Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Next to their traditional role as places for information provision and knowledge transmission, public libraries increasingly also function as important social infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. As such, they can help to address systemic challenges such as social fragmentation, loneliness, exclusion and precarity. However, the library not merely is a social infrastructure, but becomes one each operating day through continuous labour by a network of stakeholders. This paper specifically examines library staff and their routinised practices to provide, perform and maintain the library as social infrastructure. The empirical research was carried out in four public libraries in the Netherlands and focussed on staff members who were in a 1-year post-graduate programme to become a community librarian, and their close colleagues. It consisted of two phases: first librarians were shadowed at work, followed by a focus group interview on the multiple problems librarians encounter to (re)make their library into social infrastructures. These include coping with limited space, collaborating with other institutions, difficulties to reach out to the community, financial struggles and differentiating interpretations of the library’s primary function.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Indian science funding agencies have taken several policy measures to expedite access to scholarly knowledge. The proposed “one nation, one subscription” plan is one such initiative. The main aim of this initiative is to facilitate the availability and accessibility of research articles for all higher educational institutions (HEI). This paper reflects upon the suitability and aptness of this suggested policy through an analysis of Open Access (OA) publication trends. Using Scopus and other web sources, this article tracks how the OA publishing scenario (STEM fields) is changing in India and other top publishing countries. Based on the findings, we argue that a national subscription contract is limiting its scope by considering only the option of subscription and disregarding OA publishing options. However, subscription and open access publishing deals are short-term gains and will ultimately increase the dependency on commercial publishers. In the long term, encouraging research that helps solve local context-specific problems can only be addressed by strengthening the publishing infrastructure by national research funding agencies or respective higher educational institutions through publishing and promoting open access content.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
The green open access (OA) model, which offers the most economical approach to comply with open access policies, can increase researchers’ audience and scientific outputs impact by delivering wider and easier access. This study examined researchers’ perceptions from STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and SSH (social sciences, art and humanities) disciplines in order to reveal the types, patterns, motives, and challenges underlying their articles’ self-archiving in the green route to open-access (repositories and institutional repositories) and ASNs (academic social networks). Interviews were conducted with 20 Israeli academic researchers. Half were from STEM and half from SSH disciplines. Interviews were mapped using a bottom-up thematic analysis and follow-up quantitative comparisons. According to the findings, STEM researchers self-archived pre/post-print versions of their articles to subject-based repositories as a part of their discipline norm resulting from their funding grant requirements and as a way to receive recognition and claim priority. SSH researchers post a link to the printed-published article at the publisher’s website in ASNs, and their goal is greater visibility. In addition, findings indicate a lack of awareness, mostly by SSH researchers, regarding copyright issues and OA repositories. The green OA model provides opportunities for researchers to self-archive their work. However, there are differences between the disciplines regarding where, when, why, and how to self-archive, and what is considered a legitimate mode of green OA. This indicates an urgent need to raise SSH researchers’ awareness of the existence of open subject-based repositories and of the terms of self-archiving from publishers.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Next to their traditional role as places for information provision and knowledge transmission, public libraries increasingly also function as important social infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. As such, they can help to address systemic challenges such as social fragmentation, loneliness, exclusion and precarity. However, the library not merely is a social infrastructure, but becomes one each operating day through continuous labour by a network of stakeholders. This paper specifically examines library staff and their routinised practices to provide, perform and maintain the library as social infrastructure. The empirical research was carried out in four public libraries in the Netherlands and focussed on staff members who were in a 1-year post-graduate programme to become a community librarian, and their close colleagues. It consisted of two phases: first librarians were shadowed at work, followed by a focus group interview on the multiple problems librarians encounter to (re)make their library into social infrastructures. These include coping with limited space, collaborating with other institutions, difficulties to reach out to the community, financial struggles and differentiating interpretations of the library’s primary function.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Indian science funding agencies have taken several policy measures to expedite access to scholarly knowledge. The proposed “one nation, one subscription” plan is one such initiative. The main aim of this initiative is to facilitate the availability and accessibility of research articles for all higher educational institutions (HEI). This paper reflects upon the suitability and aptness of this suggested policy through an analysis of Open Access (OA) publication trends. Using Scopus and other web sources, this article tracks how the OA publishing scenario (STEM fields) is changing in India and other top publishing countries. Based on the findings, we argue that a national subscription contract is limiting its scope by considering only the option of subscription and disregarding OA publishing options. However, subscription and open access publishing deals are short-term gains and will ultimately increase the dependency on commercial publishers. In the long term, encouraging research that helps solve local context-specific problems can only be addressed by strengthening the publishing infrastructure by national research funding agencies or respective higher educational institutions through publishing and promoting open access content.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
The green open access (OA) model, which offers the most economical approach to comply with open access policies, can increase researchers’ audience and scientific outputs impact by delivering wider and easier access. This study examined researchers’ perceptions from STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and SSH (social sciences, art and humanities) disciplines in order to reveal the types, patterns, motives, and challenges underlying their articles’ self-archiving in the green route to open-access (repositories and institutional repositories) and ASNs (academic social networks). Interviews were conducted with 20 Israeli academic researchers. Half were from STEM and half from SSH disciplines. Interviews were mapped using a bottom-up thematic analysis and follow-up quantitative comparisons. According to the findings, STEM researchers self-archived pre/post-print versions of their articles to subject-based repositories as a part of their discipline norm resulting from their funding grant requirements and as a way to receive recognition and claim priority. SSH researchers post a link to the printed-published article at the publisher’s website in ASNs, and their goal is greater visibility. In addition, findings indicate a lack of awareness, mostly by SSH researchers, regarding copyright issues and OA repositories. The green OA model provides opportunities for researchers to self-archive their work. However, there are differences between the disciplines regarding where, when, why, and how to self-archive, and what is considered a legitimate mode of green OA. This indicates an urgent need to raise SSH researchers’ awareness of the existence of open subject-based repositories and of the terms of self-archiving from publishers.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
The purpose of this study is to explore the factors affecting college users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library. The paper analyzes the factors affecting college users’ willingness to participate in library smart services, and constructs a conceptual model with 17 hypotheses proposed, based on the theory of Uses and Gratifications, Social Cognition Theory, Innovation Diffusion Theory, and Information Systems Success Model. The conceptual model was empirically tested using structural equation modeling technique through questionnaire survey data. The questionnaire was distributed online to college students and teachers in different provinces of China by using random sampling technique. College users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library is directly and positively affected by information need of users, innovative consciousness of users, service platform performance, user satisfaction, library publicity and guidance, and extrinsic incentives. Information quality, service platform performance, service quality, and service value have significant and positive impact on user satisfaction, and they all indirectly affect users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library through user satisfaction. The survey results also show that the purpose of college students and teachers’ participation in smart services is mainly to meet their information needs. And users’ participation willingness is not affected by self-efficacy of users and others’ influence, which is different from the participation motivation of users on social Q & A and short video platforms. Understanding of factors affecting users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library will likely demand rethink into a number of issues ignored by studies on smart library and smart services. Few studies focus on users’ participation behavior in smart services of library. This study focused on the factors affecting users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library, which would expand the understanding of users’ participation behavior in smart services and enrich the scope of studies on smart library and smart services.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
The purpose of this study is to explore the factors affecting college users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library. The paper analyzes the factors affecting college users’ willingness to participate in library smart services, and constructs a conceptual model with 17 hypotheses proposed, based on the theory of Uses and Gratifications, Social Cognition Theory, Innovation Diffusion Theory, and Information Systems Success Model. The conceptual model was empirically tested using structural equation modeling technique through questionnaire survey data. The questionnaire was distributed online to college students and teachers in different provinces of China by using random sampling technique. College users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library is directly and positively affected by information need of users, innovative consciousness of users, service platform performance, user satisfaction, library publicity and guidance, and extrinsic incentives. Information quality, service platform performance, service quality, and service value have significant and positive impact on user satisfaction, and they all indirectly affect users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library through user satisfaction. The survey results also show that the purpose of college students and teachers’ participation in smart services is mainly to meet their information needs. And users’ participation willingness is not affected by self-efficacy of users and others’ influence, which is different from the participation motivation of users on social Q & A and short video platforms. Understanding of factors affecting users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library will likely demand rethink into a number of issues ignored by studies on smart library and smart services. Few studies focus on users’ participation behavior in smart services of library. This study focused on the factors affecting users’ willingness to participate in smart services of academic library, which would expand the understanding of users’ participation behavior in smart services and enrich the scope of studies on smart library and smart services.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Social media platforms have been adapted into society in various ways during last two decades. Few studies have examined social media content from the perspective of the individual library professional, and in particular, from librarians’ social media posts about their work. This research explores social media complaints from library professionals to reveal insights into the areas of concern related to libraries as expressed in an informal, discursive style. Reddit data from three library subReddits was collected through a Python script. A total of 272 complaint posts with enough information were coded manually. A computational tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), was also used to extract linguistic characteristics of each post. The majority of the sources of the complaint posts came from librarians (86.76%). The top five categories of the target of the complaints were patrons (27.94%), the poster’s organization (20.22%), the poster’s supervisor (11.03%), the library field (11.03%), and the poster’s coworkers (10.29%). The top four topics of the complaint posts were patron behavior (21.69%), negative work environment (16.18%), job expectations (11.76%), and service expectations (10.66%). Organizations should put into place mechanisms and processes through which employees may share their concerns and exercise their voice, with no retribution, to solve workplace problems.

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Ahead of Print.
Social media platforms have been adapted into society in various ways during last two decades. Few studies have examined social media content from the perspective of the individual library professional, and in particular, from librarians’ social media posts about their work. This research explores social media complaints from library professionals to reveal insights into the areas of concern related to libraries as expressed in an informal, discursive style. Reddit data from three library subReddits was collected through a Python script. A total of 272 complaint posts with enough information were coded manually. A computational tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), was also used to extract linguistic characteristics of each post. The majority of the sources of the complaint posts came from librarians (86.76%). The top five categories of the target of the complaints were patrons (27.94%), the poster’s organization (20.22%), the poster’s supervisor (11.03%), the library field (11.03%), and the poster’s coworkers (10.29%). The top four topics of the complaint posts were patron behavior (21.69%), negative work environment (16.18%), job expectations (11.76%), and service expectations (10.66%). Organizations should put into place mechanisms and processes through which employees may share their concerns and exercise their voice, with no retribution, to solve workplace problems.