Editorial: Special selection on contemporary digital culture and reading

Citation

Chiu, D.K.W. and Ho, K.K.W. (2022), "Editorial: Special selection on contemporary digital culture and reading", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 40 No. 5, pp. 1204-1209. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-10-2022-516

First, we thank the publisher for increasing the printing budget by 20 more articles this year and next year in response to the long print queue. Also, we have had a timely response to the COVID-19 pandemic by compiling two special issues (Huang et al., 2021, 2022), which have been well-received with significant downloads and citations. Besides, our special selections and editorials (Chiu and Ho, 2021, 2022) better guide readers to an overview of the upcoming contemporary research in various fields covered by Library Hi Tech and related to our recently published articles.

To continue our efforts, this issue of Library Hi Tech consists of a selection of papers focusing on digital culture and reading in the current mobile digital era. We also have a special section on “Technological Advancement and Pioneering Methods for Smart Cities – Recent Advances and Future Trends”, with a separate editorial for the special section prepared by our special section editors, Prof. Victor Chang and Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Basset (Chang and Abdel-Basset, 2022).

Using contemporary technologies in cultural services venues

Technology has now been widely used for improving cultural services and is not just limited to academia or libraries (Dalili Saleh et al., 2021; Greene and Groenendyk, 2021; Noh, 2021; Suen et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2021; Li and Liu, 2022; Xin, 2022). In particular, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) has drawn much attention. For example, Cheng (2022) studied online virtual museum navigation using 3D space capture techniques. Through PLS-SEM analysis, he showed the significance of attention demand, instant enjoyment and exploration intention when users navigating the online virtual museum with perceptions of spatial presence were identified. Hsu and Liang (2022) developed a universal game-based blended museum learning service and showed that it engaged museum visitors and promoted their return visits. Readers may also be interested in reading our earlier articles on the use of virtual reality in museums to engage users (Lo et al., 2019) and social robots in museums (Fuentes-Moraleda et al., 2022).

On the other hand, Wanyan and Wang (2022) discussed how government departments and public cultural institutions could improve their provision of public cultural services for low-income groups, improve service methods and foster their cultural awareness and cultural rights. Further, Wang et al. (2022) studied the churn behavior of rural public digital cultural services and identified environmental stimulus factors that affected user churn behavior via user organism factors. They also suggested that improving the information literacy of rural users could restrain user churn behavior for such services.

Due to the recent lockdowns of COVID-19, many cultural venues such as museums and libraries have offered many new digital services and strengthened existing ones. Readers may also be interested in further recent developments in our articles (Leung et al., 2022a, b; Guo et al., 2021; Fasae et al., 2021; Meng et al., 2021, 2022; Yu et al., 2022b; Nadi-Ravandi and Batooli, 2022).

Reading in the mobile age

Mobile devices are becoming critical tools for reading and library services in our daily lives (Lai et al., 2021; Chan et al., 2022). For example, Sung and Chiu (2022) also studied the perception and preference of parents for their children using mobile devices for reading. They showed that most parents and schools still preferred using print books, yet, e-books have played an essential role in the COVID-19 pandemic and digital literacy development. Readers may also note that COVID-19 has brought much stress to parenting (Avçin and Can, 2022; Wang et al., 2022c).

With the help of mobile devices, people can now more readily read educational and leisure information through social media. Pianzola et al. (2022) studied how different motivations, familiarity with Twitter and participating instructions affect digital social reading activity. They noted that the decoupling of text they read and comments would lead users to mainly share text excerpts rather than original personal reactions to the story. Readers may note that social media has been important learning aid, especially for the younger generation, though it cannot replace formal learning (Li et al., 2021; Cheng et al., 2022; Leung et al., 2022a, b; Wang and Xie, 2022; Mak et al., 2022).

Digital news and reading

Readers may also be interested in other recent changes in news reading and digitalization trends (Wang et al., 2022b). In this issue, Yu et al. (2022) developed a quantitative study comparing the news reading habits of undergraduate and postgraduate Library and Information Management students from Hong Kong. They found that mobile devices had changed their respondents' news reading habits, and they now preferred to read electronic news using mobile devices. Banshal et al. (2022) presented their comprehensive analysis of the current status and development of the digital journalism field from 1987 to 2021 using the dimensions database through a bibliometric analysis. In addition, Khan et al. (2022) studied the headings of the news articles to link digital news stories published in various newspapers.

One hot issue related to electronic news, especially on social media and other electronic means, is the spreading of misinformation and fake news (Naveed et al., 2021; Au et al., 2021a, b; Ho et al., 2022). In the issue, Zhang et al. (2022) studied the features of health misinformation on social media sites (SMSs) to help easy identification by users and social media companies.

Faculty research characteristics and information-seeking behavior

Reading is crucial for research, and many changes have occurred in research reading and communication behavior due to the diffusion of mobile devices and ubiquitous Internet connections (Ding et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2016; Dong et al., 2021; Yu et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022). Izuagbe et al. (2022) studied whether or not faculty members would be motivated to use e-databases for research using data collected from Nigeria. They showed that job relevance, output quality and result demonstrability motivated faculty to use e-databases for research. Also, Chuang and Chen (2022) applied social network analysis to study faculty research productivity of management information systems (MIS) researchers in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015. They showed how Taiwanese MIS scholars collaborated with their counterparts from the USA, China, Canada and the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, Li et al. (2022) presented a study on multi-modal information search (MMIS) and showed that multi-modal information search behavior (MMISB) is directly related to users' search intention, and the search intention can influence users' cognition of the usefulness and ease of MMIS through their information search ability and system characteristics.

iSchool archival education and contemporary technologies

Last but not least, such changes in and popularization of digital culture and reading environment have impact digitalization in archives and special library collections (Lo et al., 2019; Xiao et al., 2021; Yun et al., 2022; Mak et al., 2022; Sun et al., 2022) and caused the need to revitalize archival education. Ng et al. (2022) investigated the learning and career motivations for students to study for a master's degree in archival they conducted a series of interviews with students from the University of Hong Kong and the University of British Columbia. They summarized the findings into five themes to better interpret the meanings behind them. Li and Chiu (2022) reviewed iSchools' archival education system based on ten elements. They suggested that iSchools may explore the possibility of organizing more conferences and forums to exchange ideas on archival studies and education issues, which can attract more members worldwide and cooperate with other accreditation organizations of archival education. Readers may also be interested in a recent review of the curricula in programs related to library science (Yew et al., 2022) and information literacy skills among library and information science professionals (Ali and Ahmed, 2021).