Identifying Research Approaches Related to Digital Transformation in Public Libraries
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Digital transformation is an organization-wide strategic approach that brings together people, processes, and technology to create innovation and effectiveness. Understanding research approaches to digital transformation in public libraries is essential to exploiting it. The purpose of this research is to identify research approaches related to digital evolution of public libraries. The problem of the research according to the past researches, is what research approaches are there in the field of digital transformation of public libraries? The current research is applied in terms of type, qualitative and descriptive in terms of method, and based on document-oriented validity review in terms of approach. The type of reasoning used in the research is inductive. The reason for adopting such an approach is the need to know and identify research approaches in the field of digital transformation of public libraries. The statistical population of this study included all authentic texts and documents from domestic and foreign databases based on the search strategy of the exact phrase “digital transformation and public library” and five phrases surrounding it in both English and Persian languages during the period 1393 to 1403 AH and 2015 to 2024 AD. In this research, three main research approaches were identified in the field of digital transformation of public libraries. These approaches were: a) future-oriented approaches: the meaning of researches based on future studies, trends and presenting conceptual models of the digital transformation of public libraries, b) present-oriented approaches: the meaning of researches based on examining and understanding the current situation and measuring readiness digital transformation of public libraries, c) transition-oriented approaches: researches based on improving the existing situation, implementing transformational plans and examining the results of implementing digital transformation in public libraries are meant. It seems that the current research is considered an innovative effort from several perspectives: a) in this research, an attempt has been made to make a meaningful organization in the field of scientific efforts made for the digital transformation of public libraries and for the first time, relevant research approaches are identified; b) presenting a broad classification of research conducted in the field of digital transformation of public libraries and identifying their common points is one of the initiatives of this research.
Language: Persian
Subfield: Library and Information Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7130596017