ITAL Information Technology and Libraries (E-Journal)
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Topic Modeling as a Tool for Analyzing Library Chat Transcripts
Get PDFLibrary chat services are an increasingly important communication channel to connect patrons to library resources and services. Analysis of chat transcripts could provide librarians with insights into improving services. Unfortunately, chat transcripts consist of unstructured text data, making it impractical for librarians to go beyond simple quantitative analysis (e.g., chat duration, message count, word frequencies) with existing tools. As a stepping-stone toward a more sophisticated chat transcript analysis tool, this study investigated the application of different types of topic modeling techniques to analyze one academic library’s chat reference data collected from April 10, 2015, to May 31, 2019, with the goal of extracting the most accurate and easily interpretable topics. In this study, topic accuracy and interpretability—the quality of topic outcomes—were quantitatively measured with topic coherence metrics. Additionally, qualitative accuracy and interpretability were measured by the librarian author of this paper depending on the subjective judgment on whether topics are aligned with frequently asked questions or easily inferable themes in academic library contexts. This study found that from a human’s qualitative evaluation, Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (pLSA) produced more accurate and interpretable topics, which is not necessarily aligned with the findings of the quantitative evaluation with all three types of topic coherence metrics. Interestingly, the commonly used technique Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) did not necessarily perform better than pLSA. Also, semi-supervised techniques with human-curated anchor words of Correlation Explanation (CorEx) or guided LDA (GuidedLDA) did not necessarily perform better than an unsupervised technique of Dirichlet Multinomial Mixture (DMM). Last, the study found that using the entire transcript, including both sides of the interaction between the library patron and the librarian, performed better than using only the initial question asked by the library patron across different techniques in increasing the quality of topic outcomes
Bento Box User Experience Study at Franklin University
Get PDFThis article discusses the benefits of the bento-box method of searching library resources, including a comparison of the method with a tabbed search interface. It then describes a usability study conducted by the Franklin University Library in which 27 students searched for an article, an ebook, and a journal on two websites: one using a bento box and one using the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). Screen recordings of the searches were reviewed to see what actions users took while looking for information on each site, as well as how long the searches took. Students also filled out questionnaires to indicate what they thought of each type of search. Overall students found more items on the bento-box site, and indicated a slight preference for the bento-box search over EDS. The bento-box site also provided quicker results than the EDS site. As a result, the Franklin University library decided to implement bento-box searching on its website
User Experience with a New Public Interface for an Integrated Library System
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to understand the viewpoints and attitudes of researchers at Louisiana State University toward the new public search interface from SirsiDynix, Enterprise. Fifteen university constituents participated in user studies to provide feedback while completing common research tasks. Particularly of interest to the librarian observers were identifying and characterizing where problems were expressed by the participants as they utilized the new interface. This study was approached within the framework of the cognitive load theory and user experience (UX). Problems that were discovered are discussed along with remedies, in addition to areas for further study
Measuring the Impact of Digital Heritage Collections Using Google Scholar
Get PDFThis study aimed to measure the impact of digital heritage collections by analysing the citations received in scholarly outputs. Google Scholar was used to retrieve the scholarly outputs citing Memòria Digital de Catalunya (MDC), a cooperative, open-access repository containing digitized collections related to Catalonia and its heritage. The number of documents citing MDC has grown steadily since the creation of the repository in 2006. Most citing documents are scholarly outputs in the form of articles, proceedings and monographs, and academic theses and dissertations. Citing documents mainly pertain to the humanities and the social sciences and are in local languages. The most cited MDC collection contains digitized ancient Catalan periodicals. The study shows that Google Scholar is a suitable tool for providing evidence of the scholarly impact of digital heritage collections. Google Scholar indexes the full-text of documents, facilitating the retrieval of citations inserted in the text or in sections that are not the final list of references. It also indexes document types, such as theses and dissertations, which contain a significant share of the citations to digital heritage collections
Automated Fake News Detection in the Age of Digital Libraries
Get PDFThe transformation of printed media into digital environment and the extensive use of social media have changed the concept of media literacy and people’s habit of consuming news. While this faster, easier, and comparatively cheaper opportunity offers convenience in terms of people's access to information, it comes with a certain significant problem: Fake News. Due to the free production and consumption of large amounts of data, fact-checking systems powered by human efforts are not enough to question the credibility of the information provided, or to prevent its rapid dissemination like a virus. Libraries, known as sources of trusted information for ages, are facing with the problem because of this difficulty. Considering that libraries are undergoing digitisation processes all over the world and providing digital media to their users, it is very likely that unchecked digital content will be served by world’s libraries. The solution is to develop automated mechanisms that can check the credibility of digital content served in libraries without manual validation. For this purpose, we developed an automated fake news detection system based on the Turkish digital news content. Our approach can be modified for any other language if there is labelled training material. The developed model can be integrated into libraries’ digital systems to label served news content as potentially fake whenever necessary, preventing uncontrolled falsehood dissemination via libraries
Journey with Veterans: Virtual Reality Program using Google Expeditions
Get PDFThe Fresno County Public Library in Fresno, California partnered with the Community Living Center at the VA Medical Center and the Veterans Home of California – Fresno to bring a virtual reality program to residents. The program utilized Google Expeditions to provide a fun, educational virtual reality experience for veterans. This column will discuss how the program was developed, the implementation of the program, the software and hardware used, and the outcomes
User Experience Methods and Maturity in Academic Libraries
Get PDFThis article presents a mixed-methods study of the methods and maturity of user experience (UX) practice in academic libraries. The authors apply qualitative content analysis and quantitative statistical analysis to a research dataset derived from a survey of UX practitioners. Results reveal the type and extent of UX methods currently in use by practitioners in academic libraries. Themes extracted from the survey responses also reveal a set of factors that influence the development of UX maturity. Analysis and discussion focus on organizational characteristics that influence UX methods and maturity. The authors conclude by offering a library-focused maturity scale with recommended practices for advancing UX maturity in academic libraries
A Framework for Member Success
Get PDFOur organization and governance (our committees, offices, processes, etc.) play a major role in what it is like to be a member. For those of us who are most involved in ALA and LITA, the organization may be familiar and supportive. But for new members looking for a foothold, or library workers who don’t see themselves in our association, our organization may look like a barrier. Moreover, many of our financial challenges are connected to our organization. The organization must evolve, but we must achieve this without losing what makes us loyal members.
 
Likes, Comments, Views: A Content Analysis of Academic Library Instagram Posts
Get PDFThis article presents a content analysis of academic library Instagram accounts at eleven land-grant universities. Previous research has examined personal, corporate, and university use of Instagram, but fewer studies have used this methodology to examine how academic libraries share content on this platform and the engagement generated by different categories of posts. Findings indicate that showcasing posts (highlighting library or campus resources) accounted for more than 50 percent of posts shared, while a much smaller percentage of posts reflected humanizing content (emphasizing warmth or humor) or crowdsourcing content (encouraging user feedback). Crowdsourcing posts generated the most likes on average, followed closely by orienting posts (situating the library within the campus community), while a larger proportion of crowdsourcing posts, compared to other post categories, included comments. The results of this study indicate that libraries should seek to create Instagram posts that include various types of content while also ensuring that the content shared reflects their unique campus contexts. By sharing a framework for analyzing library Instagram content, this article will provide libraries with the tools they need to more effectively identify the types of content their users respond to and enjoy as well as make their social media marketing on Instagram more impactful