Editorial

Abstract

Whether we like it or not, we have been living with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) for more than 20 months now. It is a global pandemic, disseminating to everywhere on this planet. This pandemic has fundamentally altered many aspects of our lives and society, with short-term and likely long-term effects on health systems. Therefore, the Editorial Board of Library Hi Tech invites researchers from cross-disciplines to submit their latest research work and share their experiences with other researchers. Up to July 2021, we accepted eleven papers for the first series of the special issue. These 13 papers are related to the following topics:

Editorial: 40th anniversary: contemporary library research

“…Another important direction of transformation of libraries system is digitalization and automation (Lo et al , 2017; Sun et al , 2022; Lin et al , 2022; Tse et al , 2022; Shahzad and Khan, 2022). This is particularly important as a measure against library lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic (Huang et al , 2021, 2022a; Fasae et al , 2021; Guo et al , 2021; Meng et al , 2022; Yu et al , 2022). Khan and Ayesha (2022) studied information management systems for automation in university libraries.…”

Social media aids for business learning: A quantitative evaluation with the 5E instructional model

“…During the pandemic, instructors may face challenges to re-embody the course (Aroles & Küpers, 2021), where social media may help enhance students' engagement in learning. Therefore, universities should offer adequate training and IT support to instructors, in addition to COVID-related training and funding (Earle & Leyva-de la Hiz, 2021;Huang et al, 2021;2022), especially for those preferring traditional teaching approaches to engage them in using social media tools as aids to effectively and efficiently for better class communication and interaction (Lei et al, 2021).…”

Guest editorial: Social robots, services and applications

“…They offer features such as human facial, voice, and emotion recognition, including adding human-like personality to their artificial intelligence (AI)-based capabilities to achieve better human-machine interaction. Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, robotic applications can save human resources and reduce direct contact to avoid virus transmission (Yu et al, 2022;Huang et al, 2021Huang et al, , 2022.…”