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Top1. Introduction
Many government investments on information communication technologies (ICTs) such as open government and open data put less emphasis on the demand side (Jurisch, Kautz, Wolf, & Krcmar, 2015). They often assume that citizen’s participation in the initiatives is given (Hellberg & Hedström, 2015). Data divide and lack of access to infrastructure or necessary skills were cited as critical determinants affecting the lack of participation (Gurstein, 2011). This condition gives rises to the crucial role of public libraries to mediate the connection between government and its constituents (Bertot, Jaeger, Langa, & McClure, 2006; Burke, Kowlowitz, Pardo, & Sutherland, 2014; Jaeger et al., 2014; Taylor et al., 2014). Through this mediation, digital inclusion could be increased, foremost, to the benefit of the “grassroots” populations and those challenged in using and benefiting from computers and the internet (Sey, Coward, Rothschild, Clark, & Koepke, 2013). The values offered by public libraries are significant in enhancing the achievement of the community open government ecosystem (Burke et al., 2014; Sayogo, Wang & Yuli, 2016). The library is also crucial in facilitating the implementation of smart cities (Loerke, Wyatt & McQuire, 2018; Mckenzie, 2000).
The change in information environment facilitated by the advancement of ICTs also transforms and enhanced libraries strategies and management (Little, 2013) concerning the libraries roles, contents, information services, data centers, and the relationships between a library and its user (Min, 2012; Salem et al., 2012). This situation gives rise to the phenomenon of smart libraries (Baryshev, Verkhovets, & Babina, 2018). The use of ICTs in facilitating the working and business processes of the library constitutes the “smart” aspect of the smart library (Freyberg, 2018). Schopfel (2018) proposes four dimensions of a smart library, namely: smart services, smart people, smart place, and smart governance. The smart library is users oriented, providing services that are “interactive, innovative, informative, real, changing and international” (Baryshev, Verkhovets, & Babina, 2018, p.537), and based on the information needs of the users (Alipour-Hafezi et al., 2019; Kim & Abbas, 2010). The smart library is less associated with physically collecting, storing, managing, and transferring knowledge (Koehler, 2004), but more on functioning as information commons, learning centers, and cultural infrastructure connecting community with information (Schöpfel, 2018).