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A recent trend in public libraries′ children’s services emphasizes the role of promoting school readiness. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the school readiness efforts present in storytime programs, this study observed and scored 68 public library preschool storytime sessions presented by 35 storytime providers across three states using the CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System) measure. The CLASS evaluates adult-child interactions in learning environments within three domains related to positive outcomes in children’s school readiness: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. Additionally, the study examined whether differences among CLASS scores were influenced by the population density of the library community, the storytime provider’s degree status and educational level, the provider’s prior teaching experience, the provider’s years of experience in children’s services, and the number of children participating in the storytime session. Results revealed that storytime providers score well in the CLASS’s emotional support and classroom organization dimensions but have room for improvement in the content-focused instructional support domain. Of the factors examined, only years of experience in children’s services was found to influence a provider’s CLASS score. These findings suggest that professional development programs should focus on preparing librarians to teach and model school readiness skills during storytime.

PurposeThis study aims to explore knowledge structure and research trends in the domain of digital humanities (DH) in the recent decade. The study identified prevailing topics and then, analyzed trends of such topics over time in the DH field.Design/methodology/approachResearch bibliographic data in the area of DH were collected from scholarly databases. Multiple text mining techniques were used to identify prevailing research topics and trends, such as keyword co-occurrences, bigram analysis, structural topic models and bi-term topic models.FindingsTerm-level analysis revealed that cultural heritage, geographic information, semantic web, linked data and digital media were among the most popular topics in the recent decade. Structural topic models identified that linked open data, text mining, semantic web and ontology, text digitization and social network analysis received increased attention in the DH field.Originality/valueThis study applied existent text mining techniques to understand the research domain in DH. The study collected a large set of bibliographic text, representing the area of DH from multiple academic databases and explored research trends based on structural topic models.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore to which extent data mining research would be associated with the library and information science (LIS) discipline. This study aims to identify data mining related subject terms and topics in representative LIS scholarly publications.Design/methodology/approachA large set of bibliographic records over 38,000 was collected from a scholarly database representing the fields of LIS and the data mining, respectively. A multitude of text mining techniques were applied to investigate prevailing subject terms and research topics, such as influential term analysis and Dirichlet multinomial regression topic modeling.FindingsThe findings of this study revealed the relationship between the LIS and data mining research domains. Various data mining method terms were observed in recent LIS publications, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and neural networks. The topic modeling result identified prevailing data mining related research topics in LIS, such as machine learning, deep learning, big data and among others. In addition, this study investigated the trends of popular topics in LIS over time in the recent decade.Originality/valueThis investigation is one of a few studies that empirically investigated the relationships between the LIS and data mining research domains. Multiple text mining techniques were employed to delineate to which extent the two research domains would be associated with each other based on both at the term-level and topic-level analysis. Methodologically, the study identified influential terms in each domain using multiple feature selection indices. In addition, Dirichlet multinomial regression was applied to explore LIS topics in relation to data mining.

Based on text mining, this study explored topics in the research domain of knowledge organization. A text corpus consisting of titles and abstracts was generated from 282 articles of the Knowledge Organization journal for the recent ten years from 2006 to 2015. Term frequency analysis and Latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling were employed to analyze the collected corpus. Topic modeling uncovered twenty research topics prevailing in the knowledge organization field, including theories and epistemology, classification scheme, domain analysis and ontology, digital archiving, document indexing and retrieval, taxonomy and thesaurus system, metadata and controlled vocabulary, ethical issues, and others. In addition, topic trends over the ten years were examined to identify topics that attracted more discussion in the journal. The top two topics that received increased attention recently were “ethical issues in knowledge organization” and “domain analysis and ontologies.” This study yields insight into a better understanding of the research domain of knowledge organization. Moreover, text mining approaches introduced in this study have methodological implications for domain analysis in knowledge organization.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify challenges and motivators to social media adoption for marketing purposes in public libraries and to investigate how these libraries perceive the importance of social media marketing.Design/methodology/approachA nation-wide online survey on public libraries in the USA was conducted to carry out this study, and a total number of 470 responses were used for data analysis.FindingsThis study determined a range of challenges and motivators to implementing social media for marketing in public libraries. The results also showed that public libraries perceive social media as an important tool for their library marketing and intend to increase their use.Practical implicationsThe findings from this study can serve as a guideline for public libraries when employing social media for marketing purposes in their libraries.Originality/valueThis study assessed the current state of social media use for marketing in the public library context, a context that has been under-researched in the literature, from three perspectives: challenges, motivators, and perceptions.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the factors affecting students’ continuance intention to use online library resources (OLRs) in the context of academic libraries. Based on an extended expectation confirmation theory (ECT), the effects of usefulness, confirmation and resource quality on continuance intention to use OLRs were examined. Design/methodology/approach To empirically test the model, a survey study was conducted. Data were collected from 606 student library users at a large state university in the USA. The collected data were analysed quantitatively to answer seven hypotheses using partial least squares method. Findings The findings revealed that both usefulness and confirmation had a positive direct and indirect influence on continuance intention. Also, the effect of resource quality on continuance intention was found to be significant. Satisfaction had a mediating effect on the relationship between usefulness, confirmation and resource quality, and continuance intention. Originality/value This study is one of the first attempts that adopted the ECT to understand students’ continuance intention to use OLRs. In addition, the effect of the multiple dimensions of resource quality – accessibility, credibility, coverage, and format – on users’ continuance intention to use OLRs was investigated.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple factors affecting online library resource selection by undergraduate students. Three dimensions of factors are investigated including usefulness and ease-of-use, resource quality, and individual differences. Design/methodology/approach – An instrument was developed to measure various aspect factors and online library resource use intention. A survey was administered to 332 undergraduate students. Quantitative analysis, including structural equation modeling, ANOVA, and t-tests, was used to statistically examine the effects of the identified 11 factors on the use intention of online library resources. Findings – The findings indicated that both usefulness and ease-of-use positively influenced the undergraduates’ use intention of online library resources. Also, five resource quality constructs – accessibility, credibility, coverage, currency, and format – were the determinants of online library resources use intention. Interestingly, the effect of accessibility was the strongest, while that of credibility was the weakest. In addition, this study found that familiarity with sources and use of good search skills had a significant effect on users’ use intention at the individual user level. Originality/value – This study is one of the few studies investigating multiple factors comprehensively that influence online library resource selection.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple factors affecting online library resource selection by undergraduate students. Three dimensions of factors are investigated including usefulness and ease-of-use, resource quality, and individual differences. Design/methodology/approach - An instrument was developed to measure various aspect factors and online library resource use intention. A survey was administered to 332 undergraduate students. Quantitative analysis, including structural equation modeling, ANOVA, andt -tests, was used to statistically examine the effects of the identified 11 factors on the use intention of online library resources. Findings - The findings indicated that both usefulness and ease-of-use positively influenced the undergraduates' use intention of online library resources. Also, five resource quality constructs - accessibility, credibility, coverage, currency, and format - were the determinants of online library resources use intention. Interestingly, the effect of accessibility was the strongest, while that of credibility was the weakest. In addition, this study found that familiarity with sources and use of good search skills had a significant effect on users' use intention at the individual user level. Originality/value - This study is one of the few studies investigating multiple factors comprehensively that influence online library resource selection.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore what kinds of social media content public libraries create to communicate with users online, and to examine the relationships between social media content types and corresponding levels of user engagement.Design/methodology/approachThe sample comprises 4,637 Facebook posts collected from 151 public libraries across the USA. The authors identified ten types of Facebook posts based on the open coding, and calculated the degrees of user engagement for each type of Facebook post, represented by the numbers of likes, shares and comments. Also, The authors examined the effects of the inclusions of images or video clips on user engagement.FindingsThe authors observed that the most frequent type of post was related to announcing upcoming events held in libraries. This study also found that posts about community news or emotionally inspiring messages elicited much engagement from users. Posts having an image or images tend to receive more user engagement.Practical implicationsBased on the findings of this study, the authors discussed practical strategies for public libraries to effectively use social media to better facilitate user engagement.Originality/valueThis study is one of a few attempts that examine the relationships between the types of social media content and the degrees of user engagement in public library environments. Also, the authors have proposed a coding scheme useful to analyze social media content in the context of public libraries.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore topics of Facebook posts created by public libraries using the bi-term topic model, and examine the relationships between types of topics and user engagement. The authors further investigated the effects of three library factors, namely, staff size, budget and urbanization degrees, on Facebook content and user engagement based on multilevel generalized linear modeling. Design/methodology/approach This study suggested a novel method, a combination of the bi-term topic modeling and MGLM, to enhance the understanding of social media in the context of public libraries. Findings The findings revealed that posts related to community events, awards and photos were likely to receive more likes and shares, whereas posts about summer reading programs received relatively more comments. In addition, the authors found that a larger staff size and the inclusion of multimedia had positive impacts on user engagement. Originality/value This study analyzed the content of public library-generated social media based on text mining. Then, the authors examined the effects of contextual library-level factors on social media practice in public libraries. Based on empirical findings, the study suggested a range of practical implications for effective use of social media in public libraries.