LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
Year:2008 | Volume:11 | Issue:2|Papers Count:13

The definition of information and communication in different fields of studies is presented and discussed. Various models and theories relating to these two terms are also described and explained. Information and entropy, information and probability, different types of communication, verbal and nonverbal communication are explained and their roles in information and communication studies are described.

The purpose of this study was to investigate .the service quality of central libraries of three medical universities namely Iran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, and Islamic Azad University (Tehran Medical Branch). The research sample included 361, 116 and 344 users of the central libraries of Iran, Shahid Beheshti and Azad medical universities respectively. Results showed that the service quality of the central library of Iran medical university was statistically higher than the two other university libraries; but the quality of services rendered by the central libraries of Shahid Beheshti and Azad medical universities was not statistically different. The libraries services had higher negative gap in the dimension of information control. The most unsatisfactory service in libraries was "making electronic resources accessible from my home or office". Considering the research results some suggestions are made for improving the service quality of the libraries.

The cognition process in information retrieval can influence user’s judgment of relevance about retrieved document. In this article, after addressing the cognitive psychology briefly, relevance and its assessment, we studied the impact of user cognition on this process. Suggestions are made and new research issues are proposed which can benefit systems designers to develop cognitive-oriented information systems.

Information asymmetry in markets reduces the social efficiency. In such situations, there is always lack of information on one side of the market (Mostly the one who purchases the goods). He never pays the real price due to his uncertainty about the real quality of the good. On the other hand, Mono or Duopolies also affect the efficiency of markets. As for the Information markets, where journals or databases are being marketed, information asymmetry multiplied by monopolies, decreases efficiency which adversely affects the libraries. Addressing these problems, this paper aims to delineate some way out of the problem.

This study was carried out to investigate the status of Scholarly collaboration among faculty staff in four fields at ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Statistical population included all the common sources (articles, books and research) produced by the faculty staff during the 6 years. The findings were as follows: There is a significant difference between the extent of scientific collaboration in various fields at Ferdowsi university. The three fields of Agriculture, science and Engineering had high record in scientific collaboration in scientific products, but the humanities had the lowest record in respect. 3) The highest record in university belongs to the field and Science and the lowest record belongs to the Humanities.  

This research aims to investigate the visibility, Web Impact Factor (WIF), and the collaboration rate of the websites of the Iranian Universities of medical sciences using webometrics. All 42 websites belonging to the Iranian universities of medical sciences were reviewed through Yahoo. The research results indicated that Shiraz university of Medical sciences websites with 12,700 links, Tehran university of medical sciences with 10,400 and Isfahan university of medical sciences with 5170 links were the most visited sites, the websites belonging to Baqiatallah, Bousher and Lorestan Universities of Medical Sciences made the highest WIF, and the website of the Gilan University of Medical Sciences with a WIF of 0.094 made the least impact. In-link analysis results indicated that websites under study had collaborated in 7 clusters, and on the other hand a multidimensional scale illustrated the Collaboration of these websites in 4 clusters.

In this article the types of image indexing approaches are described briefly, and an overview of challenges to concept-based image indexing is provided. A New approach that is named folksonomy or social classification is introduced. In this indexing approach, social tagging is perceived as a tool for enhancing description of digital objects and providing a venue for user input and greater user engagement. This article seeks to examine the pros and cons of user-generated metadata in the context of digital image collections and compares it to professionally created metadata schema and controlled vocabulary tools. It analyzes the characteristics of social classification and finds that social tagging can be implemented to professionally created metadata records to provide an opportunity for user to comment on images.

Bibliometrics and its related branches are directly related to the study of the extent of scientific information production in different specialized fields and offer researchers some indicators for evaluation and measurement of produced information in various domains and countries. In this study, using Scientometric methods the amount of scientific publications in the Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics and Webometrics in Web Of Science database during 1990-2005 was studied. All records in terms of subject, language, author, publication year, type of document, journal title and institution and university fields were analyzed. Findings revealed that totally 53 countries had role in scientific documents production in studied subject domains. USA, UK, Germany and Netherlands had 1 to 4 ranks. Current research indicated that %91/26 of documents were in English. A few institutions (%16/1) were producers of a major segment of scientific literature. More than %50 of the documents were published in 6 Journals (%3168). Findings showed that %73/14 publications were in article format, and then consequently article reviews (%6/96) and book reviews (%5/99) were placed. Other findings indicated that in this research the first five articles received 47-1 il citations and consequently were published in 1989, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2002. Most of the documents published in 2004 and 2005 reflect development in this field.

Fuzzy Logic (FL) was first introduced in 1965 by Professor Lotfi Zade from Iran. In contrarst to Aristotelian logic, FL accepts vagueness as part of the logical system. It argues that while machinery is unable to perceive qualitative concepts - easily understood by humans- it is possible to transfer. Ways of human thinking to technology through FL. Today FL is used in many disciplines including Information Management. According to LISA, the major part of what has been published' on FL relates to information storage and retrieval followed by organization and acquisition. At present FL is also used for network security. Little research has been carried out on FL and documentation or record management. The main interest in FL research tends to be towards' expert systems and artificial intelligence. It seems that FL can be used much more extensively in solving present problems facing information management.

The purpose of this paper is to study Japan and China foresight experience in ICT field. Results show: Japan foresight time limit is 2035 and China time limit is 2020. According to Economic, Social and important index, "Information security technology will be the most superior technology for Japan in future and it will realize 2012 to 2017. In average, time gap between technology realization and social application is 5/3 years.The results of China foresight indicated that, according to analysis result of economic index (Eco-Index), "network technology" is most likely to yield the greatest benefits. According to Social-Index, "network technology" and "new integrated circuit" is superior technology. According to the important index (I-index) "Information security technology" and "network security technology" is much higher. According to analysis result of impact on high-tech industries (H-index), "network technology" and "new integrated circuit" exert the greatest impact on high-tech industries. According to analysis results of the index for enhancing people's life quality (L-index), "Chinese information processing technology", "Broadband access technology" have the greatest function for enhancing life quality.

This article is about the problems and common interests, which exist among different kinds of libraries. Describes values of libraries and introduces eight values for standard of assessing libraries: stewardship, services, intellectual freedom, privacy, and rationalism, commitment to literacy and learning, equity of access to record knowledge and information, and democracy. Although most of services and programs are changing and will be changed by the use technology in libraries at present and future, the values of libraries will remain the same forever.

Despite increasing integration of information literacy into university curricula there are evident limitations in students' use of information associated with an information literacy imbalance between well-developed information technology skills and uncritical approaches, compounded by differences in cultural and linguistic experience. Explores the complexity of online information use for learning in the culturally diverse, information and communication technologies-intensive, higher education context. It presents a Model of responses and influences in online information use for learning, which aims to increase awareness of the complexity of online information use and support information literacy development.