Volume 31, Issue 1

Background. Problem-solving support services in Japan’s public libraries offer users’ problem-solving support by providing information in business, health and medical, legal, and administrative support. Though such services are quite well-developed in Japan’s public libraries, there is little research on the information needs of local citizens who make use of these services.
Objective. This study investigated the information seeking processes of two groups of library users—aspiring entrepreneurs and cancer patients—who used public libraries to attain their problem-solving goals. This study used an information behavioral grammar model as the theoretical framework.
Method. Existing interview data of aspiring entrepreneurs and cancer patients were analyzed using the model, applying a constant-comparative method adopted from the grounded theory approach in order to elicit how problem-solving goal (distal goal) and information needs (proximal sub-goals) are modified in information seeking process.
Results. The information behavioral grammar model was found to be useful for characterizing and explaining the change in the distal goal and the information needs for problem solving, together with the emotions of the actor that result in the change. Entrepreneurs and cancer patients use various external services before and after using the public library’s problem-solving support service.

Background. With the availability of a wide array of social media platforms, it is not surprising that students use social media to support their formal learning in a voluntary manner. To achieve effective learning, it is important for students to employ self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies to manage their learning process. There has been limited work concerning the SRL strategies that students use in a voluntary context of learning with social media.
Objective. This study aims to uncover how students use SRL strategies when learning with social media in a voluntary context.
Results. Based on focus group discussions with 41 university students, this study uncovered two categories of SRL strategies: regulation of learning (i.e., goal setting, environment structuring, performance control, and self-evaluation), and regulation of social media use (i.e., information evaluation, support exchange, and distraction management). The findings have implications for students’ effective learning with new technologies like social media in formal education and lifelong learning.

Background. With the availability of a wide array of social media platforms, it is not surprising that students use social media to support their formal learning in a voluntary manner. To achieve effective learning, it is important for students to employ self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies to manage their learning process. There has been limited work concerning the SRL strategies that students use in a voluntary context of learning with social media.
Objective. This study aims to uncover how students use SRL strategies when learning with social media in a voluntary context.
Results. Based on focus group discussions with 41 university students, this study uncovered two categories of SRL strategies: regulation of learning (i.e., goal setting, environment structuring, performance control, and self-evaluation), and regulation of social media use (i.e., information evaluation, support exchange, and distraction management). The findings have implications for students’ effective learning with new technologies like social media in formal education and lifelong learning.

Background. The Taiwan Biographical Database (TBDB) assembles biographical information of historical personages in Taiwan. It is a digital-humanities-oriented system that supports relational database operations, fulltext search, social network analysis, and geographic information system functions.
Objectives. Through semi-automatic named entity recognition from the fulltext of biographies, TBDB assists historians to construct networks of social relationships. However, the fulltext of biographies may not describe all social relationships. Taking advantage of the fact that historical photographs were usually taken on formal occasions, historical photographs may be exploited to uncover additional relationships. This paper describes and evaluates a face detection function in TBDB that utilizes the OpenCV Library to detect faces of historical persons in old photographs. Furthermore, it employs hierarchical agglomerative clustering to combine fragmentary social networks.
Results. An experiment using 45 historical photographs found that the face detection function achieved an average recall of 98% recall, but with low precision. To address the low precision rate, a user interface has been implemented in TBDB to facilitate review and deletion of false-positive faces in the photographs. Furthermore, cluster analysis is used to integrate social relationships found in biographies, those detected from historical photographs, and even relationships harvested from external sources, to produce comprehensive social networks for historical research.

Objective. The study investigated the effect of weather and day of the week on the daily circulation numbers in two public libraries in Japan.
Method. Datasets on library circulation were collected from one library in an urban area, and another in a rural area. The data were then divided according to rainy day and other days, holiday and workday, and day of the week, and the presence or absence of significant differences in daily circulation was analyzed. Automatic linear modeling was performed to analyze the effect of weather, day of the week, and holiday on daily circulation.
Results. The results revealed that day of the week have a considerable impact on daily circulation for both libraries. However, weather exerted a significant impact in the urban area only. Automatic linear modeling explained the daily circulation based on day of the week and holiday with an accuracy of 71.5% for the rural library, and explained the circulation numbers based on day of the week, holiday, and precipitation amount with an accuracy of 81% for the urban library.

Background. For a long time, Japanese public libraries were managed by local governments. However, in 2003, other organizations, including private enterprises, took over the management of libraries and introduced an outsourcing system called designated administrator system. The suitability of this outsourcing system for libraries is now being debated.
Objective. We conducted a causal analysis on the introduction of outsourcing in public libraries in Japan. We performed matching analysis, difference-in-differences (DD) analysis, and DD analysis with matching on library usage, in terms of three factors—gate count, number of loans, and number of reference transactions.
Results. The matching analysis found that the average gate count per capita for all outsourcing libraries was higher than that for all direct management libraries. In the DD analysis with and without matching, the average gate count per capita and number of loans per capita for all the outsourcing libraries were higher than for all the direct management libraries. These differences were statistically significant at the 0.01 level.
Conclusion. The results indicate that the introduction of the designated administrator system increases gate count per capita. Considering the difference in characteristics of the matching and DD analyses, the number of loans per capita may also be increasing with the introduction of the system.