Volume 73, Issue 1

The concept of truth, although unavoidable, is very problematic from a philosophical point of view and, in the field of librarianship, it is even more disputed for various reasons: inapplicability to libraries’ collections and reference services; scarcity of resources necessary in the event of a possible application; conflict with the value of intellectual neutrality. The “alethic rights” proposed by D’Agostini in 2017, pertinent to truth claims in social contexts, can be interpreted in two ways: the “strong” way is not applicable to libraries because it would lead to the same problems caused by the research of the truthfulness of each document preserved by libraries and of any information provided by their reference services; the “weak” way would instead be applicable to libraries, but it is more appropriate not to apply this either, both because there would be the risk that it could be interpreted in the strong way, and because its application would still be redundant compared to what already happens in libraries and to what, if necessary, could be obtained in emergency situations by applying instead the principle of social responsibility. In the library field it would be more sensible and useful to apply, instead of alethic rights, the epistemological theory of “alethic pluralism” by Wright (1992). Truth and Objectivity . Cambridge: Harvard University Press and Lynch (2009). Truth as One and Many . Oxford: Clarendon, which defines the concept of truth in a way compatible with technical practices and with deontological rules currently more widespread in libraries.

This paper examines digital archiving policies of open access (OA) electronic scholarly journals in Central Europe. The research sample consists of 1589 journals from nine Central European countries registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Results show that of the 1589 journals, 69% of them have an archiving policy. In terms of the number of indexed journals, Poland ranks first with 592 journals. Switzerland is at the forefront of digital archiving with 89% of archived journals. It was also found that Portico and national libraries are the most widely used archives, and that 19% of the preserved journals are archived in more than one archive. A preliminary analysis was also conducted to investigate the possible existence of a relationship between journal rank and digital archiving. The results show a higher number of JCR indexed titles, as well as a higher ranking, among archived journals. The paper also compares the status of archiving policies among Asian and Central European countries. The results reveal that archived journals are significantly more represented in Central European countries.

The suicide of one person impacts 60 people, known as suicide survivors. These survivors are at an increased risk for negative mental health outcomes including PTSD, suicidal ideation, and suicide contagion. Despite these consequences, there have not been any information science studies that have explored the information behaviors of people who have recently survived the suicide of a loved one. This article takes a unique approach in combining autoethnography with traditional survey research. One hundred and ninteen participants sourced from a private Facebook suicide bereavement group responded to a survey asking them about their information-seeking after a loved one committed suicide. The qualitative data were fragmented and grouped into like-responses and thematic codes that gave explanation to the research questions. These results are coupled with the author’s ethnographic recounting of a similar experience. Brenda Dervin’s sense-making is employed as the methodological lens through which the study is conducted. It is found that suicide survivors are highly unlikely to have their informational needs met. In the immediate aftermath of their loss, they are most likely to look for information related to the suffering of the deceased. As time passes, they begin to look for information about coping with their loss and preventing suicide of other people; either those close to them or in a larger community scale. Being a survivor motivated many participants to advocacy work. Finally, the author argues that the findings of this article should compel further research and the creation of information policy to aid survivors and prevent suicide contagion.

New topic modeling technique has been increasingly used in research of communication for quick discovery of latent topics that are spread across huge volumes of text. This work intends to analyze and compare the topics automatically generated by Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The data for building LDA model in this work is based on 38,124 articles published from 1991 through 2016 in one of the world’s most influential political and economic magazines, The Economist . The retrieved documents for generating topics are divided into three countries of the UK, the US, and China in order to observe topical differences between these ingroup or outgroup countries in The Economist coverage. The work analyzes interpretability, overall weight distributions, and historical changing patterns of the topics using LDA model diagnostics. It discusses the hot or increasing trends using regression coefficient. The work also tentatively explores the relationship between the media agenda and events.

This study aims to examine and compare the trends of information literacy research in Korea and in some English-speaking other countries in the last two decades from 2001 to 2020 through keyword network analysis. With regard to English-speaking countries, author keywords were collected from articles retrieved from the Scopus database using the search term “information literacy.” For the Korean LIS field, the author keywords were collected from articles retrieved through a Korean academic database called “KCI” using the search term “information literacy.” For other countries, a total of 1163 articles and 2454 author keywords were collected for this study. Among these author keywords, the top 10 that appeared most were “academic libraries,” “library education,” “assessment,” “collaboration,” “higher education,” “undergraduate students,” “e-learning,” “information literacy instruction,” “instruction,” and “instructional design.” By comparison, a total of 120 articles and 352 author keywords were collected for this study in Korea. Among the keywords, eight that appeared most frequently were “information literacy instruction,” “school libraries,” “school librarians,” “library education,” “academic libraries,” “information services,” “user education,” and “public libraries.” Based on the study results, some recommendations for Korea’s IL research can be made as follows: First, particular attention needs to be given to the subjects of “assessment” and “collaboration” related to IL research. Second, the research related to the subject of IL has been carried out by a few researchers majoring in school libraries. Therefore, in addition to researchers in the LIS field, those from various other fields need to have an interest in the subject.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) offers school librarians a systematic process for developing, assessing, and revising their school library programs. Two of the seven steps in this process involve collecting and sharing meaningful evidence with appropriate stakeholders, often for advocacy purposes, strategically selecting communication channels and methods aligned with target audiences. Through a survey collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, 161 school librarians in Kentucky, Virginia, and Texas shared their experiences with evidence-based practice. The study reported here focuses on school librarians’ evidence collection and sharing practices. Findings indicate school librarians collect easily obtainable data and share evidence of practice widely; however, they are most likely to share with building-level administrators, and the channels through which they communicate with school personnel differ from those chosen to communicate with other stakeholder groups. Approximately half of participants share evidence for advocacy purposes, and only slightly more than half share evidence of their practice with other school librarians.

Questions about whether and how American libraries should collect, describe, and share sexually explicit materials are a perennial source of discussion both within the profession and in the wider national public forum. This ever-present debate has led to book challenges and bans as well as legal action, and it remains a hot topic through the present day for those looking to critique the role and function of libraries in American society. By examining elements of this history and how these questions have been addressed in both public and academic library settings, we can start to uncover some of the deeper cultural biases at play in the American LIS profession’s failures to fully embrace sexually explicit materials as a meaningful part of our collections and, relatedly, our larger philosophical failures to treat our patrons holistically as human beings whose physical lives are inextricably linked to their intellectual ones. A critical reconsideration of the place of pleasure and embodiment in our libraries has deep implications for how we work with and for our communities.

The article describes a social network approach to understanding the relationships between academic library employees: knowledge use network and problem solving network with the division into strong and weak ties. The author collected the data based on a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire on a selected population of library staff in a major academic library in Poland. Then, collected data was analyzed through the non-parametric network statistics tests (quadratic assignment procedure [QAP] and multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure [MRQAP]) to test dependencies occurring in social networks of librarians. The results show a relationship between knowledge use and problem solving based on strong and weak ties between librarians, with the beta for weak ties higher than for strong ties. The network methodology is becoming a critical research approach used to understand the informal structures and complexity of the academic library. Thus, it is a valuable tool in the hands of library directors.