نشریه مطالعات کتابداری و سازماندهی اطلاعات
سال سی و سوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 130، تابستان 1401)

Effective library services for children require a wide range of professional librarian skills. Therefore, it is important to identify the competencies of child librarians. In this study, a comparison has been designed and validated to assess the competencies and requirements of child librarians in public libraries. According to Tetens theory, the personality and character of every human being is composed of five areas, the first three areas are called internal areas and the last two areas are called external areas. The three inner realms include the realm of ideas and beliefs, the realm of feelings, and emotions, and the realm of wills and desires, and the three outer realms are the realm of speech and the realm of action.

The method of the present study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive in terms of data collection method. In this research, structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis have been used. To determine the content validity of the designed questionnaire, experts and librarians of public libraries were used. The sampling method in this section was purposeful sampling. The research community in the validation section of the research tools was librarians of public libraries in Khuzestan province. A simple random sampling method was used to distribute the research tools among the target population. A researcher-made questionnaire based on the research of Akbari, Shaghaghi, and Asnafi (1400) was used to collect data. Data analysis was performed using inferential statistical indicators including structural equation modelling.

The findings showed that the competencies of a secretary have three factors: beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires, and wills and 44 items; And action requirements have 2 factors of speech and behaviour and 34 items. The results of fitting the secretary competencies model of child librarians showed that the factor load of 44 paths is greater than 0.5 and also the calculated significant numbers are greater than 1.96 which indicates the confirmation of all paths. The results of confirmatory factor analysis of child librarians' action requirements model show that the calculated factor loads for all paths are greater than 0.5 and also the calculated significant numbers are greater than 1.96 which indicates the confirmation of all paths. Confirmatory factor analysis of the instrument showed that the instrument has a good fit and the combined reliability of all factors was higher than 0.90, which indicates the optimal reliability of the instrument. Also, the correlation of the scores of the components of the questionnaires is positive and significant, which indicates the convergent validity of the questionnaire.

In this scale, the competencies of a child librarian's secretary were constructed and validated with three dimensions of beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires and wills, and a scale of behavioral competencies of child librarians with two dimensions of speech and behavior. Secretary competencies refer to what is in the child librarian's mind about the child and services to children, and secretary competencies focus more on operational skills. This scale provides a benchmark for recruiting a child librarian. It will also be an indicator for strengthening and enhancing the secretarial and action skills of child librarians through educational programs.

The user interface is the first point of contact with a website. If the content of the website, especially its textual and graphic symbols, does not match with the ability of users to comprehend it, they will probably leave the website. This research has measured comprehensibility of the textual and graphic symbols used in the user interface of a portal designed for children and young adults.

The statistical population included 600 children and adolescents active members in three centers belong to the Institute for Intellectual Development for Children and Adolescents (IDCA) in Birjand (Iran). A randomly selected sample of 115 through a non-relative stratified method answered the researcher-made questionnaire, prepared after examining theoretical and research literature as well as examining user interface environments of children's portals. In the present study, the standard vocabulary of IDCA thesaurus was used to prepare a text-by-text questionnaire. The portal examined was “koodak24”.

The ability of children and adolescents to identify the textual and graphic symbols of the child portal was more than optimal. But their ability to combine symbols was variable (the significance level in the above test is equal to the value of 0.000 and smaller than the value of 0.05). Also, there was a difference in identifying textual and graphic symbols between different age groups (P<0.05). There is a significant difference between the two age groups (10 to 12) and (14 to 16) years, and the average ability to identify graphical symbols of the user interface in the age group of 10 to 12 years is 71.82 and this average in the age group of 14 to 16 years is 76. there was no difference between the ability of girls and boys to identify textual and graphic symbols.

The words used in the portal for children and adolescent are simple, understandable and standard. If the mental and cognitive abilities of children and teenagers as well as their needs are taken into account in designing the user interface, it will be easy and attractive for children and adolescent to identify the graphical and textual symbols of the user interface and use different parts of websites.

To identify the most important factors affecting query formulation.

The design of this study was qualitative. The factors were extracted and categorized through a systematic review and an analytical meta-analysis in six steps. The steps included: determining keywords, creating inclusion criteria and deleting articles, background search, extracting lists A, B and C, descriptive analysis, and thematic analysis. In this regard, based on a search cycle and using a number of keywords approved by experts, articles related to the factors affecting the query formulation were studied. After descriptive analysis of these resources, contents were extracted according to the topic. The research population included all published articles on the factors affecting the query formulation in the period from 1991 to 2021. These resources were searched in reliable databases such as Scopus, Springer, Emerald, Web of Science, Elsevier, Eric, ProQuest, Ebsco, Cite Seer, Information Research, LISA, LISTA and Wiley. After extracting articles, collecting and analysing qualitative data, these analyses were used to determine the factors affecting the query formulation.

Findings showed that the factors affecting the query formulation itself originate from several fields such as user and retrieval task, which can be classified into two general categories of user-related factors and task-related factors. User-related factors included subject knowledge, knowledge of how to use the search system, search experience, language, demographic features, contextual factors, cognitive style, and cognitive load. Task-related factors included the type of search task and task difficulty. These factors change the formulation process in different ways that can be considered both positive and negative, as some of them may help to improve the quality of the formulation, others may prevent retrieval to be performed correctly.

Identifying factors affecting the query formulation and analysing the relationships between them can improve the quality of information literacy training by experts in this field. Also, it helps web designers create search tools tailored to the user's needs. Since formulation is an important part of information retrieval behaviours, recognizing the influencing factors can help discovering information retrieval patterns. Understanding how to formulate a query under the influence of various factors and recognizing these factors, can help increase the quality of search and retrieve more relevant results and improve human-computer interaction.

To identify cities and centers where Shiite jurisprudential texts were compiled and copied.

Data was collected by searching the Indexes of the Union Catalog of Manuscripts of Iran (فهرستگان نسخ خطی ایران =).

Out of 554 titles identified, 392 had notes of place. Around 50 % (192 titles) were written or copied in Mashhad and Isfahan, Shiraz, Qazvin, Kashan, and Tabriz. Only for 86 titles the center was mentioned. Of this number 65 were produced in 47 seminaries. The rest were reproduced in centers such as shrines, mosques, private houses, Nezamiyehs (institutions of higher learning in the Muslim world), Khangahs (Sufi centers for spiritual retreat), and local communities.

Proliferation of Shiite schools in the first half of the Safavid period in major cities played an important role in reproduction of Imami jurisprudential texts for teaching purposes. Authors of contemporary works were jurists like Mohaghegh Karki and Sheikh Baha'i and the works of famous jurists who immigrated from Jabal Amel to Iran upon the invitation of Safavid monarchs to help with the promotion of Imami Shiism among the population which the majority used to be Sunnis until then. Calssical works by authors such as Allameh Helli and Mohaghegh Helli were also copied vastly.

To evaluate the usability of the digital library of the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI) based on user experience.

A heuristic mixed method (convergent parallel approach) was used. To evaluate the usability of the digital library, a multifaceted approach was adopted and various techniques were used, including usability test, questionnaires, interview, observation, and Think-aloud protocol.  Eight tasks were defined for users to identify their path, problems and challenges, their confusion in the path, and the so-called pain points and ambiguous words of the website. SPSS software was used for quantitative data analysis and MaxQda software for qualitative interview data analysis. The systematic observation was carried out using Faststone and Ocam softwares. Two groups including novice users (clients) and advanced (librarians) participated in the study. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the oCam collected from interviews. In order to validate the findings, the Methodological Triangulation method and Lincoln and Cuba criteria were used.

Paying attention to the average of tasks performed by novice users (clients) and advanced (librarians) showed that registering a new user account took the most amount of time (more than 6 minutes). The overall average difficulty and ease of completing tasks without separating the two groups of users showed that Task 5 with an average of 3.45 and Task 2 with an average of 3.35 were the most difficult tasks, while Task 8 with an average of 2.25, was the easiest. Feedbacks received from novice and advanced users about the usability of evaluation criteria of the digital library (satisfaction rate, ease of operation, ease of navigation, site attractiveness, layout of information elements, etc.) showed that some components did not receive the average score of 3. For example, organizing website information with an average of 1.70, and visually attractiveness with an average of 2.10 are not desirable from the point of view of advanced users. Monitoring the level of user satisfaction with NLAI’s digital library showed that only 30% of novice users and 10% of advanced users were satisfied with their performance on the website. Numerous problems and challenges were reported during the completion of the tasks defined for the users. These challenges include complexity of processes (complex resource search process; registration process complexity; and search fields), poor understanding of site tags and concepts, arrangement of site elements, redundancy and multiplicity of options, visual appearance of the site, inappropriate retrieval, technical issues, inconsistencies, collection, and access constraints, wasted user time, variety of resource formats, and digital resource display.

Comparing the means of the two groups of novice and advanced users indicates that advanced users spend more time performing their tasks. Paying attention to the unsuccessful attempts between the two user groups and comparing them with each other showed that the rate of unsuccessful attempts was higher among advanced users than novice users. Advanced users were more unsuccessful because of the strategies and perceptions they had of the search. They naturally tended to use advanced search instead of simple search. This perception led to an increase in the number of unsuccessful attempts, as the advanced search of the digital library was very confusing.

The purpose of this study is to explain the methodology and relationships between concepts for designing and creating ontology of children and Young adults as one of the basic technologies for the realization of the Semantic Web.

The present study is one of the applied researches because it deals with the creation of ontology of children and Young adults which is one of the essential tools in designing information systems in the field of children and Young adults. Also, in terms of purpose and method of data collection, this research is considered as a descriptive and survey research. Conceptual design of ontology was done using Methontology methodology based on the concepts and relationships in ASKA thesaurus (Thesaurus of Kanoon-e Parvaresh-e Fekri Koodakan va Nojavanan). The face and content validity of the conceptual structure was confirmed by experts in the field of Children and Young adults of the National Library and Delphi method. The tool used to build the Protégé of the software is version 5.5.0

The results showed that the ontology of Children and Young adults can be composed of 12 main classes (education, literature, communication, history, social sciences, Information science & Computer, religion, psychology, linguistics, science and technology, philosophy, Arts and recreation). 4 types of interpretive attributes (1- Definition, 2- Synonyms 3- Equivalent to, 4- Notes) are used. This ontology includes 42 types of object attributes (1-Instrument for, 2- Executed by, 3- Executes, 4- Evaluates, 5- Is Used of, 6- Uses, 7- Has kind, 8- Is part of, 9- Based on, 10- Checked in, 11- Taken from, 12- Held in, 13- Founder, 14- Has negative influence, 15- Supporter, 16- Is a related field of, 17- Has skill, 18- Is Method of, 19- Is a time for, 20- Is a measure of, 21- Includes, 22- Has symptom, 23- Provider, 24- Accessible by, 25- Is low of, 26- Prevents from, 27- Is affected by, 28- Opposite to, 29- Execution place, 30- Operation place, 31- Phase of, 32- Studies, 33- Is concept of, 34- Beneficial for, 35- Is effective on, 36- Caused by, 37- Is sign of, 38- Is theory of, 39- Is a kind of, 40- Is a, 41-Collaboration with, 42- Has Property), Which of these properties, a symmetric properties and four Transitive properties and 6 of these relationships are Inverse properties property and also has 16 types of data properties (1- Uses, 2- Abbreviated, 3- Created by, 4- Used for, 5- Date of creation, 6- Date of holding, 7- Date of establishment, 8- Date of birth, 9- Date of death, 10-Has Kind, 11- Are treated, 12- Including services, 13- Symptoms, 14- Causes, 15- Accessible from the source, 16- Another name) and 214 samples are listed.

Given the focus of new standards in the field of knowledge organization on ontological approaches, the need to understand and recognize ontologies, relationships, and how they operate and function is very important. In this regard, the ontology of Children and Young adults can be one of the useful and effective tool for this purpose and a representation of knowledge in this field. This essential tool can be used in the design of information systems for Children and Young adults, and also as a basis for the development of future terms and concepts in this field.