Editorial

Juan D. Machin-Mastromatteo, Anna Maria Tammaro

Digital Library Perspectives

ISSN: 2059-5816

Article publication date: 14 February 2022

Issue publication date: 19 January 2022

351

Citation

Machin-Mastromatteo, J.D. and Tammaro, A.M. (2022), "Editorial", Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-02-2022-133

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited


At the moment of writing this editorial, Mark Zukerberg has just renamed Facebook to Meta and announced the development of services that are going to combine virtual and augmented realities, next to the privacy concerns and considerations, as well as the potential for audience manipulation and data theft that all social media sites are facing nowadays after scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, information scientists all over the world may have dreamt with Zuckerberg’s presentation regarding the potential for developing new experiences for our digital libraries and especially galleries and museums. Although other critics have already started to warn us of possible Orwellian nightmares of manipulation. Only time will tell which direction will Meta take, as technology by itself may be used for many different purposes and with varied intentions.

We have also joined in celebrating two very important anniversaries. Dialnet, established by the Universidad de La Rioja (Spain), is the largest scientific database in the Spanish-speaking world (and other Hispanic languages), is 20 years old and it currently offers access to 7.5 million documents, 11,000 journals and 280,000 PhD theses; it serves 2.34 million users (70 % from Latin America) []. Dialnet has also released and is still updating their own journal metrics and research indicators. The Internet Archive also celebrated its 25th anniversary of being one of the largest digital libraries on the Web that offers documents, sounds, music, games and many more document formats in open access. It is also the home of the WayBackMachine, which allows checking earlier versions of websites, and it is particularly useful for retrieving some Web contents and pages that have been changed or deleted. The Internet Archive has also recently opened a sister site, the Internet Archive Scholar, which offers access to over 25 million scholarly articles []. Also, a new version of the Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) [] was launched by UNESCO and its various partners. GOAP offers a completely new interface to navigate its hub that registers open access initiatives, mandates and resources from all regions and countries.

This issue of digital library perspectives opens with “Infodemic surrounding COVID-19: Can LIS students recognize and categorize ‘problematic information’ types on social media?’, in which Yesmin and Ahmed investigated Library and Information Science (LIS) students” ability to understand and categorize COVID-19-related information on social media, by surveying a sample of 114 undergraduate students enrolled in a public university in Bangladesh. They found that students’ understanding of the specialized terminologies was poor, regardless of their gender, age and level of study. This highlights the need of developing health literacy, which is important for everyone, especially for librarians in training, as they may deal with health students, professors and researchers, even with health information services.

Amina and Warraich contributed “Use and trustworthiness of Wikipedia information: Students” perceptions and reflections’, in which they studied students’ perceptions of the quality of the contents in Wikipedia, regarding its accuracy, stability, objectivity and validity, by surveying 233 students from eight master programs at the University of Punjab, Pakistan. Findings included that students used Wikipedia for academic and leisure purposes, they generally did not participate in editing pages, but they recognized that some pages were incomplete. Students had reservations regarding the accuracy of the contents and concerns about its stability and integrity, but they trusted in its objectivity through editors’ verification and moderation.

In “Toll based access vs pirate access: A webometric study of academic publishers”, Amin, Ayoub, Amin and Wan compared the traffic ranking, usage and popularity of ScienceDirect, Emerald Insight and Sci-Hub, by using a data set obtained from Alexa. They found that ScienceDirect has the highest traffic rank, while Sci-Hub presents the highest number of page visits and the fastest downloading speed; also, users spent less time on the legal alternatives, and most visitors are from developing countries.

Misgar, Bhat and Wani contributed “A study of Open Access research data repositories developed by BRICS countries”, in which they analyzed BRICS countries’ presence in the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data), by looking at their distribution, the types of documents deposited, subject coverage and language diversity. India is the leading country in this regard, with the highest number of repositories and deposited documents, while English is the most widely used language.

In “Perceived usefulness and adoption of Koha integrated library systems by librarians in universities in Southern Nigeria”, Jamogha, Owoeye and Godwin used some of the principles of the technology acceptance model (TAM), particularly perceived usefulness and adoption to study 84 Nigerian librarians’ perceptions related to their usage of Koha. Using TAM is very important for testing technological solutions (both software and hardware), especially open-source options. Librarians thought that Koha was useful for all library functions, but it was not so much adopted for making purchases or subscriptions. As it had a good perceived usefulness, it has been largely adopted. However, training on the use of Koha was found to be insufficient.

Okyere-Kwakye and Nor contributed “Examining the intentions of a Ghanaian technical university students to use e-library”, in which they used a questionnaire to survey 200 university students from Ghana and analyzed their data by using structural equation modeling (SEM). They found that the variables from the TAM model (accessibility, attitude, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness), apart from the relevance to students’ activities, positively influenced their attitudes towards using e-library, while self-efficacy, subjective norms and attitudes had a positive effect on intention. Nevertheless, the authors recommended enhancing student training and providing tutorials for them.

In “Legality of electronic archive management in realizing Indonesia e-government”, Harisanty and Anugrah analyzed the legality of electronic archive management in Indonesia in the context of e-government initiatives, but they found that there are opportunities for developing the legal framework for managing electronic archives to fully realize their support for e-government. Finally, Muzvondiwa and Marutha contributed a “Framework for improving usage of library services and resources in the private higher education in South Africa”, in which they used a questionnaire that they applied to 20 staff members and 40 students at a private higher education institution in South Africa and they also interviewed five staff members. They found that one of the libraries understudy did not conduct proper marketing, and this resulted in a general unawareness from users about library services and resources.

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