited users in having a single set of credentials to access all the library e-resources, reducing the hassle of remembering multiple login credentials. Features such as cloud hosting, granular usage reports, and the admin dashboard gave complete hold on the usage of library e-resources. Although OpenAthens has its merits, the setup process involved challenges in the integration of existing library-subscribed e-resources. This article provides insight into the step-by-step process of enabling OpenAthens, addresses troubleshooters, and makes recommendations to libraries looking towards SSO remote access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the role of public libraries in bridging the digital divide in the Kerala State Central library (KSCL), Thiruvananthapuram. The study employed a descriptive survey method using a structured questionnaire distributed among library users. It discussed the use of ICT and internet services in the library, the purpose of using the internet, digital services, e-governance services, e-resources provided by the library and factors that cause the digital divide. The findings revealed that the majority of the users are not aware of ICT (47.0 %) and internet services (39.4%) provided by the library. The users preferred photocopy (43.2 %) and OPAC (31.8 %) services. The library users access the internet for education, reading news, and employment purposes, and mostly use computers to access e-journals and e-books provided by the library (52.2 %). M-governance (12.8 %) and E-district (12.0 %), were the most frequently used e-governance information services provided by the library. The users opined the primary factors that causes digital divide are lack of ICT skills and illiteracy. Non-parametric test showed the significant differences between the purpose of internet usage and the place of living, as well as the factors driving the digital divide. Public library services are essential for common people to overcome the digital gap and the library can bring new technologies to reduce the digital gap of public users and can assist them in getting education, employment, and government services. The respondents suggested that the library should conduct user awareness program about emerging technologies and orientation for users to familiarise the services provided by the library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries have started incorporating game-like elements into their services, while the latter have added gamebased facilities to their collections. Now a days, Gamification is a well-known concept in education and marketing. It entails incorporating game-like features into a certain process. It can serve to attract people's attention, interest them in a specific activity, and affect their behaviour. Gamification can be used to grab library users' attention, engage them in game-like library activities, and impact their overall library user behaviour. Ten years of data from 2013 to 2023 was extracted from Web of Science, and R Software (Biblioshiny) has been used for visualising the extracted data. Findings are mainly based on indicators like-most relevant sources, authors, globally cited documents, affiliations, country scientific production, three field plot, word growth, keyword plus and co-occurrence network. This study emphasises the importance of Gamification in library culture as it motivates users and makes learning more engaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of digital humanities (DH) in libraries, emphasizing its importance in preserving historical humanities and archaeological resources. It covers various aspects of DH, including courses, machine learning applications, metadata practices and the potential for interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

Libraries must provide supportive environments and unhindered services to their users to support their academic well-being. A survey of 202 Punjab Agricultural University Library users was conducted to determine users' satisfaction with the library webpage, library resources, infrastructure facilities, and library services. The study found differences in the satisfaction level and awareness of library services and facilities among the undergraduate, graduate, research scholars and faculty users. A compulsory credit-based course exists for postgraduate students only, leaving the other users uninformed about the services and facilities offered by the library. It was discovered that a robust ICT infrastructure is required since most of the users assessed the ICT infrastructure as 'average'. Data collected was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to give a brief about the services provided by libraries to disable library users using software and hardware technologies. In this era, the development of technologies, information and communication technologies, etc., is widespread and being disseminated and published globally. Usually, it is convenient for a library professional to differentiate between individuals in need of assistance. This paper emphasises specialised equipment, technologies, and services that provide a barrier-free environment to the disabled users in libraries and information centres, leading to many technological innovations and advancements for general and disabled persons. This study will be helpful for persons with disabilities, LIS specialists, and other professional communities to provide information about the situation and the variety of assistive technologies available in libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to find out the collection development and management, library services, library staff, library budget, and ICT technology in the selected six libraries of the central government ministries viz. Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution that are situated in Delhi by way of collecting their qualitative and quantitative data on aforesaid parameters which could be directly related to their overall development. There are various studies on various types of government libraries however no study on ministerial libraries of the government of India has been done before. The research was designed through a structured questionnaire that aimed at collecting information about the overall collection, management, and functions of the libraries and subsequently, the librarians or heads of selected libraries alongwith their staff were approached for collection of the data specific to the structured questionnaire. Findings of the study show that these libraries are lacking professional skilled staff as well as the unavailability of adequate ICT components. Furthermore, there is a lack of proper information services which is hindering their overall development. Since these libraries are special libraries in nature and consists of a rare and useful collection related to their respective Ministry, hence, evaluation and study of these libraries to know their developmental status will be helpful to the library users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, researchers aim to understand the attitude of users towards information technology application in two university libraries of north India, namely Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and Panjabi University, Patiala. Survey method of research was used to collect data from the users. The sample consisted of 391 users, which included PG Students, Research Scholars and Faculty Members in the Faculties of Social Sciences and Sciences in both the universities. The data were collected through structured questionnaires and further analysed using the Chi-Square test and Kruskal-Wallis test. The data analysis and discussion reveals that despite a few number of library users being involved in the decision-making of IT application in libraries and availability of few training programmes on the know-how of IT systems, a positive attitude towards information technology application prevails among the library users in both the university libraries. In the end, some key recommendations are presented for deriving more benefits from future IT initiatives in libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a critical review of selected studies. A point of departure is the focus on the methodology used and the related issue of whether the inferences drawn are justified by the methodologies used. This is thus meant to be potentially useful for researchers in the broad area of information -seeking behaviour of the users in a digital environment. Eleven studies were selected for a deeper understanding of their users' information needs and information-seeking behaviour and to make suggestions on how to enhance the effectiveness of library services and their efficient utilisation. The libraries selected for the present study are diverse-college libraries, university libraries, public libraries and a Government Department library. Our review is based on the results obtained through critical study and examination of the literature with the main focus on the Information Seeking Behaviour of the users. There is a diverse range of libraries and users covered by these studies, and several interesting hypotheses could be statistically validated. Without statistical validation of hypotheses, the inferences lack robustness. This is a striking weakness of the extant literature-including the sample examined here. However, some constructive suggestions are made. These include a focus on special libraries, methodological extensions and refinements, and a broadening of the hypotheses and validation of inferences. We believe our review fulfils an important gap as scant attention is given to analytical rigour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology in educational institutions had influenced a lot and even changed the educational process there in. In the mobile age, every system is moving towards mobile-based service wherein everything had become available at the tip of the finger. In response to the call digitisation, Mobile Library Resources Application (MoLiRA) was developed to cater to the needs of the academe in knowledge management and to provide quality service to the students in terms of library services. The study was conducted in one of the schools in Bacolod City, Philippines, with the intention of evaluating its e-service quality level. The result of the study was that the MoLiRA enables the student to search through not only book-related resources but every library resource such as e-books, multimedia storage devices, unpublished researches, and other learning material using their primary gadget such as a smartphone. The study shows that the developed MoLiRA is high in terms of e-service quality level as perceived by the IT experts and students. The users have the ease of accessing the library resource information since the smartphone has become the primary gadget nowadays. The student can easily search resources available in the library which is in line with the course syllabus. Every library user using a smartphone received a notification informing them of the availability of the new library resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]