ZIN. Issues in Information Science. Information Studies, No.2A (2020)

Thanks to the financial support which the Ministry of Science and Higher Education provided in 2020 under the program “Działalność upowszechniająca naukę: działalność wydawnicza (DUN)” (Actions to Promote Science: Publishing) to increase the national and international circulation of ZIN. Issues in Information Science. Information Studies, the editorial committee is releasing in 2020 two additional thematic issues devoted to the newest topics in information science. We publish them entirely in English, hoping that it will make their contents more accessible to the international audience.

No. 2A - Crisis Situations and Information Science

Preface

This  issue  of  Zagadnienia  Informacji  Naukowej  –  Studia  Informacyjne  presents  seven  articles submitted in response to the Call for Papers, in which our Editorial Board invited submissions devoted to different aspects of crisis situations which have recently become a popular subject of research in information science. The intention of the Editorial Board was to present various aspects of crisis situations, with an emphasis on the role of infor-mation science in controlling and managing them in effective ways. We invited research and review articles reflecting on five main areas of information science we identified in the Call, i.e., users; resources and services; information management strategies; research and scholarly communication; and impact of crisis situations on the development of information technology and its applications.

The opening article, entitled Crisis Situations and Information Science. Selected Issues in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, is of my authorship. I provide a critical review of selected scholarly literature on the issues related to the current global health crisis published by information science scholars and professionals, as well as initiatives related to information science, undertaken to provide access to reliable and valid information in crisis situations.

In the following article, entitled The Implications of Epidemic Risks for Scholarly Commu-nication and Higher Education Processes. Preliminary Remarks, Piotr Tafiłowski presents reflections on changes in scholarly communication, basing on discussions with second-year students  taking  a  course  on  scholarly  communication.  The  aim  of  this  paper  is  to  start  a discussion on the changes in scholarly communication, both in research and in teaching, that have occured during the current epidemic crisis.

The  next  two  articles  consider  the  strategies  that  Polish  academic  libraries  employed  during the COVID-19 lockdown introduced in the spring of 2020.

The article by Bożena Jaskowska – Management of Academic Libraries in Poland During the COVID-19 Lockdown – presents results of a study conducted among the directors of Polish academic libraries regarding the organization of information and library services during the lockdown and the management obstacles which the libraries faced.

The article by Anna Kamińska, Anna Książczak-Gronowska, and Zuzanna Wiorogórska – The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Academic Libraries in a Crisis Situation. Experiences of the University of Warsaw Library – investigates the impact of the crisis situation caused by the spread of COVID-19 on the work of library information and IT systems, with the University of Warsaw Library as a case study. However, unlike most of the other studies, it focuses on electronic resources and service hubs, rather than on the library understood as a public space and a store of printed publications.

The next article – Information Behavior in Crisis Situations – by Monika Krakowska discusses the research on information behavior during crises, conflicts and disasters. The article presents various concepts and models concerning the identification of heterogeneous information activities and an attempt to define and characterize various crisis situations.

In  the  sixth  article,  entitled  The  Impact  of  COVID-19  on  the  Information  Literacy  of  Business Sharing Groups Users, Dorota Rak determines whether COVID-19 has affected information  competences  of  users  of  a  specific  type,  i.e.  members  of  business  sharing  Facebook groups. In her pilot study, she surveyed eight groups from Lesser Poland, as well as Tri-City, Silesia, and Mazovia, collecting responses on the following issues: recognizing information needs and obtaining information, evaluating and using information, defining and self-assessing information competences.

The issue ends with an article by Anna Matysek and Jacek Tomaszczyk – Digital Wis-dom  in  Research  Work  –  which  focuses  on  digital  wisdom  as  defined  by  Marc  Prensky.  The authors present select digital tools that increase the efficiency of scientific research and facilitate conceptual work, information retrieval, note-taking and the writing process. Access to the newest tools and the development of digital wisdom have become crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These diverse articles published in our thematic issue attempt to understand how the current crisis situation has affected information management and work of researchers and information organizations,; they show the best strategies that have been employed to adjust the work to the conditions of the pandemic; and the changes in the functioning of the in-formation systems. We hope that the issue will be of interest to our readers and contribute to the continuously growing body of scholarly literature on the current crisis situation.

Zuzanna Wiorogórska
Editor in Charge of the Issue

Warsaw, 18 December, 2020

   
ZIN. Issues in Information Science. Information Studies, No.2A*

* (The publication of this issue was funded by the grant “Publishing of ZIN. Issues in Information Science. Information Studies journal – increasing the national and international circulation” – an action financed under agreement 921/P-DUN/2019, supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education program “Actions to Promote Science: Publishing” (DUN))