Editorial

After two special issues dedicated to COVID-19 that included many outstanding responses from Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers and practitioners, which have also been the most successful issues in the journal’s publication history in terms of article downloads, at Digital Library Perspectives, we are resuming the publication of regular issues with the present one. However, we still have many interesting articles in our cue that are related to other pertinent LIS’ responses to the pandemic; please look forward to them.

We open this issue with “Perceptions and use of cloud services: An empirical study on the students of a public university in Bangladesh,” by Atikuzzaman and Islam, who quantitatively assessed students’ perceptions and use of cloud services at the University of Dhaka. This technology, which has been increasingly used for different purposes, was used by students for backup, storage and for working collaboratively, specifically Google’s tools. This type of research may help educational stakeholders to design strategies and policies to harness its possibilities for learning purposes.

Okeji and Mayowa-Adebara present “An evaluation of digital library education in library and information science curriculum in Nigerian universities.” By conducting a survey in 30 LIS schools in Nigerian universities, their study revealed that the majority of the library schools offer the course “digital libraries” or related areas as core courses in their curriculum. However, some LIS educators in the library schools identified challenges such as lack of qualified ICT staff to handle the course coupled with lack of computer laboratories equipped with modern computers with stable internet facilities. Findings from the study can inform LIS educators to see the need to review their curriculum and incorporate a stand-alone course on “digital libraries.”

In “Creativity-related traits and the scientific production of professors from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua,” Delgado-Carreón, Machin-Mastromatteo, Romo-González and Pacheco-Mendoza presented the findings of a bibliometric research that intended to find the relationship between professors’ creativity and their scientific output’s indicators. Such a relationship is complicated, as there are many other factors that affect scholars’ output, and as available research has revealed, the associations among different indicators with altmetrics are quite difficult. However, this study highlighted the resilience and dedication of Mexican researchers given the different challenges they face, mostly extrinsic. Moreover, it highlights various creativity traits that may aid scientific output and provides an opportunity to replicate this research in other contexts, to assess if different sociocultural values may impact the results presented by the authors.

Lapworth’s “Assessing large-scale digitization using web analytics” analyzed digitized archival collections by comparing Web analytics for three digital collections to find out if their usage was related to how richly they are described. The main research question of this study is: Are digital collections created via large-scale digitization methods used less than digital collections created via traditional boutique digitization methods? Web analytics represent a limited interpretation of “use”; however, it can present a method for institutions to assess the use of their own large-scale digitization efforts.

Next, Méndez-Govea, Mireles-Cárdenas and Tarango presented “Learning styles in the digital library and their application in academic communities in the biomedical and health areas,” in which they studied the importance for health professionals of learning how to use digital scientific information, by using a learning styles diagnostic in a Mexican public university.

Fontanin’s “On fake news, gatekeepers and LIS professionals: the finger or the moon?” reflected on the debates related to misinformation and fake news available in the specialized literature and discussed the multidisciplinary, freedom of expression and moral implications.

Finally, we have Anderson’s “The wrong side of the spreadsheets: A life in the digital humanities,” which reflected on the work conducted within this field from the perspective of the author’s career and argued about the importance of understanding technological issues and big data for digital humanities research.