RESEARCH ON INFORMATION SCIENCE AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES (PAYAM-E-KETABKHANEH (LIBRARY MESSAGE))
Year:2009 | Volume:15 | Issue:2 (57)|Papers Count:9

Library and information science suffers from poverty in theoretical foundations. Mere change of the name does not solve the problem. In fact, librarianship is neither worthy of this major regarding the name nor it is in concordance with its concept regarding the content. Although libraries in western world prospered again as a position for presenting scientific findings after spread of new industrial wave and increasing need of researchers to find knowledge, this attention and revivification was challenged by emergence of information technology and power of information broadcasting through utilizing novel electronic and optical tools, such that the necessity of library existence in its conventional form became in doubt. This inattention occurred despite the fact that fundamental of the new technology was as well based upon classification. The author in the present paper surveys the domain of library and information science from six issues and makes suggestions about them. These six issues are as follows: first, origin of the concept of library and information science; second, its position in knowledge tree; third, a comprehensive and simultaneously preventive definition of this major; fourth, scope of existence and influence of the major; fifth, suggesting a name for it; and finally sixth, proposing names for jobs which this domain is supposed to train individuals for. The research methodology in this study is induction, comparative study, and to some extent content analysis.

In this study, statistics of 39 countries was ordered in following 14 indexes: Loan, collection output, visit, users, book, other material, collection updating, computer, connection to internet, full-time staff, trained staff, loan charge, charge, and service center and was evaluated with MADM approach. In order to determine the weight of indexes, a combination of theoretical studies and evaluator's opinion was utilized together with Shannon entropy. To rank the indexes, SAW model was used. The resultant ranking indicated that the three countries Finland, Estonia, and Denmark are the ones with the best public libraries in the world

Although no professional person exists without requiring some ethic code, such codes become increasingly essential in service-oriented professions such as library and information science. Nevertheless, lack of educational programs in the field of professional ethics for librarians is noticeable. From viewpoint of this literature, compiling items of professional ethics is beyond writing a set of orders such as "should and should not". The "should and should not" orders with no reasonable philosophical basis remain only as recommended informal statements and might not be implemented in real world. Therefore, the author proposes a theory under title of "theory of libraries' equilibrium function", as a platform for compiling professional ethics criteria and training them in library and information science.

The current research investigates the status of collection development of governmental high school libraries in Tehran in 2008-2009. Ninety nine high schools were selected from 296 governmental female high schools in a random sampling way and were studied descriptively. The material utilized in this research was a questionnaire including 23 yes/no questions together with 2 open-ended questions. The findings indicated that 40 libraries (45.5 percent) were managed by librarians. “Ignoring the significance of librarianship as a job” is mentioned as the main reason of not employing librarians in school libraries. The annual increase of the resources in school libraries is on average less than one percent. Chi square statistical test revealed that the presence of a professional librarian in the library has a close relationship with establishment of a collection which satisfies the needs of clients. (X2=6/54, P=38%). Most of books in the collection are religious ones, while amusing books are the least existing ones. Furthermore, it was shown that having academic certificate in library and information science does not have any effect on subject prioritization of the collection. "Client’s advice" has been mentioned as the first priority for book selection and "budget deficit" as the major problem in collection development.

Public libraries are responsible for providing services to all society members. From this regard, population is the parameter of most significance in establishing public libraries and their resources as well must be gathered according to population combination and structure. In this paper, population access to public libraries in two urban and rural domains is studied considering Iran's population statistics. Afterward the role of population components such as age, gender, literacy, religion, and type of activity, is investigated in determination of need to resources and services of public libraries.

University libraries are among the significant fundamentals of educational and research system. Therefore, viewpoints of the clients, along with their use and satisfaction level of these libraries and provided services can be an appropriate criterion for assessment of this important basis of academic system, which finally leads to change in existing methods and employing new information methods with the purpose of higher utilization by clients and elucidating the obstacles against their access to resources under search. The goal of this research is investigating satisfaction level of sport science students in Tehran University, Tarbiat Moallem University, and Shahid Beheshti University, of the services provided in libraries and information centers of these universities, which was accomplished by interviewing the students via survey method. The society under study in this research involved 800 persons of undergraduate and postgraduate students being members of sport science libraries and 205 questionnaires were distributed among them (25%). In current research, different aspects of library from students' views were studied, including collection development, reference services, welfare equipments and facilities, laws and prescriptions of libraries, together with computer and information services. Regarding the calculated value of t at α level of 0.05, the research results indicate that by t value being positive, the students who are members of sport science libraries are significantly satisfied of the existing equipments and facilities, laws and prescriptions of libraries, and behavior of librarians, while by t value being negative, the students are not satisfied of reference services, computer and information services, and general services of their libraries.

The current research tries to investigate the information infrastructure of public libraries under coverage of cultural and art organization of Tehran municipality, as well as suggesting a plan for establishing an information network in these libraries in order to form regular relationships and mutual collaboration among them. The present research has been carried out in two stages. The first stage is assigned to studying current status of public libraries under coverage of cultural and art organization of Tehran municipality. Results of the research indicate that 55.7 percent of people working in the libraries under study have certificate in librarianship, while the rest do not. In addition, more than two third of these libraries are encountered with inappropriate collection development, shortage of resources, shortage of space and human resources, lack of budget, and lack of computer facilities and equipments. However, 95 percent of them agree with network establishment and use of its advantages and capabilities. At the second stage after investigating the status of libraries, an information network is suggested with the purpose of improving their current status and forming mutual relationships in regular and coordinated way in form of network collaborations among the mentioned libraries. The proposed network is of combinational morphology, such that some activities like bibliographic control, current notification services, supplying expert human resource, computer equipments and facilities, communication with internal and external networks, preparation and approval of standards and protocols through the network core (office of book and libraries affairs) are performed in centralized way. On the other hand, other services such as providing resources, connection to other libraries, training the clients, and reference services are provided in semi-centralized way via main centers and other libraries under study. In addition, suggestions are finally made such as providing expert human resource, supplying the required budget for providing and equipment of libraries to electronic tools and facilities, providing software’s, and communication with internal and external networks so as to develop the network and its services as well as improving the current status of these libraries.

In this research, coming into existence and evolution of public libraries in Iran have been investigated in comparison with those in America and England from historical perspective, along with guidelines of IFLA and UNESCO. The most important finding of present study is that public libraries movement in Iran was formed by people and intellectuals, similar to pioneer countries in this field like America and England. Nevertheless, in contrast to America and England, in Iran the laws increasingly reduced participation of people and librarians in public libraries' affairs and resulted in several problems and insufficiencies. Another finding of this study is that the legal and financial framework of public libraries in Iran is not so consistent with guidelines of IFLA and UNESCO in 2001. Due to paying no attention to local needs, children, and special groups, the public libraries in Iran are far from their functions, nature, and main mission. Therefore, it seems that the laws related to public libraries in Iran need to be rewritten such that people's participation increases through local councils and experts of library and information science. Besides presenting research findings, the present paper can be an introduction for further qualitative and historical researches in this field.

With increasing growth of electronic publications due to their potential capabilities and tendency of libraries toward substituting print publications with them, researchers have studied how much and how the clients have taken advantage of this modern capability in previous decade. Imam Sadiq University as well has provided this opportunity for its clients via subscription of databases containing electronic publications. In current study which was carried out by survey method and statistical analysis related to use of electronic resources offered by publishers, it was shown that among the publications of these databases, the publications in management field are of the highest use. Regarding the number of visits, the databases in descending order are Proquest 5000, Gstore, EMERALD, and EBSCO. Regarding the number of downloaded articles, Gstore database has the highest rank. The most important reasons for students to use databases are doing homework and writing articles, while the professors consider education and teaching as well as writing articles as the reasons of highest significance for their use of databases.