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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects Web 2.0 has on users' ability to browse online archive catalogues effectively.

Methods used included a review of the relevant scholarly literature, content analysis and semi‐structured interviews with purposive samples of online catalogues and archive staff, respectively.

The Web 2.0 technologies likely to improve browsability were identified. Web 2.0 use was expected to be low, the results confirmed this. Results from the interviews showed that although Web 2.0 may improve browsability for certain user groups, more fundamental improvements such as improved catalogue data were expected to be more effective. Interviewees did not see any clear benefits to Web 2.0 implementation and had struggled to collect data on usage of some of the Web 2.0 tools they used.

The results provided confirmation of many points made in existing research. Data need to be collected from users if Web 2.0 use and its effects on browsability are to be understood. At present the effects of Web 2.0 on the browsability of online catalogues remains unclear.

This paper provides a starting point for further investigation into the effect of Web 2.0 on the browsability of online catalogues. Web 2.0 tools which could potentially improve browsability have been identified and a snapshot has been taken of their use across the sample catalogues.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how archivists, records managers and scholarly literature in the field(s) analyse how “participation” is discussed in the context of archives and records management, and to explore practical and theoretical implications of the disclosed discursive practices.

The analysis is based on a discourse analysis of a body of archival literature and a sample of posts collected from the archival and records management blogosphere.

The analysis shows that instead of discussing one notion of participation, the archival science literature is referring to nine different and partly conflicting types of participation from three broad perspectives: management, empowerment and technology. The discourses have also conflicting ideas of the role of engagement and enthusiasm, and of that what do the different stakeholder communities see as real options.

The analysed material consists of a limited sample of mainly English language texts that may not capture all the nuances of how participation is discussed in the archival literature.

A better understanding of how different claims of the benefits and threats endorsing “participation” in archives helps to develop effective and less contradictory forms of collaboration between different stakeholders.

In spite of the popularity of the notion of “participation”, there little, especially critical, research on how participation is conceptualised by archives professionals and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the task design and assignment of full-text generation on mass Chinese historical archives (CHAs) by crowdsourcing, with special attention paid to how to best divide full-text generation tasks into smaller ones assigned to crowdsourced volunteers and to improve the digitization of mass CHAs and the data-oriented processing of the digital humanities.

This paper starts from the complexities of character recognition of mass CHAs, takes Sheng Xuanhuai archives crowdsourcing project of Shanghai Library as a case study, and makes use of the theories of archival science, including diplomatics of Chinese archival documents, and the historical approach of Chinese archival traditions as the theoretical basis and analysis methods. The results are generated through the comprehensive research.

This paper points out that volunteer tasks of full-text generation include transcription, punctuation, proofreading, metadata description, segmentation, and attribute annotation in digital humanities and provides a metadata element set for volunteers to use in creating or revising metadata descriptions and also provides an attribute tag set. The two sets can be used across the humanities to construct overall observations about texts and the archives of which they are a part. Along these lines, this paper presents significant insights for application in outlining the principles, methods, activities, and procedures of crowdsourced full-text generation for mass CHAs.

This study is the first to explore and identify the effective design and allocation of tasks for crowdsourced volunteers completing full-text generation on CHAs in digital humanities.

Despite the availability of the mandate of public archives repositories to “take archives to the people in South Africa”, archives in South Africa remain largely the domain of the elite. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of social media in South Africa as a tool for taking archives to the people especially young people between the age of 13 and 34. The researchers confined the study to all ten public archives repositories in South Africa.

This quantitative study collected data using survey questionnaires and web-based content analysis of social media presence of public archives repositories.

The study revealed that few public archives repositories are using Facebook, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn to engage users. The public archives repositories rely mostly on social media platforms operated by their mother bodies as they are subsidiary units within arts and culture departments in government. As a result, public archives repositories are restricted to operate their own accounts on social media. It is argued that public archives should be allowed by their mother departments to operate their own accounts on social media platforms. Failure to change this restriction could lead to public archival institutions continuing to take archives away from the people, instead of taking archives to the people.

The study sought to provide useful practical implications for public archives repositories as it would serve as a benchmarking tool to enable the development and reporting on the visibility and accessibility of archival material, and thus ensure an increased public knowledge of archives.

The study triangulated data collection instruments that helped to collect as much and as diverse data as possible, which generated the best possible insights into the phenomenon of interest. Previous similar studies in South Africa utilised only survey method with either interviews or questionnaires as data collection tools.

In the wake of the fourth industrial revolution, where most information is accessible online, archives should be visible online for them to fulfil their legislated mandate and facilitate access to information resources. The Covid-19 pandemic has further underscored the importance of online platforms in making archives accessible without the public having to visit archival institutions physically. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which public archival institutions of South Africa are visible online with the view to deepen their understanding of how archives promote themselves online.

The study employed content analysis to establish the online content of public archival institutions in South Africa. A google search was conducted using the names of the archival institutions as search terms. The top results obtained after the search were recorded for further analysis.

The findings suggest that public archival institutions in South Africa have limited online presence. Only the National Archives of South Africa had an active website with collections that are accessible online. Some provincial archives had websites hosted by their parent bodies while others had no websites at all. Only the Limpopo and Eastern Cape provincial archives had their Facebook pages in the top results. There were no signs of other social media sites in the top results.

The study concludes that public archival institutions are not visible online. All provincial archives need to have websites where they can be accessed. The use of social media platforms needs to be prioritised. In this fourth industrial revolution age, people communicate and interact online. Public archival institutions should therefore make it their primary mandate to take the archives to where the people are currently meeting.

The article aims to explore the changes taking place over time in the scholarly communication process.

With the help of available literature, the traditional scholarly communication process is compared and contrasted with the open access driven scholarly communication process/model.

It has been observed that the Web 2.0 has affected the way knowledge is created and disseminated. New avenues of the peer review process are taking place, which is an integral part of the scholarly communication process. The article ends with some thoughts on the future of scholarly communication and the challenges ahead.

The present paper attempts to summarize the scholarly communication process from two different perspectives, i.e. traditional and open access driven.

This study aims to examine the pattern of publications, using a bibliometric analysis, of the African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science (AJLAIS) for the period between 2000 and 2012.

The study uses appropriate measures and techniques of bibliometric analysis. Keeping the objectives of the study in mind, the data were collected from the AJLAIS covering the 13 identified years. The analysis covers mainly the number of articles published per volume in each of the specified years, the authorship patterns, the subject areas covered, the length of articles, the citation pattern of articles and the article types.

The results of the study reveal that a total of 218 articles were published in the 13-year period, with 21 (9.63 per cent) articles being the highest total in the year 2002. The study showed that the majority of the articles, i.e. 126 (57.8 per cent), were published by single authors, out of which, a large number were on information retrieval. Of the total number of articles published, 86 (39.4 per cent) were 6-10 pages in length. Volume 19 in 2009 had the highest number of citations with a total of 451 (12.4 per cent). In addition, the study revealed that the majority of the articles were theoretical papers, with a total of 108 (49.5 per cent), while the others were empirical papers, book reviews and short communications.

This bibliometric study will enlarge the knowledge base of information professionals on the present condition of library and information science (LIS) research in the current African context and provide some basis for future projections of the discipline. The study will also be helpful for librarians in the process of collection development. This is because, due to increased journal costs and slim budgets for libraries, collection development specialists must make careful selections based on the qualities and standards of journals.

Researchers who shy away from this particular type of research owing to its rigorous and time-consuming nature should gather the courage to do so. Further studies should focus on analysing journals that are published in the field of librarianship in Africa, as it will create more awareness of the field of study among other professionals or researchers who are yet to know about it. The study has also revealed AJLAIS as one of the LIS standard journals in terms of its wider citation by contributors in the broader LIS literature.