JOURNAL OF EPISTEMOLOGY (LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY)
Year:2013 | Volume:5 | Issue:19|Papers Count:10

Purpose: This research aims to compare the attitude of the managers of libraries located at Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Medical Sciences Universities’ training hospitals on the status of information technology (IT) in the mentioned libraries.methodology: Applied survey research methodology was assigned in this research. It used researcher-made questionnaire to collect the data. The managers of forty hospital libraries of Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities formed the population of the research. To analyze the collected data, the statistical software SPSS (version 17) was used.Findings: Results showed that 12.5% of Tehran, 15.6% of Iran and 25% of Shahid Beheshti universities library managers agreed to a very large extent on the application and development of IT and its tools and 93.7% of the managers from all the three hospital libraries deemed the application of IT most necessary. The managers believed that the greatest advantage of IT is concerned with the reduction of human efforts (59.4%), and 100% of the managers acknowledged the need for further promotion of their skills in a wide variety of IT issues. 16.1% at Tehran, 12.9% at Iran and 29% at Shahid Beheshti University considerably approved of formal education for the promotion of their librarians’ skills.Conclusion: According to the research findings it can be concluded that objective and scientific attitude towards the role of information technology on hospital library managers has significant differences, so that the hospital library managers of SBU have higher positions in objective and practical attitude and desire.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the public libraries role in society’s cultural engineering covered by-Iran Public Libraries’ Organization (I. P. L. O.).Methodology: Research method is descriptive. The research community includes all 117 librarians from 37 public libraries. To gather information the researcher has used questionnaires including 29 questions. The validity of this questionnaire was confirmed by experts and reliability of questionnaire was verified by Cronbach’s alpha. For statistical analysis, Single variable T- test, K square and Friedman test were used.Findings: Results of this research reveal that public libraries role in society’s cultural engineering is more than 50% and also clarifies that between the chosen factors as the cultural role of libraries; the most effective one is libraries’ role in developing knowledge and information among the society.Conclusion: This research is one of the first researches in public libraries to show their role in cultural engineering in society.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the organizational intelligence of Iran Research Institute for Information Science & Technology.Methodology: The research method is analytical survey, and the population consisted of 150 employee of Iran Research Institute for Information Science & Technology. A questionnaire used based on Karl Albrecht’s Seven Skills. Karl Albrecht presents a model for organizational intelligence that has seven dimensions: strategic vision, shared faith, appetite to change, sprit, alignment and congruence, knowledge deployment and performance pressure.Findings: According to the results, the organizational intelligence mean (3.2) is higher than average. The highest and lowest obtained means relate to knowledge application and change indexes 3.76 and 2.66 respectively.Conclusion: Although the organizational intelligence in Iran Research Institute for Information Science & Technology is higher than average, it still needs augmentation by taking all dimensions of Organizational intelligence into consideration.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to determine website accessibility status of central libraries of 20 superior universities associated with Ministry of Science ‚ Research ‚ and Technology based on worldwide web consortium guidelines.Methodology: This paper is an applied study using evaluation method in accordance with 15 indices extracted from guidelines of web content accessibility of the consortium. ‚ Accessibility of 20 central libraries’ websites of superior universities associated with Ministry of Science‚ Research‚ and Technology which have gained 1-20 grades due to university ranking of the Ministry‚ have been evaluated by technical method (mechanical-manual) based on indices of the first priority extracted from worldwide web consortium. Mechanical evaluation was performed by EvalAccess 2.0 application and manual evaluation was developed by using the checklist extracted from indices of the first priority of worldwide web consortium guideline.Findings: The data demonstrated that in mechanical evaluation method‚ the central library website and the document center of Gilan University with 19 points and grade 1‚ and the central library Website of Mashhad Ferdosi University with 472 points and grade 18 are the most and the least accessible websites respectively. In manual evaluation the average of websites accessibility is 23%. Totally the accessibility rate of the websites is below 50% that is too far from the desirable outcome. Finally‚ some techniques and suggestions have been offered to improve websites accessibility.Conclusion: The paper is the second applied study in the field of website accessibility evaluation and the first applied study in the field of Iranian academic websites accessibility evaluation. The study data may develop a global perspective to policy makers to design accessible websites.

Purpose: Scientific productions indexed in major databases such as Scopus are important criteria for ranking the medical universities. Publication of these scientific productions leads to increase their visibility and citation. The purpose of this article is to investigate the publication and citation status of Gilan and Golestan Medical Sciences universities’ by end of August 2011 designating their Hirsh index.Methodology: This study is a descriptive one that was conducted through Science metric Attributable to both the university and all papers published in the Scopus database and were indexed under review. The findings were presented using descriptive statistics.Findings: Golestan University of Medical Sciences faculty members with the rank of associate professors are13 and they have the maximum number. The faculty members with rank of instructor are 9 and they have the lowest number. The Gilan University faculty members with the highest rank of professor are 5 and have the maximum number. The faculty members with rank of instructor and associate professor have the lowest number.Conclusion: According to Scopus, the articles of the faculties of Golestan University of Medical Sciences were 502 titles ; and the articles of Gilan were 262. The research population consists of 444 faculties of both Universities among them 103 faculties belong to Golestan university and 341 faculties belong to Gilan university. 32 faculties of Golestan university have Hirsh Index (31.6%) and 43 faculties of Gilan University have Hirsh Index (12.61%).These 32 facuties of Golestan have 502 articles, 1080 citations and their H index is 94. But the 43 faculties of Gilan University have 262 articles, 689 citations and their HIdex is 82. So we can conclude that as well as our citation is, our H Index will go up. Golestan University faculties are less, but their H index is higher namely their scientific potential is higher.

Purpose: This research aims to investigate visibility, Web Impact Factor (WIF), total links and size of the websites of the Islamic Azad Universities (IAU).Methodology: In this research we used webometrics methods specially link analysis. All 176 websites belonging to the IAU which were in a period of one month were reviewed through Yahoo.Findings: The research results indicated that “Lenjan branch.” with 5440 in- links, “Nour abad mamsani branch.” with 4280 and “South Tehran branch.” with 3290 in-links. “Sarvan branch”, “Lenjan branch” and “Khoram abad branch.” had the highest WIF among Islamic Azad Universities (IAU).Conclusion: Results analysis indicated that web designers in these universities must identify how to attract links and web traffic in order to promote the quality and content of websites. However، the ultimate success of a website was dependent upon factors such as quality، size، language، and the approximate age of a website which was not limited to one or two factors.

Purpose: The purpose of this inquiry was determining evaluated research ethics in higher education with the concentration on individual characteristics and professional responsibilities of researchers in Tehran governmental universities.Methodology: The study was conducted through content analysis method with qualitative approach and the necessary information was collected through semi-structured interviews. Research population consisted of faculty members and graduate students from Tehran’ governmental universities. A total of 37 interviews were conducted with informants. In order to analyze the narrative information, content analysis was used in three consecutive process transcribing interviews and open coding.Findings: The results revealed that researchers’ ethics can be divided into two categories, individual characteristics and professional responsibilities. The individual characteristics include commitment, honesty, motivation, Perseverance and patience and ethical responsibilities involve responsibilities to the community, sponsors, partners, subjects, research topic, other researchers, data collection and analysis, and publication of results.Conclusion: generally be said to improve ethics of research among the scientific community requires attention to infrastructure development and quality in research.

Purpose: This study aims to assess knowledge management standards in the seventh, fourteenth and fifteenth regional branches of Iran Islamic Azad University (IAU) websites.Methodology: The present research has been done by a descriptive survey method. The statistical population of this study is consisted of all websites of IAU in the seventh, fourteenth and fifteenth regional branches. An evaluation model known as knowledge Access, Creation and Transfer (K-ACT) was presented for evaluating the academic websites.Results: Findings show that in standard of knowledge access Sirjan branch has acquired the highest rank among all branches of the three regions. In standard of knowledge creation the website of Zahedan branch, which is placed in the 14th region, has obtained the highest rank. The latest standard is knowledge transfer that Bardsir branch has acquired the best position among all of them. Totally, among the three standards, Zahedan branch obtained the highest rank among all branches of IAU and the second position was is Sirjan branch. At the end, Hajiabad branch got the lowest position.Conclusion: Although many of academic branches in the three regions were using the internet and information technology, in general, they acted without support from science. They presented the total information of the universities on their websites and did not pay attention to different functions and services which could be done by knowledge management topic in the field of information technology.