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This study aims to develop a model for integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in resource sharing practices for enhanced service delivery in academic libraries in Southeast Nigeria. Seven objectives guided the study; ICT-based resource sharing practices in academic libraries in Southeast Nigeria; ICT infrastructure for resource sharing; ICT needs of librarians for resource sharing practices; stages of ICT integration in resource sharing; perception of librarians towards ICT-based resource sharing; challenges to integration of ICT in resource sharing practices; design a model for the integration of ICT into resource sharing; all in academic libraries in Southeast Nigeria.

The research design adopted for this study is the mixed research design containing the “descriptive survey” research design and the “research and development, R&D.” The population of the study is 164, comprising all of the librarians in federal universities in Southeast Nigeria. All of the librarians of the five federal universities will be involved in the study. Hence, there was no sampling. The instrument for data collection is a structured questionnaire.

The findings of the study revealed that 88.8% of the librarians use ICT to boost the volume of resources; while 74% of the librarians were positive in all responses pertaining to ICT-based resource sharing practices in the libraries. The study also revealed that ICT infrastructures in the library for resource sharing are highly available and applicable; while computers and internet networks are the most needed gadgets for the operations. Libraries in Southeast Nigeria are in the applying and transforming stages of ICT adoption at a 69.7% response rate; while the librarians have a strong belief and understanding that a lot can be achieved in resource sharing through ICT; and would recommend such. Poor electrification, inadequate funding and unavailability of some ICT technologies were equally identified as challenges. The study conclusively developed a resource sharing model, the Southeast Federal University Library Connect; accessible at https://southeastfeduniconnect.njh.com.ng

The research study is one of the few types of research that has developed a functional model for resource sharing in academic libraries in Southeast Nigeria.

For the provision of smart library services to end users, tools of the Internet of Things (IoT) play a significant role. The study aims to discover the factors influencing the adoption of IoT in university libraries, investigate the impact of IoT on university library services and identify challenges to adopt IoT applications in university libraries.

A systematic literature review was carried out to address the objectives of the study. The 40 most relevant research papers published in the world’s leading digital databases were selected to conduct the study.

The findings illustrated that rapid growth in technology, perceived benefits, the networked world and the changing landscape of librarianship positively influenced the adoption of IoT in university libraries. The study also displayed that IoT supported library professionals to initiate smart library services, assisted in service efficiency, offered context-based library services, provided tracking facilities and delivered effective management of library systems. Results also revealed that a lack of technical infrastructure, security and privacy concerns, a lack of technological skills and unavailability of policy and strategic planning caused barriers to the successful adoption of IoT applications in university libraries.

The study has provided theoretical implications through a valuable addition to the current literature. It has also offered managerial implications for policymakers to construct productive policies for the implementation of IoT applications in university libraries for the attainment of fruitful outcomes. Finally, the study provides a baseline for understanding the adoption of IoT in academic libraries.

This paper focuses on the use of e-resources by research scholars and post-graduate students at Kashmir University. The main aim is to determine the use of e-resources, users skills in handling e-resources and the purpose of their use. Further, this paper aims to highlight the problems faced by research scholars and post-graduate students in accessing e-resources.

The survey was conducted through a structured questionnaire circulated among 250 research scholars, both (M.Phil./Ph.D.) and post-graduate students, from different departments of Kashmir University, and the response rate was 80%. Random sample method was used for the selection of respondents and interacting with them. The responses received from the research scholars to 14 questions are presented in the form of tables.

Major findings of the study reveal that the majority of the students reported using electronic journal resources for various purposes including working on assignments, research proposal writing, literature review writing, research report writing, current awareness and leisurely exploration of ongoing scientific debates through peer-reviewed papers. The challenges encountered in the use of electronic journal resources include a power outage, inadequate bandwidth, slow download speed, inability to access the resources from home, lack of training, lack of awareness, limited access to computers and difficulty in searching. The paper concludes that electronic resources have become an integral part of the information needs of research scholars’ post-graduate students at Kashmir University. Further, it finds that e-resources can be good substitutes for conventional resources, if the access is fast, and more computer terminals are installed to provide fast access to e-resources. Finally, recommendations for improving the use of electronic journal resources are provided.

The paper restrains the study exclusively to use of e-resources by the research scholars and post-graduate students of Kashmir University.

The paper highlights the use of e-resources by research scholars and post-graduate students of Kashmir University and makes some constructive suggestions for the improvement of electronic resources and services. This is the first time an effort has been made to assess the use of electronic resources by post-graduate students at Kashmir University. The study could be used to assess the post-graduate students’ needs for electronic resources at the Kashmir University and other users in higher learning institutions.

The article investigates the institutional setup of e-lending in public libraries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Our point of departure is that e-lending has necessitated new library collaborations between local, regional and national levels, and therefore, institutional e-lending setups have emerged. The study seeks to provide better understanding of how the institutional setups are structured, how governance logics have shaped them and what tensions and dynamics become visible in the key actors’ problematisations of these setups.

The study is situated in the neo-institutional tradition and applies the institutional logics perspective. The research questions are answered by taking a qualitative approach, grounded in an extensive interview study with representatives of libraries, publishers and policy actors in three Scandinavian countries. To provide in-depth insight into e-lending setups, the scope of empirical material is then limited to accounts the central library and policy actors involved in establishing e-lending.

The analysis shows that the e-lending setups are both similar (especially when it comes to financing), and different across Scandinavia, especially when it comes to centralisation and involvement of librarians in this task. The differences are attributed to the influence of different governance logics (question of administrative autonomy, collaboration in the field and existing legal and political frames), and to what extent the digital and market logics are incorporated or rejected in the field.

The study provides new insights into the question of how Scandinavian public libraries face the consequences of the digitalisation of book distribution and consumption by investigating how they organise their e-lending services. This has not been explored before, notably in a comparative perspective.

The purpose of this case study was to complement existing weeding and retention criteria beyond the most used methods in academic libraries and to consider citation counts in the identification of important scholarly works.

Using a small sample of items chosen for withdrawal from a small liberal arts college library, this case study looks at the use of Google Scholar citation counts as a metric for identification of notable monographs in the social sciences and mathematics.

Google Scholar citation counts are a quick indicator of classic, foundational or discursive monographs in a particular field and should be given more consideration in weeding and retention analysis decisions that impact scholarly collections. Higher citation counts can be an indicator of higher circulation counts.

The authors found little indication in the literature that Google Scholar citation counts are being used as a metric for identification of notable works or for retention of monographs in academic libraries.

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 study aimed to predict and understand the academic libraries' probability of successful adoption of blockchain within the lens of integrated technology acceptance model (TAM) and technology organization and environment theory (TOE) framework.

A mixed approach was employed to gather data from librarians (292) and system analysts (46) totaling 338 respondents. The total enumeration sampling technique was considered. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically, while quantitative data were analyzed using structural equation model (SEM).

Perceived usefulness and policy are the important factors that influence academic libraries' blockchain adoption intentions. Unlimited access to both print and electronic resources, security of users' information and easy collaboration between users and library staff were found to be the benefits of blockchain application to academic libraries' operations. Major challenges to the adoption of blockchain in academic libraries include the cost of infrastructure related to blockchain applications, privacy issues and a lack of understanding of blockchain technology among librarians.

Future studies would need to include more relevant items to the observed variables of the independent variables that were found insignificant in this study.

The findings of this study will create a roadmap for government and polytechnic management on the factors that could strengthen the adoption of blockchain in the libraries.

The outcome of this study came at a crucial moment when the majority of academic libraries in developing nations like Nigeria were skeptical about the deployment of blockchain technology in their libraries.

The study identified new factors that influence blockchain adoption intention.

The PICCH research project contributes to opening a dialogue between cultural heritage archives and users. Hence, the users are identified and their information needs, the search strategies they apply and the search challenges they experience are uncovered.

A combination of questionnaires and interviews is used for collection of data. Questionnaire data were collected from users of three different audiovisual archives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two user groups: (1) scholars searching information for research projects and (2) archivists who perform their own scholarly work and search information on behalf of others.

The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background. Hence, scholars and archivists constitute the target group for in-depth interviews. The interviews reveal that their information needs are multi-faceted and match the information need typology by Ingwersen. The scholars mainly apply collection-specific search strategies but have in common primarily doing keyword searching, which they typically plan in advance. The archivists do less planning owing to their knowledge of the collections. All interviewees demonstrate domain knowledge, archival intelligence and artefactual literacy in their use and mastering of the archives. The search challenges they experience can be characterised as search system complexity challenges, material challenges and metadata challenges.

The paper provides a rare insight into the complexity of the search situation of cultural heritage archives, and the users’ multi-facetted information needs and hence contributes to the dialogue between the archives and the users.

This study aims to assess the extent to which Uganda university libraries have implemented digital transformation technologies and to determine the facilitators and barriers affecting the implementation of digital transformation in selected university libraries in Uganda.

This study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design. It was conducted in six selected university libraries in Uganda, which were in three private and three public universities. The study sample included 103 librarians with a minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree and six library directors.

The findings indicated that there was an average (n = 37, 48.7%) implementation of digital transformation in the selected university libraries in Uganda. Some of the barriers hindering digital transformation included inadequate funding, lack of awareness of digital technologies, inadequate ICT skills, insufficient ICT infrastructure and limited staff among others. There is a need for library management to provide support in the form of funds, policies and human resources to implement such digital transformation.

The criteria for choosing universities were those that have been around for at least 10 years. The reason for this was that it was assumed that these universities would have well-established staff development programmes and procedures as well as be likely to have incorporated technology into their services, including libraries. This study’s limitations stem from the fact that this criterion for selection might not apply to all Ugandan university libraries, particularly those that are less than 10 years old and may not have been well represented in this study.

The magnitude of the problem of digital transformation in university libraries in Uganda is unclear because of the limited research available in the Uganda library and information science field. This study presents the status of digital transformation in Uganda university libraries.

The study aims to shed light on the current state of “Dataset repositories” indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).

From each repository/record information, the Open-Access Policies, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), year of creation and the number of data sets archived in the repositories were manually searched, documented and analyzed.

Developed countries like the United Kingdom and the USA are primarily involved in the development of institutional open-access repositories comprising significant components of OpenDOAR. The most extensively used software is DSpace. Most data set archives are OAI-PMH compliant but do not follow open-access rules. The study also highlights the sites’ embrace of Web 2.0 capabilities and discovers really simple syndication feeds and Atom integration. The use of social media has made its presence known. Furthermore, the study concludes that the number of data sets kept in repositories is insufficient, although the expansion of such repositories has been consistent over the years.

The work has the potential to benefit both researchers in general and policymakers in particular. Scholars interested in research data, data sharing and data reuse can learn about the present state of repositories that preserve data sets in OpenDOAR. At the same time, policymakers can develop recommendations and policies to assist in the construction and maintenance of repositories for data sets.

According to the literature, there have been numerous studies on open-access repositories and OpenDOAR internationally, but no research has focused on repositories preserving content-type data sets. As a result, the study attempts to uncover various characteristics of OpenDOAR Data set repositories.