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The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a deeper theoretical understanding of liminality, its utility in understanding the experiences of graduate student researchers and how being explicit about the liminal nature of the graduate student experience can be especially impactful for students from marginalized communities.

This conceptual paper examines liminality as an essential component of researcher identity development and how an awareness of this liminality relates to effective and inclusive librarian support of graduate student researchers. The authors explore the affective and academic implications of operating in this liminal state and how direct acknowledgment of this inbetweenness, especially within the spaces of classroom instruction and research consultations, can be leveraged as an inclusive practice. The authors ground this exploration in critical pedagogy.

Graduate student researchers often operate in an unacknowledged liminal state, which causes students to question the importance of their previous knowledge and life experiences and feel discouraged and uncertain about their potential place in academia. This is particularly damaging to students from communities that have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from higher education.

The authors are liaison librarians to education and health sciences at a large, minority-serving, urban research institution in the western USA and draw on their experience supporting students in disciplines that include many students returning to graduate studies after substantial professional experience. This work makes a contribution to library and information studies by focusing on the concept of liminality. The authors offer a conceptual perspective on liminality relative to librarians and their support role in the graduate student experience.

This study addresses the need for a theory-guided, rich, descriptive account of research data repositories' (RDRs) understanding of data quality and the structures of their data quality assurance (DQA) activities. Its findings can help develop operational DQA models and best practice guides and identify opportunities for innovation in the DQA activities.

The study analyzed 122 data repositories' applications for the Core Trustworthy Data Repositories, interview transcripts of 32 curators and repository managers and data curation-related webpages of their repository websites. The combined dataset represented 146 unique RDRs. The study was guided by a theoretical framework comprising activity theory and an information quality evaluation framework.

The study provided a theory-based examination of the DQA practices of RDRs summarized as a conceptual model. The authors identified three DQA activities: evaluation, intervention and communication and their structures, including activity motivations, roles played and mediating tools and rules and standards. When defining data quality, study participants went beyond the traditional definition of data quality and referenced seven facets of ethical and effective information systems in addition to data quality. Furthermore, the participants and RDRs referenced 13 dimensions in their DQA models. The study revealed that DQA activities were prioritized by data value, level of quality, available expertise, cost and funding incentives.

The study's findings can inform the design and construction of digital research data curation infrastructure components on university campuses that aim to provide access not just to big data but trustworthy data. Communities of practice focused on repositories and archives could consider adding FAIR operationalizations, extensions and metrics focused on data quality. The availability of such metrics and associated measurements can help reusers determine whether they can trust and reuse a particular dataset. The findings of this study can help to develop such data quality assessment metrics and intervention strategies in a sound and systematic way.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first data quality theory guided examination of DQA practices in RDRs.

The digital contents (d-contents) are vulnerable to various threats either natural or manmade. Digital preservation is the plethora of a wide array of strategies necessary for the long-term preservation of digital objects. This study was carried out to assess the digital preservation practices for information resources in university libraries of Pakistan.

A quantitative survey based on a structured questionnaire was carried out to conduct the study. The questionnaire containing two sets of strategies (general and technical) was distributed amongst the whole population and received 90% response rate.

Overall, progressive implementation of general digital preservation practices was noted in these libraries like checking the digital collections for viruses, keeping the digital media in fire/water/theft proof locations, restricting unauthorized access, maintaining ideal humidity and temperature, and checking the digital media for functionality. Amongst the technical practices, only replication was in practice at a progressive rate, followed by metadata recording and media refreshing that was sometimes practiced in these libraries. The other technical practices were rarely or never practiced in these libraries. Significant variances in general and technical digital preservation practices were noted based on their physical locations (regional distribution).

The study contributes a comprehensive set of digital preservation practices divided into general and technical types to conduct similar studies in other parts of the world.

The findings stress the need for national and institutional policies, funding streams and skill enhancement of library staff.

The study fills the literature gap and contributes a comprehensive set of digital preservation practices divided into general and technical types to conduct similar studies in other parts of the world.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-02-2023-0074

The purpose of this study is to chart the development of Makerspaces in higher education (MIHE), by building a map of existing research work in the field. Based on a corpus of 183 manuscripts, published between January 2014 and April 2021, it sets out to describe the range of topics covered under the umbrella of MIHE and provide a holistic view of the field.

The approach adopted in this research includes development of the 2014–2021 MIHE corpus; literature overview and initial coding scheme development; refinement of the initial coding scheme with the help of a focus group and construction of the MIHE map version 1.0; refinement of the MIHE map version 1.0 following a systematic approach of content analysis and development of the MIHE map version 2.0; evaluation of the proposed structure and inclusiveness of all categories in the MIHE map version 2.0 using card-sorting technique; and, finally, development of the MIHE map version 3.0.

The research trends in the categories of the MIHE map are discussed, as well as possible future directions in the field.

This paper provides a holistic view of the field of MIHE guiding both junior MIHE researchers to place themselves in the field, and policymakers and decision-makers who attempt to evaluate the current and future scholar activity in the field. Finally, it caters for more experienced researchers to focus on certain underinvestigated domains.