RESEARCH ON INFORMATION SCIENCE AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES (PAYAM-E-KETABKHANEH (LIBRARY MESSAGE))
Year:2009 | Volume:4 | Issue:4 (55)|Papers Count:8

The aim of the present study is to identify subject trends of research in the field of library and information science so that one can have a general image of subject evolution trends in the research of this field. A subject analysis of the references of the articles published in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) between 2002 and 2006 was conducted. Of 4663 references cited in ARIST articles, about 76% were printed material and 8% were electronic material. They all were published between 1996 and 2005. The most popular subject was "information storage and retrieval", with 839 (18%) references belonging to this subject. The least popular subject was “library buildings" with only one (0.02%) reference. The subjects “library and information science” and“organization” had decreasing trend up to 2000 and then its use was increased. Subjects “career” and “library use and users” had fluctuation during the period. Technical services, bibliographical control, technology and Information Technology, Media and Records Management had upward trend in the middle of the decade, but at the end of the decade, they decreased.

Using the Web has become ubiquitous and an indispensable part of scientists’ daily life. Although there are many studies dealing with the use of the Web, few studies have focused on how different user groups including scientists make use of visible and invisible parts of the Web for educational and research purposes. This article first introduces the visible and invisible parts of the Web, and then examines scientists’ use of these parts of the Web based on a usage typology. The study is a qualitative one and uses interviews as data collection tools. The research population includes 75 PhD students, researchers and lecturers in Grenoble (France) who are active in natural sciences. The sampling was done using stratified random sampling method. Max Weber’s ideal type is used for the data analysis.

the article studies deaf high school students’ satisfaction of Isfahan public library services. A sample of 156 deaf students in Isfahan was given a questionnaire to complete. Fifty-three students (34%) said they used public library services, of which 92.5% had joined the library in the last two years prior to the study. About 77% of users used the library once a week. About 45% used public libraries managed by municipality and 41.5% used mosque libraries. About 77% of users were a little satisfied with the service instructions. There were no significant gender differences in regard with students’ satisfaction of librarians and quality and quantity of physical and welfare facilities.

In this article, nine web based OPACs of state universities’central libraries in Tehran were evaluated. For this purpose, first a list criteria for the evaluation of OPACs was drawn from the literature and an evaluation checklist was prepared. Then OPACs were evaluated using the checklist. The results showed the need for some improvement in the design of the OPACs. In terms of accessibility and usability of search system, they were relatively good. However, in term of the process of accessing information, user friendliness, presentation of different types of information resources and direct interaction between user and system, they were poor. The findings indicated that little attention had been paid to users' needs in designing the studied OPACs.

The article aims to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers from an intradisciplinary perspective. It also aims to find out any relation between the scatter of literature of a field, its interdisciplinairty and the information seeking behaviour of the scientists working in that field. A survey of PhD students and staff at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University College London was carried out with 114 respondents. The findings showed that the areas that are more interdisciplinary or have more scattered literature are more likely to use general search facilities for finding their information. The study also shows that cross-disciplinary use of literature is not necessarily an indication of the scatter of literature.

This article aims to investigate structural and content attributes of university websites from the perspective of website users and developers. The study had two phases. First, a sample of graduate students and faculty members from Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Sharif University of Technology and Tehran University of Arts were surveyed as users of websites. A checklist of attributes was used in the survey. In the second phase, 14 website developers were surveyed. The findings showed that from users’ perspective, content attributes were more important than structural ones, while, website developers put more value on special content attributes as well as on those structural attributes which were useroriented and facilitated users access to the content.

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) is a conceptual model for the arrangement of bibliographic records in catalogs and databases which was proposed in IFLA 1997, following a plan for revising Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR).This model is inclined to be separated from the other cataloging rules, and uses a new structure for storing and displaying bibliographic records in order to meet users' information needs, which is the most important purpose of this model. Some unique characteristics of this model can be used for eliminating the problems of current catalogs and designing future ones. In this article, after describing the history of FRBR, and introducing this model as well as the entities which forms it, past studies related to FRBR and the main characteristics of this model are reviewed. In comparison to AACR, the main characteristics of FRBR are: parallel description of primary document, hierarchical structure of bibliographic records, preparing a super record for each document, and determining functions of existing data elements in bibliographic records. The article ends with some criticisms of the model.