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The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by national libraries regarding the legal deposit of electronic books, and to make recommendations for issues to consider – especially with regard to developing, planning and implementing.

Literature published from 2000 to 2014 on legal deposit of electronic publications was examined. Key databases covering library and information science were searched, and case studies, general reviews, research papers/reports and view point articles were considered.

National libraries embarking on projects on legal deposit of electronic books need to consider the collection, preservation and accessibility of the legal deposit collection. They face challenges regarding legal deposit legislation and institutional policy, legal considerations such as copyright, environmental factors, established mechanisms for deposit, information retrieval and access, preservation, human resources, financial implications and trust. Further research and continued monitoring of issues of concern and changes are required due to technological developments and the obsolescence of technology.

The review raises awareness of issues that need to be considered by national libraries and other repositories to manage the legal deposit of electronic books in their institutions.

The review can serve as a guide for nations (particularly in developing countries) to embark on the legal deposit of electronic publications, specifically electronic books.

This research aims at conducting a survey of web‐based services offered by Asian national libraries.

To do this, 23 accessible and English language web sites of national libraries in Asia were studied. Direct observation and a checklist including six general services were used for data collection and data evaluation, respectively. In order to determine the detailed services provided by national library web sites, five web sites of the greatest and historical national libraries in the world with appropriate geographical distribution were taken into account.

National Library of Singapore had the first rank in providing its services via a web site for users and was the only national library in Asia that provides more than half of its services (52.29 per cent) via the web site. The national libraries of seven countries: Japan, Malaysia, China, Iran, Israel, Seri Lanka, and Kyrgyzstan provide web‐based services in the range of 25‐50 per cent, respectively in descending order. And the web sites of Asian national libraries (ANLs) were far from ideal and optimal as an online service provider.

Asian National Libraries must use the web facilities for achievement of their target goals and provision of their information services in the best manner. It is also suggested that these libraries should make high use of both traditional library tools like bibliographies and web‐based ones including web forms, chat, videoconferences, and so forth to meet their goals and ideals.

This study provides a unique insight into the situation of provision of web‐based services offered by national libraries in selected Asian countries.

The present survey attempts to investigate the viability of a single library education programme for the education of teacher‐librarians in developing countries. Questionnaires were sent to 55 professional librarians in 29 different countries, of which 35 replies were received. Data were analysed and the result was compared with the outcome of a similar survey done for the education of teacher‐librarians in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The overall view is that a single library programme for developing countries is possible.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Indian newspaper web sites using Alexa databank.

The list compiled by Audit Bureau of Circulations of top newspapers in India by daily circulation was used for selecting newspapers. The list included 28 newspapers in various languages. Out of these 26 were available online. These 26 newspapers are taken for evaluation in the present study. Each newspaper web site was searched in Alexa databank and relevant data including traffic rank, pages viewed, speed, links, bounce percentage, time on site, search percentage, and Indian/foreign users were collected. The data collected were analysed and tabulated to reveal findings in accordance with the desired objectives.

The results of this study show that Dainik Bhaskar has the highest traffic rank. Punjab Kesari has the highest number of average pages viewed per day and estimated daily time spent on site by the visitors. The fastest downloading speed is for Economic Times. Hindustan Times has the highest number of links. Decan Herald has the highest reach amongst the global internet users, where as Udayavani has the lowest bounce percentage. The highest percentage of visits that came from search engines is for Dainik Jagran. The highest number of foreign users is for Ananda Bazar Patrika. Most of the foreign users to Indian newspapers come from the USA.

Besides administrators of Indian newspapers, the results of this study will be useful for web site managers in any field including those in charge of library web sites. The study will also help librarians and anyone interested to increase usage of a web site by analysing the use of web site.

The aim of this work is to evaluate Greek newspaper websites using clustering and a number of criteria obtained from the Alexa search engine. Furthermore, a recommendation approach is proposed for matching Greek online newspapers with the profiles of potential readers. The paper presents the implementation and validation of a recommender tool that suggests to a user (based on age, education and income) an optional Greek newspaper's website to read.

A total of 25 newspaper websites were selected from the Greek information bank http://edoellada.gr. After investigating these websites one by one, this number was decreased to 16 websites due to their printing prevention, cessation or no coverage by Alexa.

Based on data obtained from Alexa, the Naftemporiki newspaper has the highest traffic rank and the Eleftherotypia newspaper the largest number of links among others. The Macedonia newspaper has the largest number of foreign users. The results of the study also show that most newspaper websites' visitors come from the UK. The expectation‐maximisation (EM) clustering algorithm classifies the 16 websites into two groups based on some common characteristics.

The proposed recommendation approach is generic because it can be applied as a recommendation solution on various types of website, such as educational or commercial. However, slight adjustments are needed depending on the nature of recommending websites.

A website administrator of an online newspaper can adapt the newspaper's features such as content and layout according to the prevailing user profile of the online newspaper. For example, a website administrator of an online newspaper whose dominant user education is “no‐college” should enable the writing style of this newspaper in a more naive way. The administrator can also add advertisements that are more suitable to readers aged between 35 and 55 years, if the most frequent age of users of this online newspaper is between 35 and 55.

The results of this research will be important not only to administrators of Greek newspaper websites but also to anyone with a need to increase the usage of a website.

This research aims to address the issues in providing information resources and services to the distance education students of Shiraz University.

Using a survey methodology, the investigator ran SPSS Software to analyze both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The findings highlighted the most important library services. Although the Virtual Institute of Shiraz University does not offer any of the library services noted, the majority of distance education students are making use of other information resources in their studies.

As the distance education system in Iran is in its infancy, findings of this study can be invaluable in highlighting the most significant library and information services for the distant learners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate image search and retrieval problems in selected search engines in relation to Persian writing style challenges.

This study is an applied one, and to answer the questions the authors used an evaluative research method. The aim of the research is to explore the morphological and semantic problems of Persian language in connection with image search and retrieval among the three major and widespread search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. In order to collect the data, a checklist designed by the researcher was used and then the data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicate that Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines do not pay enough attention to morphological and semantic features of Persian language in image search and retrieval. This research reveals that six groups of Persian language features include derived words, derived/compound words, Persian and Arabic Plural words, use of dotted T and the use of spoken language and polysemy, which are the major problems in this area. In addition, the results suggest that Google is the best search engine of all in terms of compatibility with Persian language features.

This study investigated some new aspects of the above-mentioned subject through combining morphological and semantic aspects of Persian language with image search and retrieval. Therefore, this study is an interdisciplinary research, the results of which would help both to offer some solutions and to carry out similar research on this subject area. This study will also fill a gap in research studies conducted so far in this area in Farsi language, especially in image search and retrieval. Moreover, findings of this study can help to bridge the gap between the user’s questions and search engines (systems) retrievals. In addition, the methodology of this paper provides a framework for further research on image search and retrieval in databases and search engines.

The European Union (EU) aims to become climate-neutral by 2050. Achieving this requires targeted measures and strategies. One of the instruments of the EU is the EU taxonomy, a classification system with the purpose of creating a common definition of what economic activities are deemed sustainable. The paper aims to examine how the EU taxonomy can affect the Norwegian construction industry, property owners and facilities management (FM) providers.

The research is based on a document analysis and interviews with main stakeholders within the financial sector, construction and real estate (RE) sector, authorities, environmental organisations and businesses related to FM and RE.

The findings show that different stakeholders share largely similar attitudes towards the taxonomy, although some differ in their opinions. This paper finds that there are high levels of uncertainty and confusion associated with the taxonomy, which can be said to be a major obstacle for successful implementation. Several stakeholders show concerns related to the fact that Norway lacks definitions and regulations on which the taxonomy is based. The requirements for new buildings and existing buildings are considered stricter than the current practice in the Norwegian construction and RE industry, while the requirements for renovation are considered more achievable. The uptake of the EU taxonomy will impact the FM and the urban FM practices and standards for the procurement of services, and the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies must be developed.

The research presented in this paper was conducted at a time when the EU taxonomy was a relatively unknown concept in the Norwegian construction and RE industry. FM providers were not interviewed in this study.

This research is one of the first studies to be conducted on this topic in Norway and represents the first meeting between the EU taxonomy and the industry. The discussion underpins the relevance of adjusting and updating FM standards to today’s knowledge about ESG principles.

The paper shows the viewpoint of the Norwegian stakeholders involved in the construction and RE industry. This gives valuable information about the challenges that the industry needs to overcome.

This study aims to examine the scholarly impact of funded and non-funded research published in ten core library and information science (LIS) journals published in 2016.

In total, ten high-impact LIS journals were selected using Google Scholar metrics. The source title of each selected journal was searched in the Scopus database to retrieve the articles published in 2016. The detailed information of all the retrieved articles for every journal was exported in a CSV Excel file, and after collecting all the journal articles’ information, all CSV Excel files were merged into a single MS Excel file for data analysis.

The study analyzed 1,064 publications and found that 14% of them were funded research articles. Funded articles received higher average citation counts (24.56) compared to non-funded articles (20.49). Funded open-access articles had a higher scholarly impact than funded closed-access articles. The research area with the most funded articles was “Bibliometrics,” which also received the highest number of citations (1,676) with an average citation count of 24.64. The National Natural Science Foundation of China funded the most papers (30), while the USA funded the highest number of research publications (36) in the field of LIS.

This study highlights the importance of securing funding, open access publishing, discipline-specific differences, diverse funding sources and aiming for higher citations. Researchers, practitioners and policymakers can use these findings to enhance research impact in LIS.

This study explores the impact of funding on research LIS and provides valuable insights into the intricate relationship between funding and research impact.