Human Information Interaction

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Background and Aim: The main objective of this research was to investigate the use of full-text databases in the LIS theses of Tehran State Universities within the years 2005 and 2009.

Method: For this purpose, the total of 9952 citations related to 172 existing theses in the academic central libraries were studied. The data collected were analyzed by the bibliometrics and citation analysis methods.

Results: The results showed that only 499 (5.01%) out of the total of 9952 citations were of full-text databases. By the use of Bradford law, the Emerald, Iran Doc. Pro Quest and Science Direct were chosen as the core databases in LIS. There was no statistically significance difference in the use of full-text databases with regard to database, university and subject. Citing the linguistic distribution of full-text data showed that most citations were in English language. Finally, the amount of the use of full-text databases by the theses has not been increased between the years 2005 and 2009.

Conclusion: The results obtained in the present research showed that the use of databases was very low and no growing trend for citing databases did   show.  Also English language was Dominant language in citing databases

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Background and Aim: The present paper discusses results of a study which aimed to explore the knowledge and use of Online social networking by MLIS students in Iran and to explore their perceptions of using that technology for academic and professional purposes, and challenges they face for using them.

Method: The research method was explorative and empirical. Data was collected through a web-based survey questionnaire containing both open and close ended question. The link of questionnaire was emailed to MLIS students in Tehran. 113 students completed the questionnaire.

Results: The results show that 35 percent of respondents were not users of SNS. Internet filtering in Iran was identified as the major barrier on using SNS by MLIS students. Negative perceptions toward SNSs were identified as another big barrier for using SNSs by MLIS students. 22% of respondents felt that social networking would waste their time and some 14% saw on benefit on online social networking. 36% of respondents trusted very little to information released in SNSs. MLIS students were not sophisticated users of social networking sites. They have good level of skills on basic features of social networking sites. However, in more advanced features of SNSs such as privacy settings their skills seemed limited. Respondents to the questionnaire showed positive feedback on using SNS for academic and professional purposes.

Conclusion: There are several advantages for integrating SNS in LIS education. Preparing students for employing those technologies on their work places upon their graduation; increasing the employability of LIS students; reaping the educational benefits that SNSs offer and preparing students to teach social networking literacy competencies to others are some of the advantages of incorporating SNSs into LIS education. Authors suggest that skills to master online social networking must be taught in LIS education

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Background and Aim: The present study aims to explore the coverage and reflection of Knowledge and Information Science news in the Iranian press. Iran Newspaper which is one of the main public newspapers in the country has been selected as the case for this study.

Method: This study used content analysis as its research methodology and adopted an inductive approach in data analysis. All the pages of this newspaper during a year (from March 2011 to March 2012), were downloaded from the newspaper website and their contents were inductively analyzed to identify Knowledge and Information Science related news.

Results: Iran Newspaper, as one of the most well-known and public press in the country, has covered the Knowledge and Information Science news with a reasonable coverage and comprehensiveness. However, the reports are mainly descriptive with less analytic perspective and there is a gap for more analytical news. The collected data were categorized into seven categories and all the concepts and subcategories were presented in the tables. The main identified categories in this study include: Tehran International Book events, other book exhibitions and cultural events, meetings and book awards, reflection of the news related to book and publication industry, scientometrics, reading and its promotion and hinders.

Conclusion: There is a gap of the news from ILISA (Iranian Library and Information Science Association) and also popular notes written by Knowledge and Information Science scholars, librarians and Knowledge and Information Science students. As a result it seems ILISA could be more active in publishing its news and use popular press to introduce this area to the public and promotes its activities in the public domains. 

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Background and Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of observing the standards of indexing (ISO 999-1996, BS 3700) of Library and Information Sciences books.

Method: The study used descriptive-analytical methodology and the population consisted of all the Persian books, written and translated, in the field of Library and Information Sciences published from 2006 to 2012 with the back-of-book index. To collect the data, a checklist based on the indexing standards of ISO 1996-999 and B.S. 3700 was used.

Results: The findings indicated that among the 424 books studied, 26% had index, while 71% lacks it. Overall, the extent of observing the evaluation criteria in the book indices in the field of Library and Information Sciences was 56%.

Conclusion: The results suggest that the extent of providing the index for the books in the field of Library and Information Sciences has a relatively optimal condition compared with those in other fields. However, considering the purposes and applications of the field of Library and Information Sciences, the standards in the indices have been poorly observed. Time-consuming nature of indexing, lack of time and accelerating pace of publishing and offering books, economic issues, lack of expert human resources, and lack of enough knowledge about the significance of index are some of the obstacles for preparing the index for the books.

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Background and Aim: The present investigation was carried out in order to study the self-archiving behavior displayed by Knowledge and Information Sciences (KIS) faculty members in Iran. It intended to discover the incentives and barriers impacting on this behavior as well as arriving at a baseline for predicting the extent of self-archiving.
Method: A descriptive survey method was deployed. The population investigated, included all KIS faculty members affiliated with universities and research centers supervised by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran.
Results: Based on self-reporting by the population studied, the extent of self-archiving is above average.  Self-archiving in personal and corporate websites were more prevalent than institutional and subject repositories. Recognition component was the most important incentive and copyright consideration was the most important barrier to self-archiving by KIS faculty members. Among the 10 factors studied, only the professional recognition component was capable of predicting self-archiving of scientific output in open access websites.
Conclusion: KIS faculty members in Iran welcome open access of their scientific works but there is some obstacles such as copyright that removing it could help to improve current conditions.

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Background and Aim: Human Knowledge depends on data and information that is emerged and transffered from different channels. The dessimination process is different from type, form of transfer, and distribution based on information or awareness. This survey compares the librarians and information scienctist’s information transferring capabilities in mass media and social networks.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey, descriptive and applied - 94 librarians in the cities of Torbat Heidariyeh and Gonabad. The data was collected by a researcher made questionnaire and the Census method was utilized.  Data was analyzed by Wilcakson Test.
Results: Mass media and social networks have their own unique abilities and both are used for information and knowledge transffering. The cost of social media networks is cheaper than media. Most of the participants claim that social networks do a better job of transferring information today.
Conclusion: Media and social networks overlap in most aspects of dissiminating information. In general the strength and capabilities of social networks was much higher than social media. The results will help select a better media and work better in the field of information transferring.

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Background and Aim: The aim of this study is to assess the Iranian Personal electronic information management of knowledge and information science and medical Library and Information Sciences faculty members based on the Jones model.

Method: This study is kind of application research and in terms of data collection is descriptive and analytical study. The statistical population included faculty of knowledge and information science and medical library and information science in Iranian state universities. Data were collected by a questionnaire that its validity is confirmed by the ISprofessors, and its reliability was measured by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.81). To analyse the data, descriptive and inferential statistic using SPSS statistical software was used.

Results: Analysis of the data showed that the average of activities in finding and re-finding were 4.0101, in storage was 4.0783, in organization was 3.2424, in maintaining were 2.8106, in security were 3.1162, in measuring and evaluation was 3.7803, in making sense of things was 3.9192 and total average personal electronic information management was 3.5659. Findings showed that there was nosignificant difference in the personal electronic information management in terms of gender and organizational affiliation, but in terms of the scientific and age there, there were significant differences among faculty members. The differences were found between the scientific degrees of associate professor and professor, and between the age group 36-45 years old and up to 56 years old.

Conclusion: The results indicated that faculty members in the age group 46-55 years old as well as associate degree had the best performance. Also, faculty members of medical library and information science had been used greater extent personal information management activities and personal information management quality women had better than men. Faculty members had desirable operation to Retrieve and store information, but they do not well maintained this information and do not provide appropriate security measures. In general, management of personal electronic information was in the relatively good level.

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Background and Aim: The aim of this research was to determine the quantity and quality of qualitative studies accomplished by Knowledge and Information Science (KIS) Researchers.

Methods: For this purpose, methodology section of articles published in 13 main Persian Journals in the field of KIS during 2004-2015 had been systematically scrutinized.

Results: Findings showed that:  total of 143 articles had been completed by qualitative methods, indicating unfavorable status of qualitative researches among KIS researchers.   Further, findings showed that mix and Content analysis methods were prevalent methods investigators had used, among the issues examined two publications informing research and academic libraries and library and information science had the highest share in qualitative research publications in KIS. While check list and document analysis were common way of data gathering.

Conclusion: Although the convention of qualitative research in recent years has been of interest to researchers of KIS,  it is still far from preferred objective of focusing on quantitative approaches.  Most focus is on quantitative approach, consequently not incorporating qualitative approaches in KIS studies

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Background and Aim: The purpose of this research is investigating the structure of research articles in the Iranian knowledge and information science journals (peer reviewed journals). In the next step, the writing guidelines in the scientific journals websites that designed to introduce desired structure of a scientific paper are studied.
Methods: The research was survey with analytical approach. The population of the research were articles published in the Persian scientific journals of knowledge and information science field in 2013-2015 and their writing guidelines. Stratified random sampling was used and, accordingly, 245 scientific articles were examined using a research checklist.
Results: Research findings showed that the structure of the research articles reviewed are in a good condition and only in three sub-structural components i.e "theoretical foundations", "research application" and "research limitations", consistent with the desired structure is weak. About the writing guidelines, the findings showed that they are in the unfavorable condition. Some structural components i.e "brief review of the scientific literature," "rationale to the study," "aim and motivation of the research", "advantages and importance of the research", "the research time", "space of the research", "credibility (reliability) of the research tools", "reliability of the study" did not appear in any writing guidelines. The first hypothesis showed a significant difference between research journals about their matching with the desired structure of the research article. However, the overall average ratings of the articles structure in this journals are in the good condition. Also in the second hypothesis was found a significant difference between the compliance rate of writing guides and articles published in the scientific journals with the desired research article structure.
Conclusion: Due to structural weakness in the writing guidelines of Persian peer-reviewed journals studied, can be such a conclude that authors of these articles shape the article structure based on what they have been trained and not attend to the writing guidelines of the journals. From the other side, one of the reasons of the structural weakness in the structure of the articles is disregarding editors and the other practitioners of journals to offering needed help contents. 

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Purpose: This study aims to reveal the intellectual structure of Knowledge and Information Science and its evolution along with the review of journals subjective scope based on 6830 abstract in the ten core journal in the JCR 2013, over the ten years (2004-2013).
Methodology: In this research, co-word and Correspondence analysis of 150 words -selected by tf-idf weight- were done after parametric analysis. To this end, the Cosine theta index and the second-order affinity were used for the hierarchical clustering based on the average-linkage algorithm.
Findings: The results of the co-word analysis reveal 3 mature clusters and 1 immature cluster in relation to the second cluster. Furthermore, the study of journals' domain show four clusters and the time progress show two clusters in counterclockwise motion.
Conclusion: In general, the results show except cluster four all clusters have a stable state with conceptual maturity, and along with constant concepts, a conceptual metamorphosis can be seen under the influence of technological change.
 

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Introduction: A thorough understanding of the drivers and inhabitants to the study can provide the basis for effective planning to improve the study. The aim of this study was to investigate the driving and inhibitory factors affecting the tendency of Iranian knowledge and information science PhD students towards study.
Methods: This research was conducted with a qualitative approach and using content analysis method. The data collection tool was an in-depth semi-structured interview. The interviews were conducted through face-to-face visits, telephone calls, e-mails, sending and receiving audio files and conversations on social media. PhD students in knowledge and information science at state universities, Payame-Nour Universities, and Islamic Azad Universities form the research community, and 33 people were selected as the research sample using targeted sampling.
Results: The results show that four factors of "professor", "compulsion", "personal promotion" and "interest" were the driving factors among doctoral students and seven factors were "professor", "family". "Access problems", "ambiguous future", "problems and weaknesses of the educational system", "growth of the spirit of need to study" and "non-participation in teaching" have been identified as deterrents factors.
Conclusion: The drivers and inhabitants of the study are very intertwined and interrelated. Some of these factors affect others and are in some way the cause and effect of each other. To strengthen effective factors and reduce barriers to study, it requires more effort from professors and programmers at the macro level, libraries and librarians, politicians, and more effort and planning from doctoral students themselves. It is necessary for the education system and the education system in universities to get out of the monolithic system and to be the speaker of unity. In this way, students are less likely to study and research until there are fundamental changes in teaching methods and curriculum content in the education system. For the first time, this study examines the most important factors and barriers to the advancement of PhD students in information science, and the results provide qualitative factors for the context of the research community. And it can be used in planning and policy making for the doctoral program of the field. Since no research has been done in this field so far, the present study can be considered as a new research in this field.

 

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