Quantitative and Critical Analysis of Digital Library Research in Iran

The purpose of this study was to analyze the quantitative and critical content of research conducted by Iranian researchers in digital libraries in terms of research method, research community, topics, authors and their organizational affiliation and results of previous research. The research method is quantitative content analysis and for this purpose the authors' information, title, abstract, articles keywords and theses related to this field were analyzed. The statistical population of the study consists of 209 Iranian research outputs (138 articles and 71 theses) in the field of digital libraries that were selected based on their internal validity criteria. In terms of place of publication and research, in research articles, Scientific Journal of Information Processing and Management (13); in Extension Articles, Journal of Monthly Books (12); And in the theses, Islamic Azad University of Tehran - North Branch (12) gained the most frequency. In terms of topics used, the results showed that topics such as "evaluation of digital libraries","concepts of digital, virtual and electronic libraries", "feasibility of creating digital libraries" and "digital libraries user interface" gained the most attention. The results of content analysis indicate that the topic of digital libraries in previous research has been growing in recent years and new topics such as semantic web, mapping, semantic integration and organization in this area have attracted the attention of researchers. Has attracted. Also, research studies have shown that the bulk of research has been aimed at introducing and promoting the conceptual and conceptual content of the digital library, namely the knowledge available in English; second, the subject of much repetitive research; Conceptual or technology creation to develop the digital library field was not found. In addition, the results of some previous methodological research shows that the most prominent examples are research methods that are quite feasible. Overall, the study of the topics studied and their timing in the field of theory and practice of digital libraries in Iran led to the identification of research gaps in this field. Researchers are therefore encouraged to look at other aspects of digital libraries that have not been studied or devoted to less research.