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The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study exploring the emerging field of data science from the library and information science (LIS) perspective.

Content analysis of research publications on data science was made of papers published in the Web of Science database to identify the main themes discussed in the publications from the LIS perspective.

A content analysis of 80 publications is presented. The articles belonged to the six broad categories: data science education and training; knowledge and skills of the data professional; the role of libraries and librarians in the data science movement; tools, techniques and applications of data science; data science from the knowledge management perspective; and data science from the perspective of health sciences. The category of tools, techniques and applications of data science was most addressed by the authors, followed by data science from the perspective of health sciences, data science education and training and knowledge and skills of the data professional. However, several publications fell into several categories because these topics were closely related.

Only publication recorded in the Web of Science database and with the term “data science” in the topic area were analyzed. Therefore, several relevant studies are not discussed in this paper that either were related to other keywords such as “e-science”, “e-research”, “data service”, “data curation”, “research data management” or “scientific data management” or were not present in the Web of Science database.

The paper provides the first exploration by content analysis of the field of data science from the perspective of the LIS.

With the technological innovation dominating higher education, the university libraries, as physical spaces, continue to play a crucial role in connecting students with knowledge. The emergence of the “Learning Commons” serves as a catalyst in the design of library spaces, renewing libraries’ roles and missions and making them popular to Millennials for new reasons. This study aims to record Greek librarians' views on the current situation in Greek academic libraries regarding physical space design, services provided and the existence of the “Learning Commons” model characteristics.

This study was conducted through an online survey structured questionnaire (closed-ended, five-point Likert scale, multiple-choice and statements questions). This study population comprised librarians working in 37 academic institutions and colleges. The collected data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis. The research questions were answered using variables creation and the tests, t-test, ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis. The groups of questions were tested for their reliability using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

In total, 186 librarians responded to this study. The responses revealed that participants were willing and ready to accept and support a different approach to academic library physical spaces use, according to the shared learning spaces model. However, this requires changes in the organization's vision, further growth and evolution. Although recently most Greek academic libraries have made significant progress in developing their services to function as information and digital hubs, they do not function as learning collaborative hubs, since the “Learning Commons” model is not reflected in their buildings.

The creation of new academic libraries according to the “common” model is a rapidly evolving issue that affects Greek libraries. This paper highlights the characteristics of libraries that should be adopted in the modern era, the new roles of academic librarians and the importance of an appropriate design of the physical space to achieve optimal learning outcomes. At the same time, this paper is one of the few that illustrates librarians', and not users', perceptions of these changes. This paper is a good research example, and the methodology for measuring this type of context could be used by other future research approaches in other countries.

In the digital era individuals are overwhelmed by huge amount of readily available information. The information provided at the time of COVID-19 crisis is increasingly available. The purpose of this paper was to investigate individuals’ perceived feelings due to the plethora of information during COVID-19 pandemic in Greece in Spring 2020.

This study was conducted through a Web-based questionnaire survey posted on the Google Forms platform. The questionnaire consisted of closed-ended, seven-point Likert-scale questions. The data collected were subjected to a principal component analysis. The retained principal components (PCs) were subjected to statistical analysis between genders and among age groups and professional status with the nonparametric criteria Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis.

Responses by 776 individuals were obtained. Seventeen original variables from the questionnaire were summarized into three PCs that explained the 71.7% of total variance: “affective disorders,” “uncertainty issues and inaccurate information worries” and “satisfaction and optimism.” Participants partly agree that the received amount of information on the disease caused them feelings of uncertainty about the future and worries about relatives’ lives, but also satisfaction with developments in the country. Females seem to experience stronger perceived feelings of “affective disorders” (p < 0.001) and reported higher degree of agreement about “uncertainty issues and inaccurate information worries.”

The recorded feelings caused by the volume of available information may have forced people accept the necessary precautionary behavioral changes that had contributed to the Greek success in preventing spread of the disease in Spring 2020.

Data science is a relatively new field which has gained considerable attention in recent years. This new field requires a wide range of knowledge and skills from different disciplines including mathematics and statistics, computer science and information science. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the study that explored the field of data science from the library and information science (LIS) perspective.

Analysis of research publications on data science was made on the basis of papers published in the Web of Science database. The following research questions were proposed: What are the main tendencies in publication years, document types, countries of origin, source titles, authors of publications, affiliations of the article authors and the most cited articles related to data science in the field of LIS? What are the main themes discussed in the publications from the LIS perspective?

The highest contribution to data science comes from the computer science research community. The contribution of information science and library science community is quite small. However, there has been continuous increase in articles from the year 2015. The main document types are journal articles, followed by conference proceedings and editorial material. The top three journals that publish data science papers from the LIS perspective are the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the International Journal of Information Management and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. The top five countries publishing are USA, China, England, Australia and India. The most cited article has got 112 citations. The analysis revealed that the data science field is quite interdisciplinary by nature. In addition to the field of LIS the papers belonged to several other research areas. The reviewed articles belonged to the six broad categories: data science education and training; knowledge and skills of the data professional; the role of libraries and librarians in the data science movement; tools, techniques and applications of data science; data science from the knowledge management perspective; and data science from the perspective of health sciences.

The limitations of this research are that this study only analyzed research papers in the Web of Science database and therefore only covers a certain amount of scientific papers published in the field of LIS. In addition, only publications with the term “data science” in the topic area of the Web of Science database were analyzed. Therefore, several relevant studies are not discussed in this paper that are not reflected in the Web of Science database or were related to other keywords such as “e-science,” “e-research,” “data service,” “data curation” or “research data management.”

The field of data science has not been explored using bibliographic analysis of publications from the perspective of the LIS. This paper helps to better understand the field of data science and the perspectives for information professionals.

Mobile technology has redefined the way people communicate and interact. In education, the number of academic institutions developing and offering mobile information services is growing steadily. The purpose of this paper is to identify the use of mobile technology by the Library Science and Information Systems undergraduate students in Greece.

A questionnaire was developed drawing from the relevant literature and sent to undergraduate students studying Library and Information Science during the 2014-2015 academic year.

It was found that students employed mobile phones for entertainment purposes whereas laptops and desktop computers for performing education-related tasks. Laptops and desktop computers were again mostly used to access library services, namely the OPAC, reference books, journals.

Academic institutions need to offer services and adopt online learning platforms supported in mobile devices. Students from other disciplines and their acceptance of mobile technology should be explored.

This study identifies the specific mobile devices that students use to perform a variety of activities, educational and social, as well as the reasons for doing so.

Currently, knowing where to seek for reliable information may be one of the most important human skills. Data reliability is a matter of debate. The online dissemination of information has been a field for the reproduction of fake news. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) states that libraries are part of the answer to this ever-increasing problem. The purpose of the study is to investigate libraries' role in combating the fake news phenomenon.

The study was designed to record attitudes of professionals and students of library science on the libraries' role in the battle against misinformation. The study was conducted through an online survey using a questionnaire consisted of closed-ended, seven-point Likert scale questions. The data collected were subjected to a descriptive statistical analysis. The median was used to present the results. In order to perform analysis between genders, as well as age groups, the non-parametric criteria Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis were applied to determine the existence of differences in participants' beliefs. Spearman's rank correlation test was used in order to examine whether participants' replies were interrelated.

Responses by 434 individuals were obtained. Participants highlighted primarily the educational role of libraries and agreed that the fake news phenomenon is an opportunity to promote the libraries' role in society. No clear direction was recorded in the participants' beliefs about the plethora of information and fake news as a potential threat to libraries. The respondents partly agreed that the plethora of information caused work-related emotional disorders and feeling that the respondents were not able to keep track of developments in the field. Finally, the study depicted the participants' need for training on combating fake news, information sources evaluation and recognizing predatory journals.

The study's significance lies in the following: the study contributes to the recording of professionals' as well as students of library science views about (1) libraries' role, (2) working environment and (3) training needs, concerning fake news and the overabundance of information in the digital era.

Social networking sites are becoming more and more popular triggering an increase in published research and impacting different aspects of daily life. One such aspect concerns libraries and librarians and the way they have adopted social networking sites. The purpose of this paper is to present a selective review on libraries’ adoption and use of a specific social networking site such as Facebook in order to promote their services.

The method of selective review is employed to identify, document and present the relevant literature in a structured and annotated way. More specifically, all types of documents published between 2006 and 2012 are considered. In addition, the papers are assigned based on their expressed aim/s to emerged themes and sub-themes.

It was found that the main body of the reported literature focused on reporting experiences, problems and lessons learned from building a presence on Facebook. A few studies aimed to explore users’ and librarians’ perspectives towards social networking sites whereas there is a strong need for specific guidelines to assist libraries and librarians in adopting Facebook.

This systematic literature review consists of articles published between 2006 and 2012.

This paper contributes to identifying, collecting and presenting research regarding the use of Facebook in the field of library science. In addition, it identifies and summarises the main problems and challenges libraries and librarians are faced with when employing Facebook.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth insight on librarians’ use of the social networking site Facebook as a way to connect and promote interaction with library users. A series of common practices for building and maintaining a Facebook page for information professionals are thoroughly and critically presented.

Two methods were employed for the purposes of this study. Specifically, a systematic review was adopted to identify all the relevant literature concerning librarian’s use of Facebook, and a content analysis of the literature to identify the specific Facebook features used, the way these were employed by librarians, and the reasons these specific features were chosen.

In total, 12 Facebook features used by librarians in the literature were identified through content analysis. The creation of the librarian’s Facebook Profile was the most important featured employed followed by Groups Messages, Wall Posts, Events and Friends.

This study extents a literature review paper (Vassilakaki and Garoufallou, 2014). Therefore, only papers published between 2005 and 2012 and assigned to categories “librarians creating profiles on Facebook”, “Librarians personal experiences on Facebook” and “exploring librarians’ perspectives” were considered with the view to focus on librarians’ views and the way they use Facebook to connect with users.

This study contributes in providing the baseline for creating a series of best practices for librarians use of Facebook for professional purposes. Furthermore, it provides a valuable insight on the specific ways information professionals use Facebook successfully.

This paper aims to propose a toolset that enables individual digital collections owners to satisfy the requirements of aggregators even in cases where their IT and software infrastructure is limited and does not support them inherently. Managers of repositories/digital collections face the challenge of exposing their data via Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to multiple aggregators and conforming to their possibly differing requirements, for example on output metadata schemas and selective harvesting.

The authors developed a software server that is able to wrap existing systems or even metadata records in plain files as OAI-PMH sources. They analysed the functionality of OAI-PMH data providers in a flow of discrete steps and used a software library to modularise the software for these steps so that the whole process can be easily customised to the needs of each pair of OAI-PMH data provider and service provider. The developed server includes a mechanism for the implementation of schema mappings using an XML specification that can be defined by non-IT personnel, for example metadata experts. The server has been applied in various real-life use cases, in particular for providing content to Europeana.

It has been concluded through real-life use cases that it is indeed possible and feasible in practice to expose metadata records of digital collections via OAI-PMH even when the data sources do not support the required protocols and standards. Even advanced OAI-PMH features like selective harvesting can be supported. Mappings between input and output schemas in many practical cases can be implemented entirely or to a large extent as XML specifications by metadata experts instead of software developers.

Exposing data via OAI-PMH to aggregators like Europeana is made feasible/easier for digital collections owners, even when their software infrastructure does not inherently support the required protocols and standards.

The approach is original and applicable in practice to diverse technology environments, effectively addressing the indisputable fact of the heterogeneity of software and systems used to implement digital repositories and collections worldwide.

This paper aims to describe marketing methods, techniques and activities used in Greek academic libraries and their staff perceptions regarding the importance of marketing applications. In addition, it identifies factors which hinder the uptake of marketing, and investigates the evaluation methods used.

There are 151 central and departmental academic libraries in Greece, yet there is limited published research concerning their marketing activities. Therefore, it was intended to discover the reasons behind the low/non-use of marketing in Greek academic libraries. A three-section questionnaire was designed as the main research tool and distributed to 151 libraries. Survey results are presented and analysed according to the structure of the questionnaire.

Whilst marketing techniques and methods are used in academic libraries worldwide, the spread of marketing in Greek academic libraries proved to be limited. Basic operational problems were identified as the main barrier to greater uptake. Nevertheless, the majority of Greek academic librarians realize the importance of marketing, but they still have a long way to go in terms of understanding and adopting marketing concepts in their provision of services.

A quantitative survey was employed to determine the current situation, and examine the attitudes and perceptions of librarians in Greek academic libraries. However, the rapidly changing information environment and the increased international interest in academic library marketing have necessitated further research.

The paper presents research on staff perceptions and attitudes, towards marketing activities in Greek academic libraries. However, there is limited published research on the topic. Additionally, it is the first attempt to discover the extent to which marketing is used in Greek libraries' services' provision. The research depicts marketing techniques and methods used in Greek academic libraries and compares its results with international practices.