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This bibliometric study aims to analyze the latest trends and patterns of big data applications in librarianship from 2000 to 2022. By conducting a comprehensive examination of the existing literature, this study aims to provide valuable insights into the emerging field of big data in librarianship and its potential impact on the future of libraries.

This study employed a rigorous four-stage process of identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion to filter and select the most relevant documents for analysis. The Scopus database was utilized to retrieve pertinent data related to big data applications in librarianship. The dataset comprised 430 documents, including journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, reviews and books. Through bibliometric analysis, the study examined the effectiveness of different publication types and identified the main topics and themes within the field.

The study found that the field of big data in librarianship is growing rapidly, with a significant increase in publications and citations over the past few years. China is the leading country in terms of publication output, followed by the United States of America. The most influential journals in the field are Library Hi Tech and the ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. The top authors in the field are Minami T, Wu J, Fox EA and Giles CL. The most common keywords in the literature are big data, librarianship, data mining, information retrieval, machine learning and webometrics.

This bibliometric study contributes to the existing body of literature by comprehensively analyzing the latest trends and patterns in big data applications within librarianship. It offers a systematic approach to understanding the state of the field and highlights the unique contributions made by various types of publications. The study’s findings and insights contribute to the originality of this research, providing a foundation for further exploration and advancement in the field of big data in librarianship.

The library and information science profession finds itself grappling with substantial difficulties and hurdles when addressing the trustworthiness and accuracy of information disseminated through social media platforms. This study aims to highlight the educational authority of librarians and propose a framework for librarians to establish their identity, understand the meaning behind their practice and integrate their expertise through knowledge practices, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness in the social media environment.

This study delves into a conceptual framework rooted in philosophical inquiry, seeking to establish a harmonious connection between interrelated concepts of civic roles, professional identity and knowledge practices. It draws upon both original research findings and a review of existing literature in the field.

Civic responsibilities reflect the professional identities of librarians. Evidence of knowledge practices collected from scientific literature emerged to be the important characterization of how librarians uphold their image as educational authorities. It describes the meaning of civic roles and professional practice.

The study sheds light on how librarians maintain their reputation as educators and the knowledge practices that underpin their civic responsibilities amidst the pervasiveness of information disorders.

The framework presented in the study offers a timely and relevant contribution to the complex realm of social media information disorders, a challenge that librarians grapple with regularly. It highlights the emerging role of librarians in society to assert their identity and recognize their civic responsibility in addressing this pressing issue that society faces.

Responding to the continuing separation of participants and researchers in LIS participatory research, a new methodology is proposed: action partnership research design (APRD). It is asserted that APRD can mitigate or remove the hierarchical structures often inherent in the research process, thus allowing for equal contribution from all.

Building on the bonded design (BD) methodology and informed by a scoping literature review conducted by the same authors, APRD is a human-centered research approach with the goal of empowering and valuing community partnerships. APRD originates from research investigating the use of participatory design methods to foster collaboration between two potentially disparate groups, firstly with adult researchers/designers and elementary school children, and secondly with university faculty and IT professionals.

To achieve this goal, in addition to BD techniques, APRD draws inspiration from elements of indigenous and decolonization research methodologies, particularly those with an emphasis on destabilizing power hierarchies and involving research participants as full partners.

APRD, which emerged from findings from previous participatory design studies, especially those of BD, is based on the premise of partnership, recognizing that each member of a design team, whether researcher or participant/user, has unique expertise to contribute. By considering participants/users as full research partners, APRD aims to flatten the hierarchies exhibited in some LIS participatory research methodologies, where participants are treated more like research subjects than partners.

Our purpose is to reconnect memetics to information, a persistent and unclear association. Information can contribute across a span of memetic research. Its obscurity restricts conversations about “information flow,” the connections between “form” and “content,” as well as many other topics. As information is involved in cultural activity, its clarification could focus memetic theories and applications.

Our design captures theoretical nuance in memetics by considering a long standing conceptual issue in memetics: information. A systematic review of memetics is provided by making use of the term information across literature. We additionally provide a citation analysis and close readings of what “information” means within the corpus.

Our initial corpus is narrowed to 128 pivotal memetic publications. From these publications, we provide a citation analysis of memetic studies. Theoretical directions of memetics in the informational context are outlined and developed. We outline two main discussion spaces, survey theoretical interests and describe where and when information is important to memetic discussion. We also find that there are continuities in goals which connect Dawkins’s meme with internet meme studies.

To our knowledge, this is the broadest, most inclusive review of memetics conducted, making use of a unique approach to studying information-oriented discourse across a corpus. In doing so, we provide information researchers areas in which they might contribute theoretical clarity in diverse memetic approaches. Additionally, we borrow the notion of “conceptual troublemakers” to contribute a corpus collection strategy which might be valuable for future literature reviews with conceptual difficulties arising from interdisciplinary study.

This study investigated two key aspects: (1) how a hospital bundles limited resources for preventive care performance and (2) how to develop IS capabilities to enhance preventive care performance.

A case study method was adopted to examine how a hospital integrates its limited resources which leads to the need for resource bundles and an understanding of IS capabilities development to understand how they contribute to the delivery of preventive care in a Malaysian hospital.

This research proposes a comprehensive framework outlining resource-bundling and IS capabilities development to improve preventive care.

We acknowledge that the problem of transferring and generalizing results has been a common criticism of a single case study. However, our objective was to enhance the reader’s understanding by including compelling, detailed narratives demonstrating how our research results offer practical examples that can be generalized theoretically. The findings also apply to similar-sized public hospitals in Malaysia and other developing countries, facing challenges like resource constraints, HIS adoption levels, healthcare workforce shortages, cultural and linguistic diversity, bureaucratic hurdles, and specific patient demographics and health issues. Further, lessons from this context can be usefully applied to non-healthcare service sector domains.

This study provides a succinct strategy for enhancing preventive care in Malaysian public hospitals, focusing on system integration and alignment with hospital strategy, workforce diversity through recruitment and mentorship, and continuous training for health equity and inclusivity. This approach aims to improve resource efficiency, communication, cultural competence, and healthcare outcomes.

Efficiently using limited resources through HIS investment is essential to improve preventive care and reduce chronic diseases, which cause approximately nine million deaths annually in Southeast Asia, according to WHO. This issue has significantly impacted the socioeconomic development of developing countries.

This research refines resource orchestration theory with new mechanisms for resource mobilization, extends IS literature by identifying how strategic bundling forms specialized healthcare IS capabilities, enriches preventive care literature through actionable resource-bundling activities, and adds to HIS literature by advocating for an integrated, preventive care focus from the alignment of HIS design, people and institutional policies to address concerns raised by other research regarding the utilization of HIS in improving the quality of preventive care.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to provide a nuanced understanding of the information concept that encapsulates both its universal foundations and context-dependent intricacies, and second, to propose a theoretical framework that integrates these diverse viewpoints, thereby contributing to the theoretical discourse and practical applications in information science/studies (IS).

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between universalism and pluralism in connection with semiotics. The paper adopts a conceptual approach based on semiotics to address the long-standing debate over the definition of information in IS. By engaging with two foundational semiotic theories—C.S. Peirce's pragmatic semiotics and Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralist semiotics – the research seeks to bridge the conflicting perspectives of universalism and pluralism within the field.

The findings reveal that Peirce's semiotics, with its universalist core, views information as dynamic and shaped by context, while Saussure's approach, which is rooted in linguistics, emphasizes the relational aspects of sign systems and connects them to pluralism. This comparative analysis facilitates a broad understanding of information that transcends the limitations of singular perspectives. In conclusion, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the integration of universalist and pluralist perspectives through semiotics offers a more holistic approach to the study of information in IS. It contributes to the field by suggesting that the tension between these perspectives is not only reconcilable but also essential for a richer and more complete understanding of information. This theoretical foundation paves the way for future research and practical advancements in IS and advocates for approaches that recognize the complexity and multifaceted nature of information.

The study engages with theoretical frameworks, predominantly semiotic theories by C.S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. While this provides a deep conceptual understanding, the lack of empirical data may limit the practical applicability of the findings. The research focuses on two semiotic perspectives, which, although foundational, do not represent the entirety of semiotics or information theory. Other significant semiotic theories and perspectives could provide alternative or complementary insights. The concepts of universalism and pluralism in information science are highly intricate and multifaceted. This study's approach to synthesizing these concepts, while comprehensive, might oversimplify some aspects of these complex paradigms.

The paper's originality lies in its unique integration of semiotic theories into the discourse of IS. This integration offers a novel perspective on understanding the concept of information, bridging the gap between universalist and pluralist approaches. The study presents a new conceptual framework for understanding information that combines elements of universalism (consistent, objective understanding of information) and pluralism (context-dependent, subjective interpretations). This dual approach is relatively unexplored in IS literature, providing fresh insights into the complex nature of information.

In today’s information and knowledge society, it is indispensable for citizens to acquire the requisite digital and information literacy (IL) skills to search information independently to meet their multiple and diverse information needs. As a result of digitalisation in the world, development and acquisition of digital and information skills is critical even for students and learners to retrieve digitised and online information to meet or achieve their curriculum-related accomplishments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of the digital and information literacies in South Africa from 2016 to 2022.

This qualitative study used a scoping review approach to collect data from research articles, conference articles and textbooks on digital literacy and IL – published in the years ranging between 2016 and 2022 from Google Scholar.

The major findings revealed that majority of the citizens especially students and learners lack digital and IL skills to recognise when information is needed, to find, locate, evaluate and use the retrieved information to meet an information need in a particular situation or context. Practical implications of this study include the alignment of curricula towards information and communication technologies to face the everchanging digital information technologies.

The study used scoping literature review research where empirical studies were retrieved and selected to address the objectives. This study provided significant approaches regarding promoting information and digital literacies in developing countries such as South Africa.

Culture is considered a critical aspect of social media usage. The purpose of this paper is to explore how cultures and languages influence multilingual users' cross-cultural information sharing patterns.

This study used a crowdsourcing survey with Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 355 multilingual users who utilize two or more languages daily. A mixed-method approach combined statistical, and cluster analysis with thematic analysis was employed to analyze information sharing patterns among multilingual users in the Chinese cultural context.

It was found that most multilingual users surveyed preferred to share in their first and second language mainly because that is what others around them speak or use. Multilingual users have more diverse sharing characteristics and are more actively engaged in social media. The results also provide insights into what incentives make multilingual users engage in social media to share information related to Chinese culture with the MOA model. Finally, the ten motivation factors include learning, entertainment, empathy, personal gain, social engagement, altruism, self-expression, information, trust and sharing culture. One opportunity factor is identified, which is convenience. Three ability factors are recognized consist of self-efficacy, habit and personality.

The findings are conducive to promoting the active participation of multilingual users in online communities, increasing global resource sharing and information flow and promoting the consumption of digital cultural content.

The purpose of this research is to comprehensively describe the legitimacy of the public library in the 21st century.

The research involved a comprehensive literature review using the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database with keywords “Library” and “Legitimacy”, combined with citation searches and additional collections. In total, we analysed 159 research articles primarily from the 21st century, with some comparative analysis of pre-2,000 works. The final phase of the research investigated libraries’ legitimisation efforts across various dimensions, examining how they employ rhetoric and theories to maintain legitimacy amidst challenging circumstances.

Through this research process, five dimensions of public library legitimacy emerged; (1) Democracy, (2) Culture and History, (3) Communication and Education, (4) Economy and (5) Librarianship, with the most diverse literature being related to democracy, and its subsections intellectual freedom, neutrality, the public sphere, social justice and social capital.

The outcome of our results indicates that the evolving legitimacy of the public library in the 21st century has become multifaceted, compared to the elements of legitimacy in the 20th century. Contemporary public libraries can continue to utilise the dimensions of legitimacy identified in this study and can reconstruct their legitimacy accordingly.

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.