A study on Chinese independent libraries' capabilities to provide ICT-based service

Purpose:The research aims to investigate the capabilities of the Chinese independent libraries in providing service based on information and communications technologies(ICTs).Design/methodology/approach:Questionnaires were distributed to 140 Chinese independent libraries all over China.Data analysis was based on 114 valid questionnaires retrieved.Findings:The Chinese independent libraries’ directors had a low level of competency in the use of computers.Among them,the old people are faced with more difficulties in computer use than the young people.About 55%of independent libraries own computers,but only43%of them offer Internet connections.Most libraries pay less than 1,000 Yuan annually for the Internet access and the Internet access fee accounts for about 5%of library directors’ annual household income on average.With a limited number of computers,it is challenging for independent libraries to provide electronic reading service.However,to their users,they are playing the same important role as public libraries in ICT-based community service.Research limitations:Independent libraries that do not have an Internet website may not be included in our sample.In addition,missing responses and some inaccurate data in annual household income may affect our analysis result.Practical implications:Governments or non-government organizations should pay more attention to independent libraries’ informatization development and provide computer training for librarians,because independent libraries are playing an important role in community information communication.Originality/value:As there is so little related research published,the data collected in this survey provides a valuable snapshot of the Chinese independent libraries’ situation in providing ICT-based service.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis

Purpose:Changes in the world show that the role,importance,and coherence of SSH(social sciences and the humanities)will increase significantly in the coming years.This paper aims to monitor and analyze the evolution(or overlapping)of the SSH thematic pattern through three funding instruments since 2007.Design/methodology/approach:The goal of the paper is to check to what extent the EU Framework Program(FP)affects/does not affect research on national level,and to highlight hot topics from a given period with the help of text analysis.Funded project titles and abstracts derived from the EU FP,Slovenian,and Estonian RIS were used.The final analysis and comparisons between different datasets were made based on the 200 most frequent words.After removing punctuation marks,numeric values,articles,prepositions,conjunctions,and auxiliary verbs,4,854 unique words in ETIS,4,421 unique words in the Slovenian Research Information System(SICRIS),and 3,950 unique words in FP were identified.Findings:Across all funding instruments,about a quarter of the top words constitute half of the word occurrences.The text analysis results show that in the majority of cases words do not overlap between FP and nationally funded projects.In some cases,it may be due to using different vocabulary.There is more overlapping between words in the case of Slovenia(SL)and Estonia(EE)and less in the case of Estonia and EU Framework Programmes(FP).At the same time,overlapping words indicate a wider reach(culture,education,social,history,human,innovation,etc.).In nationally funded projects(bottom-up),it was relatively difficult to observe the change in thematic trends over time.More specific results emerged from the comparison of the different programs throughout FP(top-down).Research limitations:Only projects with English titles and abstracts were analyzed.Practical implications:The specifics of SSH have to take into account—the one-to-one meaning of terms/words is not as important as,for example,in the exact sciences.Thus,even in co-word analysis,the final content may go unnoticed.Originality/value:This was the first attempt to monitor the trends of SSH projects using text analysis.The text analysis of the SSH projects of the two new EU Member States used in the study showed that SSH’s thematic coverage is not much affected by the EU Framework Program.Whether this result is field-specific or country-specific should be shown in the following study,which targets SSH projects in the so-called old Member States.