RESEARCH ON INFORMATION SCIENCE AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES (PAYAM-E-KETABKHANEH (LIBRARY MESSAGE))
Year:2020 | Volume:26 | Issue:3 (102)|Papers Count:7

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) highly affected the people anywhere in the world. Iran has also been highly affected by this disease. We do not know if it is either a man-made or natural disease, which is beyond the scope of this paper. In any case, each disaster has two sides and brings both limitations and opportunities, and we must try our best to change the limitations into opportunities. In fact, living in difficult situations makes people strong and resistant and forces them to find suitable solutions. One of the opportunities COVID-19 brought for us is that it proposed another way of living: some people were ready for it, some accepted reluctantly and some must be compelled to prepare for it. COVID-19 taught us that we can have our cultural activities in less expensive way, provided that the electronic infrastructure is ready, and the men in charge are well elected and responsible; It taught us that we must not waste our educational courses with unnecessary works; it proposed a competitor state of educational teaching seriously. It also showed us if someone does not try his/her best, his/her job would be omitted very soon in the era of calamity. With the worldwide spread of COVID-19 in Iran as well as in other countries, the IRIB TV provided teaching programs and Iranian school students began using it. If virtual services are provided, libraries can easily serve people in this situation. Now, the Iranian “Social Network of Students” (in Persian, acronymically abbreviated to “SHAD”) and another program called the “TV School of Iran” are two successful programs which are aimed to continue their services after the eradication of COVID-19 as well. In these days, libraries should also become more active, and try their best to answer the educational, cultural and social needs of people. If libraries want to compete with others in cultural and sociological activities, and if librarians do not want to be only knowledge keepers, as Millville Dewey had mentioned, they have to find new ways in competition. They have to be more active and change their way of service to people. It seems that Iran Public Libraries Foundation has to supplement the existing educational and cultural services with establishing school digital libraries. Some recommendations are as follows: 1. Book publishing should be hybrid (it should include both print and electronic publishing); 2. Virtual book fairs in attractive forms must be held; 3. All people should be widely informed that their educational needs are met or can be met at low costs and librarians are be accessible anytime and anywhere as soon as possible.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to identify the components affecting information seeking behavior and to measure their impact from Persian and English articles in this field. In addition, the moderating variables affecting information seeking behavior were identified and their effect size was calculated. Method: The method of this study is meta-analysis. The research population included all research papers indexed in the Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) for national research as well as all research papers indexed in ProQuest database for international research. According to the inclusion criteria, 89 studies were selected and among them, 19 studies had dependent variables of information seeking behavior and independent variables affecting information seeking behavior to calculate the effect size, which were included in the meta-analysis. These studies were conducted by applying survey method and by using questionnaire tools in different societies and according to reliable criteria. Data were analyzed using the CMA2 software. Findings: In the studies carried out in this field (which included in the metaanalysis), a total of 16 variables and factors affecting information seeking behavior were identified in four main subgroups of students, faculty members, medical staff and citizens. These factors include: Internet use, access to information resources, familiarity with specialized resources, Internet skills, search skills, familiarity with new technologies, basic knowledge of the field of search, lack of time, ability to recognize the validity of information, motivation to seek information occupation, English language proficiency, Internet access, information literacy level, personal factors, Internet anxiety, and personal interest. The overall results of the meta-analysis showed that the effect size or the coefficient of influence of the components and factors affecting the information seeking behavior is 0. 589, which is rated as high according to Cohen's interpretive system. In addition, the extent of the effect of variables and factors affecting information seeking behavior is different in term of the two variables of sample group (students, faculty members, medical staff and citizens) and the field of study (internal and external research), and both variables are moderating variables affecting information-seeking behavior. Originality/value: Due to the fact that many studies have been conducted on variables and factors affecting information seeking behavior, there was no research dealing with their results in the form of meta-analysis. Therefore, this research has tried to fill this gap. The information seeking behavior of individuals is influenced by factors, and the 16 factors identified in this study considerably affect how individuals seek information. Furthermore, in addition to the independent factors and variables of the variable, information seeking behavior is different depending on different groups of society and their local context and language.

Purpose: Reading is one of the challenging problems in contemporary Iran. After the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), reading becomes one of the factors that Iranians considered it necessary for modernization and development. For this reason, most people, even who were literate, had no desire to read. This situation was unpleasant for intellectuals, publishers and cultural activists, and therefore they published essays and articles about this issue. These publications grew significantly during the 1960-1970s. As we can see in these documents, the main idea was that Iran society has encountered by a "Reading Crisis". This study aims to describe this idea under the Reading Crisis discourse. Moreover, it seeks to show how the articulation of this discourse was affected by discursive practices and social practices. Method: The methodology used in the present research is the Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA). Based on this method, First, the articles about reading which were published from 1905 to 1978 were searched and categorized into discourses and then those documents were chosen that were tagged as “reading crisis discourse” (45 texts). These documents were then coded during the next two stages: first, each fragment of the texts was tagged by one or more elements of Fairclough's CDA model (433 fragments); then, similar text fragments were categorized and tagged. The coding process continued until sufficient data to describe all the selected discoursive components were collected, and the present researchers were able to find a logical relationship between the data. Findings: The findings indicate that publishers are the main speakers of this discourse. As for-profit institutions, they seek more profit, but in order to gain legitimacy, they use cultural language and try to show Iranian society has a big problem and people do not read enough. They call this a crisis and claim that government must intervene and facilitate buying books by subsidies. They say that government must pay subsidies to publishers as a way to reduce book price. On the other hand, government seek a way to eliminate the voice of the protesters or voices that did not match the main discourse and central power and thus to censor books. As a result, government grants privileges to publishers, provided that they publish good books. During the time, most publishers became the collaborators of government in censorship in order to safeguard their interests. In this discourse, the reader is for the most part represented as the buyer, and reading is roughly equivalent to buying. Book, as the main media of discourse, is divided into two groups: bad books and good books: good books are ones supporting the government's idea of development and modernization. Censorship mechanism is the gatekeeper of bad books; and public libraries, “Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults” and “Children's Book Council” are promoters of good books. Originality/value: The book crisis discourse in Iran is still alive and powerful. By knowing the origins and mechanism of this discourse, reading promoters and other social actors avoid mistakes that may damage their valuable efforts.

Purpose: Information and information sources can be divided into three broad categories according to their nature or type: textual information (book, journal article, conference paper, dissertation, newspaper, etc. ), visual information (infographic, photo, Cartoons, films, etc. ) and audiovisual information. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of reading textual information in comparison with visual information (infographics) on the health information perception of high school girl students in Tehran. Method: The current study was carried out by applying a semi-experimental method in which a pretest/posttest design was used on two groups. The research population included 30 high-school girl students of Boshra High School in Tehran. Two groups of 15 students were randomly selected and invited to participate in groups. In fact, 15 participants in one group read textual health information and 15 participants in another group read infographic health information. An acquaintance pre-test was performed on both groups and two post-tests of learning and retention were used to evaluate whether the participants learnt and retained textual and visual health information, which was presented to them during the period under study using a 27-item self-report questionnaire based on textual and visual information. Finally, the results of the two groups were analyzed by descriptive statistics and dependent and independent t-test. Findings: The findings of the study showed that the mean scores of the two groups of participants were the same as in the pre-test, the difference between the observed mean scores for the pre-test scores was not statistically significant. Furthermore, the mean scores of the two groups of participants for both textual information and visual information (infographics) were equal in the post-test of learning, and the difference in mean scores for posttest scores was not statistically significant. This means that both textual information and visual information (infographics) have increased the participants' learning to the same degree and do not differ significantly in terms of learning. Additionally, the mean scores of both groups for textual information and visual information (infographics) in the post-test were also equal and the difference in observed mean for post-test scores was not statistically significant. The latter finding means that textual information and visual (infographic) information were remembered equally and were not significantly different. Originality/value: The findings of the present study indicates that textual information and visual information (infographics) have increased the learning and retention of participants to the same extent and are not different in terms of learning and retention. It can also be concluded that despite the appearance of the formats and the media, the text still has an important place in the learning and retention of students.

Purpose: Childhood is one of the most important periods in the formation of people’s character which the positive points as an integral part of the human being can be strengthened with a variety of indirect methods. According to this fact, storytelling can be among the attractive methods that are very effective since it arouses emotions and curiosity of the child, and is useful in teaching a variety of concepts, including altruistic behaviors. Accordingly, this study was aimed to determine the effect of storytelling on growing the altruistic feelings and behavior of primary school boys aged 7 to 12 in Kermanshah. Method: This research is an applied and quasi-experimental study using a pretest-posttest design on an experimental group and a control group. The study population consisted of 20 boys aged 7 to 12 years old in Kermanshah. Since the research was conducted in summer and there was no access to educational facilities, the study sample (who lived in Kermanshah) was selected by using the available sampling method. There were 10 persons in both pre-test and post-test groups. The parents' form of the standard Goodman (1997) altruistic questionnaire was used for pre-test and post-test, and parents of the children responded to these questionnaires by observing their behavior in two phases. Parents were tested in both groups. The experimental group was influenced by the story-reading variable for eight sessions held from August to September 2017 in Imam Ali Public Library in Kermanshah. All eight storybooks were related to children's altruistic behavior. At the end of the intervention, the parents of both groups completed the post-test. To determine the effects of storytelling on altruism in Kermanshah boys Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests were used. Findings: Descriptive data showed that the level of altruism of boys aged 7 to 12-year-old is above average and desirable. Furthermore, the findings of statistical tests indicated that storytelling sessions increased the altruism of children. The difference between the pre-test of the control and experimental groups was not significant, but the post-test altruism level of the experimental group increased compared to the control group, which suggests that the storytelling intervention increased altruism in the Kermanshahi boys under study. Originality/value: For the first time, the present study experimentally showed that storytelling increases the altruistic sense of 7 to 12-year-old boys. This finding demonstrates the applicability of storytelling in educating children and solving their problems and suggests that storytelling should be used in educational and clinical settings as an optimal entertaining teaching method.

Purpose: The Web 2. 0 creates a collaborative and interactive space that can be achieved by launching its features and capabilities in a software environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the priorities of using Web 2. 0 features in the Iran's Public Library Management System (Saman) from the perspective of librarians working in the public libraries of Tehran Province. Method: The present study is a descriptive-survey study which is practical in terms of purpose. The statistical population of this research included 559 librarians in Tehran public libraries from whom 240 persons were selected based on the Morgan’s table. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire consisting of 103 items, i. e. features, which were categorized into seven main criteria. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by several experts in the area of knowledge and information science (KIS) and its reliability was calculated by the Cronbach's alpha at at 0. 98. The questionnaire had questions with a range of five Likert values from 1 to 5. Finally, the Friedman's statistical test was used to analyze the research hypotheses. Findings: The results show that the ability to have a personal profile (included in the criterion of “user's profile”), providing full bibliographic information and the details of documents production (included in the criterion of “full view of souces”), providing guidance (included in the criterion of “content”), and asking the librarian (included in the criterion of “user participation”) have the highest priority from the librarians' viewpoint, and the features of other criteria have equal priority. Furthermore, in the criteria surveyed, those features having characteristics related to social platforms received had lower mean ranks than than other features, and it seems that the main concern of librarians is to search for resources and providing more services in order to identify the resources needed by users in whatever way they will using Web 2. 0 features. Originality/value: Since the priorities of using Web 2. 0 features in the Iran's Public Library Management System (Saman) have not been examine till now, results of the present research can be useful for upgrade the Saman software. Moreover, according to the findings, the Saman software support the main feature of Web 2. 0 such as user's profile, user participation and notification in a lesser degree than the common features of library softwares such as searching and viewing documents. Therefore, the findings of this research can help the decision makers in this area to make the necessary plans for the future of this software.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to determine the impact of factors affecting the acceptance of the publication of video articles in scientific journals by the faculty members of Tarbiat Modares University, based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Method: The current research is an applied study in terms of purpose and a descriptivesurvey study in terms of the data collection method. The statistical population of research included all faculty members of Tarbiat Modares University. According to Cochran's formula, the sample size was determined to include 273 people. The dependent variables of this research include "behavioral intention" and "video articles usage behavior" and the independent variables in this research include "performance expectancy", "effort expectancy", "social influence" and "facilitating conditions". The main data collection tool in this study was a questionnaire validated by six experts and professors. Furthermore, after evaluating quantitatively the content validity of the questionnaire, the CVR content validity ratio coefficient of 0. 802 and the CVI content validity index of 0. 968 were obtained for each question. The reliability of the questionnaire which was measured by Cronbach's alpha coefficient was more than 0. 8. To test the hypotheses, the SEM structural equation modeling test using the least partial least squares (PLS) method was used. In order to evaluate the combined-diagnostic validity of CR test, convergence of variables from AVE test and divergence of variables from Fornell-Locker index were used. The software used in this research is SPSS and SmartPLS. articles and familiarity with it, 75. 10% of respondents were not familiar with video articles or had no experience using it. In the statistical analysis, the obtained mean score of social influence (3. 97) shows that the people in this study believed that the use and publication of video articles has made more researchers known in the community and video articles published by other researchers can influence the decision of other researchers to use video articles. The mean score of the facilitating conditions is above average (3. 94) and the research community believed that teaching, using and publishing video articles is simple and understandable. The test of research hypotheses also showed that behavioral intention (with the impact factor of 0. 271) and facilitating conditions (with the impact factor of 0. 322) have a positive and significant effect on the intention to use. The results obtained in this study, unlike other studies, indicate that "facilitating conditions" have the greatest impact on the factors of "performance expectancy", "effort expectancy" and "social influence" in accepting the publication of video articles. The more organizations provide the appropriate hardware, software, training and support conditions for the use of a technology, the faster it will be accepted by users. Moreover, after examining the effect of age and gender variables, it was found that age and gender have no significant effect on any of the research structures. Only a significant relationship was observed between the variables and effort expectancy. Therefore, it can be concluded that age and gender do not affect the amount of people's behavioral desire to publish video articles and their intention to use them, and therefore one of the ways to encourage people to accept and use video articles is to provide a clear picture of the positive aspects of using video articles as well as to create appropriate conditions. Originality/value: This study focuses on use of new technologies for presenting scientific results, improving scholarly communication, and developing e-Journals service. Due to the main role of public libraries in teaching and promoting science, with the introduction and introduction of video articles by librarians, the awareness and knowledge of library visitors about video articles will increase. Acceptance and use of databases is directly related to users' information-seeking behavior according to knowledge/skill, personal and professional characteristics of library users. Increasing awareness can have a positive effect on the behavioral intention of different segments of society to use video articles.