Library And Information Science Research Articles

AI Tools in LIS Research: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges for Scholarly Advancement

ABSTRACT This study examines the integration of AI tools in Library and Information Science (LIS) research to understand their implications on academic practices. Using a careful survey-based methodology, the study explores the advantages of AI tools, related challenges, and potential behavioural impacts, mainly focusing on whether they unintentionally promote satisfaction among researchers. Findings reveal an ideal position for AI tool utilisation, highlighting varied degrees of usage and perceived benefits like increased efficiency and expanded research scope. However, challenges encompass ethical concerns, integration complexities, and diverging opinions regarding the tools’ potential impact on researcher diligence. This study contributes significantly by addressing the less-explored behavioural implications of AI tool integration in research, offering refined insights into their multifaceted impact on academic practices. It underscores the need for a balanced and informed approach to AI integration, considering their transformative potential and ethical considerations in scholarly pursuits.

Problem-based learning with library e-resources to enhance student information literacy self-efficacy

PurposeThis study investigates the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) in information literacy curricula using library e-resources to enhance information literacy self-efficacy (ILSE) of students in two universities in Indonesia, in Java Island (University A) and Sumatra Island (University B).Design/methodology/approachA comparison of the effectiveness of the approach in the two universities forms the focus of the study, which has adopted a single group quasi-experimental design which was conducted in one online teaching-learning session. The authors compared the pre-test and post-test scores of 65 library and information science (LIS) students from both universities.FindingsThe results show that the treatment enhanced ILSE effectively. After the treatment, University A students performed better than those at University B.Research limitations/implicationsThe factors which affected the success of PBL using library e-resources have not been identified in this study, a task for a future qualitative research study.Practical implicationsThis study will both inspire the use of library e-resources in learning activities and promote ILSE.Originality/valueIntegrating PBL with library e-resources provides opportunity to identify the advantages of library e-resources in supporting student ILSE, resulting a better learning achievement.

Demystifying multilingual LIS journals in Scopus: Languages, coverage, metrics, and implications

This study aimed to investigate the languages, countries, geographic distribution, and commonly used journal metrics of multilingual Library and Information Science (LIS) journals indexed in Scopus. The Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) portal was used as a proxy for Scopus-indexed LIS journals. Through examination of the homepages of 249 LIS journals listed in SJR, 42 multilingual LIS journals were identified. For this study, multilingual journals were defined as those publishing in a combination of English and other languages. The findings revealed that although English-only journals have historically dominated the field, a significant number of multilingual journals have been indexed in Scopus over the past two decades. The 42 identified multilingual journals span 25 countries and encompass 18 languages, reflecting a diverse linguistic landscape in LIS scholarship. Notably, 67% are Open Access (OA) and affiliated with major publishers, including university presses. Spain and Brazil emerge as key players, accounting for 27% of all identified multilingual journals, highlighting the importance of their regional languages in LIS scholarship. However, the study also uncovered disparities in journal metrics and rankings, with multilingual journals consistently scoring lower than their English-only counterparts. Despite efforts to include regional and local journals in major databases, these results underscore the persistent challenges multilingual publications face in achieving and maintaining Scopus indexing.

Provocations on iSchools and Librarianship: New Priorities for LIS Forward

ABSTRACTFor the last twenty years, the field of library and information science (LIS) has been evolving within the context of iSchools. Now, organizationally melded with other information fields, LIS is better positioned than ever to synergize expertise across disciplines to benefit librarianship. However, the recent LIS Forward position paper asserts that dynamics are changing within iSchools in ways that can strengthen or diminish LIS, surfacing critical tensions and issuing recommendations for the iSchool community. This panel assembles thought leaders to share new perspectives on the provocations of the position paper and to further advance the conversation with the ASIS&T community. The group will consider themes of diversification, competition, and identity and explore two urgent professional concerns—Black librarianship and AI. A moderated discussion will be documented to inform future engagement on charting directions, investments, and grand challenges for the field of LIS and the profession.

First Insights into the Coverage of Conversational Agents in LIS Sources

ABSTRACTThis poster addresses the research question of whether conversational agents (CAs) play a role within the Library and Information Science (LIS) publication sources and provides preliminary insights. At the time of research, the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) database included 271 LIS publication sources. Twenty‐seven percent of these sources related to research topics on conversational agents. In total, the dataset included 351 documents extracted from Scopus. With 59 publications, the journal Education and Information Technologies listed the greatest number of articles. A ranking by the number of authors showed China (N = 239), the United States (N = 222), and India (N = 87) as the top three countries.

Power in the Home: Digital Housekeeping and Its Relevance to Information Behaviour, PIM, and Information Ethics

ABSTRACTDigital housekeeping (DH) is an emerging research topic focused on the labour and social implications of setting up and maintaining technology in the home. Although examined by multiple fields, the literature on DH has yet to be reviewed and its potential overlap and synergy with library and information science (LIS) have yet to be explored. We therefore conducted a tool‐supported review of 26 scholarly publications on DH. Below we summarise the people‐ and relationship‐focused sub‐topics and findings of DH literature and explore promising directions for future research in LIS, particularly in information behaviour and personal information management. The poster visually maps the sub‐topics and disciplinary connections.

Ethicizing Agency in Body Documentification

ABSTRACTWhile considerations of documents and data are longstanding in the tenants and practices of library and information science (LIS), the recent turn toward bodies and embodiment in the social sciences invites a critical interrogation of our assumptions about the interplay of documents, data, and bodies embedded within sociotechnical systems of power and bodily agency. In response, we begin to theorize the intersection of datafication and documentation as documentification, encapsulating how acts of datafication revoking agency results in a one‐directional superficial documentary status, producing assumptions about bodies by power systems which aim to simplify, nullify, and suppress. We initially examine documentification as it relates to practices of surveillance, BMI, and memory institutions. In doing so, we interrogate the ethical dilemmas emerging from assumptions about agency ascribed to documentified bodies. Finally, we challenge the library and information professions to imagine a world designed with putting people first that centers, rather than reduces, their agency.

People's Voice: Exploring Discussion Themes on Generative AI and Libraries on X

ABSTRACTThe launch of ChatGPT and other Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) models has significantly influenced people's perceptions of AI, making its impact a widely discussed topic in various areas. In Library and Information Science (LIS), researchers experience the opportunities and challenges presented by GenAI, such as using the rich text from books and digital collections as training data for GenAI and enabling quick summarization and reference consultation for patrons. Meanwhile, concerns have arisen about the generation of fake information and nonexistent text by GenAI and their potential effects on users. This project explores the themes in public discussions regarding the impact of GenAI on libraries. To explore public opinions about the impact of GenAI in libraries, we collected over 50,000 posts from X (formerly Twitter) between November 1, 2022, and May 6, 2024. We manually sampled 1,000 posts focusing on GenAI in the context of libraries. We conducted content analysis to identify the key themes and relationships among these themes. This poster presents our initial findings on different themes and highlights the trends in public opinion. Our analysis provides a curated dataset for training APIs for future investigation.

Information behaviour of Deaf people in university libraries

In Brazil, there are more than 10 million Deaf people. Of these, 2,592 Deaf people are enrolled in Higher Education institutions. This pilot study aims to explore how the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) has studied Deaf people in university libraries. This research uses a mixed methods approach: the first part of the study uses a descriptive approach to present the current state of LIS literature on Deaf users of university libraries. The second part of the research is empirical and consists of a survey that has yet to be fully carried out. It also suggests how the university library can contribute to the empowerment of the deaf community.

Tracing the Contours of Archival Silences: A Case Study of Critical Collection Building on the Rock Springs Massacre

ABSTRACTArchives can reinforce silences of marginalized communities, further erasing their stories and voices. This study aims to understand the contours of archival silences, focusing on experiences of Chinese people in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We are building a digital archival collection that centers Chinese peoples' voices around the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, an incident of racial violence that killed at least 28 Chinese people and displaced hundreds more. As we selected items, we wrote structured reflections to critically examine each item's content, source, presentation, arrangement and description in their original context, as well as any absences and silences that we encountered in the search and assessment process. Based on a praxis of radical empathy, ethics of care, and slow archives, we engaged with our positionalities, past experiences, professional training in Library and Information Sciences (LIS), and affective responses throughout the research process to reflect on how they shape our decisions and hesitations in item selection and contextualization. Three main themes emerged from a preliminary thematic analysis of our reflections: complexity of archival silences and silencing, challenges of inclusive representation, and problematizing and going beyond primary sources.

(Disrupting) Continuities between Eugenics and Statistics: A Critical Study of Regression Analysis

ABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the intertwined history of statistics and eugenics through the work of Francis Galton, whose statistical inventions were guided by his problematic belief in eugenics. The paper highlights the historical development of regression analysis, arguing that acknowledging the discriminatory origins of this method is crucial for understanding historical and contemporary injustices in data‐driven decision‐making. The paper also considers the ethical implications of other statistical techniques, emphasizing the need for library and information science (LIS) students and practitioners to be aware of the societal implications of “objective” data analysis methods.

Authorship Dynamics in Multidisciplinary Research: A Focus on Library and Information Science Professionals in RRIJM

This study looks into bibliometric studies in library and information science (LIS) to learn more about the influence of professional collaborations and multidisciplinary publication. It centers on user behaviour, digital libraries, and information management. The study uses bibliometric methodologies to examine authorship trends, geographic distribution, research paper length, and references. The results enhanced comprehension of the importance of library science in academic communities by emphasizing its function in handling intricate problems and promoting information sharing. Data from the Research Review International Journal of Multidisciplinary has been used in the study.

Comparative Analysis of Impact, Collaboration, and Prestige of Open Access and Subscription Based LIS Journals Using SJR and Scopus Indicators

The study examines whether there exist any similarities in impact, author collaboration, and prestige between Open Access (OA) and Subscription based (SB) Library and Information Science (LIS) journals. The study selected highly appearing 32 core LIS journals in all four quartiles of SCImago database during 2018–2022. The Scopus database was utilized to extract CiteScore, SNIP, Total Articles, Citations, and publications data from 2018 to 2022, while h5-index was calculated manually and SJR scores were extracted from SCImago. Statistical tests (Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test) were conducted in R software, guided by normality and variance checks. The study reveals that SB LIS journals outperformed OA LIS journals in terms of impact and prestige based on several statistical tests on CiteScore and h5-index data. However, there was no significant difference in SNIP indicator for both datasets. On the contrary, the study revealed similarities in the degree of author collaboration in both datasets, with no significant difference. Besides, the study also determines SB LIS journals have a significant advantage in articles published per year and citations garnered per year during the study period. The insights of this study would help LIS researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers to consider OA publishing as an alternate medium for scholarly communication. It is vital for OA LIS journal stakeholders to consistently improve productivity, quality, and the peer review process, to slowly diminish the gap between OA and SB journals in terms of impact and prestige.

Addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in library and information science curriculum: Looking back and to the future

This study emphasizes the importance of library and information science (LIS) educators drawing insights from practitioners’ lived experiences, particularly considering perspectives of former students’ experiences when navigating the Master of Library Science (MLS) curriculum. Acknowledging the constructivist underpinnings of learning, with a focus on Schema Theory, is imperative for LIS faculty to learn more about how students perceived their past curriculum. Challenges occur when students lack the necessary schemata to comprehend unfamiliar concepts, particularly in areas like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Given the lack of diversity amongst the faculty population in LIS, faculty must navigate this discrepancy, recognizing the potential mismatch between their own life experiences, those of their student body, and the diverse patrons of varying genders, races, sexualities, income levels, locations, and abilities that libraries and librarians aim to serve. To address this, educators should not only activate existing student schema but also guide them in constructing new schemas, especially when delving into unfamiliar DEI topics. This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, involving 190 participants who responded to a survey. Additionally, 26 participants completed interviews. Following Creswell and Plano Clark’s approach, this design allowed for a quantitative phase to gather data, followed by a qualitative phase to further contextualize the quantitative results. The findings offer valuable insights into DEI education and the challenges faced by LIS educators in promoting meaningful learning experiences to prepare students to work with all library patrons.

Unveiling novelty evolution in the field of library and information science in China

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the distribution of novelty among scholarly papers in the field of library and information science (LIS) in China. Specifically, this study explores the distribution of novelty of papers in various journals, research topics and different periods. It is possible to understand the characteristics of LIS research in China and what factors have influenced it.Design/methodology/approachThis paper collects articles published in Chinese library science journals indexed by the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index from 2000 to 2022. The BERTopic model is used based on abstracts of the papers and to obtain the topic of each paper. Based on the combination innovation theory of reference pairs cited by focal papers, novelty scores of all papers are calculated. Next, this paper analyzes the novelty of papers under different topics. Finally, this paper analyzes the differences in author collaboration patterns across various topics, aiming to explain how these differences relate to the novelty of papers from a collaborative perspective.FindingsThis study shows that archival research topics have lower novelty than papers on journal evaluation and patent technology in Chinese LIS. Research papers in this field are gradually becoming more novel over time. Papers on different topics and with varying degrees of novelty exhibit distinct author collaboration patterns, with low-novelty topics more frequently featuring solo authorship, while high-novelty topics tend to involve a higher percentage of inter-institutional collaboration.Originality/valueThis study investigates the novelty characteristics of research papers on different topics in the field of LIS in China. The authors’ contribution includes visualizing research hotspots and trends in the field and analyzing authors’ collaboration patterns at the level of research topics, thereby providing new perspectives on the factors affecting the novelty of these papers.

Reimagining LIS Education: Everything We Wanted to Say but Were Afraid To

This panel includes six library and information science (LIS) academics who bring together international perspectives on pedagogy rooted in theoretical framings. The panelists will discuss topics meaningful to the instructor experience including social justice, teaching empathy in the LIS classroom, faculty/student research collaboration, student socialization to the graduate academy, and inclusion of faculty members with a disability.

Assessment of the use of Open Educational Resources at five European Library and Information Science higher education institutions during and post-COVID-19 pandemic

This article presents an analysis of the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their potential use in the post-pandemic, in Library and Information Science (LIS) higher education institutions. The research explored how OER were used and created, what were the main barriers and drivers in practice and some main lessons learned that can help to improve the quality and increase the use of OER beyond times of crisis. The research was based on fieldwork carried out in the LIS departments of the universities of Barcelona (Spain), Hildesheim (Germany), Osijek and Zagreb (Croatia) and the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies in Sofia (Bulgaria). The methodology approach was qualitative and was based on interviews with faculty and focus groups with students. Results show that faculty members were still hesitant to adopt OER since they generally did not consider them. Moreover, those who did use them did so on their own initiative and as additional resources. We discuss the different speeds of OER implementation that have been observed depending on the faculty’s prior level of knowledge, and on whether their institutions and countries are prepared to support the use of OER. The promotion of post-pandemic OER involves greater capacity building, as well as collaboration and institutional support. Students’ attitudes about the usefulness of OER focus on their availability. The large number of teachers and students who participated in the study, as well as the international scope of the study, constitute a strength in the treatment of a topic such as the use of OER where the user perspectives and LIS context have been little addressed in the literature.

Further Reflective Conversations: Medical Library Usage in the Context of Career Transition

ABSTRACT This article is a literature driven reflection about a radiologist’s experience of using health libraries in England’s National Health Service, as a consultant after returning from a Clinical Fellowship in New Zealand. It is a collaboration between a Consultant Interventional Radiologist and two Academic Librarians. It attempts to reflect on the lived experience of the radiologist and locate that experience within the wider Library and Information Science (LIS) context. Findings include new suggestions about how librarians can support staff in career transition and apply their experience of the COVID-19 pandemic to forge pragmatic relationships within the health care community.

Exploring excellence: a comprehensive examination of professional development in library and information science

Purpose This study aims to investigate future trends evident in the literature. It systematically reviews continuing professional development (CPD) practices, covering a range of CPD channels, benefits and challenges. Design/methodology/approach The study used a systematic literature review approach following the PRISMA 20 framework. Literature published between 2017 and 2023 was sourced from Scopus and Web of Science databases and the researcher's prior collection. An extensive search strategy was devised, yielding 1,740 results for initial screening. Finally, 25 studies were thoroughly scrutinized, each fulfilling the criteria for inclusive and exclusive with descriptive and interrogative analysis. Findings The trend observed in literature over the years indicates a dynamic professional development of library and information science (LIS) professionals. This evolution encompasses foundational qualitative studies, expansive global assessments and technology-driven interventions, reflecting the field's adaptability to the evolving needs of LIS professionals. However, several impediments hinder professionals from actively participating, such as financial constraints, lack of institutional and senior support, difficulties in the workplace, the absence of well-defined CPD policies, personal commitments, family obligations and diverse staff attitudes. The study proposes seamless integration of information and communication technology, a global perspective and well-structured CPD programs focusing on lifelong learning that will shape the future of LIS professionals. Originality/value This study offers valuable insights into the present state of professional development among LIS professionals toward global collaboration and a dedication to lifelong learning, aiming to aid stakeholders in formulating suitable strategies and policies.

Integrating information ethics into library and information science curriculum at a public university in Malawi

The role of information ethics (IE) is lauded as a catalyst for the moral and professional development of library and information professionals globally. Despite this notion, the extent to which IE is integrated into the Library and Information Science (LIS) curriculum is not fully researched. Therefore, this study explored the importance of IE integration into the LIS curriculum in higher education in Malawi focusing on the Department of Library and Information Science, Mzuzu University. The study adopted a case study design, employing a qualitative research method. The study drew concepts of IE typology as a theoretical lens postulated by Froehlich. The findings established a low-level integration of IE into the LIS curriculum. In line with the findings, the study recommends a stand-alone course or module for effective delivery and indoctrination of IE concepts and practices.