نشریه مطالعات کتابداری و سازماندهی اطلاعات
سال بیست و دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 86، تابستان 1390)

This research studied the information needs as well as the information seeking behaviors of teachers in Andimeshk high schools. Design/Methodology/Approach: The data required for this descriptive/survey research were collected through a questionnaire. The research population included 531 high school teachers of Andimeshk in the 2008-2009 academic year. Among the 531 teachers, 240 were randomly selected based on the Krejcie and Morgan table. The collected data was analyzed using the SPSS statistical software. The research findings indicated that the major goal and motivation of the teachers in searching for information was improving their general knowledge. The teacher's most important official resource for obtaining information was books. An absolute majority of the high school teachers believed that the textbooks did not satisfy their information needs. The teachers studied preferred print resources to non-print resources. The teacher's most important problem in information seeking was their time limits. The teachers believed that the internet has an effective role in meeting their information needs; however, lack of adequate time was their main reason for not using the internet. According to the teachers, the most important shortage in the school libraries was that they were not rich in terms of their resources. The highest priority of teachers for using various information resources was improving their specialized knowledge. Despite the fact that the Internet is the best electronic information resource for teachers, lack of internet facilities in some schools prevents teachers from accessing this valuable resource.

This research studied the information needs as well as the information seeking behaviors of teachers in Andimeshk high schools. Design/Methodology/Approach: The data required for this descriptive/survey research were collected through a questionnaire. The research population included 531 high school teachers of Andimeshk in the 2008-2009 academic year. Among the 531 teachers, 240 were randomly selected based on the Krejcie and Morgan table. The collected data was analyzed using the SPSS statistical software.

The research findings indicated that the major goal and motivation of the teachers in searching for information was improving their general knowledge. The teacher's most important official resource for obtaining information was books. An absolute majority of the high school teachers believed that the textbooks did not satisfy their information needs. The teachers studied preferred print resources to non-print resources. The teacher's most important problem in information seeking was their time limits. The teachers believed that the internet has an effective role in meeting their information needs; however, lack of adequate time was their main reason for not using the internet. According to the teachers, the most important shortage in the school libraries was that they were not rich in terms of their resources. The highest priority of teachers for using various information resources was improving their specialized knowledge.

Despite the fact that the Internet is the best electronic information resource for teachers, lack of internet facilities in some schools prevents teachers from accessing this valuable resource.

This research reviews the literature available on the relation between the structure of reference books for children and teenagers with learning and remembering. Methodology/Approach: Relevant resources in education science and library science were studied. The way the information is organized and presented in such books is more important in a special age group of children and teenagers. The publishers of such books must be informed about the importance of structure on the understanding of children and teenagers

This paper criticizes the "format-oriented" trend that has originated from the contemporary orientation toward technology in Library and Information Science (LIS), by analyzing the historical, theoretical and philosophic ideas of the documentation movement, then reviewing its ideals and outcomes.Approach: This research was based on an analytical-historical procedure. By studying the history of the formation and development of the documentation movement in late-19th century Europe, the researcher tried to investigate transformations in fundamental traditions dominant on Library and Information Science (LIS)from that time up to now. LIS theorists should deeply reflect upon the ideals of the documentation movement and the scope of its consequences. The most important outcome of this movement has been to attract the attention of librarians to "content" and to decrease their dependency on "format". However, from five decades ago, concurrent with the development of information technology, this outcome has been less achieved; an extreme orientation toward technology has separated librarians from "content" and once again made them dependent on "format". Facing the conflicts between the two traditions i.e. “machinists” and “humanists” in the LIS profession, a new mental framework should be designed. This framework must originate from the model of the documentation movement.

This paper aims to study the viewpoint of Library and Information Science (LIS) MA students in Arak Islamic Azad University about the effect that the internet has on facilitating their learning in practical courses.B> Methodology/Approach: The required data was collected through a questionnaire (with 27 questions) distributed among 56 students. The data collected were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistical methods. To show that the effect of the internet on learning and understanding practical courses is statistically significant, the Chi-square test was used/

The internet tools that students most frequently used to meet their information needs were search engines (21.4 percent) and digital libraries and databases (17.9 percent). From the viewpoint of students, the most effective features of the internet in the learning process were rating, satisfying information needs, helping students to be up-to-date, increasing speed, increasing professional knowledge and saving time. The findings also showed that using the internet has had a considerable effect on facilitating the learning and understanding of practical courses.

This research studies the elements of knowledge portals in non-Iranian university portals and presents a model for designing knowledge-based university portals. Methodology/Approach: A researcher-made checklist (including 33 knowledge portal elements) was used to study 19 university portals. among the studied portals, the portals of the following universities had the highest number of elements: the University of Edinburgh (21 elements); Athabasca University and the University at Buffalo (20 elements); Laval, Rutgers, and Virginia Tech universities (18 elements) and the Sheridan College (17 elements). Other university portals had less than half of the checklist elements. Most of the studied university portals had made the least use of the elements of knowledge portals and had obtained little benefit from the elements that lead to knowledge-sharing and transfer in their design. Therefore the portals must be reevaluated as designed and more attention should be attached to this aspect of the capabilities of university portals.

This research investigates scholarly collaboration between Iran and other Islamic countries from 1900-2008, in three citation indexes i.e. Science, Arts and Humanities, and Social Sciences. The research population includes the papers indexed in the Web of Science produced collaboratively by researchers from Iran and other Islamic countries during 1900-2008. Microsoft Excel was used to analyze the collected data. Based on the research findings, the scientific collaboration between Iran and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference started since 1967 and Iran has published 675 documents in collaboration with these countries.The number of joint publications of Iran and other Islamic countries has increased over the years examined: the results of the exponential regression test show a 12.6 percent growth rate. Findings revealed that Iranian scholars had the highest cooperation with researchers from Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan. On the other hand Agriculture, Biology, Chemistry and Physics were the fields in which most of the collaborative research was carried out. The results also show that Shiraz University and the University of Tehran were the most productive Iranian universities in collaboration with other Islamic countries.

The present study was conducted to investiage the quality of Iranian scholarly articles published during 2000-2009 on 22 medical subfields in terms of their journal impact. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study has a scientometric approach. The names of journals which had published the papers of Iranian scholars were extracted from the Web of Science and the impact factor of the mentioned journals was also found in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Finally the mean, median and impact factor of the mentioned journals were compared with the mean, median, and impact factor of all journals in each category of JCR. The impact factor of 59 percent of the journals which published papers of Iranian scholars was higher than 1 in all medical subfields. From a total of 22 journals, only 3 are in the top nine of JCR. In veterinary sciences and pharmaceutics the quality of the journals mentioned is at a low level. In 60 percent of the journals on medical sciences, veterinary sciences, and dentistry the mean and median of the impact factor of the journals publishing papers of Iranian researchers was higher than the mean and median of the impact factor of the total journals in each field in JCR. The proportion of Iranian journals indexed in ISI in publishing articles is 24/8 percent. In some subfields of medicine, the highest number of papers are published in Iranian journals which are indexed in ISI but have a low impact factor. The number of papers published by Iranian scholars in journals with high impact factors is less than expected.

Interoperability is one of the most important and essential services for librarians and library end-users in digital libraries. The main goal of this study is to survey and identify interoperability models in digital libraries. Design/Methodology/Approach: Three main models were identified through the study of relevant literature: 1. The federated model based on an old method for information exchange and is used especially for bibliographic information 2.The Harvesting model which is an open model 3. The distributed model which is used on the web. Findings/ Among the Identified models, the distributed model is least used for information exchange in digital libraries and the harvesting model is used most frequently. Findings of this study showed that the harvesting model with the OAI protocol is the most suitable way for interoperability between digital libraries.

This paper is a comparative evaluation of the words used in dissertation titles and abstracts with descriptors assigned in the index of the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI). Design/Methodology/Approach: The method used in this study is a comparative survey and the data were collected by a checklist. The research population consists of 18,951 dissertations written from 2001 to 2008, among which a sample of 380 dissertations were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan's sampling formula from four scientific groups (i.e. Engineering, Science, Medical Science, and Humanities/Arts). The research shows that 47 percent of the words in the titles were in correspondence with the NLAI index and this amount was 53.5 percent for words in the abstracts. 24.6 percent of the title words were synonymous with the index descriptors and 24.7 percent of the abstract words were synonyms of the index descriptors. About 75 percent of the assigned descriptors are the same as or synonymous with words of the dissertation titles and abstracts.

This research studied the usage of internet resources in research projects of the Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization during 2003-2004. Methodology - In this research the rate of citations made to information resources obtained through the internet was determined using citation analysis. Furthermore, the type of information resources used, such as essays, books and reports of research projects and also the year of using internet resources were surveyed for 1,700 research projects which had finished during 2003-2004. Findings – The research findings show that only 106 projects (6.2 percent) from all the research projects studied have internet citations. From a total of 2,716 citations in the 106 research projects, 229 were citations to internet resources (8.4 percent). The subject areas of projects with internet citations were also studied based on the Library of Congress Subject Headings List. The fields with the highest internet citations were pest, plant breeding and agronomy with 68.9 percent; soil and water and irrigation with 16 percent, botany 3.8 percent and fisheries 2.9 percent. Regarding the kind of internet resources cited, 31.9 percent of the researchers have only mentioned the main address of the website. 15.7 percent of the citations refer to articles, 4.4 percent to research projects, and 4.4 percent to books. In addition to the findings mentioned, the research centers with the highest number of citations referring to internet resources were also identified.

This paper aims to investigate the visibility, the Web Impact Factor (WIF), the relative WIF (RWIF) and the collaboration rate of the websites of nuclear research institutes of IAEA member countries via webometrics.Design/Methodology/Approach: The study included 103 websites of research institutes representing 42 IAEA member countries. The data was collected in two phases: Firstly, using the AltaVista directory, all of the investigated research institute websites were retrieved and stored on a PC; and then the various links of the websites were extracted and analyzed. The website of the French National Centre for Scientific Research had the highest visibility and the website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan had the least visibility. Websites of the LAN and Fermilab centers in USA had, respectively, the highest and lowest WIF and RWIF. 16 websites were selected as core websitesResearch limitations: The variability of search engine results and the unavailability of the websites of some research institutes were limitations to the study. the visibility of the studied websites was low; this may be due to factors such as language, the amount of information presented in relation to the needs of special users, up-to-date-ness of the information, accessibility, and the possibility to interact with researchers. A high percentage of the studied websites had low WIFs and RWIFs and this may be a result of the quality and quantity of the information they presented.