نشریه مطالعات کتابداری و سازماندهی اطلاعات
سال بیست و دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 85، بهار 1390)

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the staff working in the National Library of Iran. The paper also studies the possible impact that the education and field of study of the staff may have on their performance. Methodology/Approach: Library research methodology was used in this research. The population of this study includes all the staff employed in the National Library of Iran. The required data was mainly collected through a questionnaire. Results show that, 78.61% of the staff are women and 18.5% are men. The field of education of 60.69% of the staff is completely related to their jobs, 5.2% is somewhat related and 33.52% consider that these two factors have no relationship. 75.72% of the survey population have passed general and professional courses during their career. A total of 52.06% of the staff are satisfied with their employment situation and 24.85% are dissatisfied. The average duration of working in the National Library is about 11 years. The research findings show that the staff of the National Library are generally in a good position in terms of education. According to existing standards, the average of specialist staff (having graduate degrees) in comparison to other staff must be 33 percent, but this ratio is 25.43 percent in the studied Library. On the other hand, the average percentage of staff with undergraduate education who have relevant education must be 60 percent, and the National Library meets the requirements in this regard (60.69 percent).

One contemporary approach to planning is strategic planning, towards which most organizations have gravitated. This article aims to describe the rudiments of strategic planning and to study the necessity for attention to this type of planning in libraries and information centers. Methodology/ Approach: This research has been carried out using the library method and through the study of paper and electronic resources. findings show that libraries and information centers confront challenges such as budget deficits and environmental changes resulting from technological, social, cultural, political, and economic factors. As an organization, libraries are highly affected by rapid changes in different fields e.g. scientific, social, economic and political. Because of these changes, libraries face many challenges. Libraries must keep pace with these continuous changes. Since traditional planning does not have the ability to meet these challenges, libraries and information centers should focus their attention on strategic planning.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the psychological states of reference and circulation librarians in university libraries affect the satisfaction of users. Methodology/ Approach: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test was used to survey the effect of the librarian's psychological states. The research population consists of 40 reference and circulation librarians working in central libraries of ten governmental universities in Tehran. In order to analyze the research data, both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used. Results of this research show that among all MMPI scales, there is a statistically significant correlation between "Psychasthenia" and "Depression" with the satisfaction of library users. This correlation is negative meaning that the more the psychasthenia and depression scales increase, the less the users are satisfied and vice versa. Librarians who spend most of their work time communicating with different library users must attach considerable attention to their psychological states. Library managers may have a significant role in bringing vitality and joy to their staff and in helping them to maintain it. By providing a proper work environment, managers can help their staff to keep in good psychological conditions and this will lead to higher satisfaction of library users in the long run.

The aim of this research was to explore whether the observed tendency in Iran's libraries to work in the technical services section is a personal preference or not. This research has examined this through studying the professional self-concept of B.A. graduates of Library and Information Science. Methodology/ Approach: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 B.A. students who were finishing their last semester. For analyzing the data, the techniques of continual comparison proposed in the Grounded Theory methodology were used in three levels of open, axial, and selective coding. The self-concept of B.A. LIS graduates has three components, namely 'personal feeling', 'social status', and 'perception of the profession'. Participants have become more fond of librarianship as they progressed in their studies during the program. However, they normally complain of the lack of social recognition and the low social status of librarianship. While the students consider librarianship as a service profession, they see their core of expertise in different areas. Some consider technical services as their main skill and others find general and direct services to the user most important. In their viewpoint, research and management are other aspects of librarianship. Participants in this research were interested in librarianship profession; however, they had concerns about its social status and recognition. They regard their field to be service oriented but prefer to work in specialized information and technical services.

The main purpose of this study was to compare the accessibility of the National Library of Iran's website with other websites of National Libraries of Islamic countries in the Middle East. In this research, the accessibility of the National Librarie's Websites has been surveyed using a checklist. The check list includes 13 components for reviewing and evaluating the websites. The websites of the national libraries of Iran and Turkey ranked first with 77 points (100% criteria met). Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are second with 76 points (98/7%), and Qatar ranked third with 74 points (96/1%). The websites of other countries met the criteria as follows: Syria, 72 points (93/5%); Yemen and Jordan, 70 points (90/9%); Lebanon, 65 points (84/4%); United Arab Emirates, 59 points (76/7%); and Iraq, 58 points (75/3%). Based on the results of this research, some proposals have been offered to website designers and decision-makers of national libraries. The findings of this research may help to improve the accessibility of the websites and to preserve the strategic regional position.

This survey aims to analyze the interfaces of children’s digital libraries and to present their most important content features. Forty children's digital libraries were identified using different keywords in Google and Yahoo search engines. Then a checklist was prepared based on all features of these libraries and it was presented to Iranian experts. The experts were members of the "Children’s Book Council" and also librarians of the “Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.” Combining the views of experts and considering the frequency of the two choices “important” and “very important,” the significant features were identified. These features were those that more than 70% of experts had marked as “important” or “very important”. The fifty six most important content features were selected and divided into seven general groups which were later subdivided into smaller categories. The designers of English children’s digital libraries have not paid much attention to content features and one of the reasons for this may be the variety of information that each library can place in its website. Comparing content features in children’s digital libraries with the opinions of experts shows that the low frequency of some of these features is not due to their unimportance; perhaps the change in the information environment and the advent of digital libraries has introduced new features and concepts and since they are novel, some of these features may have occurred in fewer libraries.

This paper aims to investigate the status of scientific publications of leading Iranian institutions (in terms of scientific publications) in the Web of Science (WOS) database in 2008. The data required for this study was collected through bibliometric methods. On this basis, information about the four leading science producing institutions in Iran was retrieved and analyzed based on scientometric indicators and with regard to authority control of the variant names of Institutions in WOS. In 2008 the amount of Iran's scientific publications grew by 49.75% in comparison with 2007. Having produced more than 12% of the scientific publications of Iran in 2008, the University of Tehran (UT) ranked first among Iranian institutions. After UT, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Islamic Azad University (IAU) and Tarbiat Modares University (TMU) ranked second, third, and fourth respectively. In terms of the different indexed affiliation names, only UT authors have indexed their scientific publications in WOS under a unique name. Among branches of the Islamic Azad University, the Arak Branch, after appropriate authority control, collectively has 24 scientific publications. TUMS, TMU and IAU have the highest amount of collaboration with UT authors in their scientific publications. The large number of scientific publications of organizations has an important role in scientific collaboration among them. Iranian universities still don’t use a unique affiliation name for the International Citation Databases.

The main purpose of this research was to study the extent to which blind users were satisfied with the services offered in libraries for the blind in East Azerbaijan Province.Methodology/ Approach: This study was carried out as a descriptive survey. Firstly the libraries were described in terms of their information and human resources. Then a questionnaire was used to survey the viewpoint of 353 users of libraries for the blind about the quality of services provided in East-Azerbaijan libraries for the blind. The research findings illustrate that blind user's rate of satisfaction is at a medium level (65 percent). The users are most satisfied with the librarian's attitudes and least satisfied with the accessibility of the libraries. The development of libraries in terms of collection and equipment, hiring specialist librarians, introducing the importance of books and libraries and improving the qualitative and quantitative status of libraries are some solutions for improving the conditions of libraries for the blind.

In the present paper some of the concepts that gave rise to the new generation of the web, and their impact on libraries and librarianship are discussed. Furthermore, concepts such as Library 2.0, as a social and participative library, as well as librarian 2.0 are also discussed. the library method was used in this research and the required information was collected through the study of resources and by searching for articles on websites and in databases of relevant literature. As many librarians have come to understand, Web 2.0 and libraries are a matching pair. Generally, Library 2.0 has brought about fundamental shifts in librarianship. Library 2.0 corroborates the notion that human beings do not search and use information as individuals, but rather as communities. Since we grow increasingly dependent on technology and the Internet, Library 2.0 is simply an approach by which libraries can be kept attractive for society. Looking back and comparing early libraries with today's libraries we can see that there have been many changes. While being gradual, all of these changes have resulted from confrontations with variant expectations and needs and from a corresponding prevention of failing to meet them.

This article aims to explain the concept and the philosophy behind open access journals. Accordingly, after reviewing some definitions offered, the paper discusses issues such as the different types of open access journal publishers; methods of funding these publications; the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of these publications, and the duties of libraries and librarians in this regard. Methodology/Approach: This research was carried out through a review of the literature on open access publications and by referring to library resources, both printed and electronic. Open access journals offer a good opportunity to libraries and researchers to easily and freely access scientific information and therefore accelerate the research process. Free open access journals provide opportunities for librarians. Due to their responsibilities, librarians should take this opportunity to enrich their library collections and reduce spending by collecting, organizing, and purposefully disseminating such journals.

This research is a comparative study of the consistency of informational elements, اncluding: main entry, title, imprint (publication area), collation (physical description area), subject, classification, and added entry in cataloging-in-publication and cataloging-after-publication in the National Library of Iran. It aims to identify the inconsistency of each of the mentioned informational elements and the reasons for such inconsistency and to propose solutions for creating greater consistency. Content analysis was used in this research and the research data was collected through a checklist. The research findings are as follows: 1. Among the ten main classes of human knowledge (according to Dewey Decimal Classification), the highest percentage of consistency of the "main entry" element is 98. 9 percent which is found in the fields of history and geography 2. The highest consistency of the "title" element is 86. 7 percent which again is in history and geography. 3. In the "publication area" element, the highest consistency (63. 1 percent) is in the field of technology. 4. The highest consistency rate for the "collation" element (34. 5 percent) is in the field of ethics. 5. The highest consistency for the "subject" element is 97. 3 percent (in social sciences). 6. The highest consistency of the "classification" element is 93. 4 percent and is found in the field of technological science. 7. The highest consistency for the "added entry" elements is 95. 6 percent (in philosophy). 8. On average, the mean consistency is 96. 2 percent for "main entry", 79 percent for "title", 53 percent for "publication area", 27. 2 percent for "collation", 92. 8 percent for "subject", 85. 3 percent for "classification", and 91. 3 percent for "added entry". The highest consistency belongs to the "main entry" element and then subject, added entry, classification, publication area, and collation elements (highest to lowest rate of consistency respectively).

The aim of this research is to evaluate the extent to which undergraduate students at Shiraz University are familiar with online searching in databases and the factors influencing this skill. Methodology/ Approach: This research was carried out using the descriptive survey method. Based on existing resources in the field of search skills, seven skills and eight factors influencing the identification of these skills were chosen. This research aims to study the familiarity of students with each of these skills, the factors affecting these skills, and the differences between the skills of first and last semester students. The research findings show that student's familiarity with search skills is below average. Findings also indicate that there is no meaningful difference between first and last semester students in terms of their search skills. Generally, there are some statistically significant differences between some influential factors and search skills. Overall, the acquaintance of undergraduate students with search skills was not satisfying and some suggestions are provided for improvements in this regard.