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The quest for sustainable food security (SFS) is fundamental to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In furtherance of their pivotal role in providing the required information resources in support of education and research, libraries are expected to assist the economy in ensuring SFS. The purpose of this study is to investigate how libraries provide information to support research in agriculture towards the attainment of SFS in Nigeria.

Descriptive research design was used for the study. Interview and questionnaire were used as the instruments of data collection.

This study found that the extent of use of library information resources for SFS in Nigeria is high. Libraries, though facing some challenges, contribute significantly to the attainment of food security in Nigeria. It was recommended that libraries should intensify efforts to embark on media literacy programmes and provide information resources for research on agriculture and food production with a view to actualising food security goals specified in Sustainable Development Goals. Libraries should be well-funded to acquire the relevant information resources to aid research into food security and end hunger and poverty across the world.

This study suggests having better sponsored libraries that can perform as required in advancing agricultural information needs.

This study is a creative attempt to know how libraries can contribute to SFS through the provision of information to farmers and lecturers in agriculture.

Year 2020 recorded an unprecedented bewilderment of the world with novel COVID-19, thereby threatening global food security. As such, there is need for academic libraries in Nigeria to provide information regarding food security to users to ensure post-COVID-19 food security. This study, therefore, aims to reflect on the role of academic libraries in facilitating post-COVID-19 food security in Nigeria.

Descriptive research design of survey type was used for the study. Librarians and library officers in academic libraries in south-west Nigeria were considered for the study. Self-structured online questionnaire was sent to the respondents via social media. The data generated were analysed using frequency count and simple percentage.

It was found that academic libraries performed significant role during the COVID-19 period by disseminating online information on preventive measures, and supporting research team with information on the pandemic. The study further found that the services of academic libraries are strongly required in facilitating post-COVID-19 food security, even in the face of some challenges.

In the face of the looming COVID-19-induced food shortage, it becomes evident that academic libraries have to support individuals, farmers, research teams and organisations with information and information resources that can help in accomplishing global food security.

Failure of academic libraries to offer the required support in terms of provision of necessary information resources on agriculture may make the attainment of COVID-19 food security difficult.

Ensuring post-COVID-19 food security is an issue of global concern. This study encourages academic libraries to expedite action to contribute towards ensuring post-COVID-19 global food security.

This article explores the tension between the concept of a Designated Community (DC) as a foundational element in Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) certification and curators' uncertainty about how to interpret and apply this concept in practice.

This research employs a qualitative research design involving in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the Trustworthy Digital Repository Audit and Certification (TRAC) process.

The authors' findings indicate that stakeholders in the audit and certification process viewed their uncertainty about how to apply the concept of a DC in the context of an audit as a source of risk for digital repositories and the repositories' collections.

This article brings new insights to digital preservation by applying social theories of risk to trustworthy digital repository audit and certification processes, with an emphasis on the concept of DC.

This study aims to examine the research productivity of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council’s (PARC’s) researchers published during 2001–2020 by using scientometric indicators. The study explored the growth and collaborative trends along with authorship and institutional collaborative patterns at the national and international levels.

The study was conducted in four phases. Firstly, a search strategy was designed to retrieve reliable data sets. During the second phase, data from PARC research was retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). In the third phase, the data were combined, and duplications were removed. Finally, the data were analysed using RStudio and VOSviewer.

The study identified 2,868 research publications from 16 communication channels spanning over the period of 2001–2020. The growth rate varied during the study period and the year 2020 was the most productive year of the organization. Most of the research was produced in multi-authorship and five authors were dominant. Pakistan Journal of Botany was the most preferred and cited source. Moreover, PARC research collaboration with Pakistani researchers was more than their international counterparts.

Like other research, this research has some limitations. For example, this research is based on secondary data extracted from WoS and Scopus databases, world-renowned online academic. However, researchers should keep in mind while interpreting the results of this study. Secondly, the research publications published by PARC researchers during 2001–2020 were considered. Finally, this research considered English language literature only.

The study’s key theoretical contribution is its strategy for merging WoS and Scopus in RStudio, while its findings could assist agriculture research stakeholders in identifying new areas of research, awards, promotions and identification of research gaps.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to use scientometric indicators to evaluate PARC’s research productivity. This detailed analysis provides a deeper understanding of PARC’s contribution to agriculture research and its potential implications.

The purpose of the present study is to identify the active and dead links of uniform resource locators (URLs) associated with web references and to compare the effectiveness of Chrome, Google and WayBack Machine in retrieving the dead URLs.

The web references of the Library Hi Tech from 2004 to 2008 were selected for analysis to fulfill the set objectives. The URLs were extracted from the articles to verify their accessibility in terms of persistence and decay. The URLs were then executed directly in the internet browser (Chrome), search engine (Google) and Internet Archive (WayBack Machine). The collected data were recorded in an excel file and presented in tables/diagrams for further analysis.

From the total of 1,083 web references, a maximum number was retrieved by the WayBack Machine (786; 72.6 per cent) followed by Google (501; 46.3 per cent) and the lowest by Chrome (402; 37.1 per cent). The study concludes that the WayBack Machine is more efficient, retrieves a maximum number of missing web citations and fulfills the mission of preservation of web sources to a larger extent.

A good number of studies have been conducted to analyze the persistence and decay of web-references; however, the present study is unique as it compared the dead URL retrieval effectiveness of internet explorer (Chrome), search engine giant (Google) and WayBack Machine of the Internet Archive.

The web references of a single journal, namely, Library Hi Tech, were analyzed for 5 years only. A major study across disciplines and sources may yield better results.

URL decay is becoming a major problem in the preservation and citation of web resources. The study has some healthy recommendations for authors, editors, publishers, librarians and web designers to improve the persistence of web references.

This paper aims to discuss the process of building a 24×7 reference platform for facilitating the farmers with the easy access of information at any time from any location. It takes the text string as input and process it to respond with the desired result to the user.

An interactive Web-based chatbot named as AgriRef was developed using free version of Dialogflow. The intents were defined based on the conversation flow diagram. Furthermore, the application was integrated with website on local server and telegram application.

With this chatbot application, the farmers will able to get answers of their queries. It provides the human-like conversational interface to the farmers. It will also be useful for librarians of agricultural libraries to save time in answering common queries.

This paper describes the various steps involved in developing the chatbot application using Dialogflow.

This study aims to examine the status, explores the hurdles and identifies the prospects for developing a union catalogue of university libraries in Lahore, Pakistan.

Following a quantitative research approach, a questionnaire was developed from literature and authors’ experience. After ensuring its validity and reliability, data were collected from librarians after the census. A total of 105 librarians were approached, of whom 73 (71%) responded to the survey.

University libraries in Lahore are well organized, have adequate collections and information technology-literate staff, are well automated, have good internet connections, are equipped with integrated software, follow cataloguing rules and MARC standards; however, the absence of standardized software, lack of funds, absence of uniform policy, professional workload and absence of standardized vocabulary are significant challenges. Private-sector librarians reported facing more challenges. Librarians consider all prospects vital for developing a union catalogue. These prospects include the availability of relevant information, incentives to librarians, coordination with librarians, a realization that sharing is caring, the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan taking initiative and librarians’ training.

University librarians in Lahore are ready to cooperate with the development of a union catalogue; however, they seek support from higher authorities, professional library associations and the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first of its kind that examines the status, explores the hurdles and identifies the prospects for developing a union catalogue of university libraries in Lahore. It would lead to the development of a union catalogue of university libraries in Pakistan.

The major objectives of this study are to explore the perceptions of library practitioners towards IoT and to suggest directions for its proper application in university libraries of Bangladesh.

The study conducted an online questionnaire-based survey of library practitioners working at university libraries in Bangladesh in addition to an email interview with ten librarians. A sample size of 310 library practitioners was obtained using the convenience sampling technique for the survey. Non-parametric tests were performed to examine the differences in demographics and perspectives on IoT, as well as the potential benefits and challenges of IoT deployment in libraries.

A total of 178 valid surveys were completed, and the results indicate that 147 (82.6%) library practitioners have varied degrees of IoT understanding and positive attitudes about IoT applications in libraries. The study identified RFID, wireless technologies, cloud computing, mobile apps, artificial intelligence and semantic search as major IoT enablers. Tracking, book reservation, circulation, user identification, service marketing, selection of resources, information networking and resource sharing, etc. are the main areas of a library where IoT may be applied. The integration of IoT has the potential to transform conventional libraries into smart libraries. However, there are some challenges that Bangladeshi university libraries must overcome to take use of the prospects emerged from IoT.

The study would encourage Bangladeshi librarians adopting IoT-based library and information services and provide guidelines for its successful implementation.

The study is a pioneering effort from Bangladesh’s perspective which portrays the original opinions and perceptions of library practitioners regarding IoT applications in university libraries of Bangladesh.