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Comparing
Comparing digital libraries digital libraries
with social media from the dual with social
media
route perspective
Xianjin Zha 617
School of Information Management, Center for Studies of Information Resources,
Received 30 November 2017
Wuhan University, Wuhan, China Revised 4 June 2018
Kunfeng Liu 1 October 2018
23 January 2019
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China Accepted 3 February 2019

Yalan Yan
Evergrande School of Management,
Center for Service Science and Engineering,
Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Guanxiang Yan
Laboratory Center for Library and Information Science,
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, and
Jia Guo, Fenfang Cao and Yunzhi Wang
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Abstract
Purpose – Digital libraries and social media have emerged as two prominent online information sources
with different characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to compare digital libraries and social media
from the perspective of the dual route model which outlined a general framework of central and peripheral
route-induced attitude change.
Design/methodology/approach – Research hypotheses were developed and data collected from users of
digital libraries and social media were used for data analysis. The paired samples t-test was employed to
compare the means.
Findings – Both central route (information quality) and peripheral route (source credibility and reputation) of
digital libraries are higher than those of social media.
Practical implications – The important status of digital libraries as conventional information sources
should be propagated by various “marketing” ways. Managers of digital libraries should encourage their
users to use both digital libraries and social media so that some unique advantage of social media could
usefully complement digital libraries. They should also recognize the challenge brought by social media and
try various ways to enhance reputation.
Originality/value – Building on the dual route model, this study compares digital libraries and social media
in terms of the central route and peripheral route, which the authors believe presents a new lens for digital
library research and practice alike.
Keywords Digital libraries, Social media, Reputation, Information quality, Source credibility,
Dual route model
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Digital libraries are the extension of traditional physical libraries, delivering information
collection and associated services to users (Heradio et al., 2012). In China, digital libraries
in universities have developed rapidly since the China Academic Library and Information Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2019
pp. 617-634
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 71573195, © Emerald Publishing Limited
1468-4527
71774126, 71874124, 91646206, 71804136). DOI 10.1108/OIR-11-2017-0344
OIR System (CALIS) project was initiated by the Ministry of Education in 1998. CALIS
43,4 includes four national information centers: the Science, Social Science and Humanities
Information Center, the Engineering and Technology Information Center, the Agricultural
Information Center and the Medical Information Center. It has introduced various famous
Chinese and English databases covering diversified subjects and disciplines (Zha et al.,
2015). Social media are “a group of internet-based applications that build on the
618 ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and
exchange of User Generated Content,” becoming popular in the early 2000s (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). Social media not only provide social support but also informational
support for users (Bertot et al., 2012). Younger generations use social media to satisfy their
academic and everyday-life information needs (Kim, Sin and Yoo-Lee, 2014). Given that
individuals might use several information sources, digital libraries and social media are
selected as the two objects examined in our study. In the following, the research problem is
elaborated, the literature is reviewed, the hypotheses are developed and the methodology
is described. Then, the data analysis and results are presented, and finally implications
are discussed.

2. Research problem
There is ongoing discussion about digital libraries and social media. It was suggested that
digital libraries are “no longer islands of information, but one among many nodes through
which information flows to the users” (Ross and Sennyey, 2008, p. 146). It was also
suggested that “the epistemic consequences of people using Wikipedia as a source of
information are likely to be quite good” (Fallis, 2008, p. 1662). Consequently, building and
retaining the loyalty of users poses new challenges for digital libraries (Kiran and Diljit,
2012). The loyalty of users to digital libraries is declining (Xu and Du, 2018). Indeed, most
users enter the library but do not use library resources or services. Instead, “they are buying
coffee in our cafes, reading e-mail on our terminals, socializing with friends, or using group
studies” (Ross and Sennyey, 2008, p. 146). Furthermore, prior literature illustrates that many
university students depend much on social media. Students’ information behavior habits
were suggested to have been well-developed before attending universities (Ross and
Sennyey, 2008). University students tend to have positive attitudes toward academic use of
social media ( Jahan and Ahmed, 2012). More than 80 percent of college students use social
media for their academic purposes in addition to information seeking in daily life (Kim, Sin
and Yoo-Lee, 2014). College students use social media as a quick channel to expand their
knowledge (Sharma et al., 2016). In China, the number of social media users continues to
grow rapidly, and most users are college students (CNNIC, 2018).
In the modern information society, we suggest that highlighting the important status of
digital libraries as conventional information sources is critical. Regarding the attitude
change toward information sources, the dual route model provides a useful perspective in
terms of the central and peripheral routes (Petty and Cacioppo, 1984, 1986). Following the
dual route model, prior studies have tested and extended the causal relationship proposed in
the dual route model in various information settings, such as the adoption of document
management system (Bhattacherjee and Sanford, 2006), members’ loyalty to online
communities (Chen and Ku, 2013) and persuasive processes of mobile tourism shopping
(Kim et al., 2016). However, employing the dual route model to compare different information
sources, especially compare digital libraries with social media, has been largely overlooked
in the literature. Given the increasing appreciation of quality and knowledge value of social
media, drawing on the dual route model to compare social media with digital libraries is
much needed. To fill this gap, the current study aims at exploring the exact nature by
comparing digital libraries with social media from the central route (information quality)
and the peripheral route (source credibility and reputation).
3. Literature review Comparing
3.1 Digital libraries and social media digital libraries
Digital libraries and social media have emerged as two prominent online information sources with social
with different characteristics. Digital libraries manipulate digital data in any medium and
exist in distributed networks (Borgman, 1999; Noh, 2016). Early digital libraries were mostly media
academic and research libraries (Kwanya et al., 2011) and digital libraries in universities have
gone “from a curiosity to mainstream” over the last 30 years (Arms, 2012, p. 579). Social media 619
are described as “online social networks in which people with common interests, goals, or
practices interact to share information and knowledge, and engage in social interaction”
(Chiu et al., 2006, p. 1873). From the perspective of developers and managers, digital libraries
and social media have different purpose. The final aim of digital libraries is facilitating human
knowledge to be fully accessed by anyone anytime anywhere through various information
and communication technologies in a friendly way without any barriers (Heradio et al., 2012).
Social media aim at creating highly interactive platforms via which communities and
individuals could share, co-create, modify and discuss user-generated content (Kietzmann
et al., 2011). From the perspective of users, digital libraries and social media denote different
purpose. Using digital libraries seems to relate more to study and work, whereas using social
media seems to relate more to leisure and society (Yan and Zha, 2014).
Diversified social media have been widely infiltrated into people’s daily life. Indeed, social
media has made it faster and easier for people to produce and disseminate mass information
now than ever before (Lu and Yuan, 2011). Social media has become an important tool for
information dissemination in the whole society (Fasae and Adegbilero-Iwari, 2016). The world’s
leading social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have attracted
millions of users and it is very convenient and quick for people to share and seek information
and knowledge via social media (Li et al., 2018; Panahi, 2016). In China, the popular social media
applications such as Sina Microblog, Baidu Know and ScienceNet Blog have become important
and free information sources. Users are able to obtain various information such as
transportation, personal, financial and cultural information they need from social media (Hamid
et al., 2016). With the proliferation of social media, users increasingly use social media in
different ways and for different purposes (Feroz Khan et al., 2014; Su et al., 2018). Consequently,
social media not only relate to leisure and society, but also relate to study and work.
People are using social media to obtain some services that originally belonged to digital
libraries. Younger generations were suggested to use social media to satisfy their academic and
everyday-life information needs (Kim, Sin and Yoo-Lee, 2014). Authors are more likely to
choose academic social media instead of institutional repositories for posting copies of their
published articles (Björk, 2016). As for academic information acquisition, it was suggested that
many researchers now track and request the latest research papers by following other users on
ResearchGate or other academic social network sites (Thelwall and Kousha, 2015). As for
academic information seeking, Wikipedia is regarded as a useful information source and
widely used among university students (Kim, Sin and Tsai, 2014). As for academic information
dissemination, it was suggested that individual citizens and individual researchers are widely
involved in the communication of science on Twitter (Didegah et al., 2018).

3.2 Dual route model

The dual route model was proposed by Petty and Cacioppo (1984, 1986) who outlined a
general framework of central and peripheral route-induced attitude change. The essence of
the dual route model is presented in Figure 1.
Elaboration means the extent to which an individual thinks about the issue-relevant
arguments contained in information carefully (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The dual route
model postulates two distinct routes to persuasion. The central route is around the true
merits of the information provided and the peripheral route refers to simple cues such as
OIR Elaboration
43,4 likelihood

Argument
H+ H–
quality
H+
Central route
620 Attitude change

Peripheral H+
Figure 1. cues
Dual route model
Peripheral route

source factors, affective states or simple inferences (Petty et al., 1997). When elaboration
anchored at the high end, the effect of the central route on attitude change would increase.
When elaboration anchored at the low end, the effect of the peripheral route on attitude
change would increase (Cacioppo and Petty, 1984). Elaboration likelihood can be reflected
by motivation variables such as need for cognition (Cacioppo et al., 1983), involvement
(Sussman and Siegel, 2003) and job relevance (Alpar et al., 2015). It can also be reflected by
ability variables such as user expertise (Bhattacherjee and Sanford, 2006), self-efficacy
(Zhou, 2012) and person-job fit (Gregory et al., 2013).
Following the dual route model, many studies have examined the effects of central and
peripheral routes on attitude change in different settings. Bhattacherjee and Sanford (2006)
examined the adoption of document management system, finding that the central route
(argument quality) and the peripheral route (source credibility) positively impact perceived
usefulness which further positively impacts attitude. Meanwhile, user expertise positively
moderates the central route and negatively moderates the peripheral route. Zhou (2012)
examined users’ initial trust in mobile banking, finding that the central route (information
quality and service quality) and the peripheral route (structural assurance, system quality and
reputation) have positive influences on initial trust. Meanwhile, self-efficacy positively
moderates the impacts of information quality and service quality on initial trust, and
negatively moderates the impacts of structural assurance and system quality on initial trust.
Chen and Ku (2013) examined members’ loyalty to online communities, finding that both the
central route (argument quality) and the peripheral route (source credibility) directly
affect members’ relationship quality, which further impacts members’ behavioral loyalty to
online communities. Alpar et al. (2015) examined business intelligence reports reusing, finding
that the central route (argument quality) and the peripheral route (report subscriptions,
hierarchical level) have positive impacts on perceived usefulness. Meanwhile, job relevance
and expertise positively moderates the impacts of argument quality on perceived usefulness,
and negatively moderates the impacts of hierarchical level on perceived usefulness. Kim et al.
(2016) examined the persuasive processes of mobile tourism shopping, finding that the central
route (argument quality) significantly influences perceived usefulness; the peripheral route
(source credibility) has positive effects on site attachment and perceived usefulness.
However, prior studies stayed at testing and extending the causal relationship proposed
in the dual route model oriented to a certain information setting. The purpose of the current
study is not to test or extend the causal relationship. Instead, the current study focuses on
the central route and peripheral route of both digital libraries and social media which are
two distinct and important online information sources. The current study can help better
understand the exact nature of the central route and peripheral route of digital libraries and
social media as perceived by users, which we suggest provides a new lens for digital library
research and practice alike.
4. Hypotheses development Comparing
The current study aims at comparing digital libraries with social media in terms of digital libraries
information quality which is the central route. It also compares digital libraries with social with social
media in terms of source credibility and reputation which are the peripheral route.
media
4.1 Central route of digital libraries and social media
Information quality is defined as the quality of outputs produced by information systems 621
(IS) in the form of online reports or online screens, concerning accuracy, completeness and
currency (Gorla et al., 2010). Accuracy refers to users’ perceptions of the degree to which the
information generated by IS is right and correct; completeness refers to users’ perceptions of
the degree to which IS provide all necessary information; and currency refers to the degree
as perceived by users to which the information generated by IS is current and up to date
(Wixom and Todd, 2005). In the current study, information quality reflects the true merits of
information, referring to the quality of outputs digital libraries or social media produce,
concerning currency, accuracy and completeness.
Social media build on the technological and ideological foundations of Web 2.0, allowing
users to generate content (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Open sources in social media lack
quality assurance mechanisms, offering information in mixed and unfiltered forms with
different levels of quality (Kim and Sin, 2011). Information quality has become a concern with
traditional and specific gate-keeping like peer review and editorial review replaced by user
review on the information production side (Arazy and Kopak, 2011). Users who lack domain
expertise cannot be responsible for the quality of information they contribute, which increases
the likelihood of poor quality messages, misinformation and anecdotes (Coleman et al., 2009;
Lin et al., 2016). In the crowd environment, users lack incentives to contribute high-quality
information (Lukyanenko et al., 2014). High views and well-commented educational videos in
social media might not imply quality (Lee et al., 2017). By contrast, digital libraries are
regarded as conventional information sources, providing users with prestigious academic
databases published by Elsevier, Emerald, Wiley, Springer, etc. Yan et al. (2014) compared
digital libraries with virtual communities from the perspective of e-quality (information
quality, system quality and service quality), suggesting that information quality of digital
libraries (IQDL) is significant higher than that of virtual communities. We thus make the
hypothesis below:
H1. IQDL is significantly higher than that of social media.

4.2 Peripheral route of digital libraries and social media

Source credibility reflects source factors and affective states that can be used to evaluate
the content, but are not the content per se (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986; Petty et al., 1997).
Expertise and authority imply the knowledge and skills of the source. The ability of
identifying expertise and authority has been widely recognized as a key component of
source credibility. Another important component of source credibility is identity cues that
could trigger credibility perceptions (Lin et al., 2016). In the current study, source
credibility is defined as the credibility of the persons who generate information in social
media or digital libraries.
Information provided by digital libraries is produced by experts (Yan and Zha, 2014).
The experts generally include professors, doctoral students and researchers who have a
certain professional background, thus having expertise in a specific field. Their identity can
be easily identified in terms of their affiliated organizations like universities and research
institutions. By contrast, the information on social media is generated by the crowd, with the
result that more and more sources with mixed and even dubious provenance are available
(Arazy and Kopak, 2011). Given information anonymity and aggregated authorship on
OIR social media, it is difficult to identify the identity of information producers (Lin et al., 2016).
43,4 They are random users, some can be opinion leaders or celebrities, but some can be
malicious users without any expertise (Zhang et al., 2016). They may have different
backgrounds, beliefs and motivations as opposed to professionals (Zhang et al., 2015; Bertot
et al., 2012). Even if there are some experts and authorities on social media, the degree to
which each information producer can be believed remains unclear (Flanagin and Metzger,
622 2013). High views and well-commented educational videos in social media might not imply
credibility (Lee et al., 2017). It is thus reasonable to suggest that authority and identity of
digital libraries are higher than those of social media. Given that authority and identity are
important components of source credibility (Lin et al., 2016), we make the hypothesis below:
H2. Source credibility of digital libraries (SCDL) is significantly higher than that of social
media.
Reputation also reflects source factors and affective states that are not the content per se but
can be used to evaluate the content (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986; Petty et al., 1997). Compared
with source credibility which reflects one peripheral cue at the level of individuals,
reputation represents one peripheral cue at the level of organization. In the current study,
reputation is defined as the degree to which people believe in the honesty of social media or
digital libraries toward their users and the degree to which people believe that social media
or digital libraries are known.
Digital libraries are the extension of traditional physical libraries which have been going
on for centuries and their good reputation has long been deeply rooted in people’s minds
(Borgman, 1999). Digital libraries are not only well known, but also honesty toward their
users. Indeed, digital libraries provide quality electronic collections, powerful searching
functions and information services for users (Lai et al., 2014). System quality and service
quality of digital libraries are suggested to be higher than those of virtual communities
(Yan et al., 2014). During the last 30 years, governments attach great importance to the
construction of digital libraries and the number of digital library projects keeps on growing
in the past decade (Zhang, 2010). Regarding social media which include a group of internet-
based applications, they emerged at the end of 1980s and became more popular with the
growing availability of high-speed internet access in the early 2000s (Kaplan and Haenlein,
2010). The main purpose of social media is to provide a platform for people to communicate,
interact and share content (Bertot et al., 2012). Some social media applications like Facebook
and Twitter have become widely accepted by people. They are indeed very popular and
even governments have used them to publish information (Picazo-Vela et al., 2016).
However, it seems to be hard to build honest image of social media, given that many
problems such as rumors, information security issues, privacy issues have emerged in the
process of social media use (Bertot et al., 2012; Zhao et al., 2016). In this situation, although
some social media applications are well known, people still could not fully believe in them
( Johnson and Kaye, 2015). We thus make the hypothesis below:
H3. Reputation of digital libraries is significantly higher than that of social media.

5. Methodology
5.1 Research method
The current study employs the quantitative method to compare digital libraries with social
media from the perspective of the dual route model. There are several reasons for choosing
the quantitative approach. First, prior studies have developed some constructs (latent
variables) such as information quality, source credibility and reputation that could be
applied in the dual route model. It is thus possible for all of the constructs and their
corresponding measures in the current study to be adapted from prior studies so as to
guarantee the measure validity. Second, given the increasing acknowledgment of quality, Comparing
reliability and knowledge value of social media, the quantitative method could present the digital libraries
exact mean difference of information quality, source credibility and reputation between with social
digital libraries and social media. Third, the three hypotheses which are developed oriented
to the whole population could be confirmed by using the paired samples t-test, thus media
highlighting the important status of digital libraries as conventional information sources in
the modern information society. 623
5.2 Measures development
We investigate six constructs in this study, namely IQDL, SCDL, reputation of digital libraries,
information quality of social media (IQSM), source credibility of social media (SCSM) and
reputation of social media. All the constructs and their corresponding measures were adapted
from prior studies. Specifically, the items measuring information quality and source credibility
were adapted from Bhattacherjee and Sanford (2006), the items measuring reputation were
adapted from Koufaris and Hampton-Sosa (2004). In total, 20 graduate students were invited
for the pilot survey. Based on their feedback, wordings were adjusted in several items to
improve readability and clarity. The complete instrument that contains constructs, definitions
and items can be found in Table AI. All items in this study were measured with a seven-point
disagree/agree Likert scale (1 represents “strongly disagree,” 7 represents “strongly agree”).

5.3 Data collection

To collect empirical data, we conducted a large-scale survey in one comprehensive university
located in central China, where there are 3,737 full-time faculty members, 6,741 doctoral
students, 16,625 master students, 31,886 undergraduate students and 1,577 foreign students
(WHU, 2015). This university’s library is one of the seven national regional centers of CALIS,
having purchased massive, diversified types of digital resources. In our questionnaire, brief
descriptions about digital libraries and social media were first introduced. Specifically, we
described the meaning of social media, indicating that social media like Sina Microblog, Baidu
Baike, Baidu Know, ScienceNet Blog and Wikipedia have become important and free
information sources. Meanwhile, we described that digital libraries in universities can provide
various digital resources to users. We listed some English databases such as SCI, SSCI,
Emerald, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, IEEE and Sage, and some Chinese databases such as China
National Knowledge Infrastructure, CSSCI, VIP Chinese Science and Technology Periodicals.
Potential respondents were invited to visit the online questionnaire after the questionnaire
was published online. First, based on personal profiles provided by the official website of this
university, e-mails were sent to potential respondents who were invited to visit the online
questionnaire by clicking the URL link. Second, the teachers of some classes of this university
were first contacted and the purpose of our study was explained to them. After the approval of
them, these classes were approached, and potential respondents in these classes were invited
to scan the QR code of the online questionnaire by their smart phones. Third, potential
respondents who entered the university library were invited to use their smart phones to scan
the QR code of the online questionnaire. The data collection was undertaken on a voluntary
basis, lasting for about two months. Consequently, data collected from 381 respondents
studying or working in this university were used for data analysis. The basic information of
these respondents is shown in Table I.

6. Data analysis and results

6.1 Measurement model validation
We first assessed the measurement model validity in terms of content validity, reliability,
convergent validity and discriminant validity (Straub et al., 2004). Regarding content
OIR Category Item Frequency %
43,4
Gender Male 154 40
Female 227 60
Age o18 8 2
18–25 330 86
26–35 33 9
624 W35 10 3
Field Natural sciences 97 25
Social sciences 212 56
Arts and humanities 46 12
Others 26 7
Position Undergraduate 218 57
Master student 117 31
Doctoral student 36 9
Faculty 10 3
Your experience with digital libraries (years) o1 112 29
1–2 84 22
2–3 55 15
3–4 49 13
W4 81 21
Your experience with social media (years) o1 28 7
1–2 35 9
2–3 55 14
3–4 74 20
Table I. W4 189 50
Basic information of Which information source you used first Digital libraries 69 18
survey respondents Social media 312 82

validity, since all the constructs and their corresponding measure items in the current study
are based on prior studies, we thus suggest that these constructs and items each have
correct and clear meaning.
The score of six constructs was each obtained in terms of the average value of specified
items. Then all the loadings were calculated. Given that the loading of the first item of IQSM
is relatively low, we thus dropped it to raise this construct’s reliability and convergent
validity (Churchill, 1979). Following this, the values of average variance extracted (AVE),
Cronbach’s α and composite reliability (CR) were calculated. Table II illustrates the
corresponding values. It can be seen that the smallest value of AVE is 0.661, larger than
the recommendation of 0.5. The smallest value of CR is 0.852, exceeding the
recommendation of 0.7. Although the Cronbach’s α of IQSM is 0.649 which is a bit
smaller than the recommendation of 0.7, it can be regarded to have higher reliability and
convergent validity given that it has larger values of AVE and CR (Straub et al., 2004).

Constructs Items AVE CR Cronbach’s α

Information quality of digital libraries (IQDL) 3 0.727 0.888 0.810

Source credibility of digital libraries (SCDL) 3 0.885 0.958 0.935
Reputation of digital libraries (REPDL) 3 0.790 0.919 0.860
Table II. Information quality of social media (IQSM) 2 0.743 0.852 0.649
Overview of Source credibility of social media (SCSM) 3 0.769 0.909 0.847
measurement model Reputation of social media (REPSM) 3 0.661 0.853 0.729
As shown in Table III, the square roots of each constructs’ AVE (italic values) are larger Comparing
than its correlations with other constructs, suggesting that all the constructs have a digital libraries
sufficient discriminant validity (Straub et al., 2004). with social
Given that the measurement model is valid and reliable, we thus believe it is appropriate
to use these data for further analysis. Specifically, the discriminant validity suggests that media
each of these six constructs is a meaningful, separate variable and it is useful to compare
digital libraries with social media from the central route and peripheral route. The 625
convergent validity and reliability of these six constructs suggest that it is reasonable to
present data distribution and compare means at the construct level as described below.

6.2 Comparing the central route of digital libraries and social media
Information quality is the central route. With regard to IQDL, respondents were asked to
rate the following statements:
• IQDL1: the information in the digital library of my university is up to date.
• IQDL2: the information in the digital library of my university is accurate.
• IQDL3: the information in the digital library of my university is comprehensive.
All of these three items were each measured with a seven-point disagree/agree Likert scale.
The last two items were used for data analysis so as to match the two items used in IQSM.
First, we counted the number of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 for each item according to the
381 respondents’ choice. Then, we summed the corresponding number of these two items,
respectively, obtaining the subtotal of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 of IQDL. In this fashion, the total
number of IQDL is 762 (381×2).
Likewise, regarding IQSM, respondents were asked to give responses to the three similar
items as presented in Table AI (IQSM1 was dropped). The calculation of the subtotal of 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 of IQSM and other four constructs below is in the same way as that of IQDL
above. Figure 2 presents the comparison between information quality of digital libraries
and social media.
From Figure 2, it can be seen that 7.35 percent (56/762) of the respondents think that
digital libraries have lower levels of information quality, while 77.56 percent (591/762) think
that digital libraries have higher levels of information quality. Meanwhile, 15.09 percent
(115/762) chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude. For IQSM, 25.33 percent (193/762) of the
participants think that social media have lower levels of information quality, while
37.79 percent (288/762) think that social media have higher levels of information quality.
Meanwhile, 36.88 percent (281/762) chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude.

6.3 Comparing the peripheral route of digital libraries and social media
Source credibility and reputation are the peripheral route. With regard to SCDL,
respondents were asked to rate the three statements presented in Table AI. In this case, the

IQDL SCDL REPDL IQSM SCSM REPSM

IQDL 0.853
SCDL 0.715 0.941
REPDL 0.677 0.693 0.889
IQSM 0.256 0.198 0.181 0.862 Table III.
SCSM 0.196 0.134 0.130 0.620 0.877 Correlations between
REPSM 0.363 0.333 0.306 0.486 0.513 0.813 constructs and square
Note: Italicized values are the square root of each construct’s AVE roots of AVE
OIR total number of SCDL amounts to 1,143 (381×3). The same data analysis as described above
43,4 was applied for SCDL. Similarly, regarding SCSM, respondents were asked to give
responses to the three similar items (see Table AI). Figure 3 presents the comparison
between source credibility of digital libraries and social media.
From Figure 3, it can be seen that 3.76 percent (43/1,143) of the respondents think that
digital libraries have lower levels of source credibility, while 86.00 percent (983/1,143) think
626 that digital libraries have higher levels of source credibility. Meanwhile, 10.24 percent
(117/1,143) chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude. As for SCSM, 32.81 percent (375/1,143) of
the respondents think that social media have lower levels of source credibility, while
27.56 percent (315/1,143) think that social media have higher levels of source credibility.
Meanwhile, 39.63 percent (453/1,143) chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude.
With regard to REPDL (reputation of digital libraries), respondents were asked to rate
the three statements presented in Table AI. In this case, the total number of REPDL
amounts to 1,143 (381×3). The same data analysis as described above was applied for
REPDL. Similarly, regarding REPSM (reputation of social media), respondents were asked
to give responses to the three similar items (see Table AI). Figure 4 presents the comparison
between reputation of digital libraries and social media.

300
281 279
250
211
200 182
Subtotal

151
150
115 101
100 83

31 38
50 11 23
11
Figure 2. 7
0
Comparison between 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
information quality of
digital libraries and Information quality of digital libraries
social media
Information quality of social media

500
453 470
450
400
350
276
300 274
Subtotal

250
232 237
200
150 117
81
100 66
20 26
50 9
Figure 3. 8 17
Comparison between 0
source credibility of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
digital libraries and Source credibility of digital libraries
social media
Source credibility of social media
 450
401
Comparing
400 digital libraries
350 351 319 with social
300
257 media
Subtotal

250 256 210

200
150
145 627
126 91
100 48
34
50 14 Figure 4.
12 22
0 Comparison between
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 reputation of digital
Reputation of digital libraries libraries and social
media
Reputation of social media

From Figure 4, it can be seen that 7.35 percent (84/1,143) of the respondents think that
digital libraries have lower levels of reputation, while 79.97 percent (914/1,143) think
that digital libraries have higher levels of reputation. Meanwhile, 12.68 percent (145/1,143)
chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude. As for reputation of social media, 15.05 percent
(172/1,143) of the respondents think that social media have lower levels of reputation, while
54.24 percent (620/1,143) think that social media have higher levels of reputation.
Meanwhile, 30.71 percent (351/1,143) chose 4, reflecting the neutral attitude.

6.4 Paired samples t-test

Figures 2–4 present the comparison of information quality, source credibility and reputation
between digital libraries and social media in terms of data distribution. In order to present
the exact mean difference of information quality, source credibility and reputation between
digital libraries and social media, a statistical method was employed to compare the means.
Specifically, the paired samples t-test oriented to dependent samples was used. Table IV
presents the results, suggesting that there are significant mean differences for information
quality, source credibility and reputation between digital libraries and social media.
From Table IV, it can be seen that the mean difference between SCDL and SCSM is the
largest at 1.697, while the mean difference between reputation of digital libraries and
reputation of social media is the smallest at 0.799. For both central route and peripheral
route, digital libraries significantly exceed social media. So, H1–H3 are all supported.

n Mean SD Mean difference t Significance (2-tailed)

Pair 1
IQDL 381 5.176 1.037 0.952 15.000 0.000***
IQSM 381 4.224 0.993
Pair 2
SCDL 381 5.626 1.041 1.697 24.959 0.000***
SCSM 381 3.929 0.974
Pair 3
REPDL 381 5.483 1.116 0.799 12.919 0.000***
REPSM 381 4.684 0.914 Table IV.
Note: ***p o0.001 Paired samples t-test
OIR 7. Discussion
43,4 7.1 Implications for theory
Digital libraries and social media have emerged as two distinct and important online
information sources, having obviously been impacting how a large number of people obtain
information they need. In essence, digital libraries and business entities function differently
(Kiran and Diljit, 2012). The final aim of digital libraries lies in facilitating human knowledge
628 to be fully accessed without barriers of time, distance, culture and language (Heradio et al.,
2012). In recent years, ongoing discussion about the use of digital libraries and social media
can be frequently seen (e.g. Fallis, 2008; Kiran and Diljit, 2012; Ross and Sennyey, 2008; Xu
and Du, 2018) and many university students depend much on social media (e.g. Jahan and
Ahmed, 2012; Kim, Sin and Yoo-Lee, 2014; Ross and Sennyey, 2008; Sharma et al., 2016).
Consequently, digital libraries face fierce competition in the modern information society.
This study makes several theoretical contributions to the existing literature. First, the
dual route model denotes that both central and peripheral route can induce attitude change
toward information sources (Petty and Cacioppo, 1984, 1986). Prior studies generally tested
and extended the causal relationship as proposed in the dual route model oriented to a
certain information context. As a result, the existing literature contains few studies
employing the dual route model to compare different information sources. The current study
contributes to the dual route model by comparing digital libraries with social media in terms
of the central route and peripheral route. Second, this study developed one hypothesis
oriented to the central route and two hypotheses oriented to the peripheral route. Three
hypotheses suggest that information quality, source credibility and reputation of digital
libraries are each significantly higher than those of social media. The current study
contributes to the dual route model by theoretically developing three hypotheses oriented to
the whole population, highlighting the important status of digital libraries as conventional
information sources in the modern information society. Third, this study employs the
quantitative method to confirm the three hypotheses. Specifically, the paired samples t-test
was used to present the exact mean difference of information quality, source credibility and
reputation between digital libraries and social media.

7.2 Implications for practice

Three hypotheses are all supported based on means comparison, indicating that information
quality, source credibility and reputation of digital libraries are significantly higher than
those of social media. However, from Figures 2–4, it can be seen that there are some
respondents who think that digital libraries have lower levels of information quality, source
credibility and reputation. Indeed, attracting college students to use digital libraries is a big
challenge since their habits of information seeking are well formed before arriving on
campus (Ross and Sennyey, 2008). In Chinese universities, some public elective courses like
“network information resources retrieval and utilization” are offered to students especially
to freshmen, which usually teach how to use university library resources. We suggest that
these courses cannot guarantee that all of the students can fully appreciate the information
quality, source credibility and reputation of digital libraries. We thus recommend that the
important status of digital libraries as conventional information sources should be
propagated by various “marketing” ways at the levels of universities, departments and
classes. Table I shows that 82 percent of respondents used social media first. It is reasonable
to suggest that more and more students will know and use social media first before they
have the opportunity to use university digital libraries in the future. In this situation, for the
students who just enter universities, they should be given more attention and be much
encouraged to use digital libraries.
Social media aim at providing a platform for people to communicate, interact and
share content, providing not only social support but also informational support for users
(Bertot et al., 2012; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Compared with digital libraries, social media Comparing
can be regarded as unconventional information sources (Yan and Zha, 2014). Although digital libraries
information quality, source credibility and reputation of social media are found in the with social
current study to be lower than those of digital libraries, the quality, knowledge value and
reliability of social media have been increasingly acknowledged. Indeed, it is suggested that media
Wikipedia as a kind of social media could result in positive and good epistemic effects for
people. The quality, reliability and knowledge value of user-generated Wikipedia compares 629
favorably to those of traditional encyclopedias produced by experts (Fallis, 2008). The
online collective wisdom is usually correct even though critics pointed on tremendous errors
and total distortions on the web (Ross and Sennyey, 2008). Blogs and tweets can be
effectively used to criticize the methodology or point out the technical errors of some papers
published in top journals within days of publication. “To many researchers, such rapid
response is all to the good, because it weeds out sloppy work faster” (Mandavilli, 2011,
p. 286). User-generated content is useful since it increasingly supports the analysis and
decision making in many contexts including scientific research, business applications,
e-commerce and emergency management (Lukyanenko et al., 2014). We thus recommend
that managers of digital libraries should recognize that libraries are no longer islands of
information. They should encourage their users to continue using digital libraries on the one
hand. On the other hand, they should encourage them to use social media in the meantime so
that some unique advantage of social media could usefully complement digital libraries.
From Table IV, it can be seen that the mean difference between reputation of digital
libraries and reputation of social media is the smallest one. This can be easily understood.
Compared with digital libraries which are the extension of physical libraries, social media
have a short history. However, the proliferation of social media has brought increasing
impact on people. On social media, some people are for business, some for education and
some for entertainment (Rosenbaum and Shachaf, 2010). Some social media applications like
Facebook and Twitter have become very popular and have been used in many fields
including governments (Picazo-Vela et al., 2016). In China, some social media applications
like Baidu Know, ScienceNet Blog and Sina Microblog are well known. Even though
reputation belongs to peripheral cues, the effect of it cannot be ignored. In this situation, we
recommend that managers of digital libraries should recognize the challenge brought by
social media. They should try various ways to enhance reputation. For example, they should
design and provide more services including integrating into their users’ environments by
embedded service. They should organize multi-form user training activities to introduce the
characteristics of purchased academic databases. They should develop mobile libraries so
that users could use digital libraries when they have fragmented time such as when waiting
for somebody or when they are on transport. They should pay attention to users’ feedback
so that they could obtain optimal experience when using digital libraries. Only in this way,
can reputation of digital libraries be maintained and enhanced, with the final aim of digital
libraries to be realized.

7.3 Limitations and future research directions

This study has several limitations. First, Big Data are characterized with velocity, veracity
and volume. Formal and informal information is dramatically produced in the modern
information society, where “the amount of information being created every two days is
equivalent to that created from the dawn of civilization until year 2003” ( Jackson and
Farzaneh, 2012, p. 523). Future study could explore whether the implication of Big Data
favor social media or digital libraries. Second, this study used the quantitative method given
some reasons. However, future study could use the qualitative method which is very helpful
for collecting richer data regarding information quality, source credibility, reputation and
the use of different information sources. Third, this paper focuses on digital libraries as a
OIR whole and social media as a whole. In other words, three hypotheses are oriented to digital
43,4 libraries and social media without differentiating types of information resources. Given that
the selection of any study object might have its limitation to some extent; future study could
examine specific types of information resources. Fourth, this study conducted data
collection in one comprehensive university located in central China. The library of this
university has purchased diversified types of domestic and foreign digital resources. We
630 suggest that this university could potentially represent a typical population context.
However, further investigation in other universities is needed to show the generalizability of
the findings.

8. Conclusion
Digital libraries are no longer islands of information but one among many information
nodes (Ross and Sennyey, 2008). The current study compares the central route and
peripheral route of digital libraries and social media. The results indicate that both central
route (information quality) and peripheral route (source credibility and reputation) of digital
libraries are significantly higher than those of social media. Consequently, the important
status of digital libraries as conventional information sources is confirmed. The current
study could help better understand the exact nature of information quality, source
credibility and reputation of digital libraries and social media. It can help managers of
digital libraries recognize the advantage of both digital libraries and social media. It can
help them to use various ways to attract potential users to use digital libraries and enhance
the reputation of digital libraries. In the modern information society, digital libraries and
social media have emerged as two distinct and important online information sources.
Information seekers should be encouraged to use both of them, which can promote and
guarantee diversified information context, with the result that information seekers can reap
significant rewards.

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OIR Appendix
43,4

Constructs Definitions Items

Information quality of The quality of outputs digital

1. The information in the digital library of my
634 digital libraries libraries produce, concerning
university is up to date
(adapted from currency, accuracy and 2. The information in the digital library of my
Bhattacherjee and completeness university is accurate
Sanford, 2006) 3. The information in the digital library of my
university is comprehensive
Source credibility of The credibility of the persons 1. The persons generating information in the digital
digital libraries who generate information in library of my university are trustworthy
(adapted from digital libraries 2. The persons generating information in the digital
Bhattacherjee and library of my university are knowledgeable
Sanford, 2006) 3. The persons generating information in the digital
library of my university are credible
Reputation of digital The degree to which people 1. The digital library of my university is well-known
libraries (adapted believe in digital libraries’ 2. The digital library of my university has a good
from Koufaris and honesty toward their users reputation
Hampton-Sosa, 2004) and the degree to which 3. The digital library of my university has a
people believe that digital reputation for being honest
libraries are known
Information quality of The quality of outputs social 1. The information in social media is up to date
social media (adapted media produce, concerning (dropped)
from Bhattacherjee currency, accuracy and 2. The information in social media is accurate.
and Sanford, 2006) completeness 3. The information in social media is comprehensive
Source credibility of The credibility of the persons 1. The persons generating information in social
social media (adapted who generate information in media are trustworthy
from Bhattacherjee social media 2. The persons generating information in social
and Sanford, 2006) media are knowledgeable
3. The persons generating information in social
media are credible
Reputation of social The degree to which people 1. Social media are well-known
media (adapted from believe in social media’ 2. Social media have a good reputation
Koufaris and honesty toward their users 3. Social media have a reputation for being honest
Hampton-Sosa, 2004) and the degree to which
Table AI. people believe that social
Constructs and items media are known

Corresponding author
Yalan Yan can be contacted at: yalanyan@163.com

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