LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION ORGANIZATION STUDIES (JOURNAL OF NATIONAL STUDIES ON LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION ORGANIZATION)
Year:2017 | Volume:28 | Issue:2 (110) |Papers Count:11

Purpose: To explore the current developments and changes of attitudes in novel concepts of information such as knowledge organization, information ecology, and Scientometrics; using Luhmann’s theory of social systems and regarding concepts like Autopoiesis and 2nd order Cybernetics. Also, to explain the impacts on librarianship and the library as a functional system.Methodology: Theoretical analysis and desk research. The identified changes analyzed based on Luhmann’s theory of social systems.Results: According to Luhmann’s theory, libraries are sort of autopoietic systems which apply 2nd Order Cybernetic principles to observe themselves during changes.Constant changes in the environment cause new diagnostic operations and new phenomenological boundaries to be defined and new proper systems will be developed. To survive in the complex environment and to be able to interact with other social systems, this new system has to develop new appropriate functions by means of autopoietic activities and self-reference.Conclusion: Theoretically, Luhmann’s theory well explains the self-reference and re-description trends in libraries.

Purpose: To explore the match between Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and LibraryThing’s social tags and the possibility of replacing or completing LCSH by LibraryThing’s social tags in humanities, social science and natural science books.Methodology: Content analysis. Selecting 160 books in each domain and using coding, the exact, relative and approximate match and mismatch between headings and tags were recognized. Data gathered using LC bibliographic and authority records and Library Thing records and analyzed using coverage percentage and Jaccard Similarity Coefficient.Results: There were 1311 social tags (484 tags in natural sciences, 422 in social sciences and 405 in humanities), 580 of which (43%) had exact and approximate match and 301 cases (23%) had relative match with LCSH.Also, Jaccard Similarity Coefficient calculation rejected the replacement of headings by tags in all three domains.Conclusion: The replacement of LCSH by social tags is not possible and they can only be regarded as completion.

Purpose: To evaluate influencing factors on decision to reclassify resources in libraries of Tehran, Iran and Shahid Beheshti universalities of medical sciences.Methodology: Using desk research, the determining factors for decision on reclassification were obtained and then library managers were surveyed using a selfdesigned questionnaire.Results: “Executive facilities” and “perceptual factors (realizing the necessity to change), are the most determining factors to convince library managers for reclassification. Also, there are other influencing factors such as budget and continuance of library services, manager support, library collection integrity, unproper current classification and automating the change process. The less influencing factors on managers’ decisions are providing enough information and data to set purposive and proper plan for reclassification, better browsing in new classification system and ease of user training and adaptation.Conclusion: Medical Libraries should employ a realistic view to evaluate factors influencing reclassification. There is no single predetermined model to prove reclassification will cause remarkable improvement.

Purpose: To explore studies done on research methodology in knowledge and information science in Iran and other countries.Methodology: Bibliographic approach using desk research.Results: The oldest study on methodology in Iran has been done in 1992 and outside of Iran in 1947. Jarvelin and Vakkari (1990 & 1993) study is a turning point in the history of methodology studies. The main problem of research methodology studies, regardless of number and limited operational range, is being incommensurable due to not employing a systematic and classified research design. Either inside or outside of Iran studies applied content analysis or quantitative methods (specially survey), reflecting the dominance of quantitative methods in knowledge and information science domain despite the ever-growing use of qualitative methods.Conclusion: The research methodology diversity is not seen in Iran, unlike other countries and the majority of studies employ survey. It is expected that researchers follow research trends in knowledge and information science seriously and journals publish special issues on this matter regularly.

Purpose: To identify the effect of behavioral factors on scholarly communication and knowledge production of Iranian universities’ faculty members.Methodology: A self-designed questionnaire was used to survey 378 faculty members of various Iran province capitals being selected by stratified sampling.Results: Variables of personality characteristics, cognitive style, organizational conflict, and leadership style can significantly define the variance of scholarly communication. But variables of communication and information skills and deviation from social and cognitive norms had no significant role in the prediction. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between scholarly communication and knowledge production which statistically defines variance of knowledge production significantly.Conclusion: Most behavioral factors had a direct effect on scholarly communication, also on knowledge production through the communication. Knowledge production will be increased by scholarly communication growth, while scholarly communication can be effected by personality factors, cognitive style, organizational conflict and leadership style.

Purpose: To analyze the reasons for which users select retrieved images from Google search engine and investigate the relationship between users’ demographic variables and criteria for relevance judgment.Methodology: Thirty (30) graduate students in school of Engineering of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad were surveyed. Data gathered using a questionnaire asking about the reasons for selecting images and users’ relevance judgment. Objective criteria were obtained from related literature and validated by a number of experts.Results: There was no significant correlation between individual characteristics (experience and skill, educational level, age and gender) and users’ views toward the objective relevance criteria. The “user’s overall impression that an image may be useful” with 100% agreement was the main reason for image selection and the “uncertainty and going for the next image” with 33.33% was the main reason for rejecting an image.Conclusion: Users select images based on their overall impression, mental experience and their knowledge. The relevance judgment by users is not related to their familiarity with web elements.

Purpose: To estimate the effectiveness of Iranian ever-growing research in expanding the boundaries of knowledge and science enrichment.Methodology: Descriptive study.Results: Despite the considerable participation in global knowledge production, only 0.03% of credible international awards were devoted to Iranian researchers.Also, Iranian top papers have only attracted 0.19% of all citations to world top papers.Conclusion: Despite the significant growth in number of Iranian research, the effectiveness of these studies on expanding the knowledge boundaries and science enrichment has been negligible.

Purpose: Longitudinal study to visualize the evolution of international collaboration network of Iranian researchers in knowledge production.Methodology: Using scientometrics and Social Network Analysis (SNA) measures, all internationally co-authored articles by Iranian authors being indexed in Web of Science (WoS) during 1969 to 2012 (36879 articles) were studied.Results: The share of internationally co-authored papers in total publication of Iranian researchers in WoS was 20.87%. International collaboration of Iranian researchers had an annual growth of 63.06% in average. Iranian researchers have collaborated with colleagues from 179 countries. The United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia as the most five important collaborating partners of Iran had contributed to more than 64% of internationally co-authores papers of Iran. Iranian researchers in Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Materials Science (multidisciplinary) and Applied Mathematics had the highest tendency to carry out research through collaboration with foreign countries.Conclusion: Evolutionary study of international collaboration network of Iranian researchers based on WoS data showed that this network was formed in 1969. Growing and shrinking were the only two changes which can be seen in the network during different time windows. Also, studying the structure of network in different time spans revealed that the values of network density has decreased over time.

Purpose: To investigate the efficiency of the language restriction feature in Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines and to determine the most efficient search engine in retrieving relevant results in Farsi and Arabic.Methodology: A survey on a sample of 38 homonyms with different meanings in Farsi and Arabic.Results: Google search engine showed a lower performance compared to the other two search engines in terms of the number of results retrieved and ranking the relevant results to the target language. There was no significant difference among the three search engines in retrieving irrelevant results to the target language. However, a significant difference was seen among Google and the other search engines in ranking the irrelevant results to the target language. Also, no relationship was found between the performance of the search engines in retrieving irrelevant results to the target language and traffic and popularity of irrelevant pages.Conclusion: Those using the language restriction feature for Farsi and Arabic are more likely to see relevant results in Yahoo and Bing search engines.

Purpose: To recognize similarities and differences of information organization in two social bookmarking websites of CiteUlike and Bibsonomy.Methodology: The specification and capabilities of two websites were identified and compared using a comparative and evaluative approach.Results: Regarding output format diversity, display options and interaction with tags, Bibsonomy functions better however CiteUlike is better considering connection possibilities.Conclusion: To manage bibliographical information having different display output formats and interacting with tags Bibsonomy is recommended and CiteULike can be used for its good connection possibilities.