| Cutting-edge technologies such as big data,Internet of things(IOTs)and artificial intelligence(AI)have injected new vitality into the development of smart libraries.Smart device is the carrier of new technology,which makes abstract technology become vivid and practical.It is through the use of smart devices that customers and librarians get close to cutting-edge technology.The purchase and application of smart devices in library should be the result of group decision and rational individual behavior,and its purpose is to improve the service quality and work efficiency of library so as to maximize the benefits.Whereas library has invested vast amounts of resources into the development and adoption of new technologies,but has not received the prospective earnings.Many scholars in the field of library have also begun to pay attention to this issue,but the research and application of smart devices is still in a very early stage.People's focus has also been limited to what new technologies can be developed in the library context.But in fact,another key issue is individual adaptive behavior.According to the adaptive structuration theory(AST),the factors lead to the success of information technology(IT)adoption can be divided into two categories:one is the matching degree of technology structure and current organizational structure,and the other is the adaptive learning behavior of organizations and individuals to the new technology.This paper is inclined to the latter issue.Some researchers have recognized the importance of customers in the adoption process of new technologies,whereas they ignore librarians are another close contact group.The upgrading of library services and the optimization of management depends on the collaborative work of librarians and library smart devices(LSDs).However,few studies have focused on the adoption of smart devices by librarians.In order to fill this gap,two research questions are come up with in this paper:What factors affect library profession's LSDs adoption intention and behavior?And which are the most critical factors among them?An empirical research was conducted to answer the two research questions.This study firstly explained the related concepts,key technologies,the significance of library smart devices and the application status of them in the literature review section.Through the review and analysis of previous literature,this study found that there are only theoretical and interpretive studies about librarians' pressure on new technologies environment,but lacks of empirical research.In addition,the smart device is one of the core features of the future smart library construction,so this study focuses on the two perspectives:librarians and the adoption of library smart devices.Then,the classical adaptive structuration theory was reviewed,and according to this theory,this study is positioned to analyze the adaptive behavior of individuals in the organization to adopt new information technology.In order to further understand the development status of library smart devices and enrich our empirical findings,this study interviewed 5 librarians and 1 library smart devices supplier.On the basis of classical adaptive structuration theory,the interview data were coded and analyzed manually.The opinions and suggestions expressed by the interviewees were divided into three dimensions and several sub-aspects.The three dimensions of the interview results are the individual literacy,technological feature and organizational atmosphere.The division of these three dimensions is consistent with the idea of adaptive structuration theory.The social structure of technology constrains the organization and individual who choose to use it,and the individual's adoption behavior is constrained by both of the social structure of technology and the organizational structure which comes from long-term previous practice of individuals.Even in the face of the same technology,different individual has different adoption behavior,and the reason may be closely related to their job tasks and the individual's information technology(IT)literacy.Meanwhile the individuals in the organization can decide whether to adopt the technology and which features to adopt.The individual's long-term adoption behavior will change the social structure of technology and organizational structure and constitute a new social structure,which is the so-called dynamic transformation process brought by the technology to the organization change.From the interview results,this study found that improving the work quality and working efficiency is the strongest expectation on smart devices,and one of the key factors restrain librarians to skillfully apply LSDs is their IT literacy which both includes their IT knowledge and use confidence.For the organizational atmosphere,this study found timely and efficient technological support and educational training are the major concerns of librarians.They also believed that sufficient financial investment in the organization and attention of high-level management may have a positive impact on the quality of smart devices and the organizational adaptable actions after adoption of LSDs.On the technological features,most of the technologies that LSDs rely on are borrowed from other fields,which makes the social structure of smart devices cannot perfectly match the existing organizational social structure.One solution to this problem is to adopt an agile IT development strategy that enhances the communication and feedback mechanisms between librarians and LSDs vendors at every stage of the design and development process,thus making technology,organizational institution,and individual tasks more compatible.Next,according to the original Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology(UTAUT)and AST,a model of factors influencing the adoption of library smart devices from the librarian's point of view was proposed to answer the two research questions.The model consists of seven variables,among which there are three independent variables(IT literacy,organizational facilitating condition and social influence)and four dependent variables(performance expectation,effort expectation,use intention and use behavior).In addition,10 hypotheses were proposed to explain the positive influence of the three independent variables on four dependent variables and their correlation.The questionnaire was made on the Wenjuanxing platform and distributed randomly to librarians in different parts of China through social software such as WeChat and QQ.A total of 152 questionnaires were collected,among which 142 were valid questionnaires.The SPSS-AMOS software proves that the questionnaire and the collected data have a high reliability and validity,and also verify that the modified model in this study have a high degree fit and fall into the acceptable range overall.The cross-analysis result of the demographic data of the questionnaire showed that the number of male and female interviewees account for 49 and 93 respectively.All of the respondents come from libraries in 28 provinces across China,and Hubei,Jiangxi and Jiangsu are the major provinces(21.83%,11.27%and 10.56%respectively).15 departments were mentioned,the most important four are the customer services department(37.2%),the resource construction department(33.8%),the circulation department(27.46%),and the information technology department(30%).The librarians who have used the library smart devices account for the majority,and few has not contacted with them.Male librarians believe that they use library smart devices more frequently than female librarians,but sample statistics show that the number of male librarians working in Chinese libraries is far less than that of female librarians.Male librarians are also more confident in their understanding of library smart devices.Nearly 30%of male respondents in the sample are very confident that they have a good knowledge of library smart devices,while only 15.05%of female librarians hold this confidence.Overall,no respondent thinks they do not know anything about library smart device,most of them think they know something about it,and only about 20%of librarians think they know very much about it.The results of the use motivation survey showed that improving work quality and efficiency was the most important motivation for respondents which accounts for 80%,followed by reducing workload and making libraries more attractive.The original intention of librarians to adopt smart library device is to reduce the workload and improve the work quality,but the current adoption behavior does not reach their expected condition.Besides,reputation,superior's requirements and the willingness of customers are also the motivations for libraries and librarians to adopt smart library device.Eight of the ten hypotheses are supported by empirical results.The two main factors that influences the adoption behavior of library smart devices are the use intention and facilitating condition.The use intention has the strongest positive influence on the use behavior(?=0.723,t=7.038,P<0.001).When librarians have a strong use intention or motivation,their use behavior will also increase significantly.Facilitating condition is another factor that has significant impact on use behavior in the proposed model which is behind the use intention.Facilitating condition includes:technical support,employee training,funding and high-level management attention.In the initial model of this paper,it was assumed that the facilitating condition had a significant effect on the use intention rather than the use behavior.However,the empirical results rejected the positive influence of facilitating condition on the use intention(?=-0.252,P=0.09>0.05),and support the influence of on use behavior(?=0.250,t=2.846,P<0.05).The interpretation might be that in the context of library,facilitating condition will not affect the librarian's use intention,but directly affect the librarian's use behavior.In addition,facilitating condition has also been shown to have a significant effect on performance expectations(?=0.415,t=4.384,P<0.001).No matter the high or low IT literacy librarians have,the facilitating condition will always help librarians make better use of the library's smart devices and thus improve their performance.Timely and effective technical support to help librarians faster to solve problems and to repair fault,employee training can help them to deepen the understanding of new technology and knowledge,a more reasonable financial investment will improve the quality of procurement of smart devices and the maintenance service,and more attention of the top management will comprehensively improve the adoption process of the smart device,so as to improve the librarians' job satisfaction and performance.The critical factors influencing the adoption intention are performance expectation,information technology literacy and social influence.Surprisingly,the hypothesis of effort expectation to use intention was not supported(?=0.093,P=0.367>0.05),the result only proved that the performance expectation had a positive and significant effect on the use intention(?=0.383,t=4.711,P<0.001).The reason is likely to be that librarians are paying more attention to improving their work productivity and quality with smart devices,which is the key to influencing their adoption intentions.They will not give up the willingness of using library smart devices due to the difficulty of learning process and,so no matter how much time and energy it costs to learning,they are always inclined to keep up with the trend of applying library smart device.They hope to be able to use and learn more about the library smart devices,therefore the effort expectation failed to show positive impact on use intention.Social influence in this study mainly refers to the influence of others on librarians' willingness to adopt smart library devices,including the requirements of leaders,customers' hope,peer recommendation and media publicity.Previous work showed that social influence has been proved to have a positive effect on users' intention to use in empirical research of many other fields.The results of this paper are consistent with previous work,which showed that social influence has a significant positive effect on librarians' adoption intentions(?=0.354,t=3.201,P<0.05),and they are willing to use smart devices because of the people who can influence their behaviors or the encouragement to their important people.Result also proved that IT literacy had second significant impact on use intention(?=0.723,t=7.083,p<0.001).Librarians with higher information technology literacy are considered to have a deeper understanding of smart devices.They generally have more experience in using smart devices in life than others,and they will take the initiative to seek for smart devices at work,so their willingness to use them will naturally be higher.On the contrary,those librarians with low IT literacy are afraid that too many smart devices appear in their work and life,which will interfere with their own life and bring burden to them,so their willingness will be lower.Moreover,IT literacy has a significant impact on effort expectation and performance expectation as well,which were(?=0.723,t=7.083,P<0.001)and(?=0.380,t=4.071,P<0.001),respectively.The higher level of information technology literacy,the more confident librarians are that they can make good use of the smart devices,consequently the less time and energy they spend on learning the smart devices and actually operating them in their work,which will increase their efforts expectation.At the same time,librarians are more confident that they can make good use of smart devices in their work,so as to bring more positive changes to their work.In addition to information technology literacy,the facilitating condition also has a significant impact on performance expectations(?=0.415,t=4.834,P<0.001). |
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