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The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory study whose aim was to investigate the role of public libraries in the provision of European Union (EU) information in an EU acceding country (Croatia).

Study was conducted via online questionnaire in public libraries across country.

The findings revealed that majority of respondents (83.7 percent) think it is an important task of public libraries to provide citizens with materials about the EU, and that almost all responding libraries (98 percent) have EU materials. In general, respondents think that provision of EU materials in their library does not compromise its role of politically neutral institution. The results also indicate that libraries quite rarely (10 percent) maintain links to relevant EU online sources on their websites. EU collections in responding libraries are promoted actively most frequently in the library itself and on its website, and very rarely in the local media.

Findings are expected to be of interest to European administration in charge of the development of effective communication policies, national authorities in EU candidate and acceding countries, and information professionals in general.

This is the first study to investigate the role of public libraries in EU information provision in an EU acceding country.

This chapter presents findings from a study into reading interests and habits of prisoners in six Croatian penitentiaries, and their perception and use of prison libraries. The study was conducted with the help of self-administered print survey. A total of 30% of prison population (male and female) in selected prisons was included in the study and a total of 504 valid questionnaires were returned (response rate of 81.3%). Findings indicate that reading is the respondents’ most popular leisure activity and that they read more now than before coming to prison. Respondents read more fiction than non-fiction. Most frequently they read crime novels, thrillers, and historical novels. To a lesser degree, they read religious literature, biographies, spiritual novels, social problem novels, self-help, war novels, science fiction, erotic novels, romances, spy novels and horrors. Respondents would like to read daily newspapers and magazines, and books about sport, health, travel, computers, hobbies, cookbooks, etc. Respondents have wide reading interests (both in relation to fiction and non-fiction) but they do not have access to them in their prison library. Respondents reported that reading makes their life in prison easier and their time in prison passes faster with books. Only about a quarter of respondents are satisfied with their prison library collection. Almost a fifth of respondents does not visit the library at all because it does not have anything they would like to find there: newspapers, modern literature, non-fiction, reading material for visually impaired and computers.

The purpose of this paper is to present the exploratory study whose aim was to investigate the information needs and information-seeking behavior of post-secondary students related to the European Union (EU) in Croatia.

A total of 504 students enrolled in post-secondary education across country took part in this study. Data were collected through an online survey during a 60-day period preceding the Croatia’s full membership in the EU.

The findings revealed the high need for information about the EU among the student population. The respondents required European information in a wide range of thematic areas and the majority of them did not feel well informed about the EU in general. Students responding required the European information both for personal reasons and for educational purposes. The majority of respondents required the EU information in order to better understand the EU in general and they faced a number of challenges when accessing it.

Limitations inherent to the method used and the limited number of respondents. Future research should include a wider array of respondents (older citizens, professionals, etc.) so as to obtain a broad a picture as possible of information needs and seeking behavior related to EU.

The study offers valuable insight into the types of EU information needed by citizens (post-secondary students) in an acceding country. The survey results are expected to be of interest to European administration charged with the development of effective communication policies, national authorities in EU candidate and acceding countries, and information professionals in general.

This is the first study of EU information needs and seeking behavior in an acceding country.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a small scale study the aim of which was to survey the information needs and library usage of major long‐established national minorities (Serbian, Hungarian and Slovak) in eastern Croatia (Osijek‐Baranya county); in particular in relation to the information and reading material in their native languages.

Owing to spatial limitations this paper focuses on the Serbian national minority. Data were gathered with the help of quantitative methodology. Self‐administered questionnaires were distributed through Serbian cultural associations (the snowball sampling method). In total, 140 valid and usable questionnaires were returned. Descriptive statistics and variant analysis were used to analyse the data.

The study indicated that respondents had the need for diverse information and reading material in their mother tongue and that for that purpose they used public libraries less often than some other information sources, such as TV, newspapers, internet and local Serbian cultural associations.

The limitations of the research are inherent in the methodology. The authors will, in the next phase of the project, carry out in‐depth interviews with respondents.

The importance of this research lies in its implications for the development of library services to multicultural communities in Croatia, as well as offering suggestions for improving collection building in Croatian public libraries. This study could encourage librarians in Croatia to systematically collect and analyse information about their local community minorities; especially their library and information needs.

This is the first investigation into the information needs and library usage of long‐established national minorities in Croatia.

Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information.

The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory.

Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity.

Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms.

The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals.

This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

While the library has remained a preferred place of learning and received a positive perception in all aspects, the current space planning, as categorized in the “four-space model,” does not seem to address user needs well. The purpose of this article is to explore the correlations of user perceptions, academic library usage and social capital.

This research presented a new approach to understanding the academic library's role by surveying 120 users about their preferred place on the campus, actual usage, and perceptions of the library physically and remotely. Correlation analysis between library use and user activities was performed.

The findings indicate that the library demonstrates attributes from all four levels in the learning space hierarchy, providing an ideal learning space for students. However, our results do not support academic libraries as the breeding ground of social capital.

As the data of this study were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic period, the findings may provide us with insights on how library users have adjusted themselves in using these public facilities with social distancing in their minds. The findings also provide implications for re-designing the library places to meet the users' needs and make it favorable learning commons to students in both the pandemic and post-pandemic eras.