Positive and Negative Topics of Metaverse Library from China: A Sentiment-Topic Analysis

Abstract The concept of metaverse libraries has the potential to usher in the next phase of library development. Chinese scholars in the field of library science have engaged in extensive discussions about metaverse libraries. This study investigates the potential of metaverse libraries and aims to provide a comprehensive understanding by discussing both positive and negative topics of metaverse libraries from China. To achieve this, the research collected and analyzed literature on Metaverse Libraries in China, using sentiment analysis and topic modeling to categorize and summarize academic perspectives. The study results found that: topics extracted from the positive sentiment dimension include intelligent services, spatial scenarios, theoretical research, intelligent technologies, digital resources, digital personas, architectural design, social scenarios, big data computation, and makerspaces; and topics from the negative sentiment dimension encompass technological development, user services, ethical risks, departure from reality, user interfaces, resource construction, and user privacy. Besides, this study introduces a sentiment-topic sequential literature topic mining process based on large language model text annotation.