Editorial March 2020

Welcome to the first 2020 issue of the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association (JALIA). We begin the year with a reminder about two things.

First reminder: there are four regular sections of the Journal:

1. peer-reviewed research papers;

2. peer-reviewed research-in-practice papers;

3. information-in-practice papers; and,

4. book reviews.

In addition, we will consider submissions of opinion pieces. While opinion pieces are not common in our field, when they are scholarly essays that present a personal point of view critiquing a topic, we encourage their submission. They are designed to make us think and question – the very activities we like to think that the Journal enables. If you wish to submit a less traditional paper please be in touch with the editorial team at [email protected]

Instructions for authors are available at the following link: http://tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=ualj21&page=instructions

Second reminder: JALIA supports green open access to the papers it publishes, and has no embargo on authors making their accepted manuscript (AM) available online immediately on publication. We encourage authors to post an open access version of the full text of the AM version of their papers to an institutional or subject repository and if they wish also to their personal or departmental websites, immediately upon publication. For more information see here: https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/zero-embargo-green-open-access/Doing this enables readers who do not have access in other ways to be able to read JALIA papers. The AM is the version of an article that has been through peer review and accepted by a journal editor.

Now to introduce this issue: we present five research papers in this issue. The first by Kylie Budge titled ‘Remember me: Instagram, selfies and libraries’ explores how social photography, through applications such as Instagram, can reveal much about the social and cultural life of a place and its people. The paper examines publicly generated Instagram data created during a large library project in Australia to argue that the role of the library as memory collector and shaper of histories about people and place is critical to the exchange that occurred via selfies. The findings suggest that social photography projects containing intersections of people, libraries and memorialising a moment in time are powerful ways in which library publics can be engaged. The second research paper is by Yazdan Mansourian and is an analytical review of the literature about human information behaviour (HIB) in the context of serious leisure (SL). From the reviewed literature a preliminary model is developed categorising SL activities into three main groups including (1) intellectual pursuits, (2) creating or collecting physical objects/materials/products and (3) experiential activities and categorising SL participants into three major groups of appreciators, producers/collectors and performers.

The third research paper by Michelle Matheson, Lizzie Tait and Sue Reynolds is also a review which aims to examine the literature as it relates to academic libraries, particularly how they address the needs of their LGBTIQ+ users, and how they provide LGBTIQ+ information resources to the university community. Staying in academic libraries, Joanna Richardson, Malcolm Wolski and Michelle Krahe examine the issue of digital capability at the research team level, specifically their ability to adapt to an uncertain digital future. From the literature, a digital capability model was developed, which enables library staff to assess the digital capability of research teams, which further enables libraries to tailor their services to specific research teams and drive change to overall service offerings to better meet the needs of researchers across the organisation. The final research paper by Wenyan Rosa Zhang and colleagues explores how the resourcing of staff and book purchasing affects the development of China’s public school libraries in Guangzhou.

Moving to research-in-practice, we have two papers. The first by Nicole Johnston reports on Edith Cowan University Library’s development of a digital literacy framework based on extensive consultation which promotes strategies and actions that will be implemented in order to equip students at ECU with digital literacy skills. The final paper in the issue by Rebecca Muir and Mary Carroll examines Victorian council and library corporation disability action plans to understand what these plans saw as the action areas for libraries working with people with a disability. It was found that definitions of disability in these action plans broadly matched with the wider disability and library literature, with most councils in Victoria having an online action plan but comparatively fewer library corporations having one.

The issue concludes with an obituary of Cecil Florey, an influential Western Australian librarian and long-time ALIA member, and a great selection of nine book reviews edited by Alison Fields. We hope you enjoy reading this issue.