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This study aims to investigate research scholars’ and faculty members’ perception, participation in collection development, satisfaction with the adequacy of the library collection and challenges faced during the recommendation of resources in selected university libraries of Northern India.

The data was collected with the help of a structured questionnaire from the research scholars and faculty members from all disciplines of five universities of Northern India. The comparison between the researchers and faculty members was carried out within the university, as well as across the universities. A total of 652 questionnaires were distributed, out of which 465 filled questionnaires were finally selected for data analysis. The collected data was analyzed with the help of SPSS and the hypotheses were tested using Chi-square (χ²) test.

The survey results found significant differences in awareness of collection development policy (CDP), as well as the recommendation of resources (i.e. textbooks, reference books, journals and magazines and non-book materials) between the research scholars and faculty members across the libraries. However, no significant difference was found between the opinion of the research scholars and faculty members on the adequacy of library collection across the libraries.

The study was limited to five university libraries of North India which included Maharishi Dayanand University (Rohtak) and Kurukshetra University (Kurukshetra) from the State of Haryana Panjab University from Union Territory of Chandigarh and Punjabi University (Patiala) and Guru Nanak Dev University (Amritsar) from the state of Punjab.

The outcomes of this study will undoubtedly help the library authorities and management to understand the awareness of users (i.e. research scholars and faculty members) about the collection development process such as CDP of the library, kind of resources recommend, their assessment on adequacy of different kind of resources and their ultimate satisfaction from it.

The study is an extensive survey about the perception and participation of research scholars and faculty members in the collection development process of their respective libraries and indicates their satisfaction from the library collection.

The purpose of this paper is to construct the linkage between libraries and up-to-date news. This study developed a system to recommend libraries’ resources to those daily news readers who are interested in the topics of the target news. The analysis of experiments results served as the reference for the development and improvement of linking libraries’ resources with other web resources.

Up-to-date news were gathered through the news feeds to make the integration with the libraries’ records. In task 1, the libraries’ records were linked and recommended to the target libraries’ records which are of the same topics. In task 2, the system aimed to find the relevant libraries’ records for target news. Three recommendation methods were compared in both tasks to find the most effective approach to the system.

Experiment results showed that: at first, in task 1, the system can assign the libraries’ records of the related topics effectively; second, in task 2, the recommending system can obtain a satisfied recall hit rate through human evaluation. Therefore, regarding the popularity of the daily news online, the linkage and recommendation with the libraries’ resources can increase the visibility of the libraries’ resources and eventually promote the information consuming in libraries.

The authors have confirmed, using three matrix factorization methods, that weighted matrix factorization used in the libraries’ records recommendation system, could achieve better performance than the other two. Based on the research, the libraries could incorporate the online news and libraries’ resources in practice.

To increase the visibility and promote information consuming of libraries, this study proposed a novel method to construct the linkage between library and up-to-date news. The results of data analysis indicate that recommendation of libraries resources through the daily news can achieve effective performance. Thus, it can be inferred that the research results of this study are representative and have practical values in real world practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of enriching the library subject headings with folksonomy for enhancing the visibility and usability of the library subject headings.

The WorldCat-million data set and SocialBM0311 are preprocessing and over 210,000 library catalog records and 124,482 non-repeating tags were adopted to construct the matrix to observe the semantic relation between library subject headings and folksonomy. The proposed system is compared with the state-of-the-art methods and the parameters are fixed to obtain effective performance.

The results demonstrate that by integrating different semantic relations from library subject headings and folksonomy, the system’s performance can be improved compared to the benchmark methods. The evaluation results also show that the folksonomy can enrich library subject headings through the semantic relationship.

The proposed method simultaneous weighted matrix factorization can integrate the semantic relation from the library subject headings and folksonomy into one semantic space. The observation of the semantic relation between library subject headings and social tags from folksonomy can help enriching the library subject headings and improving the visibility of the library subject headings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current characteristics and status of WeChat application in Chinese public libraries.

Using a sample of 46 sub-provincial and provincial public libraries in China, this study collected data from their WeChat official accounts. Statistical analysis and content analysis were employed for data analysis.

The results show that 82.6 percent of the 46 libraries had applied for WeChat accounts and offered services, of which the earliest created time was March 20, 2013. Differences were found among history information regarding their numbers, types and contents. Moreover, as for service mode, 84.2 percent of the libraries present custom menus, and 68.4 percent provide self-inquiry information. In addition, three types of reference services are revealed: real-time services (28.9 percent), services via telephones or e-mails (36.8 percent) and menu services (7.9 percent).

This study illustrates an overall picture of WeChat application in Chinese public libraries. Extant research has mainly focused on Web 2.0 applications in university libraries, and less attention has been paid to the application of mobile social media in public libraries. This study attempts to fill this research gap.

The number of international students and overseas faculty in Tsinghua University in Beijing has grown rapidly in recent years. How to help foreign users overcome the language barrier and make a full use of the library is a realistic problem that is encountered by many libraries. This paper aims to introduce an exploration of Tsinghua University Library experiences and to give some suggestions for the future.

The paper first describes the large influx of international students and then analyzes the information needs of foreign users by showing the results of a user survey conducted by the Tsinghua University Library in 2007. The library has made a great effort in creating a bilingual information environment for foreign users. A full spectrum of practices is presented in respect of resource, service, infrastructure and the English skill of librarians, etc.

Foreign users have multi‐level needs for libraries and the language need is the most outstanding one. As an integral part of the university community, foreign users share many information requirements with Chinese users. Therefore, the library must try to solve the language problem and enhance its academic support functions at the same time.

Libraries in non‐English‐speaking countries can do a lot to help foreign users with limited local language competency to make use of the library. Building a bilingual information environment is comprehensive systems engineering with many aspects involved.

This paper makes useful suggestions for creating a bilingual library information environment for foreign users of today and also provides tips for future improvement.

The paper analyses students' use of public libraries for study purposes and discusses the public library as a substitute or a complement for educational or academic libraries. The paper also investigates which segments of students rely heavily on public libraries as services for study purposes.

The research is based on a comprehensive survey of Danish students from both universities and other higher institutions of education. The data collection was carried out by an online survey and the sample consists of students from all over the country covering a multitude of different institutions and subject areas.

It is evident from the research that students do not bypass the physical library and it is also evident that the use of physical libraries and digital resources complement each other. The place of Google in the students' information behaviour is prominent and positively correlated to use of traditional library resources. Nearly 60 per cent of all students use the local public library for study purposes. A small group consisting of 7 per cent of the students uses the public library as their only library for study purposes. One of the more striking findings is that the service level of public libraries in relation to study topics appears to be very uneven, which means that different groups of students have very varied probabilities of success using the public library. The data also indicates that students tend to look at libraries as a whole and do not make clear distinctions between different types of libraries, expecting the whole system to be seamless. The paper also relates the findings to the general body of literature on students' information seeking behaviour.

The research raises questions concerning the detailed behaviour of students' information behaviour, for example, how they combine formalised resources with more general resources. The paper also indicates that it is probably counter‐productive to evaluate students as one group. Different segments of students have very different and varied information behaviour patterns depending on study topic, study year, psychological dispositions and other demographic factors.

The paper raises important managerial questions and concerns in relation to both the mission of public libraries and the service level given to different segments of students.

The research supports existing international research on students' information behaviour. The research is based on a comprehensive and nation‐wide sample and it emphasises students' information behaviour in relation to several important demographic factors, and it also asserts that it is important to investigate further the differing modes of behaviour. The paper points to the interplay between formalised information resources and search engines.

Consumer health literacy is a necessary skill in all facets of library work, from reference desk to programming to website development. In this chapter, the authors present key terms in the domain of health literacy; challenges and controversies in research and public library practice; and findings from a recent study of public library workers meeting consumer health information needs. Finally, the authors present examples of National Library of Medicine (NLM) initiatives for public libraries and public librarians focusing on bridging health literacy gaps. Socially disadvantaged groups who are the most affected by health disparities tend to be those who are lower-income, have less education, and are not White. The combined effects of environment and socioeconomic status mean that these communities have particular, highly local challenges in addressing their health issues, as individuals and as a population. Health literacy can serve as the enabling factor in obtaining quality health information, navigating healthcare, and seeking better health. To support the public, NLM and its National Network of Libraries of Medicine have placed a strategic emphasis on public libraries in order to develop long-term partnerships. The goals of these partnerships are to support staff development and programming, and to promote resource-sharing about programs and activities focusing on health information. Public libraries are everywhere and open to all. This makes them the ideal community agency to reach out to the public and implement national information initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to present the main findings of a nation‐wide survey of Danish high school students and their use of libraries and digital resources. The presentation of the main findings includes different organisations of the data in clusters and user types. This organisation and analysis gives indications of the factors that influence the high school students' use of libraries and digital resources and it also explains the preferences and expectations the students have.

The study was conducted as a nation‐wide online survey to a sample of high schools in Denmark. The data collection was conducted in several steps. A sample of high schools was selected and asked if they would accept the opportunity to participate in the study. If they agreed, the director or a person appointed by the director selected two to three classes of students. The students received a link to the online questionnaire and completed it during a class hour. The result was 998 usable and valid responses. There was no way to secure a true random sample, but the sample is very much like the student population as it is registered in statistical yearbooks in relation to characteristics such as type of high school, gender and geographical distribution.

The findings indicate that traditional demographic factors alone cannot explain all of the variability in the students' information behaviour. Type of high school, gender and study year influence the use of libraries and digital resources but it also becomes clear that perceptions of the study and study preferences influence the information behaviour. It is also indicated that a correlation exists between the amount of use of libraries and digital resources. Further, it is indicated that high school students possess a rather traditional view of the importance of the different services and facilities offered by libraries.

The limitations of the research are inherent in the methodology. First of all, one only gets answers in relation to the stated questions and statements. This implies that the students' use of other information grounds, horizons, social technologies are omitted from the study. It is probably valid to argue that the data collection methods bias the results in a “conservative” way.

The research is the first nationwide investigation into different aspects of high school students' use of libraries and information resources in Denmark.

This paper describes quantitative and qualitative research undertaken at the University of Sussex Library. The research was concerned to investigate the behaviour and motivations that led Library users to give puzzling responses in a user survey into book availability. The responses concerned the Library's Reserve Collection of key course texts. Hence the paper firstly sets out to describe the user survey, and then goes on to give an account of the qualitative research methodology employed to look beyond the survey results. This methodology involved semi‐structured interviews with students and tutors, which were analysed with the help of the software package QSR NUD*1st. The research uncovered interesting and useful information relating to the way Library users approach the Library service, a summary of which is included in the paper. The research methodology was found to be a valuable addition to the information gathering strategies of Library management, revealing patterns of user attitudes that are difficult if not impossible to access using traditional survey techniques alone.

This study aims to explore the factors influencing intentions to use library social media marketing accounts from users’ perspectives to help libraries use social media to provide targeted information services to users to meet their information needs.

This study is based on the technology acceptance model and theory of planned behaviour and uses WeChat as an example to build the model of factors influencing intentions to use library social media marketing accounts. It takes college students as the research object, performing empirical research through questionnaire surveys and structural equation modeling.

The results show that attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control have a significant positive impact on library social media marketing – attitude exerts the most significant effect while the impact of perceived usefulness is nonsignificant. Notably, attitude completely mediates perceived usefulness and use intention, while perceived usefulness partially mediates perceived ease of use and attitude. However, birthplace plays a negative moderating role between attitudes and use intention.

This study integrates the theory of planned behaviour and technology acceptance model, discusses the factors influencing intentions to use library social media marketing accounts from the users’ perspectives and proposes strategies and methods for the optimization of library social media marketing. The study helps enhance the effects of library social media marketing by improving the comprehension of current circumstances and influencing factors relevant to this issue.