User-opinion mining for mobile library apps in China: exploring user improvement needs
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-05-2018-0066 |
| Published date | 16 September 2019 |
| Date | 16 September 2019 |
| Pages | 325-337 |
| Author | Haichen Zhou,Dejun Zheng,Yongming Li,Junwei Shen |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
User-opinion mining for mobile
library apps in China: exploring
user improvement needs
Haichen Zhou, Dejun Zheng, Yongming Li and Junwei Shen
College of Information Science and Technology,
Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Abstract
Purpose –To further provide some insight into mobile library (m-library) applications (apps) user needs and
help libraries or app providers improve the service quality, the purpose of this paper is to explore all the types
of user improvement needs and to discover which need is the most important based on user results.
Design/methodology/approach –Data were collected from more than 27,000 m-library app users from 16
provinces and autonomous regions in China. Text analysis using latent Dirichlet allocation and Word2Vec
was carried out by text preprocessing. Furthermore, a visual presentation was conducted through pyLDAvis
and word cloud. Finally, combined with expert opinions, the results were summarized to find the different
types of needs.
Findings –There are three differe nt types of needs for impro vement: needs of funct ion, needs of
technology and needs of ex perience. These types c an be further divided int o six subtypes: richness
of function, feasibili ty of function, easiness o f technology, stablenes s of technology, optimiz ation of
experience and customi zation of experience. Besides the ric hness of function, the feasibility of f unction has
received the most atte ntion from users.
Originality/value –Most studies on m-library user needs have only focused on a method of quantitative
research based on questionnaire surveys. This study, however, is the first to apply text mining methods for
large-scale user opinion texts, which place more focus on user needs and inspire libraries and app providers to
further improve their services.
Keywords User needs, LDA, Text mining, Mobile library, User opinion, Words2Vec
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Mobile phones have become a part of everyday life. The time spent on mobile phones is also
increasing every day (GlobalWebIndex, 2016). In 2019, mobile phones will surpass
computers, tablets and other devices to become the first choice for accessing the internet.
More and more users have been longing for a mobile library (m-library) service to acquire
knowledge and read articles anywhere and at any time. Therefore, many countries such as
the USA, Finland and Japan have developed their m-library platform with the goal of
meeting the need for an m-library service.
The first institute to launch an m-library service in China was the Beijing Institute of
Technology. According to our investigation in 2014, 17 provincial libraries and 89
top-ranking university libraries launched their m-library service, accounting for 54.8 and
82.4 percent of libraries in China, respectively (Zheng et al., 2015). In contrast, users did not
show a high level of satisfaction or a strong desire for continuing usage (Tian, 2015).
To enhance users’experience and fulfill their needs, m-library has gained extensive
attention from scholars in relevant fields. Some scholarspay attention to theoretical research
on m-library, and some have applied questionnaires to study the attitude, satisfaction
and demand of m-library users (Paterson and Low, 2011; Zhao et al., 2015; Kumar, 2014).
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 37 No. 3, 2019
pp. 325-337
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-05-2018-0066
Received 15 February 2018
Revised 28 February 2018
14 May 2018
19 December 2018
28 January 2019
Accepted 6 February 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) (No. 201806850077), Postgraduate
Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (No. KYCX18_0740) and National Social
Science Fund (No. 17CTQ012).The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Library Hi Tech.
325
Mobile library
apps in China
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