Academic literature on the topic 'Online library catalogs Subject access Use studies'

A Review of: Lau, K. P., Chiu, D. K. W., Ho, K. K. W., Lo, P., & See-To, E. W. K. (2017). Educational usage of mobile devices: Differences between postgraduate and undergraduate students. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(3), 201-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.03.004 Abstract Objective – To discover how undergraduate (UG) and graduate (G; “postgraduate” [PG] in the original article) students of library and information science (LIS) use mobile devices and to understand preferences and perceived barriers to educational use. Design – Survey questionnaire. Setting – University in Japan. Subjects – Ninety undergraduate students (30 male, 60 female) and 30 graduate students (13 male, 17 female). Nineteen additional recruits were excluded from the study due to incomplete surveys. Almost all subjects (>98%) were born between 1982 and 2002. Methods – Subjects were recruited without incentives from one LIS department. An online survey was conducted with the purpose of gathering information on how often devices were used for various activities, perceived barriers to mobile learning (m-learning), and demographic data. The survey was modeled on a 2015 study of LIS students in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan (Ko, Chiu, Lo, & Ho, 2015). The Mann-Whitley U test was used to investigate possible significant differences between UG and G responses. Main Results – 94.2% of participants had smartphones with Internet access; both UG and G subjects reported weekly to daily use for social communications (email, short message service [SMS], chat, and social media) and for querying search engines. Both UG and G subjects reported using finance and banking services less than once a month. Other activities (shopping, finding locations, entertainment, sports, tools and productivity software, casual reading, academic reading, accessing reference materials, accessing libraries) for both groups fell within the range of less than once per month to weekly use. Unlike G subjects, UG subjects reported significant (p < 0.05) engagement with social media and marginal (p < 0.10) engagement with accessing libraries, and productivity tools. In terms of educational use, neither UG nor G subjects reported daily m-learning behaviors, instead reporting monthly to weekly browsing of online information and social networking sites, with far less (i.e., less than once a month) engagement with professional articles, e-books, learning management platforms, and several other activities (listening to podcasts, viewing videos, “other”). UG subjects reported significant marginal (p < 0.10) engagement with “other” materials, unlike G subjects. Library catalogs and databases were less likely to be used when compared to reference sources, with UG and G subjects reporting monthly or less use for these. When asked if they would use mobile library services, respondents answered “maybe interested if available”, with UG subject reporting significant marginal (p < 0.10) engagement vs. G subjects for several of these services. Regarding productivity activities, both UG and G subjects reported monthly or less use of note taking, word processing, and scheduling tools. For communication and sharing activities, subjects reported monthly or less activity for communicating with classmates, using email for study-related issues, posting to discussions on learning management platforms, posting or commenting about their studies on social networking sites, sending photos or videos to social media, moving document files, and scanning Quick Response (QR) codes. UG subjects were marginally (p < 0.10) more engaged in communicating with classmates than G subjects. Barriers to m-learning were not considered “high” barriers, with “low” to “medium” barriers for both UG and G subjects being small screen size, non-mobile format, difficulty typing, challenges with authentication, no Wi-Fi, difficulty reading, lack of specialized apps, and slow loading times. Conclusion – This study provides a snapshot of how participants used mobile devices at the time the survey was conducted. Both UG and G subjects used their devices for social communication more than for educational purposes.

Objective – This study sought to determine the characteristics of research materials used by history students in preparing their master’s theses. Of which information resources formats did such students make use, and in what proportions? What was the age distribution of resources used? What was the dispersal over journal titles and over subject classification, i.e., the degree of interdisciplinarity? To what extent did the master’s students make use of non-English-language materials? To what extent did their institution’s library hold the resources in question? The investigator was especially interested in finding quantitative support for what he terms two “hypotheses.” The first of these is that historical research depends to a high degree on monographs, journal articles being far less important to it than they are to research in, especially, the natural sciences and technology. The second is that the age distribution of resources important to historical research is much flatter and longer than that of resources upon which researchers in the natural sciences and technology rely. Design – Citation analysis, supplemented with comprehensive catalogue searches. Setting – Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), a mid-sized public university located in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. Subjects – MA and MS theses (N=47) successfully submitted to the Department of History over the period from academic year 1998/1999 through academic year 2007/2008, inclusive. Methods – The investigator initially identified the theses through a search of the online catalogue (“Consuls”) of the Connecticut State University system, and retrieved all of them in either electronic or hard-copy form. He then subjected all citations (N=3,498) listed in the references sections of these theses to an examination in order to identify for each cited resource the format, the age, the language, and, in the case of scholarly journal articles, the journal of publication. He carried out bibliographic searches in order to rectify any citations which he had noted to be faulty or incomplete. The study took no account of possible additional citations in footnotes or endnotes or in the text, and did not measure citation intensity (whether, for instance, a thesis referred only once, or perhaps many times, to a given resource). Duplicates “were ignored.” He furthermore performed systematic searches in Consuls and in the Library of Congress (LC) online catalogue in order to establish, insofar as possible, into which assigned LC Classification class each resource fell, and whether it belonged to the holdings of the SCSU library. “Holdings,” as used here, includes physical resources owned, as well as those resources to which the library has licensed access. Not marked as either “held” or “not held” were: resources available online without restriction or charge, items not identified in either Consuls or the LC catalogue, and all government documents. Ages of cited resources were calculated based on the edition or version date actually given in a student’s citation, without any consideration of a possible earlier date of the original version of the publication or document concerned. Main Results – Format, age distribution, and journal frequency. The local citation analysis found that 53.2% of all cited resources were monographs, 7.8% were scholarly articles, 5.3% were contributed chapters in books, and 0.6% were dissertations or theses. Non-scholarly periodicals accounted for 15.7%, government documents for 6.7%, and freely available web documents for 4.1%. The remainder, approximately 6.5%, comprised archival papers, judicial documents, directories, interviews, posters, audiovisual materials, and 13 other formats. Cited resources, measured back from the date of acceptance of the citing thesis, ranged from 0 to 479 years old; the mode was 3 years, but the median was “25” (p. 170) or “26” (p. 177) years. Just over 70% (i.e., 2,500 cited resources) were more than ten years old. Almost one thousand of the cited resources were fifty or more years old. The 274 scholarly journal articles included in the references sections were spread over 153 distinct journal titles, of which 105 titles made only one appearance, and 136 titles three or fewer appearances. The mean was 1.8 appearances. Subject dispersal and language. Of the 2,084 cited resources for which LC classification was locatable, 51.5% had a classification other than history, i.e., other than class C, D, E, or F. Nearly two thirds (66.0%) of the cited scholarly journal articles had appeared in journals with a focus other than history. (Note: table 4 is incorrect, precisely reversing the actual ratio.) Of all cited items, 98.5% were in the English language. Half (27) of the non-English-language resources cited were in Korean, all cited in the same thesis. Books (i.e., monographs plus compilations from which contributed chapters were cited) accounted for 87.0% of foreign-language citations. More than four fifths of the examined theses (83.0%) cited not a single non-English-language resource. Local holdings. Of all 3,498 cited items, 3,022 could be coded as either “held” or “not held” by the SCSU library. Of the items so coded (not, as indicated on p. 180, of all cited items), scarcely two fifths (41.0%) belonged to the library’s holdings. The holdings percentage was highest (72.6%) for the 274 scholarly journal articles cited, followed by the 186 contributed chapters (50.0%), the 550 non-scholarly periodical items (49.5%), and the 1,861 monographs (46.8%). For other cited formats, the percentage was much lower, and in some cases, e.g., for the 55 archival and the 44 judicial documents, it was 0.0%. Of the 54 foreign-language resources cited, the institution’s library held only two. Conclusion – The investigator concludes that his study’s findings do indeed lend quantitative support to his two “hypotheses.” This outcome will surprise few, if any, librarians; it is in accord with what Koenig (1978) long ago saw as a matter of “intuition” and “all conventional wisdom,” something that many subsequent studies have confirmed. Sherriff accordingly recommends, firstly, that collections which strive to support historical research should, in matters of acquisition policy and budget allocation, take serious account of that field’s relatively strong dependence on monographs. Secondly, the data on age distribution carry obvious implications for librarians’ decision-making on matters such as de-accessioning and weeding, relegation to remote storage, and retrospective acquisitions. This finding should also be considered, for instance, in connection with preservation policy and the maintaining of special collections. He even suggests that librarians “need to teach students the value of reviewing literature historically and showing them how to do so effectively” (p. 177). Sherriff considers a number of further (tentative) conclusions to be warranted or suggested by the results of this study. First of all, that historical research is now characteristically an interdisciplinary matter, in the sense that it requires extensive access to information resources, including journals, which libraries have traditionally not classified as belonging to the discipline of history itself. For a library supporting such research, this phenomenon “has implications for matters including collection budgets, reference work, bibliographic instruction, and the location of collections and departmental libraries” (p. 168). It also means “that librarians working with history students and history collections need to be aware of the relevant resources in other disciplines. This can improve reference work, research assistance, and bibliographic instruction; it may also help the coordination of acquisitions across departmental lines” (p. 179). Secondly, one may conclude that “there is no ‘core’ collection of journals for history” (p. 178) which will be able to satisfy a large proportion of master’s students’ research needs. Thirdly, the fact that a library such as SCSU’s holds significantly less than half of what master’s students require for preparing their theses “may exercise a narrowing effect on students’ awareness of the existing literature on their topics” (p. 180), “increases the importance of departmental faculty, reference librarians, and subject specialist librarians drawing students’ attention to resources beyond the library’s catalogues and collections” (p. 180), and requires that the library give serious attention to effective document delivery arrangements. Finally, this study’s finding that only a small percentage of master’s students in history made use of non-English-language materials, but then in certain cases used them rather extensively (27 Korean items cited in one thesis, ten Italian in another, nine Spanish in yet another), suggests that acquisition, or at least proactive acquisition, of such materials needn’t be a priority, as long as, once again, the students concerned have easy access to efficient and affordable document delivery services. Sherriff does concede, however, that his finding could indicate “that students are unaware of relevant resources in other languages or are aware of them but lack the language skills necessary to use them” (p. 179).

The concept of a classified catalog, or using classification as a form of subject access, has been almost forgotten by contemporary librarians. Recent developments indicate that this is changing as libraries seek to enhance the capabilities of their online catalogs. The Western North Carolina Library Network (WNCLN) has developed a “classified browse” feature for its shared online catalog that makes use of Library of Congress classification. While this feature is not expected to replace keyword searching, it offers both novice and experienced library users another way of identifying relevant materials.

T<span>raditionally, standard catalog records have provided bibliographic data that mostly address the basic features of library resources. At the same time, catalogs have offered access to these records through a limited array of names, titles, series, subject headings, class numbers, and a relatively small number of keywords contained within descriptions. Today’s catalog users expect access to information well beyond what can be offered by traditional approaches to bibliographic description and access. By pursuing a suite of projects, the Library of Congress (LC) has responded to the challenge of enticing patrons to continue to include the online catalog among the tools they use for information retrieval. Drawing extensively on the power of automation, staff of LC’s Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT) have created and implemented a variety of initiatives to link researchers, catalogs, and Web resources; increase the content of the catalog record; and link the catalog to electronic resources. BEAT’s ongoing work demonstrates how, in the electronic era, it is possible to provide new and improved ways to capitalize on traditional services in the digital age. This paper will illustrate these points by focusing on BEAT’s tables of contents projects to demonstrate how library automation can make significant bibliographic enhancement efforts quick, easy, and affordable to achieve.</span>

Abstract The importance and growth of the amount of data available on social media have made organizations use Social Media Data Archiving Software (SMDAS) to collect and archive their data. This study compares the features of three SMDAS: ArchiveSocial, Pagefreezer, and Smarsh. First, by surveying the developers’ websites and catalogs, the features of all three software products are identified and classified into four areas. After using statistical methods and the Chi-square test, significant differences among features of the software in each domain are investigated. “Access to deleted records,” “automatic archiving,” “archiving of native formats,” “archive categorization,” “archive sharing,” “simple and advanced search,” “online service,” and “advanced discovery and monitoring functions” were the shared features. A significant difference was noted in the domain of security and data preservation, with Pagefreezer software offering more features than the other two software. In the other areas, no significant difference was observed. Knowledge of SMDAS can help librarians and other information professionals choose and use it wisely. Comparing features may also benefit companies that are developing SMDAS. The literature suggests to use the studied software; nevertheless, few studies discussed the software’s features in detail. This article has made a valuable contribution to comparing the software’s features.

Objective – To determine whether and how Danish university and higher education students use public libraries for study purposes. Design – Online survey. Setting – Post-secondary students in Denmark. Subjects – 1,575 students in university-level programs or other higher education programs (vocational three-to-four-year programs) in Denmark. Methods – A sample of students was drawn from the national database of students by selecting every student born on the 15th of every month (approximately 4,900 students). A letter describing the study and with an invitation to fill out an online questionnaire was sent to all students in the sample. There were 1,694 valid responses (approximately 35% response rate). Students following short vocational programs were deemed to be under-represented and these subjects were omitted from the analysis of this report, which reflects the response of 1,575 students. The online questionnaire gathered demographic details (gender, age, educational institution, study topic, study year, geographical location, access to the Internet, etc.) and used 110 questions or statements to gather information about student information-seeking behaviour related to study purposes. These included use of the physical library and satisfaction with services, use of search engines, awareness and use of library Web-based services, study behaviour, and participation in information literacy activities. Main results – For the purposes of this study, “academic library is used as a generic term covering university libraries, research libraries, educational libraries and all other kind of libraries outside the field of public libraries” (p. 278). The survey results confirmed many of the previous international reports of student information-seeking behaviour: 85% of students use the academic library for study purposes; fewer than 10% of all students are able to cope without any library use; students in technology and engineering, the sciences and arts, architecture and music have a higher rate of non-use of their academic libraries; a large percentage of students access the electronic resources from home; the physical library is still considered important to students; Google is used extensively and is nearly the exclusive choice for search engine. The public library is used for study purposes by about 58 percent of all students with the highest use (76%) by students in higher education institutions (HEI); students of education, social topics and psychology are very frequent public library users. Female students in HEI were the most frequent users of the public library independent of study subject or year, or any other demographic variable. Seven per cent of students rely exclusively on the public library for study purposes and first-year HEI students in the subject areas of education, social topics and psychology are over-represented in this group (which additionally has less Internet access from home than the other students). Students perceive nearly all aspects of service in the academic library as superior; HEI students rate ambience, electronic resources and speed of inter-library loan provision in the public library as higher than the academic. University students give a low rating to the collections of public library, although the students use the public library principally to supplement the collections available in their academic libraries. Another high use of public libraries by HEI students is for inter-library loans placed through the national resource sharing system. Public library reference services are used often by only one per cent of students and only two per cent use the public library on a regular basis for “study related group activities.” Conclusion – Students use physical libraries to a great extent to support their studies and students have embraced digital access to collections, especially access from home. Google is the most heavily used search engine and is used by nearly all students; use of Google complements and supplements library use. Nearly 60% of all students use public libraries for study purposes and to supplement the collections of their academic library, but they find that the public library collections are insufficient to meet their needs. The inter-library loan policies of public libraries are more lenient and accommodating to student needs and may drive the high use of public libraries. Students form a large constituency of the public library user population and they generally rate most aspects of service as substandard to those of academic libraries. There is a call for review of the public library’s role in meeting the information needs of students, and in particular, those of HEI programs who are most dependent on the public library.

A Review of: Quesenberry, A. C., Oelschlegel, S., Earl, M., Leonard, K., & Vaughn, C. J. (2016). The impact of library resources and services on the scholarly activity of medical faculty and residents. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 35(3), 259-265. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2016.1189778 Abstract Objective – To assess the impact of academic medical library services and resources on information-seeking behaviours during the academic efforts of medical faculty and residents. Design – Value study derived from a 23-item survey. Setting – Public medical residency program and training hospital in Tennessee, USA. Subjects – 433 faculty and residents currently employed by or completing residency in an academic medical centre. Methods – Respondents completed a 23-question survey about their use of library resources and services in preparation for publishing, presenting, and teaching. The library services in the survey included literature searches completed by librarians and document delivery for preparation of publications, presentations, and lecture material. The survey also included questions about how resources were being accessed in preparation for scholarship. The survey sought information on whether respondents published articles or chapters or presented papers or posters in the previous three years. If respondents answered in the affirmative to one of the aforementioned methods of scholarship, they were provided with further questions about how they access library resources and whether they sought mediated literature search and document delivery services in preparation for their recent presentations and publications. The survey also included questions concerning what types of scholarly activity prompt faculty and residents to use online library resources. Main Results – The study was provided to 433 subjects, including 220 faculty and 213 residents, contacted through an email distribution list. The response rate to the survey was 15% (N=65). Residents comprised 35% of the respondents, and faculty at each of the three levels of tenure comprised 60%. The remaining 5% of respondents included PhD and non-clinical faculty within the graduate school. Over 50% of respondents reported use of library services in preparation for publishing and presenting. These library services were literature searches, document delivery, and accessing online resources. Faculty and residents reported use of PubMed first (71%) and most often, with 56% of respondents reporting weekly use, followed by Google or Google Scholar, with 20% of respondents reporting its use first and 23% of respondents reporting weekly use. However, regarding responses to the question concerning how journal articles are accessed, “using a search engine” was chosen most often, at almost 65%, followed by (in order) clicking library links in a database, contacting the library directly, searching the list of library e-journals, clicking publisher links in a database, using personal subscriptions, searching the library catalog, and using bookmarks saved in a web browser. Based on survey responses, faculty reported higher use of library services and resources than residents; however, residents reported higher use of library services and resources when preparing posters and papers for conferences and professional meetings. In addition, several comments spoke to the importance of the library for scholarly activity, many indicating the critical role of library assistance or resources in their academic accomplishments. Conclusion – This study provides evidence in support of library resources and services for medical faculty and residents, which contributes to discussions of the contributions of medical libraries. As hospital libraries close and academic medical libraries see reductions in budgets, this study contributes to the value of a library’s presence, as well as the role of the health sciences librarian in medical research and scholarly communication. This academic medical library was reported to be first and most often used, in comparison with other resources or none, in preparation for publication and presenting. The results of this and similar studies can contribute to the generalizability of its findings relating to the value of medical libraries. In addition, PubMed, UpToDate, and Google were the resources used most often by respondents, along with search engines and library links in databases. These findings can be incorporated into future outreach, marketing, and instructional curriculum for this library’s users. The survey results also provide additional support for the library’s role in the academic research lifecycle, and free-text comments about the critical role of library services furthered those findings. The authors state that further research is necessary for improving awareness of library resources and services in the role of scholarship at institutions.

Objective – To determine the factors, barriers and facilitators, preference, and intended use of e-book compared to print book usage by all patrons in a health science library system, which serves a university with health science degree programs and a hospital system. Design – Two online surveys. Setting – University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, which includes the University of Pittsburgh’s six schools of health sciences (medicine, dental medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and rehabilitation) and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospitals and programs. Subjects – All health sciences library system users, including faculty, researchers, clinicians, residents, fellows, employees, and students. Methods – Two versions of the survey were deployed in 2009 using Opinio. There were 46 questions for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) survey and 47 questions for the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) survey. The surveys were pilot tested by Health Sciences Library System (HSLS) librarians and graduate students in a survey methods class. The survey was edited based on the feedback provided and received institutional review board approval as an exempt study. A total of 5,292 email addresses were randomly selected by SPSS from a pool of 9,472 UPMC and Pitt patrons registered with a HSLS remote access password; 2,684 patrons from UPMC and 2,608 patrons from Pitt were selected. HSLS librarians were excluded from the survey. Participants were emailed a link to the survey in March of 2009. Three email reminders were sent at five day intervals. Data was collected for 22 days and exported from Opinio to SPSS statistics software. Survey results were analyzed using basic descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations. Main Results – Of the 5,292 emails sent, 979 surveys were submitted and 871 were completed fully. The 108 partially completed the surveys were analyzed using pair wise deletion. All HSLS user groups were represented and all rated their confidence in computer skills high. The mean age of respondents was 39.9 with the majority of respondents being female. Of the 871 completed surveys, over half (55.4%) of the respondents reported using HSLS e-books: 66.7% men and 54.9% women. HSLS e-books were used for in-depth reading by 53.4% of men and 36.8% of women. At UPMC, 70% of attending physicians, interns, residents, fellows, and Pitt postdoctoral/fellows use HSLS e-books. The primary use of the e-books was for clinical care, by 75.3% of attending physicians; 86% of interns, residents, and fellows; and 38.9% of nurses. HSLS e-books are also used by 61.8% of respiratory care and physical therapists, 28.6% of administrators, and 56.8% of researchers. At Pitt, 73% of postdoctoral students or fellows and 64.7% of faculty used HSLS e-books. The primary use of the e-books was to support research. 76.5% of postdoctoral students and fellows and 54.1% of faculty used e-books for this purpose. Only 21.3% of faculty assigned e-books for class readings. Though 14% of undergraduate and 33.5% of medical students responded that they had been assigned readings from e-books, 51% of undergraduates and 62.1% of graduate and medical students used an e-book to complete an assignment. Over half (65.5%) of respondents saw information about HSLS e-books on the HSLS website and 55.4% of respondents used an HSLS e-book. When using an e-book, 56.6% look up brief, factual information while 41.9% use e-books for in-depth study. Uses of HSLS e-book search tools were rated: the federated full text search tool was used by 67.2% of respondents and 74.3% of those who use this tool rated it as moderately to extremely useful. Google books and the library catalog were also rated moderately to extremely useful by respondents. The catalog received the lowest rating of the HSLS e-book search tools. More respondents (95.4%) use the library’s website than come to the physical library (63.8%); however, 66.9% say they use both the website and physical library. Of the 63.8% of respondents who came to one of the HSLS libraries, 67.2% borrowed or used a HSLS print book. When using a book at the library, 23.4% only use print, 14.8% only use e-books, 44.7% use both, and 17.1% use neither. Fewer respondents (46.4%) agreed or completely agreed they could locate an e-book compared to those who agreed or completely agreed they could locate a print book (66.7%). Nearly half (45.3%) agreed that both HSLS e-books and print books were accessible where they needed to use them; however, only 27.9% agreed or completely agreed that they had time to go to the library and use a print book when they needed it. The closer a respondent worked to the library the more likely they used the physical library. Those also within one block of the library were greater users of HSLS e-books (67% of respondents) than those who worked more than two blocks from the library (52.3% of respondents). When respondents did come to the library, 84.3% used a HSLS print book in the past year and 64.7% used an HSLS e-book. Of the respondents who did not have time to come to the library, 55.3% used a HSLS print book and 55.3% used a HSLS e-book. When using e-books, respondents preferred such features as printing, saving, and searching over features such as bookmarking, highlighting, and annotating. Respondents also preferred e-books for general reference and pharmaceutical reference, and print books for textbooks and handbooks. A finding of significance is that “those preferring print were more flexible about using e-books than those preferring e-books were about using print” (p. 224). Conclusion – HSLS e-book use varied depending on the respondent’s role at their institution (e.g., clinical physician, researcher) and type of book (e.g., reference book) they used. The heaviest HSLS e-book users were students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, and clinical physicians. Respondents who used HSLS e-books most often were also those who used print books most often, and respondents within one block of the library were some of the heaviest HSLS e-book users. Respondents felt that reference and pharmaceutical books were more suitable as e-books. Also of note was that though faculty were not using e-books heavily for assigned readings, students were using HSLS e-books to complete assignments. The greatest drive to choosing between a print and e-book was the respondent’s information need and which book format was most convenient to access at that time. Respondents were flexible in their use of print books and e-books: respondents “would be willing to use a less preferred format if it were more convenient at the time of need” (p.226). In light of respondents’ flexibility between e-book and print book usage, the authors suggest that collection development librarians could reduce the duplication of book formats. Regarding awareness of e-books, survey results from this study were comparable to that of other studies. Also, the respondent’s comments indicate that the survey itself prompted e-book awareness: respondents felt that more advertising of e-books should be done. Such responses show that passive advertisement of e-books though the library’s catalog and on the website are not enough. E-books should be advertised during library instructional sessions. Respondents also prefer Web access to HSLS e-books as well as the HSLS federated e-book search rather than to access HSLS e-books from the library catalog. The authors’ recommendation is to make sure users can easily access e-book catalog records through the Web in order to best facilitate patrons’ use of e-books. Despite the conclusions that were drawn, there were several limitations of this study. Though the sample size was large enough and all HSLS users were included, the response rate was very low. Bias could be an issue as well: non-response bias as well as an overestimation of the number of HSLS e-book users could be contributing factors to the low response rate. In addition to the small sample size and possible bias, the lack of completed responses (11%) was also a concern. Finally, respondents expressed confusion over how “e-books” were defined in the survey. Because of these issues, results of this survey may not be generalizable to other libraries.

Problem statement. Rapid globalization and integration processes are significantly reflected in almost all spheres of human activity, including cultural and educational institutions that collect printed and handwritten materials. Currently, domestic libraries are at the stage of active translation of paper catalogs into digital format, integration of various types of literature from the library fund into e-space. The main keys to the success of the development of cultural space are new standards of educational, cultural and leisure services, interesting creative projects, access to information technology and erudite employees. Users need comfortable conditions, modern resource base, new services, advanced technologies. New standards are, first of all, renewed spaces, modern forms of work, interesting and useful for community members, paradigm shift in general. In light of this, it is interesting to explore the features of library development in the digital space, highlighting their potential. The methodology. The methodology consists in the application of theoretical methods (documentary analysis, analytical and synthetic information processing, comparison). The chosen methods contribute to the identification and more thorough study of general trends in image-making and external PR, and at the same time — to outline the problems that need to be addressed for the further successful operation of libraries in the digital space. The results of the study are a comprehensive analysis of the formats of development of electronic and stationary libraries. The outlined ideas can form the basis of the concepts of library modernization at the municipal level and, accordingly, practical solutions. The scientific topicality. In the process of development of information and communication technologies, digitization of most literary and documentary materials, prevalence (due to socio-economic conditions) of distance education, cyberspace is gradually being mastered by online libraries. This trend is typical of most institutions designed to preserve monuments of science and culture (including museums, galleries). Undoubtedly, this makes more accessible locations that are physically remote from the user, allows you to easily access the required amount of information and materials in which it is contained, as well as significantly saves time of the subject of the requested information. Digitalized libraries solve one of the global problems of modern society, which has no borders and barriers — the unimpeded use of the necessary materials by people with disabilities. The practical significance. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using some of its materials in teaching theoretical courses, lectures. In addition to the above, some of the proposed positions may form the basis of further research.

This chapter studies user interfaces of Web Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) and presents their principal difficulties in facing the man-machine interaction and the contributions of Web 2.0 to overcome these limitations. Methodologies used to study OPACs interfaces are examined. A quantitative approach is used to analyze Web OPACs in academic, special, national, and public libraries through the conclusive use of several tests: chi-square or test of independence, logistic regression, odds ratio, analysis of variance, and discriminant analysis. The situation of Latin American Web OPACs is verified in relation to the use of Integrated Library Systems (ILS) and Database Management Systems (DBMS). This methodology is proposed to study the 2.0 functionalities in these catalogs.