Enhanced and changing roles of school librarians under the digital age

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the recent viewpoint of classroom teachers and school administration about the role of school librarians, which is lacking adequate studies. The current trend of fast-evolving information and communication technologies (ICT) and the emphasis on enquiry-based learning has increasing impacts on school curriculum and the required library support. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews on three practicing secondary school librarians in Hong Kong on three separate occasions to explore a different, richer type of data, in particular new requirements and issues that a questionnaire survey could provide. Findings – The new roles of the school librarians improving teaching and learning effectiveness under this environment include: being information literacy specialists, leading library improvement projects and providing classroom teaching collaboration and support. Originality/value – This is one of the very few qualitative studies reporting professional practices and changing roles amongst school librarians in Hong Kong. The results of this study are of practical interest to education policymakers, school administrators, practicing school librarians and educators with a vested interest capitalizing on the school library’s potentials to positively affect students’ achievements.preprin

Academic Library Leadership Issues and Challenges: An Informational Interview with Peter Sidorko, Librarian of the University of Hong Kong

Founded in 1911 during the British Colonial era, with the aim of competing with the other Great Powers opening universities in Mainland China, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Supporting the learning, teaching and research needs of the whole University community, the HKU Library is set up with the commitment to develop and deliver a wide range of resources and services dedicated for engaging the users in the efficient use of library resources in all formats. It was the commitment to promoting a strong intellectual environment and IT infrastructure in libraries that brought Peter Sidorko to the HKU Library over 13 years ago. A seasoned librarian with an established career of working in libraries throughout Australia, Peter Sidorko was hired in 2001 as the Deputy Librarian for HKU before becoming the current University Librarian in 2011. In his current position, Peter Sidorko oversees HKU's library network, comprised of one Main Library and six other subject branches that serve a student population of over 27,000. In the following interview, Peter Sidorko discusses the ways in which he uses his participative management style to work closely with staff and faculty in supporting the unique academic environment at HKU. Furthermore, he speaks about the deep collaboration with other university libraries in Hong Kong through organizations such as JULAC (Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee), and other services like HKALL (Hong Kong Academic Library Link). He also openly discusses the current challenges facing the field and the promising goals of supporting the unique collections that have made HKU a world-renowned academic institute.published_or_final_versio

Multiple transmission optimization of medical images in recourse-constraint mobile telemedicine systems

Background and objective In the state-of-the-art image transmission methods, multiple large medical images are usually transmitted one by one which is very inefficient. The objective of our study is to devise an effective and efficient multiple transmission optimization scheme for medical images called Mto via analyzing the visual content of the multiple images based on the characteristics of a recourse-constraint mobile telemedicine system (MTS) and the medical images; Methods To better facilitate the efficient Mto processing, two enabling techniques, i.e., 1) NIB grouping scheme, and 2) adaptive RIB replicas selection are developed. Given a set of transmission images (Ω), the correlation of these transmission images is first explored, the pixel resolutions of the corresponding MIBs keep high, the NIBs are grouped into k clusters based on the visual similarity in which the k RIBs are obtained. An optimal pixel resolution for the RIBs is derived based on the current network bandwidth and their corresponding areas, etc. Then, the candidate MIBs and the k RIBs are transmitted to the receiver node based on their transmission priorities. Finally, the IBs are reconstructed and displayed at the receiver node level for different users. Results The experimental results show that our approach is about 45% more efficient than the state-of-the-art methods, significantly minimizing the response time by decreasing the network communication cost while improving the transmission throughput; Conclusions Our proposed Mto method can be seamlessly applied in a recourse-constraint MTS environment in which the high transmission efficiency and the acceptable image quality can be guaranteed. Keywords Medical imageMulti-resolutionMobile telemedicine systemBatch transmissionpostprin

Undergraduates' Electronic Resources Diffusion at the Peking University: An Exploration on Language Impacts

Most studies on Chinese academic resource selection have used a qualitative approach, focusing on issues such as resource distribution and accessibility. To fill the research gap, the current article analyses the responses of 190 undergraduate students of the Peking University to a questionnaire survey, revealing various academic resources' access methods, usage frequency, and access obstacles, while exploring underlying factors affecting resource usage with a focus on the language impacts. Further, the application of the innovation diffusion model to study the utilization of library electronic resources is novel. The current findings showed that open-shelf books, electronic journals, and open-access resources were highly utilized because of their high quality. Electronic resources were displacing printed resources. Based on Bass's innovation diffusion model, diffusion of different electronic resources among undergraduate students fit well with the S-curve, though with significantly different slopes, for example, there was a significantly different diffusion rate between English and Chinese resources. In particular, difficulties in accessing Western databases was identified because of students' limited information literacy and language ability.postprin

Comparative Study on m-Learning Usage Among LIS Students from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan

Mobile learning (m-learning) is gaining its importance in recent years. For libraries, it is inevitable to adapt to this trend and provide various information services and support for m-learning. This paper studies the m-learning usage of Library and Information Science (LIS) students, who will be the new blood for the library in future. In this paper, we invited 267 subjects from Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan to participate in our online survey. We found that LIS students from these regions do adopt communication tools and social media for m-learning. However, they less frequently use their smartphones for academic reading. Plus, they rely more on search engines for fulfilling their information needs instead of library resources. We also found that the lack of a mobile version of the library website constitutes a significant barrier in m-learning, but the lack of mobile apps is relatively acceptable by the respondents. The result of this study shows that there are no big differences in m-learning usage among the three regions, except that LIS students from Hong Kong are accessing the learning management platforms via their smartphones more frequently compared to students from Japan and Taiwan.postprin

Behavior and informal learning at night in a 24-hour space: A case study of the Hong Kong Design Institute Library

This study explores the evening activities of students at the Hong Kong Design Institute in Zone24, a 24-hour opening learning space managed by Hong Kong Design Institute Learning Resources Centre, also referred to as the Library. In doing so, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of 24-hour learning spaces. Qualitative research was undertaken to identify and compare the students’ behaviors between daytime and night in Zone24. In addition, this study investigates how overnight activities in the learning spaces facilitate a student’s learning. The result of this study can contribute to improving librarians’ or administrators’ understanding of students’ needs at night in a 24-hour learning space in order to implement more effective programs and services for users.postprin

Exploring undergraduate students’ usage pattern of mobile apps for education

In recent years, with the general adoption of smartphones with computing power comparable to desktop computers, mobile applications (apps) have experienced a surge in popularity. However, there are few studies conducted about their educational use, especially in Southeast Asia. To close this research gap, this study aims to provide a current overview of mobile apps usage in higher education. Besides exploring the actual use of apps, the technology acceptance model was applied to examine (1) undergraduate students’ perceptions, which involve perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, towards adopting mobile apps for educational purposes, and (2) their overall attitude toward such adoption. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data from 150 undergraduate students in Business, Education, and Engineering in Hong Kong. The results show undergraduate students use mobile apps frequently to engage in learning activities related to their academic studies, with a particularly focus on communication and collaborative working, accessing academic resources, and checking a dictionary. However, the discrepancies in using apps for academic purposes are not significant between the three faculties. Meanwhile, perceived usefulness has a more positive impact on overall attitude compared with the impact of perceived ease of use. The investigation will help tertiary institutions, library service providers, and educators develop and assess strategic planning for education collaborating with mobile apps. This paper could also give app developers some suggestions for app design based on actual usage and students’ information needs.preprin

Progressive Trends in Electronic Resources Management Among Academic Libraries in Hong Kong

Due to recent technology advancement and particularly ubiquity of smart devices, user needs and habits of using library materials are also changed towards electronic resources, which facilitate anytime anyplace access as well as easier information search. For library management, digital resources facilitate long-term preservation together with savings of space and human costs. This lead to a trend of rapid development of digitization and electronic resources, leading to lots of changes in academic libraries. However, there are few studies providing a holistic view of this important trend, especially in metropolis of the East. To explore this trend, we interviewed four librarians in different departments from different universities in Hong Kong for a qualitative analysis on various aspects such as digital versus print, user expectation changes, and new management problems. Emerging issues of e-resources highlighted by the libraries includes acquisitions policies, budget implication, copyright, and access restrictions, consortium collaboration, manpower issues, workflow, and library system changes. We further discuss the practical implications of our findings, which are supportive to those disparate in other literature.postprin

Motivations for choosing librarianship as a second career among students at the University of British Columbia and the University of Hong Kong

The pathway to a career in the Library and Information Science field is rarely straightforward and unidirectional, but is often multi-faceted, with many circuitous detours along the way. There has been an increasing number of second-career in LIS emerging from many other non-LIS-related professions over the years. Many of these newcomers have made significant contributions to the LIS profession as they transfer their years of professional experiences, expertise, knowledge and skills from their former careers into the field. The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions and perspectives of the LIS students, and the various factors that influenced these midlife graduate students to consider switching from their current occupations to LIS as a second career.preprin

Educational Usage of Mobile Devices: Differences Between Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students

The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.postprin