What Do Users Think of the Digital Library? Analyzing Community’s Sentiment during Covid-19

Abstract

During the pandemic, a consortium of libraries in the Milan area (Italy) interviewed the community and applied sentiment analysis to quickly understand the community’s feelings toward online services. The model compares both sentiment analysis and topic detection using algorithms that identify sentiments and topics. The results highlight the preference for paper books but the interest in learning more about digital services.

Keywords:

• Digital library
• sentiment analysis
• topic detection

Notes

1 By active members we mean users between 25 and 65 years of age registered in the CSBNO libraries from 31 December 2017 and still actively using loan services. Inactive members are those registered in the Consortium libraries from 31 December 2017, but not actively borrowing.