Editorial

Citation

Broady-Preston, J. (2014), "Editorial", Library Review, Vol. 63 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/LR-05-2014-0049

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Library Review, Volume 63, Issue 3

A very belated Happy New Year to all readers of and contributors to Library Review. Unfortunately, I have experienced one or two health issues this year, with the result that this is the first opportunity I have had to write an editorial.

However, as promised in the final editorial of 2013, there is indeed some very good news to share with you all. Library Review appears in the Australian Deans Business Council (ABDC) ranking list of journals for the first time and on first application. The ABDC ranking generally covers business and management titles but information systems also feature as a sub-group; Library Review appears in this listing, achieving a “B” ranking together with journals such as Information Processing and Management. This is excellent news; to achieve this ranking, Library Review was nominated by a range of academics in Australia and New Zealand. This will hopefully result in the journal having a higher profile and reaching a wider audience and readership. Thanks to all who contributed to this result, including members of the Editorial Advisory Board based in Australia and New Zealand, and a special thanks to Amanda Cossham, Book Reviews and Associate Editor.

The theme of the third issue of 2014 is knowledge sharing and organisation and the first paper outlines the results of a highly topical study into the use and take-up of the new bibliographic content standard, resource description and access (RDA). Mansor and Ramdzan present the results of their investigation into the familiarity with and awareness and understanding of RDA among cataloguers in higher education institutions in Malaysia. Their results reveal that while Malaysian cataloguers were largely familiar with the basics of RDA and its related topics, they, nonetheless, acknowledged the inadequacy of their basic understanding of RDA, with low understanding of related RDA topics such as FRBR (functional requirements for bibliographic records). Their survey also identified the expressed need among the cataloguers surveyed for more training in RDA, with preference for learning more of FRBR but also including RDA context topics such as FRAD (functional requirements for authority data).

The second paper stays with the theme of user perceptions, but in this instance, examining the attitudes of academics towards the role and use of institutional repositories (IR) in scholarly communication and self-archiving. Two North American academics, Oguz and Assefa, outline their application of a binary logistic regression model to analyse data collected at a regional university in southeastern US. Interestingly, in contrast to the findings of earlier studies, they detect a negative relationship between faculty rank and positive perception of IRs, with senior ranking faculty being less likely to deposit and having a less favourable perception of the role of IRs in scholarly communication than junior faculty. Oguz and Assefa offer a range of possible explanations for their findings, including that their data derives from an academic institution with a focus on teaching, as opposed to one with a primary research orientation. Given that most known studies to date focus on the role of IRs in relation to academic information sharing and seeking behaviour in research active or intensive environments, arguably this study makes a unique contribution to our previous understanding of the role and function of IRs in scholarly communication, by examining such behaviours in a more diverse academic population.

Remaining with the theme of knowledge sharing among academics, Chong et al. compare knowledge-sharing behaviours between academics in public and private sector universities in Malaysia. As the authors note, one especially encouraging result from this wide-ranging survey was the willingness of academics from both sectors to share rather than hoard or guard their knowledge. Interesting to note that contrary to possible contemporary expectations, their results show that “many academic staff remain technophobic, and technology tools and systems are perceived as major barriers of knowledge sharing in both public and private universities”.

Finally, in a paper which outlines aspects of research from a doctoral study, Siddique and Mahmood analyse the challenges faced by academic libraries in developing countries in acquiring reliable and robust software to facilitate effective access to knowledge and stimulate knowledge exchange, with the situation in Pakistan serving as a case study.

Judith Broady-Preston