JOURNAL OF EPISTEMOLOGY (LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY)
Year:2010 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:9

Purpose: The aim of the study is to do an investigation into students’ familiarity and use of online databases in Babol University of Medical Sciences.Methodology: The method applied is descriptive and data gathering tool is questionnaire. Using stratified random sampling, 340 persons were selected as sample of among research society. Finally, 305 questionnaires were analyzed. Collected data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and chi-square statistical test, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Also, software SPSS (version 16) was utilized.Findings: Research findings show that there is a significant relation between educational degree and familiarity of the students with online databases and also between educational filed and their familiarity with online databases; 34/8% of the students aren’t familiar with databases at all and also 42% of them don’t use of them at all; there is a significant relation between familiarity of the students with the databases and using of them; “ScienceDirect”, with 2/67% average of usage, is the most known and useful database; there is also a significant relation between access of students to the databases and their educational degree and discipline; access of the students to databases with 50/2% is average. And, about half of the students know Internet and Web-based information resources. It means that, there is a significant relation between familiarity of the students with databases and Internet.Conclusions: The most of the students (36/7%) indicated that familiarity with search techniques is as the most important factor for effective using of online databases.

Purpose: Accepting the fact that information technology-based services (ITBS) in academic libraries are considerably ubiquitous and emphasizing that little attention has been given to the overall assessment of ITBS quality in academic libraries, the present paper aims at reviewing the literature related to quality assessment and performance evaluation in academic libraries, and extract key issues. Hence, it attempts to identify a set of criteria that appears to be useful for assessing the quality of academic libraries ITBS and use these criteria to develop an instrument or evaluation checklist for evaluating the quality of academic libraries ITBS.Methodology: The method used in the research is literature review by which related literature concerning quality assessment of academic libraries’ services has been consulted.Findings: The literature tells us that evaluating ITBS in academic libraries should be considered more and thus, more evaluation studies on the basis of validated tools are needed.Conclusions: Hopefully, the suggested evaluation tool or some parts of it will be used by future studies. Undoubtedly, this evaluation checklist can be enriched by further studies.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is content analysis of two text books according to the curricula approved by the High Council of Cultural Revolution: “English texts for the students of Library and Information Science” by Ali Reza Rostami Gomeh and Hossein Mokhtari-Memar; and “Using the Library and Information Terms in English Sentences” by Hossein Mokhtari-Memar. The main purpose of the research is to compare the texts to the approved curricula and to give helpful suggestions to promote the educational level of the English texts of Library and Information Science.Methodology: To collect the data, several checklists have been used. The methodology of this research is content analysis that is one of the common methods in data analysis.Findings: Findings indicate that the above mentioned texts are able to cover 86.1% of compulsory and 13.9% of the optional course curricula. The highest coverage of the first book is related to “Library and Librarianship” equals to 17.3%, but the second book covers 20.2% that is related to “Collection building 1”. Both of these are compulsory courses. In some cases such as Library resources and services for adult neo-literates and for children and young adults (compulsory courses), the texts have no coverage.Conclusions: According to the findings, some suggestions have been given for the new editions of the English texts, such as IT, ICT topics and optional courses should be more emphasized. Attention should be paid to include original English texts instead of English sentences in the second book.

Purpose: Because of restrictions such as budget, space, and manpower, libraries and information centers are forced to meet information needs of their users through resource sharing, interlibrary loan and document delivery services. Therefore, this study intends to investigate implementing system of interlibrary cooperation and document delivery services in academic libraries located in West Region of Iran.Methodology: To do this, it studies barriers and problems faced by aforementioned libraries. Using descriptive method and distributing questionnaires among managers and librarians in the academic libraries located in western parts of the country, Kurdistan, Ilam, Hamedan, Kermanshah, and Lorestan, needed data were collected.Findings: Based on the findings, on the average, about 88/7% of respondents agreed that the creation of interlibrary loan system and document delivery services is a necessity. Findings also indicate that factors such as technical factors (95%), human factors (92/3%), economic factors (85/9%), and organizational factors (68/8%) influence the creation, however, the barriers include: lack of information databases, lack of necessary equipment for document delivery, resistance of managers and librarians for cooperation among local libraries and lack of their belief to cooperate libraries, weakness in technological infrastructure, lack of specialists, tendency to source centralization in libraries, lack of credit securing from mother organization, are also among the important factors that discourage the establishment of such systems and services.Conclusions: According to the findings, some suggestions have been provided.

Purpose: This research aims to analyze citations of articles published in the Research in Science and Petroleum Engineering Quarterly during 2001- 2007.Methodology: In this research we generally analyzed 115 articles published in 17 volumes.Findings: The research shows that the most number of citations is related to journals. They form 491 cases which is equal to 42.5% of the whole citations. 95.9% of these citations are concerned to Latin journals and 4.1% of them are related to Persian ones. Books with 453 cases and 37.5% of the whole citations are categorized at second rank. From the whole numbers of the citations to the books, 91.7% is allotted to Latin books and 8.3% is allocated to the Persian ones. Citation to reports, standards, patents and conferences with 14.7% is at third rank; in addition, citation to dissertations and projects with 4.4% and electronic sources with 0.8% are at the following ranks. It also became clear that in average, 4 titles of Latin journals, 3 titles of Latin books and 1 title of Latin reports, standards and patents are used in each article. Moreover, the number of using Latin electronic resources, dissertations and projects is less than one resource per article. The number of the core journals is 18.

Purpose: In this study the history and definitions of bibliometrics have been described. Then, the current state of this field has been reviewed in ISI database.Methodology: To do this, data available in ISI database were consulted.Findings: Findings show that Glanzel has produced 41 documents and thus is the most productive author in this database. According to findings, USA with production of 453 documents stands in the highest rank in all nations. Findings also show that Leiden University has produced 78 articles and therefore stands as the first university in this regard. The documents regarding bibliometrics in ISI database have been written in 11 languages. In this regard, 1503 documents have been written in English language. Scientometrics Journal has published 111 documents relating to bibliometrics. 213 documents have been written by researchers in the field of Library and Information Science. The most productive year for bibliometrics studies is the year 2007.Conclusions: Term “bibliometrics” has significantly developed compared to other metrics terms.

Purpose: The shape and functions of libraries is now changing with the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The aim of this research is to investigate the present state of information and communication technology usage on the basis of managers and librarians’ attitude in the Organization of Libraries of Astan Quds Razavi.Methodology: The method used is descriptive survey. To collect needed data a questionnaire was utilized.Findings: The research findings showed that factors affecting high usage of ICTs are ICT training, allocation of budget, and ICT infrastructure; ICT is used well in acquisition and organization departments of the organization; ICT usage causes increased quality of acquiring and organizing information resources and services.Conclusions: There are impediments and problems of ICT usage which follow in order as lack of employees’ ICT knowledge, insufficient budgets, lack of standard software packages, and unsuitable structure of ICT.

Purpose: This research aims at evaluating the Islamic books’ back-of-the-book indexes in Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch according to the compliance with ISO 999 Standard.Methodology: Descriptive survey was the research method used in this study and research population consists of all the Islamic books (BP Class in National Bibliography) available in the libraries of Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch.Findings: Research findings showed that among total 2650 books, 223 titles have had back-of-the-book index. It was found that Islamic books have had the most compliance (97.8%) with “pagination of back-of-the-book index”, one criterion of ISO 999 Standard. Least compliance (8.1%) was relating to presenting “the introductory note”. The overall compliance with ISO 999 Standard was 43.9%.Conclusions: In terms of back-of-the-book indexes, Islamic books are in a weak state. To improve this, importance of back-of-the-book indexes should be highlighted for authors, translators, and publishers.