INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LIBRARIANSHIP, 8(3), 1-3. ISSN: 2474-3542 An Issue Featuring Diverse Authors and Topics This issue is an epitome of the journal itself. As the name of the journal – the International Journal of Librarianship indicates, this issue features a diverse group of authors with different LIS background from countries in different continents. Among them are trained librarians, independent researcher, and burgeoning PhD students. The diverse topics covered include: • Research conducted by a team of ALA Emerging Leaders 2022 on the ALA members’ attitudes and their perceived challenges on attending international conferences, • The development of the archival public accounts on China’s most popular social media platform - WeChat, • Job seeking prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the American academic libraries and the implications for both the job seekers and the hiring institutions, • Job ads analysis of the qualifications and skills required for cataloging positions in Academic Libraries, • Users’ perception of librarians’ attitudes in a Nigerian private university library and how that impacts users’ use of library, • A literature review of mobile-based library services, • An investigation of the availability of the cataloguing and classification courses on MOOC platforms, • And a review of the book Digital Transformative Library Collection and Services: A Smart Library Approach. Grace Liu et al. surveyed ALA members on their attitudes, needs and barriers to participating in international conferences. Their findings revealed a gap between librarians’ strong interest in attending such conferences and the fact that more than half of them never or rarely participated in one, primary due to lack of institutional funding. Their study was born out of an ALA Emerging Leaders project to investigate the interests in attending international conferences of the members of the ALA International Relations Round Table (IRRT). This group of researchers expanded the study to all ALA members and aimed to answer the research questions on what interests and challenges ALA members’ participation in international conferences, what they need and how can professional organizations like ALA support their members. The authors were able to uncover the barriers and pointed out the differences between members from public libraries and academic libraries. The authors explored the differences between in-person and virtual international conferences, the differences between funding in public and academic libraries, and individual decision making and shared the recommendations on how to support librarians in attending international conferences. They called for support for librarians’ professional network and professional development and explained why that’s something important. Ren / International Journal of Librarianship 8(3) 2 WeChat is the most popular social media platform in China. Two Chinese PhD students from the School of Information Management of Sun Yat-sen University, China presented a thorough review of the current state of archival education in the social media environment - WeChat in Mainland China. These two authors examined and explored how the advancement of information technology influenced the archival work and education. WeChat allows individuals or institutions to create personal or public account on the platform and allows others to subscribe to or view the content published on the public account and therefore can reach a wider audience. Such archival outlet can be used for disseminating official news, quality archival research articles, experiential learning, and industry information. The authors enlisted 17 public archival WeChat public accounts ran by 17 universities in China, which is almost half of all the Chinese universities that provide archival education. Andrea Quinn, the law librarian at Emory University’s School of Law described the challenges COVID-19 pandemic posed to job seekers and search committee members. The author compared a group of individuals hired by academic libraries before COVID-19 to another group hired by academic libraries during COVID-19 and reported interesting findings that have implications for both the job seekers and the hiring institutions. Interestingly, pre-existing geographic ties to the hiring institution plays an important part in the hiring during the pandemic. Andrea’s findings have strong implications for those seeking jobs at academic libraries and for MLIS students when they choose field work locations. Peng Mu analyzed cataloging librarians job ads in the United States academic libraries to find what skills, knowledge and abilities are required for those positions. His findings have implications for LIS educators in curriculum development and help LIS students who are seeking such jobs. Data were collected from universities’ websites, Indeed.com and Code4Lib Job from 2016-2023. The author identified essential qualities that candidates should have when seeking a cataloging librarians’ position. Michael and Olayemi from Nigeria investigated the possible influence of librarians’ attitudes toward users on users’ patronage in private university libraries. Librarians’ attitudes were defined by users’ perception of the librarians, librarians’ interpersonal relationship skill and their professionalism. Their findings provided evidence for librarians being approachable and professional and the value of the interpersonal and communication skills in a service industry. Considering how the COVID-19 pandemic forced libraries to find alternative ways to reach remote users, Singh and Madhusudhan from India reviewed literature related to the available mobile app - based library services like mobile OPAC, website, and databases during 2015-2022. The authors observed the types of the publications, the pattern of authorships, the growth trend of the publications and provided projections on the future state of the research on this topic. Adetayo from the Adeleke University in Nigeria explores if cataloging and classification can be learnt on MOOC platforms. The author found no catalog or classification courses offered on current MOOC platforms and made recommendations on how such courses can be included in MOOC platforms. Lastly, Singh reviewed the book Digital Transformative Library Collection and Services: A Smart Library Approach which presents a comprehensive overview of the transforming digital library services and practical applications in the concept of “smart library.” We hope you enjoy reading this issue! http://indeed.com/ Ren / International Journal of Librarianship 8(3) 3 Xiaoai Ren Co-Editors-in-Chief Editing contributors to this issue: Copy editing: Anne Kaay, Denise Lynne Montgomery, Helen Power, Jessica Koos Layout editing: Cordelia Tang, Cindy Li