Volume 72, Issue 4

Disinformation in the online world has been recently spreading across the world, especially in relation to major global issues (the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, vaccination, elections, etc.) The recent COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by disinformation, affecting the lives of millions across the world. In this text, we are trying to describe which COVID-19 related disinformation have spread intensively within the Czech Republic in the Czech language, what they are focused on and which ones are most frequently encountered among the population.

This paper presents a critical analysis of disciplinary discussions on user-generated contributions to institutional archives collections metadata and attempts to assess its impact on professional archivists’ approach to archival description. It frames archival description as a distinct knowledge domain and considers the possibilities, limitations, and contradictions of expanding this key function of archival work beyond the professional purview. It discusses how enhanced user participation might contribute to the knowledge and information infrastructures of archives and what this might suggest for archival description going forward. It identifies various practical, theoretical, and ethical implications for archives emerging from this body of literature, all undergirded by the role of technology in shaping the cultural and historical phenomena that archives seek to capture. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of archives’ renewed place in knowledge building in a digital society and offers suggestions for continued inquiry.

The research examines the contextual landscape of academic libraries in Vietnam with the intention of discovering and exploring the barriers and enablers of cooperation in information resource sharing. The aim of this research is to address the principal question of: what are the contextual factors affecting the cooperation of academic libraries in information resource sharing in Vietnam? The interpretive study employed a mixed-methods approach and its findings are based on the analysis of data gathered from key informant interviews (20 library directors) and surveys (145 librarians, 182 students, and 46 lecturers) from 20 universities, as well as from documentary evidence. The participants involved in this study include library directors, librarians, and information users. Data shows that there are contextual factors affecting the cooperation in information resource sharing in terms of policies, directors’ attitudes, cooperative culture, IT infrastructure, information resources, lack of standards, and inappropriate funding roles of professional associations. Based on the findings, a model for cooperation in information resource sharing was developed with the contextual factors. The outcome of this research provides a model which incorporates the contextual factors influencing information resource sharing among academic libraries in Vietnam. To that extent, it contributes to our knowledge of information resource sharing in general, especially in regard to developing countries and more specifically to Vietnam. An acknowledgment of these factors will encourage more academic libraries to collaborate in sharing information resources in order to meet the demands of information users.

This study aims to determine engineering students’ behavior towards Knowledge Sharing (KS). Researchers also investigated the effect of technological and organizational factors on students’ behavior towards KS. Another purpose of this paper was to identify the difference among different universities’ students regarding their KSB. The authors conducted this study using quantitative methodology. The population of the study was engineering students admitted in 10 Pakistani universities based in different Pakistani provinces and capital. Results confirmed that the majority of Pakistani engineering students were sharing knowledge with their fellows with good frequency. It was also found that students of different universities differed significantly regarding their KSB. However, factors related with technology and organization did not influence (significantly) KSB of engineering students of Pakistan. Results might facilitate students and organizations, especially related to the field of education in understanding the role of technological and organizational related factors towards students’ KSB.

How can documentary heritage institutions protect the rights of publishers and creators while archiving their digital works for future generations? Is such an intervention of collecting, archiving and making available digital work justifiable and, if so, why? A legal deposit system is implemented in most national libraries to balance protecting rights holders and guaranteeing public interest. However, the expansion of collection coverage such as e-books and social media content has resulted in legal and ethical conflicts. Legal and economic approaches can convert legal conflicts into analysable trade-off phenomena. Therefore, we explore whether and to what extent economic reasoning applies to the legislative process. This is primarily for electronic legal deposit systems, specifically focusing on copyright and privacy issues. For copyright, legal deposits serve a public domain function and a correction function for market failures. Preserving the function of legal deposits can mitigate legal and ethical risks over time. However, such risks remain, as long as privacy is subjective and contextual. Even if documentary heritage institutions are granted legislative authority to collect digital work mandatorily, they must pursue other methods to minimise such risks. This suggests that collection coverage diversifies between countries and regions.

Elements of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in diverse books support children’s intellectual, social, and emotional development. Public library storytime programs serve as venues to showcase books with characters of varied backgrounds, identities, and experiences who may or may not reflect those of the communities the libraries serve. Because storytime providers often rely on online resources to plan their programs, it is important to investigate the presence and quality of EDI elements in books recommended for storytimes by these resources. The present study analyzed the text, illustrations, and WorldCat metadata for a random sample of 481 children’s books recommended by six popular online resources for storytime planning. Results revealed an overall lack of EDI in the recommended books with few characters representing parallel cultures, living with a disability or chronic illness, practicing a religion other than Christianity, or communicating in a language other than English. The paper includes implications for storytime providers and library administrators in the areas of program planning, professional development, and program assessment.

As useful tools in delivering information services, social media could create a wide range of opportunities and reduce communication costs significantly. The present study set out to initially identify the potential roles of social media in information services using a systematic review procedure. Using the meta-synthesis method, the identified roles were organized in a conceptual model and then prioritized through Shannon’s entropy technique. The results showed that the operational, financial, strategic, user-related, and informing roles ranked first to fifth, respectively. In the last step, the results of a survey of 30 experts active in online information services were analyzed using the weighted average method to be compared with the findings of the systematic review. The order of prioritization of the roles and indicators from the experts’ point of view showed financial, user-related, strategic, operational, and informing roles, respectively. The prioritization of roles in Shannon’s entropy method was similar to the results from the perspective of experts in terms of strategic and informing roles. However, experts have come to understand more about financial and user-related roles for social media. The only factor that had the greatest difference in ranks between Shannon’s entropy method and experts’ opinions survey was the operational role, which ranked first in Shannon’s entropy method and fourth in expert scrutiny. The present study is one of the first attempts to identify the possible roles of social media in information services that can be considered a pioneering research by related researchers.