The Invisible Web Weblog

The 6th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG ’09) will take place in 27-29 April, 2009 in Las Vegas. Its Web technologies track covers topics like Web algorithms and techniques, Web user studies, search engines, log analysis, Web mining, multimedia Web, Web interfaces, Web architectures; e.g. performance, fault tolerance, design, etc.

Webology is going to publish a special issue on Folksonomies, the Web and Search Engines. Folksonomy is a user-generated system that allows users to tag their favorite web resources with their chosen natural-language words or phrases. These tags can be used to classify web resources and to express users' preferences. Folksonomy may be generated and shared collaboratively by the creators and consumers of web content. Contributions to this issue should address folksonomies, taxonomies, knowledge organizartion, the Web and search engines. The topics are folksonomies, taxonomies, search engines,social bookmarking, social tagging, social classification, social softwares, social networks, social indexing, collaborative tagging, controlled vocabulary, knowledge organization, knowledge management and the role of the folksonomy in information retrieval. Submissions should follow the Author Guidelines of Webology avilable at this link .

My recent paper entitled "Exploratory nature of, and uncertainty tolerance in, qualitative research" was published in New Library World, Vol. 109 No. 5/6, 2008, pp. 273-286. The abstract is as follows: Purpose – This paper seeks to depict an overall picture of an exploratory research journey to exemplify how qualitative studies on little understood phenomena can be done successfully. The paper aims to show how the author adopted an appropriate approach and an apposite methodology to cope with the uncertainty, stress and ambiguity arising during exploratory research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper was developed based on a reflective and narrative approach by the author to highlight the pivotal milestones of the reported research. The paper narrates how the research naturally evolved through seven stages including origination, orientation, exploration, elucidation, consolidation, reflection and culmination. Findings – Dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity is inevitabl...

I had a workshop on "Qualitative Research in Library and Information Science" in Kermanshah on Thursday 22 May 2008. The workshop aimed to illustrate an introduction to this issue for LIS students.

A new book entitle "student plagiarism in an online world: problems and solutions" written by Tim Roberts was published recently and covers interesting topics related to this issue such as: "Alternatives to plagiarism, assessing textual plagiarism, assignments that support original work, blogging and plagiarism, contract cheating, contributing factors to online plagiarism, controlling plagiarism, educating students, information revolution, lecturer attitudes toward plagiarism, plagiarism and international students, plagiarism and the community college, plagiarism as an ethical issue, plagiarism detection systems, plagiarism prevention, plagiarism-related behaviors, student perspective of plagiarism, unintentional plagiarism, writing as a developmental skill". For more information please see this link (http://www.igi-pub.com/downloads/pdf/Roberts_brochure.pdf)

I have to deal with a constant dilemma in my mind to choose between the enjoyment of reading so many valuable books and other stuff or keep writing to survive in the academic world when we have the motto "publish or perish!". What would you do to cope with this difficulty?

The increasing growth of the social Web and Web 2.0 has created so many new concepts which are mainly based on the new "User-Led Content Creation" approach. One of these terms is "Produsage" which "...breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge ... produsers engage not in a traditional form of content production, but are instead involved in produsage - the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement." For more information please have a look at this site .

In the series of panels in conjunction with TIBF, I also attended a panel on Webometrics to discuss the current issues and trends in this area and its links to the related subjects such as bibliometrics, scientometrics, and Informetrics. At the panel I said the fundamental essence of Webometrics is based on the Web's ability on making link between any parts of it regardless of their distance. We also reviewed the challenges and opportunities in this area. The proceedings of the panel will be published soon.

Yesterday I was a member of two specialized panels in conjunction with the Tehran International Book Fair . The first one was about screen reading versus reading on paper. We discussed about the current trends of reading on screen and how it affects people reading behavior. The second panel was about mosque libraries and their services. The details of these panels and our discussions will be published soon.

These days I have been busy as usual with various LIS related works but these works were somehow different recently. This week I delivered a presentation about the desirable features of library buildings, then contributed to the collection development for my faculty library from Tehran International Book Fair and meanwhile I wrote two book reviews that I was supposed to do ages ago. Luckily, I have done them and should make myself ready for the next week's task including normal teaching, running a workshop and attending a panel at the Tehran International Book Fair.