The Invisible Web Weblog

In another LIS job announcement I came across a position entitled “Electronic Resources Manager”. Based on the job advertisement applicants for this position should prepare themselves for the following responsibilities: "tracking and managing subscriptions invoices, licenses, and contracts, maintaining awareness of resources, ensuring timely payments and renewals, tracking cost and allocation for budget purposes, anticipating and preparing annual renewals, prepare annual budget for resources, managing cancellations and additions as needed and also maintain vendor relations, and meet with representatives". This is just another example of the areas that LIS graduates can look for their future career.

Library Hi Tech is going to publish a special issue on technology and digital preservation. According to the journal’s call for paper: “ ... articles should be 4000 to 8000 words long and should be submitted by the end of January, 2010. Library Hi Tech is an ISI-indexed, peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Emerald".

The latest issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice was published. The full text papers are available at the journal's website .

Following my previous posts about the new job titles for librarians, today I saw a job announcement for Repository Librarian who should “ ... support faculty members, students, and staff with information, training, and assistance in depositing digital materials ... communicate with depositors, maintain website and online documentation; work with librarians, faculty, and the heads of the various academic, administrative, and research units on campus to identify materials that would be appropriate to include in the depository system, explain expectations, policies, and workflows, negotiate deposit agreements, provide services, training, and support and investigate and resolve user issues; manage the ingest of materials, including mapping user requirements and metadata to repository functionality and standards; contribute to the planning and development of strategy, functionality, and capacity by gathering and analyzing depositor and user input and feedback; participate in the developmen...

The 2nd International Symposium on Information Management in a Changing World, will be held in Ankara, Turkey, from 22-24 September 2010. The conference’s main theme is “The Impact of Technological Convergence and Social Networks on Information Management”. According the conference’s call for paper, their main topics are: Technological Convergence and Information Management; Social Networks and Web 2.0 Technologies; Convergence, Social Networks and Education; Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage; Socialization of Information and Convergence; Information Organization; Information Architecture and Information Retrieval; and Interdisciplinary Studies. The narrower areas within the above-mentioned broad fields include many research topics such as: digital information services, digital collection management, web 2.0 and reference services, virtual libraries , M-libraries, Library 2.0, convergence and records management , Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and Semantic Web, incorporating user-created co...

Today morning I delivered a presentation at TMU for faculty members and students, entitled "The Quality of Qualitative Research: Authenticity of Research Process and Research Findings in Qualitative Approach". In this presentation I talked about how the evaluation criteria of research process, like validity and reliability in quantitative studies, have been replaced by new measures such as: trustworthiness, dependability, objectivity, confirmability, transferability, neutrality, interpretative and procedural rigour, and credibility.

The 2nd International Conference on Environmental and Computer Science (ICECS 2009) will take place on December 28-30, 2009, in Dubai. This conference reviews numerous links between various environmental research areas and computer science, from several perspectives. According to their website just some of the topics include: “... global environmental change and ecosystems management, environmental restoration and ecological engineering, environmental sustainability, air pollution and control, solid waste management, water pollution and water quality control, air quality assessment, transport of air pollutants, air pollutant monitoring, waste recycling, ecosystem restoration, ecosystem assessment, urban ecology and many more areas.

The forthcoming special issue of Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (THCI) is going to focus on “Design Research in HCI”. According to the journal’s call for paper, this issue will include the following topics: "science and/or theories for design in HCI, philosophical foundation of design in HCI, new principles and methods of design in HCI, specific design innovations to support individuals, groups, organizations or societies, design aesthetics, emotional design, affective computing, evaluating and comparing new interactions and interfaces, integration of new technologies in HCI designs, best practices of design in HCI, impacts of mobility and distributed computing in HCI designs, impacts of service-oriented architectures and cloud computing on HCI designs and ethical issues of HCI design". For more information, please visit the journal’s website .

In my next post, I will make a list of new job titles and positions for librarians and LIS professionals. This might be the first step for that content analysis study, which I mentioned before. Perhaps sometime in the future, I'll find a chance to do that study.

I always wanted to do a content analysis of job announcements in the area of LIS, but never found a chance for it, as I have always been too busy with my “To Do List”! I am sure similar studies must have been done by now and their findings should be very interesting. These studies illustrate the qualifications and skills that nowadays’ employers expect from LIS graduates. For example, today in a job announcement I saw the following job description and responsibilities for an Electronic Content Librarian who “will assist with implementing usability and access to digital resources and with developing marketing-communication tools ... primary responsibilities include: perform content analysis and mapping to determine navigation and layout; define workflows, content authoring and review policies; create new graphics and visual designs within existing guidelines; implement RSS feeds and similar notification features; assist with usability testing and translating results into design and org...

Transliteracy Conference will take place on 9 Feb 2010, at the Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre, Leicester. According to the conference website , Transliteracy is “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.” The conference’s topic include: transliteracy and libraries, transliteracy and the arts, transliteracy in education, transliteracy in communications, transliteracy in the workplace, transliteracy and transdisciplinarity, transliteracy in action - examples of transliterate works, like digital fiction, networked arts projects, or library resources.

The Ubiquitous Learning Conference will be held at the Northeastern University, 5 to 6 December 2009, in Boston. According their website, this conference “... investigates the uses of technologies in learning, including devices with sophisticated computing and networking capacities which are now pervasively part of our everyday lives’ from laptops to mobile phones, games, digital music players, personal digital assistants and cameras. The Conference explores the possibilities of new forms of learning using these devices not only in the classroom, but in a wider range of places and times than was conventionally the case for education.”

Yesterday I had a workshop on “Time Management and Study Skills” for LIS students at TMU. It was my first experience of running a workshop on this topic, and I found it very interesting. The participants showed their great interest and we had a lot to talk about. In particular, as the topic is related to everyone’s everyday life, they actively participated in the discussions. Hopefully, we all can improve our Time Management and our Study Skills!

I made a speech at the National Library for a group of new LIS students from different Iranian universities on last Tuesday, 17 November. It was part of a briefing session entitled “Future Librarians” which was held by the federation of LIS student associations in Iran with the collaboration of ILISA. My speech’s title was: “An Experience of Being a Librarian: A Narration of Learning Opportunities”. I'll upload the PowerPoint slides on my homepage.

The “ International Symposium on Information Management in a Changing World ”, will take place in September 22-24, 2010, in Ankara, Turkey. The main conference’s theme is “The Impact of Technological Convergence and Social Networks on Information Management” and the topics include: Technological Convergence and Information Management, Social Networks and Web 2.0 Technologies, Convergence, Social Networks and Education, Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Socialization of Information and Convergence, Information Organization, Information Architecture and Information Retrieval, and Interdisciplinary Studies.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is publicly available on the Web and enables all Web users to search among 364,448 subject authority records. You can access to this service in this address .

A draft copy of “Information: A Fundamental Construct” written by Robert B. Allen is available by open access at this address . The book includes the following chapters: Information, Category-Based Models for Knowledge Representation, Documents, Descriptions, and Organizing Information Resources, Finding and Using Information, Human Information Processing, Cognition, Emotion, and Interaction with Computers, Social Interaction, Language and Communication, Information System Architectures and Services, Social Informatics and Economics, Scholarship, Science, Data Services, and Domain Informatics, Text, Text Processing, and Search Engines, and Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Simulation.

“Variations in Reading Behaviours: What Makes a Difference?” is the title of Professor Carol Tenopir’s lecture in honour and memory of Stephen and Marion Johnson in the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, at the University of British Columbia, on November 12. The abstract of this talk shows interesting findings about academic reading patterns such as: “... academics read more articles on average now than in the past, but spend less time on each reading. They search for and read scholarly articles for many reasons, including research, teaching, and current awareness and access articles from print and electronic library journal collections, personal print and electronic subscriptions, from authors and colleagues, and from the open web. Overall averages show changes over time, but reading patterns vary depending on some personal characteristics of readers, such as academic department, work responsibilities, and age, and by some characteristics of the individual reading, ...

International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL) with the theme of “Shaping the Information Paradigm” will take place in New Delhi 23–26 February 2010. The conference’s topics include: DL development, architecture, and management, contents management in DL, interoperability issues, digital rights management, digital preservation and access management, semantic web, KM (knowledge management) and organizational repositories, e-learning and e-publishing, DL standards and policy, open archives initiatives, ODOL (Open distance online learning), multimedia content, virtual support to distance learners, e-resources management for distance learners, access management and m-learning technology.

Personal Information Management Workshop 2009 will take place in November 7-8, 2009, in Vancouver. According to the workshop's website : “Personal information management (PIM) is the practice and study of the activities people perform to acquire, organize, maintain, and retrieve information for everyday use. PIM is a growing area of interest as we all strive for better use of our limited personal resources of time, money, and energy, as well as greater workplace efficiency and productivity. Good research on the topic is being done in several disciplines, including human-computer interaction, database management, information retrieval, and artificial intelligence. This workshop will continue momentum towards building a community of researchers doing PIM-related research.”

One of the workshops at the 2009 ASIS&T Annual Meeting, is called "The Soft Skills for Academic Library Web Project Managers". According to their announcement : “This workshop is focused on communication, teamwork, and usability for web managers, programmers, technical staff and anyone who may be called upon to manage a web project within the library environment. The main topics include: how to lead a project team, how to design an organizational communication plan, how to involve administrators and others in leadership, how to get constructive input from colleagues, how to evaluate the success of your project management skills.

The journal of "Evidence Based Library and Information Practice" has just published its latest issue, Vol 4, No 3 .

The 18th International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization ( UMAP 2010 ) will take place in Hawaii, June 20-24, 2010. In the conference’s call for submission the topics include the following categories: - Purposes of UMAP: personalizing information, recommending products, tailoring search results, enhancing learning outcomes, personalizing help, assuming routine tasks, adapting interfaces. - User characteristics for UMAP: knowledge and skills, interests and preferences, special needs, affective states, goals and plans, contexts of use, roles, cultural characteristics. - Application domains for UMAP: e-commerce, e-learning, cultural heritage, healthcare, assistive technologies, digital libraries, office work, recommender systems, targeted advertisement, digital TV. - Environments for UMAP: web-based systems (including the semantic/social Web), desktop systems, groupware systems, mobile and wearable systems, smart environments, smart objects, virtual environments....

The 7th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations will be held in April 12-14, 2010. According to their website the conference’s topics include: Use of information communication technologies for social computing, Mobile social computing, Infrastructure and architectures for social computing, Online communities and social networking, Social tagging and collaborative information organization, Information retrieval and sharing techniques, Usability and user needs, Applications and case studies in social computing, Novel applications supporting user-generated content and social interaction, Social, institutional and policy issues in social computing, Social computing in schools, enterprises and other organizations, Collaboration and social computing and Social computing trends and issues.

The 5th International Conference on Signal Image Technology and Internet Based Systems (SITIS'09) will be held from 29 November to 4 December in Morocco. Various related topics in three tracks form the main theme of this event. These tracks are: Information Management & Retrieval Technologies, Web-Based Information Technologies & Distributed Systems and also Open Source Software Development and Solution.

If future digital devices can not read some of the existing data formats we might lose a huge chunk of human knowledge stored in these unreadable resources. This is the sign of what is called “The Digital Dark Age”. In Wikipedia this term is defined as “ ... a possible future situation where it will be difficult or impossible to read historical documents, because they have been stored in an obsolete digital format. This could cause the period around the turn of the 21st century, when viewed from the future, to be comparable to the Dark Ages in the sense that there will be a relative lack of written record.”

Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) will host the second in a series of five three-day training events in Europe in Sofia, Bulgaria, on 16-18 September 2009. ‘ Digital Preservation – The Planets Way ’ will consider the need to preserve digital content, the action that needs to be taken and introduce the Planets approach to addressing these issues. The following quotation from their website justifies the necessity of these kinds of initiatives: “... as more information is created or stored digitally there is a need to take action to preserve digital collections in the same way as there is a need to preserve physical collections of books, journals, images, film, audio and manuscripts. The rapid rate at which technology is evolving and digital material is degraded presents particular challenges about what to preserve, which features to preserve, for how long, for what usage and how to undertake preservation activities”. According to their website the fol...

Library Trends plans for a special issue titled "Involving Users in the Co-Construction of Digital Knowledge in Libraries, Archives, and Museums". In their call for paper they mentioned that: “many libraries, archives, and museums provide their users with social computing environments that include the ability to tag collections, annotate objects, and otherwise contribute their thoughts to the knowledge base of the institution. Information professionals and users have responded to the transition to a web 2.0 world of user-created content by developing open source tools to coordinate these activities and researching the best ways to involve users in the co-creation of digital knowledge ... we seek authors who can step back and think broadly about those issues that are raised when we bring users into the mix in various ways and at various points in the data/information/knowledge life-cycle ... sample questions include, but are certainly not limited to: * How are libraries, archi...

It seems the future direction of the Web and the growth of mobile technology are inevitably integrated. Various mobile ICT devices are widely available in the market and their facilities increase every day. The term "Mobile Web" which has appeared in ICT literature recently, refers to the Web platform and web-based services which are accessible through mobile devices. The future of this trend seems very promising. Of course, there are some limitations that somehow hinder the usability of Mobile Web at present time. For example, mobile devices’ small screen size, limitations in the location of mobile user, lack of windows and limited types of accessible pages in these services are some of the existing challenges for users and designers. For more information you can have a look at the Mobile Web Initiative website.

The 5th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium (SIG SI, co-sponsored by SIG-CRIT) will take place in November 7, 2009, in Vancouver. Based on their call for participation, the main theme is “People, information, technology: The social analysis of computing in a diverse and pluralistic world”. At this event general questions like the following ones will be explored: “How do difference and diversity shape design, implementation, use, disuse, and reconfiguration of information and ICTs where groups and organizations work and play in a global environment? In what ways do information and ICTs shape those creating, implementing and using them? How does this vary across cultures? How may such difference be managed in global interactions? What can we learn about information and ICT and ongoing social and cultural change at different levels of social analysis such as groups, organizational units, political entities or cultural systems? Can we harmonize our insights? How may we explore t...

An annual research symposium of the Special Interest Group on Information Needs, Seeking & Use (SIG USE) will take place on Saturday, November 7, 2009, in Vancouver. According to their call for participation “ ... this symposium will offer guided reflection on essential questions around information behaviour research and practice in social and collaborative information environments: Where is collaborative information behaviour research headed? How are we to communicate our insights to researchers and practitioners in related areas of study and design? How can and should our models, theories and findings inform the design and delivery of collaborative and innovative information products and services? Applicants are invited to reflect on the four questions that will frame the symposium and present ways that their research addresses them: * How does our research address the transformative relationship between people and information? * What are the fundamental questions that we should ...

Today I was the external examiner for a PhD thesis in Tehran. The research was about the concept of interoperability for data exchange in digital libraries. As the external examiner, I did my refereeing in four levels including the originality of the research topic, the research methodology that has been employed to address the research questions, the content and structure of the thesis, and finally how the student addressed the questions in the viva session.

In another interview with IBNA, I talked about how promotion of reading is necessary for enhancing lifelong learning in the society. In this interview, which has been published as “A Learning Society Learns by Reading”, I mentioned that if we want to move towards independent and lifelong learning, we need to practically demonstrate the usefulness of reading to our children. I also talked about the other aspects of this issue which its full transcript is available here: http://ibna.ir/vdcjthex.uqemozsffu.html

I did an interview with IBNA about the various methods that we can assess the efficiency of a public library services. In this interview I referred to the four possible approaches which provide us with some criteria for this assessment. These methods are aim-oriented, librarian-oriented, user-oriented and management based evaluations. I believe a credible assessment which enables us to make a plausible judgment on the efficiency of the public library services should consider a bit of each approaches in its overall perspective. The interview transcription is available here (http://www.ibna.ir/vdcjamex.uqemazsffu.html)

Following my previous post about the conference of "Research in LIS: Approaches, Procedures and Implications", this post provides you with details of the its themes. The focal premise of this event is research, in its broadest form, in Library and Information Sciences (LIS). Various aspects of research activities including research approaches, methodologies, practical implications of research findings and so on form the main topics. Accordingly, we have categorized this general area into the following topics: - Evaluation and Assessment of LIS Research Methods - Research-based Learning and Teaching in LIS Curricula - Enhancing Librarians and Information Professionals' Research Skills - Contribution of Research Based Materials in LIS Publications - Implications of Research Findings on Libraries' Services - Roles of Research on Fostering Interdisciplinary Links in LIS - Comparing Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches in LIS Research - LIS Research Trends in the Past, ...

Recently, I published a paper in Persian entitled “100 Fundamental Issues in LIS”. In this paper I decided to illustrate an overall picture of LIS, firstly as a profession and secondly as an academic discipline. The paper identifies 10 major categories which include the main LIS’s basics and boundaries. Then, each category has been divided into 10 subcategories. The main categories are: Theoretical Basics of LIS, Interdisciplinary Nature of LIS, Librarians’ Missions and Aims, Various Types of Libraries, Anticipated Functions and Desirable Features of Library Buildings, Work Areas for LIS Graduates, Roads Ahead of LIS Profession, Distinctive Features of LIS among other Disciplines, Required Skills and Competencies of Successful Librarians, and Examples of LIS Progress in Iran.

My colleagues and I in the department of Library and Information Studies at Tarbiat Moallem University are planning to run a national conference in March 2010 in Tehran on “Research in LIS: Approaches, Procedures and Implications”. We have prepared all the initial steps and have already announced the research themes through LIS discussion groups and we will soon launch the website. I will post the details of the conference soon.

While I was in Reading to deliver my presentation to the LTEA 2009 Conference, I also attended four useful workshops including: 1. Understanding Digital Identity, run by Patrick Parslow and Sarah Fleming from University of Reading. 2. Designing and Assessing Inquiry Based Learning, run by Phil Levy, CiLASS, from University of Sheffield. 3. Three Dimensions of Collaborative Learning: the PEERS Project at University College Maastricht, run by Oscar van den Wijngaard & Wilfred van Dellen from University College Maastricht. 4. Effective Feedback, by professor Phil Race.

These two presentations have been done recently: Mansourian, Y. (2009). Implications of Inquiry-based Learning in Teaching the Concept of Information Visibility: a Case Study. Presented at the Learning through Enquiry Alliance (LTEA 2009) Conference, the University of Reading, 15 July 2009. Mansourian, Y. (2009). How to Merge an Inquiry-based Learning Approach in Teaching First Year LIS Students: An Action Research. Presented at the Centre for Information Literacy Research Event, the University of Sheffield, 23 July 2009.

The preliminary program for the ASIST Annual Meeting, “Thriving on Diversity - Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World”, which will take place in November in Vancouver, Canada, is now available at: http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/

The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science is going to publish a special issue on “Image Indexing and Retrieval: Challenges and New Perspective”. This issue will focus on various aspects of digital image perception, understanding, indexing, and retrieval. The themes are: Image indexing strategies within an information retrieval context, Social computing, image tagging and folksonomies, Methods, models, and theories applicable to image research, Image users and uses, Cognitive aspects of image perception and understanding, Cross-Language Image Retrieval, Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR).

The CAB Thesaurus, the largest life sciences and related topics thesaurus in the world, is now available online at http://www.cabi.org/cabthesaurus/. Key features include: Controlled vocabulary that has been in constant use since 1983, Regularly updated (current version released January 2009), Broad coverage of pure and applied life sciences, technology and social sciences, Approximately 96,000 terms, including 64,000 preferred terms and 32,000 non-preferred terms, Includes about 62,000 plant, animal and microorganism names, Multi-lingual, with Spanish and Portuguese equivalents for most English terms, American and British spelling variants, Relevant CAS registry numbers for chemicals, and Commission notation for enzymes.

I just came back from a wonderful visit of Esfahan, a remarkable historic city in the middle of the county. In 25 May 2009, the main library of the Esfahan University held a one day seminar about the visible and invisible web. I was one of the invited speakers and I delivered a one hour presentation entitled “The Visibility and Invisibility of Information on the Web”. It was a brief summary of my studies on the invisible web concept over the last eight years. At the end of the seminar, I also took part in a panel to answer the participants’ questions. I can summarize my main message to the seminar simply as follows: “ … in my theory of information visibility on the web, I basically put the web user in the focal point of the definition of the invisible web and also consider the search context’s effects in the level of information visibility for each search session. This approach is considerably different with the common definition of this concept which is only focused on search engines’...

The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIST), with the support of the iSchool at Drexel University, is organizing a one-day meeting "Google, the Web, and the Future Roles of Publishers and Librarians" which will take place on June 26, 2009 at Drexel University. For more information you can see this link .

Tehran International Book Fair ( TIBF ) is much greater than an exhibition place for new publications. In conjunction with the book fair, various cultural activities take place every year, that I have a chance to contribute in a few of them in this year. In its the third day, I was member of a panel to discuss on the "Popularization of Science and Its Challenges". In the seventh day, I did run a workshop on "The Basics of Paper Writing". Brief reports of these events are available here and here .

First Monday published the May 2009 (volume 14, number 5) issue. To see the table of contents and full text of the papers, please follow the link .

Information Processing & Management journal is going to publish a special issue on Collaborative Information Seeking. According to their call for paper “… collaborative information seeking refers to occasions when pairs or groups of people actively work together to satisfy a shared information need. Such collaborations may be synchronous or asynchronous, co-located or remote. … understanding how digital technologies can improve the process and outcomes of collaborative information seeking is an emerging area of research engaging several communities, including researchers in the fields of information retrieval, library sciences, education, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work.”

Recently, I was member of the scientific committees at two national conferences in LIS. The first one, “ Knowledge Management and Information Science: Links and Interactions ” took place last week. The second one is a national conference entitled “ School Libraries: Dynamism of the Educational System and Contribution in Learning and Teaching ” which is being held now. The increasing number of specialized conferences in LIS in Iran is a sign of the dynamism of this field in the country.

I had an interview with IBNA about the current trends in publishing LIS books in Iran. The full transcription of this interview is available here .

Yesterday, I delivered a presentation at our university about the basics of data analysis and interpretation in qualitative research and how we can make sense of piles of notes and raw materials in our studies to present meaningful and comprehensible results. The presentation's title was "How to Make Sense of Qualitative Data in Qualitative Studies". If you like to see the PowePoint file please send me an email.

The 18th International World Wide Web Conference will take place in Madrid, for more details follow the link .

In another interview with IBNA, I referred to the necessity of keeping LIS curricula abreast on the rapid changes in the filed. The full transcription of this interview is available here .

Research 2.0: Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds as Research Environments will take place in January 5-8, 2010, in Hawaii. The main topics are: changing landscape for qualitative and quantitative research due to emergence of Web 2.0 and virtual worlds; development of online research communities; online collaborative techniques in Web 2.0 environments for advancing research methodologies; use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in data collection and analyses; use of Web 2.0 platforms and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) such as avatars, online communities, for conducting qualitative and quantitative research; effectiveness of Web 2.0 for increasing participating rates in research (e.g., questionnaire response rates; online focus groups); using user-generated content as a data source in research; ethical and legal issues (e.g., privacy; copyright) in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in virtual environments; use of social computing in building research communities; role of social...

Recently I had another interview with IBNA on the issue of existing approaches in LIS research. In this interview, I mentioned that until now most of the LIS studies in the country have been adopting quantitative approaches and we need to do more research with qualitative methods to make a reasonable balance between these two paradigms. You can see the full transcription of the interview on IBNA website at here .

Yesterday I was one of the speakers at the first festival of Iranian LIS students. This event was held at the National Library of Iran and was organized by ADKA to announce the outstanding dissertations, most successful student associations, and the best student journals in Iranian LIS. In this speech I delivered a presentation entitled “100 Hints in Writing a Dissertation”. I’ll upload the PowerPoint file on my homepage soon.

Last week I had another workshop on the basics of qualitative research in social science. The workshop went very well and I enjoyed of our discussion on theoretical frameworks and practical procedures of qualitative research. However, as most of the participants were more familiar with quantitative paradigm one of their main concerns was the trustworthiness of researchers' interpretation in qualitative research and how scientific and how useful this approach is in reality. I think, if we try to evaluate the credibility of research findings in qualitative research with similar tools of quantitative approach, these questions remain unanswered. I'll write more about this issue later on.

The iConference 2009; iSociety: research, education, engagement will take place in February 8-11, 2009 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is the Program Schedule .

Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture is the title of a new book written by Ana M. Martínez Alemán, and Katherine Lynk Wartman. The book examines college students' use of online social networking sites and how they use these.

The Autumn semester ends soon and in 10 days I will have to mark a pile of exam papers and coursework. In the next semester I am going to teach various modules including principles of LIS, research methods, statistics, library buildings and equipments, and English LIS texts.

This is my third interview with IBNA (Iranian Books News Agency) during these days. In this interview I have explained my ideas on the various areas that librarians can play their role as information specialists. I believe librarians should not limit themselves to libraries and they can rely on their abilities to provide a vast group of people with their services. You can read this interview here .

This is the first day of 2009 and I say Happy New Year to the readers of my weblog. I hope this year brings success and happiness for everyone.