Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applications of social media in digital libraries and identify related problems. Design/methodology/approach – A total of ten institutions were selected from the following cultural institution types – public libraries, academic libraries, museums, government, and international organisations – to represent a variety of digital libraries developed or sponsored by different types of organisations. The social media applications were examined with regard to the following aspects: types of social media, placement of social media, updating social media, types of interactions, and types of functions. Findings – This study presents the types of social media applications in the selected digital libraries and further characterises their placements, update frequency, types of interactions between digital librarians and users, as well as various types of roles they played. In the process of analysis the authors also identified problems related to lack of standards, creating two-way communication channels, and the lack of education functions. Research limitations/implications – Further research needs to expand the selection of institutions and digital libraries to have more representative sampling, in particular institutions that are outside North America and Europe. It is also important to perform in-depth content analysis of social media to identify patterns and functions that social media perform. Moreover the authors will compare specific social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., across institutions. In order to explore fully the reason why certain social media tools are implemented in digital libraries, it is important to survey or interview digital librarians of digital libraries in different types of cultural institutions. In addition users can be interviewed to solicit their perspectives about their usage of social media in digital libraries. Originality/value – This study not only examines the current status and problems of social media application in digital libraries but also offers suggestions on making good use of social media to connect users and digital libraries.

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We investigated a topic‐based navigation guidance system in the World Health Organization portal, compared the link connection network and the semantic connection network derived from the guidance system, analyzed the characteristics of the 2 networks from the perspective of the node centrality (in_closeness, out_closeness, betweenness, in_degree, and out_degree), and provided the suggestions to optimize and enhance the topic‐based navigation guidance system. A mixed research method that combines the social network analysis method, clustering analysis method, and inferential analysis methods was used. The clustering analysis results of the link connection network were quite different from those of the semantic connection network. There were significant differences between the link connection network and the semantic network in terms of density and centrality. Inferential analysis results show that there were no strong correlations between the centrality of a node and its topic information characteristics. Suggestions for enhancing the navigation guidance system are discussed in detail. Future research directions, such as application of the same research method presented in this study to other similar public health portals, are also included.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the types of roles that Twitter played in digital libraries (DLs) and their relationships in building DL online communities. Design/methodology/approach A mixed method analysis of DLs’ tweets was conducted to identify the usage, roles of Twitter in DL communities and relationships among the roles. Twitter data from 15 different DLs for one year were extracted, and an open coding analysis was performed to identify types of Twitter roles. Pearson correlation coefficient was applied to examine the relationships among the roles based on word similarities. Findings The results present 15 types of Twitter roles representing five main categories identified from DL tweets, including information, promotion, related resources, social identity and social connection. Moreover, word similarities analysis identifies more strong relationships among the roles in four main categories (promotion, related resources, social identity and social connection) but less with roles in information. Research limitations/implications Characteristics of DL online communities are discussed and compared with physical library communities. Suggestions are proposed for how tweets can be improved to play more effective roles. To build a strong community, it is critical for digital librarians to engage with followers. Originality/value This study is a pioneering work that not only analyzes Twitter roles and their relationships in building DL online communities but also offers recommendations in terms of how to build a strong online community and improve Twitter use in DLs.

Twitter is a popular social media tool for people to connect and communicate with one another. In recent years, digital libraries (DLs) have added Twitter to their lists of social media tools as a way to engage with users. However, how digital librarians and users actually use this social media tool is unknown. In order to gain more knowledge about the use of Twitter, the authors conducted an open coding analysis of Tweets from 15 different DLs for the course of one year. Five types of functions of Twitters in DLs were selected and discussed, which represent the problems, promotion, related resources, social connection and social identity of DLs. In addition, their relationships were also explored.