Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (Journal)
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Promoting Open Access in Israeli Academic Libraries: What Needs to Change?
No full textA Review of:
Hadad, S., & Aharony, N. (2024). Librarians and academic libraries’ role in promoting open access: What needs to change? College & Research Libraries, 85(4), 464–478. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.85.4.464
Objective – The study aims to explore and examine how Israeli librarians perceive their role and the academic library\u27s role in promoting open access (OA) publishing; identify the barriers, challenges, and difficulties in implementing OA; and determine the factors and needs that are required to promote OA. By examining these aspects, the research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of OA promotion in Israeli academic libraries, the challenges faced by librarians, and the necessary changes and support required to enhance OA adoption in the country\u27s academic institutions.
Design – Qualitative design using semi-structured interviews.
Setting – University libraries in Israel.
Subjects – One representative from each of the ten existing universities in Israel. The ten participants held positions as administrators of the library system at their institution (50%), directors of disciplinary libraries (30%), or directors of information systems in academic libraries of Israeli universities. Among the subjects, 90% were female. In terms of seniority, 60% of respondents had been employed by their institution for over 10 years, while 40% had been less than 10 years in their current positions.
Methods – Semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom between April and June of 2020. The interviews were based on items from existing surveys on librarians\u27 attitudes towards open access and changes in academic library practices. The authors used thematic analysis to categorize and code the interview responses. This "bottom-up" approach allowed researchers to identify common expressions and recurring themes. The analysis yielded 1,264 statements classified into three main categories with several sub-categories. To ensure reliability, 25% of the statements were analyzed by a second coder, resulting in a Cohen\u27s Kappa of .86 (.8 and above is rated as “almost perfect”). The researchers ensured trustworthiness of data by adhering to four principles: truth-value, applicability, consistency, and neutrality of data.
Main Results – The interview data revealed that, in general, librarians see their role as crucial in advising researchers about OA publishing. They view themselves as responsible for implementing changes related to OA after institutional policies are set. The authors identify a myriad of barriers to overcome if OA is going to grow and become a more accepted practice of publishing for Israeli researchers. These barriers include, but are not limited to, lack of budget for OA agreements, lack of cooperation from university management, researchers\u27 unfamiliarity with OA and fears about predatory journals, the influence of journal impact factors, and lack of personnel and training for librarians. In order to overcome these barriers, librarians believe they need clear national and institutional OA policies, as well as cooperation and collaboration between academic institutions on OA initiatives. Librarians also believe that systematic training for library staff in OA publishing is imperative, along with guidance and incentives for researchers to publish in OA journals. The results also yielded qualitative data about librarians’ current involvement in OA, which include participating in OA agreements through library consortia, operating current research information systems (CRIS), promoting institutional policies, and interfacing with university administration on OA issues. The study also revealed that there is a desire among librarians to establish the library as the central body for OA matters within their institutions.
Conclusion – Librarians see their role as crucial in promoting open access (OA) publishing, particularly in advising researchers and implementing changes after institutional policies are set. Overall, the study concludes that while librarians see themselves as playing important roles in promoting OA, they face numerous challenges and require additional support and resources to fulfill this role effectively. The research highlights the need for systemic changes at both institutional and national levels to advance OA adoption in Israeli academic institutions.
Increased Usage of Alt Text Is Required Across Ontario Public Library Social Media Feeds to Increase the Accessibility of Content
No full textA Review of:
Hill, H., & Oswald, K. (2023). “May be a picture of a dog and a book”: The inaccessibility of public libraries’ social media feeds. Partnership, 18(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v18i1.7008
Objective – The research project sought to explore how accessible the social media feeds of Ontario public libraries are, particularly the use of alt text for images, by assessing the usage of alt text and by making recommendations for appropriate use within social media posts.
Design – Collection of social media posts and computer-assisted textual analysis of visual media content.
Setting – 76 public libraries and 9 public library systems in Ontario, Canada.
Subjects – Approximately 900 Ontario public library social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Methods – A random number generator sampling of 30 libraries per platform from the relevant social media accounts from a spreadsheet created using Ontario Public Library Statistics (OPLS) data of social media usage from the included libraries was initially created capturing 76 individual libraries. Then the researchers performed targeted sampling of posts from the nine library systems serving over 250,000 residents each. Researchers identified the 10 most recent posts from each included platform feed, and then undertook textual analysis for the presence of alt text with each post using two Mozilla Firefox browser extensions that determine the presence of alt text.
Main Results – Of the 76 unique libraries chosen by the random sampling and the nine library systems that serve populations over 250,000, only two regularly used alt text and five had at least one instance of alt text. Only Toronto Public Library regularly included alt text across each of the three social media platforms analyzed by the study. The study also initially aimed to assess the quality of alt text used by public libraries in social media posts. However, due to the lack of alt text use across the sample, this was not possible at the scale initially aimed for, although a small number of examples are analyzed in the findings.
Conclusion – The initial goal of analyzing the alt text to make recommendations for improved usage could not be realized due to the surprising lack of inclusion of any alt text across the sampled posts. This lack of any alt text can prevent some disabled users from engaging with content and information, leading to an inequitable experience. Public libraries should consider how accessible their engagement with users is and seek to improve the accessibility of social media posts
Students’ Perspective of the Advantages and Disadvantages of ChatGPT Compared to Reference Librarians
No full textA Review of:
Adetayo, A. J. (2023). ChatGPT and librarians for reference consultations. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 27(3), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875301.2023.2203681
Objective – To investigate students’ use of ChatGPT and its potential advantages and disadvantages compared to reference librarians at a university library.
Design – Survey research.
Setting – A university library in Nigeria.
Subjects – Students familiar with ChatGPT (n=54) who were enrolled in a library users’ education course.
Methods – A survey was conducted in a sample of undergraduate students enrolled in a library users’ education course, who had previously used ChatGPT. Participants were asked questions based on six categories that reflected frequency of use, types of inquiries, frequency of reference consultations, desire to consult reference librarians despite the availability of ChatGPT, and potential advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT compared to reference librarians. A 4-point Likert scale was used to measure the responses from often to never, strongly agree to strongly disagree, and rarely to frequently.
Main Results – The sample of students who participated (n=54) were a diverse group whose age varied from below 20 (35.2%) to above 30 years (31.5%) and represented a variety of fields of study, such as engineering, business and social sciences, arts, law, sciences, basic and medical sciences. Regarding frequency of use, the author reported that 40.7% of participants occasionally used ChatGPT, and 26.1% and 16.7% used it frequently or very frequently, respectively. Of the five options that represented types of inquiries (religious, political, academic, entertainment, and work), academic and work-related inquiries were topics most often searched in ChatGPT. Participants indicated that they consulted reference librarians occasionally (40.8%), frequently (37%), or rarely (22.2%). Most students (87%) would continue to consult reference librarians despite the availability of ChatGPT. For questions that compared ChatGPT to reference librarians, four options were provided to describe potential advantages and four options were provided to describe potential disadvantages. Most students agreed or strongly agreed that ChatGPT is more user friendly (83.4%), that it includes a broad knowledge base (90.7%), is easily accessible (83.3%), and saves time by responding to questions quickly (98%) compared to reference librarians. Fewer than half of the students agreed or strongly agreed that ChatGPT’s knowledge base is not up to date (47.2%). Most agreed or strongly agreed that it cannot comprehend some questions (72.3%), that it cannot read emotions as a librarian would (74.1%), and that responses to questions may be incorrect (66.6%). The potential advantage with the strongest response score was that ChatGPT saves time by responding to questions quickly (mean 3.52). The potential disadvantage with the strongest response score was ChatGPT could not read emotions as a librarian would (mean 2.91).
Conclusion – Students from an academic institution acknowledged the potential advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT over reference librarians, yet the majority of students would continue to utilize reference librarian services. The author suggests that ChatGPT is a versatile and useful tool as a supplement rather than a replacement for knowledgeable and personable reference librarians. Based on the results of the study, the author emphasizes the importance of interpersonal skills and enhanced accessibility of reference librarians outside of typical work hours
A Survey of Public Library-Led Digital Literacy Training in Canada: Perceptions of Administrators and Instructors
No full textObjective – This paper presents the results from a survey of administrators and instructors at public libraries across Canada investigating the delivery of digital literacy training led by public libraries. The goal of the survey was to capture a snapshot of the Canadian public library-led digital literacy training landscape and to explore differences in perceptions of training activities between public library administrators and instructors.
Methods – An online survey was distributed to administrators and instructors at public libraries across Canada with the help of two national public library associations. The survey instrument was developed based on a theoretical framework from the research team’s prior case study investigations of community-led digital literacy training. The survey included closed- and open-ended questions concerning the availability of adequate/sustained funding, the adequacy of dedicated classroom resources, the competency of teaching staff, the helpfulness of support staff, the amount and frequency of knowledge sharing of best practices, the amount of rigorous and regular performance measurement, the scheduling of the training provided, the skills taught, the pedagogical approaches used, and the marketing carried out. Responses were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques.
Results – Public library administrators and instructors in Canada are generally satisfied with the delivery of digital literacy training; however, room for improvement exists. Instructors are more positive about the delivery of this training than administrators. Findings support and extend the research team’s conceptual model, specifically in terms of providing more insight and clarity on how the learning environment and program components affect the delivery of digital literacy training led by public libraries. Results highlight how training is situated in context and how libraries need to fine-tune the delivery of this training in ways that are reflective of libraries’ learning environments and program components.
Conclusion – Results are of high interest to researchers and library practitioners who wish to leverage evidence-based library and information practice to understand and address the factors affecting the successful delivery of public library-led digital literacy training. Though funding is always an obstacle for any public service organization, libraries can make improvements to the delivery of their training in other ways, such as carrying out more robust performance measurement and using results more transparently, participating in more knowledge-sharing opportunities, and better understanding learner needs and preferences
Academic Libraries’ Citation Guides to ChatGPT Show Mixed Levels of Accuracy and Currency
No full textA Review of:
Moulaison-Sandy, H. (2023). What is a person? Emerging interpretations of AI authorship and attribution. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 60(1), 279–290. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.788
Objective – To examine how and which academic libraries are responding to emerging guidelines on citing ChatGPT in the American Psychological Association (APA) style through guidance published on the libraries’ websites.
Design – Analysis of search results and webpage content.
Setting – Websites of academic libraries in the United States.
Subjects – Library webpages addressing how ChatGPT should be cited in APA format.
Methods – Google search results for academic library webpages providing guidance on citing ChatGPT in APA format were retrieved on a weekly basis using the query “chatgpt apa citation site:.edu” over a six-week period that covered the weeks before and immediately after the APA issued official guidance for citing ChatGPT. The first three pages of relevant search results were coded in MAXQDA and analyzed to determine the type of institution, using the Carnegie Classification and membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU). As this was a period during which APA style recommendations for citing ChatGPT were shifting, the accuracy of the library webpage content was also assessed and tracked across the studied time period.
Main Results – During the six-week period, the number of library webpages with guidance for citing ChatGPT in APA format increased. Although doctoral universities accounted for the largest number of webpages each week, baccalaureate colleges, baccalaureate/associate’s colleges, and associates’ colleges were also well-represented in the search results. Institutions belonging to the AAU were represented by a relatively small number throughout the study. Over half of the pages made some mention of APA’s recommendations being interim or evolving, though the exact number fluctuated throughout the period. Prior to the collection period, APA had revised its initial recommendations to cite ChatGPT as a webpage or as personal communication, but 40% to 60% of library webpages continued to offer this outdated guidance. Of the library webpages, 13% to 40% provided verbatim guidance from ChatGPT responses on how it should be cited. The final two weeks of the collection period occurred after April 7, 2023, when APA had published official recommendations for citing ChatGPT. In the week following this change, none of the webpages in the first three pages of results had been updated to fully capture the new recommendations. The study analyzed the nine webpages appearing in the first page of results for the second week after APA’s official recommendations were published, showing that three linked to the APA’s blog, zero provided further explanation on how to apply the recommendations, five included outdated guidance, and three gave guidance from ChatGPT’s responses to questions on how it should be cited.
Conclusion – The author sees the results of the study as reflecting three interrelated components: a new technology, gaps in librarians’ knowledge related to large language models (LLMs) and how they are currently being discussed in terms of authorship, and Google’s inability to rank the results in a way that prioritizes correct information. The substantial presence of institutions serving undergraduates leads the author to conclude that this is the population most in need of guidance for citing ChatGPT and the responsiveness on the part of the librarians shows an understanding of this need, even if the guidance itself is inaccurate
Machine-learning Recommender Systems Can Inform Collection Development Decisions
No full textA Review of:
Xiao, J., & Gao, W. (2020). Connecting the dots: reader ratings, bibliographic data, and machine-learning algorithms for monograph selection. The Serials Librarian, 78(1-4), 117-122. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2020.1707599
Objective – To illustrate how machine-learning book recommender systems can help librarians make collection development decisions.
Design – Data analysis of publicly available book sales rankings and reader ratings.
Setting – The internet.
Subjects – 192 New York Times hardcover fiction best seller titles from 2018, and 1,367 Goodreads ratings posted in 2018.
Methods – Data were collected using Application Programming Interfaces. The researchers retrieved weekly hardcover fiction best seller rankings published by the New York Times in 2018 in CSV file format. All 52 files, each containing bibliographic data for 15 hardcover fiction titles, were combined and duplicate titles removed, resulting in 192 unique best seller titles. The researchers retrieved reader ratings of the 192 best seller titles from Goodreads. The ratings were limited to those posted in 2018 by the top Goodreads reviewers.
A Bayes estimator produced a list of the top ten highest rated New York Times best sellers. The researchers built the recommender system using Python and employed several content-based and collaborative filtering recommender techniques (e.g., cosine similarity, term frequency-inverse document frequency, and matrix factorization algorithms) to identify novels similar to the highest rated best sellers.
Main Results – Each recommender technique generated a different list of novels.
Conclusion – The main finding from this study is that recommender systems can simplify collection development for librarians and facilitate greater access to relevant library materials for users. Academic libraries can use the same recommender techniques employed in the study to identify titles similar to highly circulated monographs or frequently requested interlibrary loans. There are several limitations to using recommender systems in libraries, including privacy concerns when analyzing user behaviour data and potential biases in machine-learning algorithms
Evidence Based Principles to Accelerate Health Information Flow and Uptake Among Older Adults
No full text
Machine Learning Offers Opportunities to Advance Library Services
No full textA Review of:
Wang, Y. (2022). Using machine learning and natural language processing to analyze library chat reference transcripts. Information Technology and Libraries, 41(3). https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v41i3.14967
Objective – The study sought to develop a model to predict if library chat questions are reference or non-reference.
Design – Supervised machine learning and natural language processing.
Setting – College of New Jersey academic library.
Subjects – 8,000 Springshare LibChat transactions collected from 2014 to 2021.
Methods – The chat logs were downloaded into Excel, cleaned, and individual questions were labelled reference or non-reference by hand. Labelled data were preprocessed to remove nonmeaningful and stop words, and reformatted to lowercase. Data were then stemmed to group words with similar meaning. The feature of question length was then added and data were transformed from text to numeric for text vectorization. Data were then divided into training and testing sets. The Python packages Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and scikit-learn were used for analysis, building random forest and gradient boosting models which were evaluated via confusion matrix.
Main Results – Both models performed very well in precision, recall and accuracy, with the random forest model having better overall results than the gradient boosting model, as well as a more efficient fit time, though slightly longer prediction time.
Conclusion – High volume library chat services could benefit from utilizing machine learning to develop models that inform plugins or chat enhancements to filter chat queries quickly
Training for Academic Librarians in Assistive Technologies (AT) Requires Higher Priority and Targeted Funding
No full textA Review of:
Munyoro, J., Machimbidza, T., & Mutula, S. (2021). Examining key strategies for building assistive technology (AT) competence of academic library personnel at university libraries in Midlands and Harare provinces in Zimbabwe. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(4), Article 102364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102364
Objective – To explore strategies for building up library worker abilities in assistive technology (AT) for inclusive implementation. The primary focuses of the study’s interviewing included the extent of existing training, the challenges of funding and executing this type of training, and any notable strategies for creating greater access to high-quality AT training.
Design – A qualitative exploratory study of library workers.
Setting – Three academic libraries in Zimbabwe.
Subjects – Thirty library workers comprised of Senior Library Assistants, Administrative Assistants, and Assistant Librarians.
Methods – The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews confidentially over WhatsApp and telephone. They then conducted thematic analysis on the results.
Main Results – Exposure to AT training for academic librarians in Zimbabwe is low. Of the 30 librarians interviewed, only 13 had been exposed to any formal AT training. Of those 13, 12 scored their AT training experience as “not very effective.” Primary challenges listed included lack of AT experts as trainers, not enough funding, and ignorance around disability issues.
Conclusion – To improve AT expertise in academic librarians, suggestions included integrating AT training into LIS professional education, and for those already in the profession to establish partnerships across academic departments to perhaps leverage more professional AT training across campus. There was also a noted suggestion that hands-on exposure is more beneficial than passive training