فصلنامه کتابداری و اطلاع رسانی
سال پانزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 60، زمستان 1391)

The intent of the article is to review the background of historical studies with emphasis on such studies in Information science. This study has tried to analysis angles and positive aspects of more attention to this issue in the field. Approach of Research: This study is a theoretical one and also is an analytical review of the subject. Results showed that neglect of conduct such studies has led to some impairment in theoretical and practical atmosphere of the field; like some misplaced foresight. Also, the growing tendency of these studies in the field since nearly two decades ago has led to changes in theoretical perspective of LIS, such as renewing of Documentation concepts in theoretical atmosphere of the field. The need of Information Science to the theoretical work, paradigm shift, achieving conceptual discipline, identifying theoretical negligence in the discipline occurring in the past and representing it in order to correct it in the future, the necessity for the maturity of the discipline and accelerating the professionalism in the field are some reasons that calls for an urgent need for historical studies on the discipline's past.

Introduction/ Scientific databases are one of the most important and useful resources. Users retrieve the needed information through the user interface of such databases. This study aimed at evaluating the understandability of the elements of the interface environments of Ebsco, Proquest, ScienceDirect databases. This study was conducted through a mixed method. Data gathering instruments included checklists, log files, and thinking-aloud protocols. The population included 30 graduate and post graduate students in two majors, Humanities/Social science, and Basic Sciences /Engineering at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Descriptive and analytical statistics were used for analysing the quantitative data and content analysis was applied to qualitative data. Findings showed that most elements of the user interface are understandable to the students. Users’ awareness of the elements in the interfaces was also higher than the average. In addition, all students used the interface elements objectively based on Ellis’ information seeking behavior model. The results of testing the hypotheses revealed that there was no significant difference the students’ information seeking behavior in terms of the features of Ellis’s model (starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring and extracting).

Research Due to its special characteristics and lacking a standard writing style, Persian language faces with difficulties in coping with electronic media, seemingly affecting the effectiveness of the information retrieval. Reviewing previous literature on the subject, the present study attempts to study the challenges, their impact on the effective information retrieval and the solutions proposed to overcome them.Research Significance: A comprehensive review on the Persian Language challenges in digital environment may highlight the knowledge gathered so far on the subject and uncover its deficiencies and progress.Research The present study applies a documentary method with a text analysis approach, which is a qualitative method. The reviewed studies report a large number of inconsistencies and variations in Persian writing, seeming to seriously affect the effectiveness of information retrieval regarding precision, false drop or recall. It is, therefore, required that Persian information retrieval systems normalize the morphological and grammatical inconsistencies and variations. The studies offer some solutions to eliminate or lessen the negative effects, namely standardizing Persian writing style, using pre-defined lists, equipping the databases with thesauri. Although failing to encompass all the challenges, they seem to be more or less effectual. Specially, preparing Persian writing style standards, spelling dictionaries and thesauri, search manuals or guides, and designing subject-specific information retrieval algorithms can be useful. The human-based solutions require serious training of and contribution from text writers (including typists and users) and are a long-term and expensive process. Consequently, it is vital to move toward automatic text processing and indexing techniques.

this study tends to investigate the impact of cognitive style on document relevance judgment in document selection and evaluation process. this is an applied research conducted in survey method. Humanities & social Science – Basic and engineering science students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran were applied as test persons in Riding’s cognitive style analysis in order to distinguish two cognitive style groups (Holistic and Analytic. Data were gathered through Simulated work tasks and individual relevance judgment sessions. the results of the research demonstrated that there were some but not significant differences between the two cognitive style’s grading of relevance judgment. In addition, while Holistics failed in evaluating “partial relevance” documents, they needed to get more support from IR system. Furthermore, both Holistic and Analytic persons almost agreed on “relevant” documents. Conversely, the least agreement occurred in “partial relevant” documents.Value: It is expected that the results of the study will help search engine and web designers to enhance a user-personalized interface in order to support interactive information retrieval systems

Digital library is an integrated set of electronic resources and services for capturing, organizing, protecting and retrieving information in digital formats. Nowadays, the emergence of semantic web and ontology, support the evolution of digital libraries and creating semantic digital libraries. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to survey into the applications of ontology in digital libraries. Ontology is a highly expressive representation of objects, classes of objects and relations between them in a particular domain. Ontology has some potential benefits such as inferencing capability, interoperability, natural language processing (NLP) support and search query understanding. Therefore it can be used to convert digital libraries to distributed and intelligent information systems and to create semantic digital libraries. Creating different capabilities in digital libraries architecture, specially inference capability, transmission of information between digital libraries and other information systems, semantic description of resources in digital libraries with mapping MARC bibliographic metadata in an ontology (such as MarcOnt ontology), improvement the question-answering system of digital libraries (such as BT Digital Library), creating a user-friendly interface and making available an easy and quick search and browsing, are some of ontology applications in digital libraries that surveyed.

The goal of this research is showing Cataloger's view of Three big Libraries in Mashhad (Astan Quds Library, Central Library of Ferdowsi University, and Central Library of Medical Sciences University of Mashhad) Toward Resource Description and Access Rules (RDA). Measuring the level of familiarity of catalogers with RDA and the level of acceptance it with them are from other goals of this research. The method of this research is experimental and was done based on pre-post test. The level of cataloger's familiarity with RDA in this research has measured in two ways: the personal comment and the actual test. Findings shows that level of personal comment familiarity with RDA before education is upper than middle and the level of actual familiarity before education is lower than middle. But after offering specialized education in a workshop about RDA findings shows the level of two kinds of familiarity are raising upper than middle. From other findings is the positive impact of education in acceptance level of RDA with catalogers. So, we can conclude that level of acceptance of RDA with catalogers has risen after education and in result of raised familiarity with these rules. According to the findings, there aren’t significant relationships between age, work experience of catalogers and their self-comment familiarity, actual familiarity and the level of acceptance of RDA with them. Catalogers also have demanded to make changes in library software's to better using of RDA in the future. They have requested to use from help capabilities to introduce the changes in cataloging rules, offering sufficient education to catalogers before Implementing RDA, coordinate cataloging worksheets, review in headings of information organization lessons and apply catalogers in the workgroup of software update.

This study aimed to identify, classify and determine the relative importance of variables involved in reading culture of Iran.Study Population and Research The variables and their importance were identified and determined using Delphi method and Documentary study. Study Population was selected from scholars and experts in the field of reading culture via purposive sampling. Results showed that the layer of values and beliefs of reading culture has been consisted of four main criteria (society, educational system, publishing and family), seven sub-criteria and 26 indicators. In addition to that, most sub-criteria and indicators have been related to the main criterion i.e. "Society". Moreover, Friedman ranking of the main criteria showed no significant difference among them, whereas, there is a significant difference among the sub-criteria. Among the sub-criteria, the highest ranks were awarded to "Promoting and encouraging pupils, students, teachers and professors to reading", "Creating value to achieve" and "The family with Literacy and reading" respectively. But ranking the indicators in sub-criteria showed that indicators including "Society`s attitude towards the cosmos", "Promoting and Encouraging pupils, students and teachers to reading " as well as " Believing in efficacy of book on various aspects of personal and social growth " has not been significant, while ranking the indicators of "feel the need to reading" sub-criterion has been significant.Suggestions: According to the nature of reading culture, the researcher has suggested a balanced view in order to develop reading culture with priority to changing the layer of values over other layers of culture by system approach.

This research attempted to study scientific production of Iranian PHDs in Library and Information Science. Respondents were compared in terms of their scientific production before and after being awarded PHD degree, as well as the place where graduated, Iran or abroad. This research is of a descriptive type and the method is survey. To collect the data, a checklist and the book "Iranian Academic Librarians" were used. The data were analyzed through descriptive as well as inferential statistics. The population of the study consisted of 76 PHDs and their scolarly productivity. It was revealed that there was no significant difference between scientific production of local graduates and those studied overseas. It was also found that scholarly productivity of the LIS faculty has an increasing trend, so that they have produced more documents after being awarded the PhD. degree It is implied that LIS education in Iran is successful in training qualified graduates. Although research productivity is only one measure of faculty effectiveness, it is a necessary one. The production and publication of research helps the profession establish its theoretical and epistemological foundation. Without this foundation, the profession and its educators will founder.

Perpose: The aim of this research is to study The Namaye “Database of Persian language articles” effect on the enhancement of the informational services of the public libraries and evaluation of user's satisfaction of it and its functionality for them. The first population was all the librarians of the public libraries of Mashhad. The second population was the first 10 users of 21 public libraries of Mashhad who were familiar with Namaye. The third population was all the searches done during 2 months at these databases in 9 most used libraries of 3 different regions of Mashhad. The method which was used can be divided in two parts: 1) the use of non interventional observation with the help of Snagit software which recorded and analyzed the searches. 2) The second part was a descriptive survey which included two librarian's and user's questionnaires for collecting information. The results of the research show that: 1) on the average, the opinions of the users and the librarians on "the method of reference to Namaye via librarians" are 3.88 and 4.61, respectively, which is "more than the medium limit". The librarians, in comparison with the users, much more supported this theory. 2) On the average, the opinions of the users and the librarians on "the purpose of reference to Namaye database" are 3.88 and 4.38, respectively, which is more than the medium limit. Moreover, the users mostly refer to Namaye for research. The librarians, in comparison with the users, more supported this theory. 3) On the average, the opinions of the users and the librarians on "the method of searching in database" is 3.94, most of the searches were topical. The results of the analysis done by Snagit software reveal that more than 82% of the searches were topical. 4) More than 64% of the users prefer scientific journals and 52% prefer popular journals, total average of the opinions is 3.11 which is more than the medium limit. The librarians and the users agree on the fact that popular articles are more selected. The results of the analysis done by Snagit software reveal that more than 62% of the users choose articles from popular magazines. 5) Results of the user's and librarian's opinions on "the user's satisfaction of the ease of access to Namaye" are 2.73 and 3.63, respectively. From librarian's point of view, the users are relatively satisfied with the ease of access to Namaye. 6) On the average, the opinions of the users and librarians on "the advantages and disadvantages of Namaye" are 3,54 and 3.70, respectively, which is more than the medium limit. Overall, the advantages of the database are more than its disadvantages; total average of 3.62, in comparison with the opinions of the two groups, shows that the opinions of the users are because of the less of their knowledge about how to use the database. 7) The average opinions of the users on "the ratio of the used papers to the retrieved papers in the database" with the value of 3.40, show that there is a big difference between what is retrieved and what is used. The results of the analysis done by Snagit software also reveal that only 1% of the retrieved papers are used, therefore. The research show that the librarians are less familiar with the Namaye than the internet and the computers. 70% of the librarians, for resolving user's and their own informational needs, prefer internet to the database. The librarians feel that they have to use the database more.The librarians need to be trained for using the database. 71% of the librarians declare that the use of the database will increase in future. All the librarians think that there must be some changes made to the database and it cant be a complete substitute for the printed magazines yet. The most important disadvantages of the database, from librarian's point of view, are in aspects of 1) facility of display 2) capacity and 3) the facilities of the searching; and they mentioned 1) the ease of access and 2) the topical coverage as its advantages.

This paper aims at offering a series of syllabi for information literacy workshops for research staff of libraries and information centers, on the basis of the results of a research project executed by the first author of the paper entitled ' Improving information literacy skills of research staff of libraries and information centers: a case study of the research staff of Regional Information Center for Science and Technology' and information literacy competency standards for higher education. Besides, the effectiveness of the syllabi of the held information literacy workshops will be assessed. In this study, first, the level of participants’ information literacy skills was measured and then their emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creative thinking were determined because of the significant relationship between these three skills and information literacy. Second, participants were surveyed on the basis of their gender, degree level, field of study, graduation time and working experience. In addition, their prior knowledge, expertise and experience were measured. Finally, the statistical population of the study was decreased to 30 participants out of 35 after normalization. In the next phase of the study, a series of syllabi was offered by the project executor after surveying pretests. It was tried to minimize the impact of external and internal factors on this experiential research. In order to assess the effectiveness of the suggested syllabi, participants were given evaluation forms after every workshop. Finally, the post-tests showed a significant difference between information literacy skills of participants before and after their attendance in workshops. They considered these syllabi effective and advantageous. The significant relationship between pre-test and post-test scores supports the effectiveness of the suggested syllabi in improving their information literacy skills.

Considering the increase of ethical problem cases in recent years promoting professional ethics among Library and Information Sciences students is important. In order to identify the strengths and weakness, as well as opportunities and threats of Library and Information Sciences ethics training these effective strategies have been designed. Using these strategies can make Library and Information Sciences ethics training in Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences more effective and more efficient. In this cross sectional study, after identifying a list of strengths and weakness as well as opportunities and threats of Library and Information Sciences ethics training, a questionnaire was used to obtain the opinions of the faculty members of Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences, and then the strategies were presented in the model of SWOT. According to the internal factors analysis table, among the strengths, the most important rate of significance (weight) was given to the existence of rich Islamic and historical sources in the field of Library and Information Sciences ethics with the weight of 0.10 and the grade of 2.9. Further more, among the weakness the most important rate of significance was given to using traditional methods in the Library and Information Sciences ethics training with the weight of 0.09 and the grade of 2.7. Regarding the sum of points in the analysis table, internal factors (2.85) and external factors (2.87) we can generally say that the reaction of the faculty members of Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences to the strengths and weakness and also to the opportunities and threats in the Library and Information Sciences ethics training is less than average. Considering the findings of this research, using the method of SWOT, on the whole, 17 strategies in the forms of competitive, defensive, conservative and aggressive are presented. After prioritizing strategies, the first priority belonged to Library and Information Sciences ethics training in the form of interdisciplinary by professors of ethics and Library and Information Sciences. The second and third priorities belonged to training in practice, and using new methods of library and Information sciences ethics education.

The purpose of this paper was to identify the bibliographic relationships in Persian bibliographic universe and fields necessary to illustrate them. Research methodology was survey and conducted through a research-made check list. Results indicated that there is high percentage of bibliographic relationships in bibliographic universe. Also, 42.85% of the relational fields applied in illustrating the identified bibliographic relationships. The result of this paper showed that some of the relational fields specially have used for illustrating of bibliographic relationships in Persian bibliographic universe.