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The purpose of this paper is to discuss research articles from authors who have just left school.

This is an opinion piece.

Bad research should not be accepted just to help young professionals get published, but the best can be offered opportunities like this special issue with explicit invitations to publish their research via a peer‐review process.

This paper identifies the potential of young professionals and peer‐reviewed journals.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand why many researchers do not have a profile on social networking sites (SNS), and whether this is the result of conscious decisions.

Thematic analysis was conducted on a large qualitative data set from researchers across three levels of seniority, four countries and four disciplines to explore their attitudes toward and experiences with SNS.

The study found much greater scepticism toward adopting SNS than previously reported. Reasons behind researchers’ scepticism range from SNS being unimportant for their work to not belonging to their culture or habits. Some even felt that a profile presented people negatively and might harm their career. These concerns were mostly expressed by junior and midlevel researchers, showing that the largest opponents to SNS may unexpectedly be younger researchers.

A limitation of this study was that the authors did not conduct the interviews, and therefore reframing or adding questions to specifically unpack comments related to attitudes, feelings or the use of SNS in academia was not possible.

By studying implicit attitudes and experiences, this study shows that instead of being ignorant of SNS profiles, some researchers actively opt for a non-use of profiles on SNS.

The purpose of this paper is to look back on the last 30 years of technology development for libraries.

The paper presents an interview that took place at the American Library Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.

The paper reveals that many of the developments are slow. There are very few really sudden revolutions in social‐scale technologies. They do not switch on quickly and cannot be sudden because the installed base is too thin.

The paper reveals that there should be some renewed conversation about how libraries can help the public. In the early days of the internet libraries played an enormous uncredited role in teaching the adult population about the internet. There are some opportunities like that now, and one place where we are starting to see signs of it is digital preservation, not as libraries doing it for the cultural record, but helping individuals to do it for their own content.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the German Library Association (Bibliothekartag) meeting and the German Library Hi Tech award.

This is a descriptive report.

One of the advantages of the Bibliothekartag over the American Library Association meetings is its relative compactness.

This report is designed to introduce the meeting to those unfamiliar with it.

This paper aims to examine changes in the quality of user research in library and information science.

The paper connects recent literature studies and current papers submitted to a special issue about user research and technology in Library Hi Tech.

The paper concludes that the diversity of methods to study users is growing and a confidence about labeling and using methods is becoming manifest. The number of research questions that a single study answers is both diminishing and at the same time growing more diverse.

This paper is not in‐depth research that offers evidence that a change in user research has taken place. Its arguments build on papers submitted to this special issue on that topic.

Research about users, their behaviour and their needs were often an add‐on at the end of a project. In the last two years, this situation has changed. The topic of user experience is suddenly omnipresent at conferences and in journal articles. Studies about the way research is conducted are an important part of library and information science.

This paper aims to discuss whether there is difference between pragmatic and scholarly approaches to data gathering in libraries.

This paper discusses the research design that used mystery shoppers to evaluate library reference services.

The paper argues that people do a disservice to the institutions they study if they overstate the validity of their data and draw unsupportable conclusions based on those data.

The paper argues that valid results must be part of practical as well as scholarly research.

The paper illustrates how practical data gathering and analysis can have validity if the weaknesses of the data gathering are recognized and openly discussed, and if the right analytical methods are used.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect about future professionals, hybrid publications and conference blogging.

This is an opinion piece, based on the participation during the BOBCATSSS conference.

Our young professionals are aware that the library profession is at a crossroads and that it is up to them to find the best way to deal with current issues. The paper emphasizes that we need a combination of new ideas and work experience.

Practical implications are observations about conference blogging and the impact of hybrid publishing.

This paper identifies the potential we have within our future professionals.