RESEARCH ON INFORMATION SCIENCE AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES (PAYAM-E-KETABKHANEH (LIBRARY MESSAGE))
Year:2011 | Volume:16 | Issue:4 (63)|Papers Count:7

Purpose: With the aim of introducing toy libraries together with their associated goals, services, activities and structures, and through presenting an image of world experiences in the field, this research tries to emphasize the increasing importance of such centers in children’s development and remind the necessity of the respective practical activities in Iran.Methodology: This research has used library study. Toy libraries in the world which had website and portal were identified. In total, status of 50 libraries was investigated.Findings: Different characteristics of these libraries were studied, including their budget, services, size of the collection, types of materials, organization method, and rules. Finally, the suggestion was made so as to establish “the Iranian national game and toy library”.Originality/Value: This is the first research of its type which has made an attempt to provide the novel idea of establishing “the Iranian national game and toy library” based upon identification of world toy libraries and introduction to them. Not only the goal of such a library would be to maintain Iranian game and toy culture, but also providing services in this field is among its main goals.

Purpose: This study has been performed for content analysis of papers related to promotion of reading and children’s libraries which were published in specialized journals of library and information science (LIS) during 1999-2008.Methodology: Content analysis was employed. The population under study included all LIS specialized journals which were seven.Findings: Investigation of total number of papers published in LIS specialized journals indicated that, among these 1429 papers, 52 of them (6.3%) related to development of reading and 27 of them (8.1%) have studied children’s libraries; among these 79 papers, 75 of them (9.94%) were original papers while 4 of them (1.5%) were translation. Also, among the papers related to book reading and children’s libraries which were published in LIS specialized journals, 37 ones (8.46%) were research papers, 21 ones (6.26%) were analytic papers, 2 of them (5.2%) were review papers, and 19 ones (1.24%) were compilation.Originality/Value: Paying attention to book reading and children’s libraries is among significant issues in LIS. Absence of research studies in such fields reveals little attention assigned to them. This justifies the present study.

Purpose: This study was carried out to examine the publication status of religious stories for children and adolescents during 2001-2006.Methodology: We made use of content analysis. The population under study included 291 religious story books published during 2001-2006, which were retrieved from website of Iranian book house.Findings: The obtained results indicated that contribution of men and women to writing these books was 77% and 23%, respectively. Also, their contribution to painting these books was 56.7% and 43.6%, respectively. Publishing religious stories was limited to only seven cities. The highest and the lowest number of these books were published in 2006 and 2003, respectively. The target age groups “B” and “C” related to 47.8% of the studied books. Mean book circulation for all publishers, governmental publishers, and private ones was 7246, 4550, and 7888 copies, respectively. Comparison of mean prices showed that in contrast to governmental publishers, private publishers have annually increased the price of their books.Originality/Value: In spite of good status of reading religious stories books and support of publishing such books by government and governmental institutions, no independent study has been carried out regarding the publication status of religious books. This is the first study of its kind which, in addition to investigating the role of effective organizations in publishing and support of such books, has made some suggestions for familiarity of officials, publishers, and authors of such books with existing limitations and has proposed programs to alleviate the problems in future.

Purpose: This study seeks to identify significant structural characteristics of the websites designed for Iranian teenagers with age of 12-14 years.Methodology: It was accomplished using structural analysis of 54 English and Persian websites designed for teenagers, as well as opinion polling from 93 experts and 32 teenagers with age of 12-14 years. This was achieved as survey through a questionnaire. To analyze data, descriptive statistics together with T-test and Chi-square test were used.Findings: By investigating the opinions f the two mentioned groups, i.e. the experts and teenagers, 27 important structural characteristics (among the 30 identified characteristics) were determined for the websites designed for Iranian teenagers with age of 12-14 years. The 10 most significant ones were as follows: text readability (92.4%), high loading speed (89.2%), logo (88.1%), clearness of the titles of pages (86.3%), link to homepage (86%), correct grammar used in the website (86%), considering search engines for searching the website (82.8%), use of different colors (82.7%), governance in pages (81.6%), and use of images (81.5%).Originality/Value: To best of our knowledge, no research has been conducted so far regarding structural characteristics of the websites designed for children and adolescents in a specific age category considering their needs and characteristics; this makes the present study valuable. In addition by using the result of this study, the website designers, librarians of public libraries, parents, and teachers can design or choose appropriate websites for the mentioned group.

Purpose: We have studied in the present research the semantic relationship between publication date and literature templates in European books for children and adolescents translated into Persian in the first decade of 21st century and have identified literature templates in the mentioned books which have been published during 9 years, i.e. from beginning of 2000 to end of 2008.Methodology: Content analysis was used in this study by which it was tried to examine each of the stories in an accurate way and determine its literature template through systematic analysis of literature templates for the books. The population under study was chosen by ordered sampling. The necessary information for each book was written down in a checklist and the research hypothesis was tested using Chi-square test.Findings: It was indicated that among the mentioned 318 translated story books, 59 of them (28%) were written by women; 170 of them (53.5%) were written by men; and 89 of them (28%) had no obvious author. Considering the four standard literature templates, it was shown that 89 of them (28%) were fable, 81 of them (25.4%) were fiction, 106 of them (33.4%) were fantasy, and 42 of them (13.2%) were folklore. English-speaking authors had the highest contribution with 105 books (31.9%). Furthermore, the results indicated that the hypothesis of “existence of a significant relationship between abundance of literature template and publication date” is rejected since p value was calculated to be 23.135 > 0.05 based upon Chi-square test. It was concluded that there is no significant relationship between literature templates and publication date for the translated books.Originality/Value: This paper has identified the scope of literature templates for European books of children and adolescents translated into Persian, and it is a new approach which studies the status of books in this field regarding the typology of literature templates and investigates the semantic relationship between literature templates and publication date of these books.

Purpose: This research is devoted to study the information needs of blind and low-sighted users in Kerman City and their use of library services.Methodology: The methodology of this research is of descriptive-survey type and the population under study included blind and low-sighted members of academic and public libraries of Kerman City which consisted of 55 users and 13 libraries. Data collection was accomplished by questionnaire. To this end, two separate questionnaires were designed for blind and low-sighted users and library managers.Findings: The results showed that the resources with highest use by blind and low-sighted users are auditory (64%) and Berrile (42%) resources. Unfortunately a very low percentage of these clients use electronic resources. Furthermore, facilities and technologies in libraries are utilized at a very low extent.90 percent of blind and low-sighted users have considered library resources as insufficient. Also, 80 percent of users believe that the role of library in meeting their information needs is medium or less. Most of these users (78%) stated that librarians have helped them in accessing their needed information.Originality/Value: The results of this study can assist the officials in programming for providing facilities and information technologies necessary for specialized services to blind users in libraries. This paper additionally emphasizes sharing of specialized resources for blind users in public libraries and formation of inter-library collaboration system, and considers the establishment of national network of blinds information dissemination by National Institution of Public Libraries with collaboration of National Library of Iran as the basic solution for access of blinds to a wide range of information resources.

Purpose: This study was performed to determine and compare safety conditions of public libraries affiliated with Iran Public Libraries Foundation (IPLF) as well as Municipality Organization for Culture and Arts (MOCA) for the purpose of identification and comparison of their strengths, weaknesses, common points, and differences regarding safety indices.Methodology: This is of survey type. The population under study consisted of 37 public libraries of IPLF and 72 public libraries affiliated with MOCA, which were in total 109 libraries. A researcher-made questionnaire as a checklist was used to collect necessary data and included questions in terms of 8 indices of library safety, which were filled by the responders.Findings: As the results show, there is significant difference between public libraries of the IPLF and those affiliated with MOCA for the first index (quality of library building) in two criteria and for the fourth index (safety of library against fire) in one criterion, such that these criteria are observed more in public libraries of IPLF, and these public libraries were evaluated to be better concerning the quality of library building. Regarding safety against fire, no significant difference was observed except one case which was observed in public libraries affiliated with IPLF. Considering the second index (library’s safety against earthquake), the third index (library’s safety against storm and flood), and the eighth index (library’s safety against damages caused by biological factors), the two groups were similar to a high extent and no significant difference existed between them. There were significant differences for the fifth index (library’s safety against theft and harming the resources) in four criteria, for the sixth index (employees’ safety) in two criteria, and for the seventh index (safety against damages caused by physical and chemical factors) in seven criteria, such that libraries affiliated with MOCA were evaluated to be better concerning their safety against theft and harm, employees’ safety, and resource’ safety against damages caused by heat, moisture and light. For the seventh index, there was significant difference in one criterion which was observed in public libraries supervised by IPLF. In total, libraries of the both groups had no appropriate status with regard to observing safety indices.Originality/Value: The new comparative approach made for safety issues of public libraries makes this paper valuable as it exhibits the weaknesses and strengths to inform programmers and officials, and provides some strategies to improve safety conditions of libraries.