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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between internet filtering, emotions and information-seeking behaviour.

In total, 15 postgraduate students at an Iranian university participated in the study which involved a questionnaire, search tasks with think aloud narratives, and interviews.

Internet content filtering results in some changes in the information-seeking behaviour of users. Users who face website blocking use a variety of methods to bypass filtering, mostly by using anti-filter software. Filtering encourages users to use channels such as social networking services to share resources and it increases the use of library material by some of the users. Users who face filtering during their search are more likely to visit more pages of results and click on more hits in the results, unlike users who do not experience filtering who rarely go past the first page. Blocking users’ access to content stimulates their curiosity and they become more determined to access the content. In terms of the affective aspect, filtering causes several negative emotions (e.g. anger, disgust, sadness and anxiety) and the main reason for these emotions is not the inability to access information but the feeling of being controlled and not having freedom.

The study was limited to a small number of postgraduate students in social sciences and not generalisable to all user groups. The implication is that in countries where filtering is used, libraries can play an important role in serving users and reducing users negative emotions, especially if libraries can take advantage of technologies such as social media for their services.

This is first study to address the effects of internet filtering on information-seeking behaviour and emotions. The study shows that internet filtering causes negative emotions and results in some changes in information-seeking behaviour.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Australian public libraries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of management, planning and communication. The study also investigated operational approaches to the development and implementation of new and adapted models of service and resource delivery.

Utilising a multiple qualitative case study approach, interviews were conducted with 15 Australian public library staff members at three library services – one inner-city, one regional and one remote. Inductive thematic analysis was employed to generate insights into the operations and management strategies employed during the COVID-19 crisis.

Findings suggest that public library managers performed admirably in the face of significant logistical, budgetary and regulatory challenges. Five key themes emerged to represent the ways in which public library leaders responded effectively to the crisis: resourcefulness, flexibility, presence, sensitivity and communication. Results also demonstrate the importance placed on library users’ welfare.

This research represents the first study to focus on the response of Australian public library managers to the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify the strategies employed by library leaders to respond effectively. In doing so this research provides valuable insights into how public library managers can prepare for future crises.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experiences of Australian public library staff during the COVID-19 library closures. The study examines the effect of mandated physical library closures on staff well-being, along with the challenges they faced as library operations moved to a remotely delivered model. The paper includes an examination of staff perceptions of their library's value in the lives of their users.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 15 Australian library staff from three library networks. A process of inductive coding resulted in a thematic description of the participants' experiences of continuing to work during a period of where their libraries were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Australian public library workers experienced many challenges that affected their well-being during the period of library closures. These included challenges relating to moving library programming to a virtual delivery model, managing significant change in their work lives, managing the emotions of self and others, and concern for the well-being of library users. Positive outcomes relating to skill development and innovative thinking were also reported.

The operational responses to the COVID-19 library closures in Australia and elsewhere have been well reported. This paper takes a different approach by examining the emotional and well-being outcomes for public library staff during these periods of closure.

The aim of this paper is to investigate contextual information that has an impact on the process of selection and decision making in recommender systems (RSs) in digital libraries.

Using a grounded theory method of qualitative research, semi‐structured interviews were carried out with 22 information specialists, and IT and computer engineering students and professors. Data resulting from interviews were analysed in two stages using open coding, followed by axial and selective coding.

The central idea (concept) developed in this study, named scientific research ground (SRG), is an information ground users step into with scholarly purposes. Within SRG they start interacting with information systems. SRG has contexts which situate users in a range of situations while interacting with information systems. Users' characteristics such as purpose, activity, literacy, mental state, expectations, and assumptions, occupational and social status are some contexts that should be taken into account for making a recommendation.

This study sought to explore contextual information in the academic community and the academic contextual information cannot be generalized to RSs in other environments such as e‐commerce.

Identifying and implementing contextual information in information systems can help make better recommendations as well as improve interaction between users and information systems.

Based on the SRG idea and its contexts, a multi‐layer contextual model for a recommender system is proposed.

This paper seeks to investigate the reading behaviour of scientists from an intradisciplinary perspective.

Different aspects of reading behaviour were studied including the amount of reading, the sources of reading, and the impact of factors such as age, academic status, academic activities and methods used for identifying articles on reading behaviour. The data were collected through a survey of 114 physicists and astronomers (faculty members and PhD students) at University College London. A total of 56 interviews were also conducted with PhD students and faculty members.

The results revealed intradisciplinary differences within physics and astronomy in terms of reading behaviour. The study showed that recently published articles account for a large proportion of the readings. Age and academic status have an influence on the age of papers read. The amount of reading is influenced by the type of activities academics conduct, meaning those who spend more time teaching read fewer papers and those who spend more time doing research read more papers.

The paper is the first to look at intradisciplinary differences within a single discipline and reveals the impact of some task‐related and information‐seeking factors on reading behaviour.

This paper aims to demonstrate the role that the Google general search engine plays in the information‐seeking behaviour of scientists, particularly physicists and astronomers.

The paper is based on a mixed‐methods study including 56 semi‐structured interviews, a questionnaire survey of 114 respondents (47 per cent response rate) and the use of information‐event cards to collect critical incident data. The study was conducted at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College, London.

The results show that Google is the tool most used for problem‐specific information seeking. The results also show the growing reliance of scientists on general search engines, particularly Google, for finding scholarly articles. Initially, finding scholarly articles was a by‐product of general searching for information rather than focused searches for papers. However, a growing number of articles read by scientists are identified through the Google general search engine and, as scientists are becoming more aware of the quantity of scholarly papers searchable by Google, they are increasingly relying on Google for finding scholarly literature.

As the only fields covered in the study were physics and astronomy, and the research participants were sourced from just one department of one institution, caution should be taken in generalising the findings.

The data are based on a mixed‐methods in‐depth study of scientists' information‐seeking behaviour which sheds some light on a question raised in past studies relating to the reason for the high number of articles identified through Google.

The study aims to examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up‐to‐date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated.

Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey.

The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information‐seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists.

The study is the first to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information‐seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up‐to‐date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers.

The purpose of this paper is to present some of the results of the project “Evaluating the usage and impact of e‐journals in the UK”. The particular research reported here evaluated the use of the ScienceDirect journals database with regard to Life Sciences, Economics, Chemistry, Earth & Environmental Sciences and Physics by ten major UK research institutions. The aim of the study is to investigate researchers' digital behaviour, and to ascertain whether their use and behaviours varied by subjects and disciplines, or in relation to the institutions in which they worked.

Raw logs for ScienceDirect were obtained for the period January to April 2007, were subject to deep log techniques and analysed using the Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

Typically, 5 per cent of the ScienceDirect journals viewed accounted for a third to half of all use. A high proportion of researchers entered the ScienceDirect site via a third‐party site, and this was especially so in the case of the Life Sciences and in the highest‐ranked research institutions. There were significant institutional and subject differences in information‐seeking behaviour. In the most research‐intensive institutions, per capita journal use was highest and their users spent much less time on each visit. There were significant differences of the order of 100‐300 per cent in the age of material viewed between subjects and institutions. Just four months after ScienceDirect content was opened to Google indexing, a third of traffic to the site's Physics journals came via that route.

The research is one of the very few studies to investigate subject and institutional differences with regard to the information seeking and use of UK researchers, something UK academic librarians should particularly welcome.