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Showing posts from 2010

A Quick Look at 2010

This is probably the last post that I am writing in 2010. Perhaps, it would be a good time to take a quick look at what I have done during this year in my academic life. Thankfully, it was a fairly successful year for me and I managed to achieve some of my academic and research goals, though I still have a very long list of unfinished works! I think like many others I suffer from some sorts of academic procrastination and need to enhance my time management skills! But, luckily, the overall result is not too bad. As in addition to my usual works at the university including my teaching duties as a lecturer, and my administration jobs as the head of our small department, I completed some other tasks too. For example, I eventually completed my book entitled “Basics of Academic Writing” which was in my ‘to do list’ for more than two years. Moreover, I wrote a number of Persian and English papers including research articles, viewpoints, book reviews and brief notes. I also had several worksh

Library Hi Tech

Library Hi Tech published a special issue on "Best Young Professionals 2", and the following papers appeared in this issue. Artificially intelligent conversational agents in libraries, Alleviating physical space constraints using virtual space?: A study from an urban academic library, Utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) in library research, Information literacy barriers: language use and social structure, Making web content accessible for the deaf via sign language, Overcoming the information gap: Measuring the accessibility of library databases to adaptive technology users, Preserving authenticity in the digital age, Making the case for the leadership role of school librarians in technology integration, A Six Sigma-based method to renovate information services: Focusing on information acquisition process, OCLC's WorldCat Local versus III's WebPAC: Which interface is better at supporting common user tasks? Evaluating and comparing discovery tools: how close

The International Information & Library Review

The following papers were appeared in the latest issue of The International Information & Library Review: International scholarly collaboration in science, technology and medicine and social science of Turkish scientists, Gender differences in information seeking behaviour in three universities in West Bengal, India, Mapping mixed methods research in library and information science journals in Sub-Saharan Africa 2004–2008, Surveying scholars’ perceptions of electronic environments: A case study of university libraries in Kerala (India), Scholarly journal use and reading behaviour of social scientists in Taiwan.

Decision Making Skills

Yesterday I had a workshop at the National Library about "Decision Making Skills in the Research Process". If you would like to see the workshop’s PowerPoint file, please email me.

Journal of Informetrics

The first issue of the Journal of Informetrics in 2011 was published. These are some of the research papers in this issue: PrestigeRank: A new evaluation method for papers and journals, Approaches to understanding and measuring interdisciplinary scientific research(IDR): A review of the literature, On the definition of forward and backward citation generations, Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations, The measurement of low- and high-impact in citation distributions, Structured evaluation of the scientific output of academic research groups by recent h-based indicators, Bibliometric rankings of journals based on Impact Factors: An axiomatic approach, Indicators of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Diversity, centrality, and citations, The effects and their stability of field normalization baseline on relative performance with respect to citation impact: A case study of 20 natural science departments, How and where the TeraGrid supercomputing infrastructure ben

Reading and Writing Practice

This week I had two workshops for two different groups of students about academic writing. At the end of these workshops I asked them to do the following practices to enhance their writing skills. 1. Bibliographic Practice : Make a list of 10 well known textbooks in your subject, with their full bibliographic information. Please make sure to include the latest versions of these books in your list. Then have a look at their table of contents and compare their contents and structures. 2. Paraphrasing : Read a recent well cited or hot paper in your subject and write a few paragraphs, or preferably 2 or 3 pages, about it in your own language. Please use simple words and write simple and short sentences. 3. Browsing : Go to the library and browse the recent issues of the main journals in your area of study. Read the paper titles and have a quick look at abstracts. Alternatively, you can browse their websites. In this stage you do not need to read the thoroughly. 4. Free Writing : Select a

ELPUB 2011

15th International Conference on Electronic Publishing: Digital Publishing and Mobile Technologies will be held in June 2011, in Istanbul. The main themes of the conference include: Digital Publishing and Mobile Applications, Digital Publishing and Libraries, Archives and Museums, Scholarly Communication and Mobile Information Services, Social Networks and Mobile Technologies, Mobile Learning and Digital Cultural Heritage, and Mobile Information Organization and Retrieval.

COLLNET 2011

Seventh International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS) & Twelfth COLLNET Meeting will take place 20-23 September, 2011, at Istanbul Bilgi University. According to the conference call for paper: the broad focus of the conference is on collaboration and communication in science and technology; science policy; quantitative aspects of science of science; and combination and integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in study of scientific practices. Theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of the conference can be listed as follows: Emerging issues in scientometrics / informetrics /webometrics and history of science, Impact and role of open access and digital libraries on patterns of collaborations and sciences, Science policy and collaboration, Collaboration studies for science & society, Collaboration, knowledge management & industrial partnership, Collaborative bridge between academic research and industry, Methods for colla

LIS Research in Australia

Library & Information Science Research Journal has published a special issue about LIS Research in Australia. These are some of the papers in this issue: Informed learning: A pedagogical construct attending simultaneously to information use and learning, Beliefs, attitudes and perceptions about research and practice in a professional field, Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Academization of LIS educators in higher education institutions, Australian PhDs by LIS educators, researchers and practitioners: Depicting diversity and demise, The contemporary librarian: Skills, knowledge and attributes required in a world of emerging technologies, The play's the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare, Developing and sustaining a sense of place: The role of social information.

New Library World Current Issue

New Library World journal has published the 11/12th issue of its 111 Volume. The following papers appeared in this issue. Public libraries as impartial spaces in a consumer society: possible, plausible, desirable? Social networking in academic libraries: the possibilities and the concerns, Library design, learning spaces and academic literacy, Implementation of the Finnish University Libraries National Information Literacy Recommendation into academic studies at the Kumpula Science Library, University of Helsinki, Customizing an open-source tool to enhance information literacy, Reference tools in Second Life: implications for real life libraries, Project management in the library.

The Electronic Library

The Electronic Library Journal has published the 6th issue of its 28th Volume. Some of the papers in this issue are: Assessment of taxonomy building tools, Web site accessibility evaluation methods in action: A comparative approach for ministerial web sites in Iran, Dissemination motives and effects of internet book reviews, Scientific information transfer: a conceptual model for scientific communication in IranDoc, Using data mining to improve digital library services, Recommendation sources on the intention to use e-books in academic digital libraries, Integrated systems applications in Kuwait academic libraries, An innovative approach for developing and employing electronic libraries to support context-aware ubiquitous learning.

Online Information Review

Theses papers have been published in the latest issue of Online Information Review: Why do members contribute knowledge to online communities? User evaluation of textual results clustering for web search, Understanding the consistent use of internet health information, Three-dimensional context-aware tailoring of information, How to improve trust toward electronic banking, Antecedents and consequences of trust in online product recommendations: An empirical study in social shopping, Genre analysis of bookmarked webpages, Pragmatic issues in calculating and comparing the quantity and quality of research through rating and ranking of researchers based on peer reviews and bibliometric indicators from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.

Journal of Documentation: Vol. 66, No. 6

Journal of Documentation has published the 6th Issue of it 66th Volume. Titles of some papers in this issue are: Documentary tools in everyday life: the wedding planner, Opening and closing rituals of the virtual reference service of the Internet Public Library, The individual and social dynamics of knowledge sharing: an exploratory study, Managing documents at home for serious leisure: a case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking, A multilevel model of HIV/AIDS information/help network development, How poor informationally are the information poor?: Evidence from an empirical study of daily and regular information practices of individuals, Carbon footprint of the knowledge sector: what's the future? Findings of the last paper is very interesting: "... The current practices for production and distribution of printed knowledge products generate an enormous amount of CO2. It is estimated that the book industry in the UK and USA alone produces about 1.8 million tonnes and about 1

What Links Research to Practice

Today morning I was one of the speakers in the Research Week Seminar at our university. The title of my speech was: Evidence-based Library and Information Practice: A Link between Research, Planning and Decision Making . If you would like to have the slides, please email me.

Stable and Transient Nature of the Internet

In a brief note in IBNA , I explained how the Internet resources are, at the same time, so ephemeral and so stable. I also described some of the reasons that contribute to making such a dynamic and paradoxical context.

JASIS&T Latest Issue

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) is one of the most prestigious and influential peer reviewed journals in LIS and has been published continuously since 1950. Recently, JASIS&T has published the 12th issue of its 61 volume (December 2010). Titles of some papers appeared in this issue are: Last but not least: Additional positional effects on citation and readership in arXiv, Co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and direct citation: Which citation approach represents the research front most accurately? A comparison of two techniques for bibliometric mapping: Multidimensional scaling and VOS, Power law distributions in information science: Making the case for logarithmic binning, The effect of folder structure on personal file navigation, Requirements and use of in-service information in an engineering redesign task: Case studies from the aerospace industry, The effect of spelling and retrieval system familiarity on search behavio

Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries

The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2011 continues the tradition of the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL). The conference is going to bring together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries. TPDL 2011 is organized by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin School of Library and Information Science, the Computer and Media Services and the Department of Computer Science). More details are available here .

Social Theory in Information Systems Research

The 17th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), will take place in Detroit, Michigan, August 4-7, 2011. In one of the panels, researchers in this area will focus on research that makes use of social theory to investigate the dynamics of online and virtual communities. According to their call for contributions: “… they seek to attract research papers, research-in-progress papers, and panels from all IS researchers who are using the work of social theorists, organizational theorists, socio-technical theorists, and cultural anthropologists in their online and virtual communities research. They are particularly interested in research that makes use of social theory to address issues of virtual collaborations. They will address issues such as: How and under what conditions do these communities form, self-organize, maintain and manage themselves and dissolve? What are the roles that information and communication technologies play n the dynamics of online and virtual communities?

Information Research

The latest issue of Information Research (Volume 15 No 3 September, 2010) was published. To read the papers please follow this link .

Taming the Information Tsunami

The 53rd NFAIS Annual Conference will discuss Taming the Information Tsunami: The New World of Discovery. Main issues to explore in this meeting are: How can content providers efficiently navigate the information tsunami to provide scholars and researchers with the reliable, relevant information that deserves their time and attention - no matter what the source or format? How does that information get filtered, made consumable, and incorporated into workflows? What roles can semantic search, image search and the social graph play in finding the specific information that users want? Who is improving the overall search experience with touch technologies, predictive tools and personalized search? How can large volumes of information across all media be acquired, processed and transmitted to an increasingly mobile and collaborative global research community? Where is that content stored - on the desk, shelves, servers or in the Cloud? And what new business practices are emerging that are

Excellent Library Science Blogs

My weblog has been noted as one of 50 excellent library science blogs worth reading. In this list my weblog is 48th. Also in another list of “ 100 Best Blogs for Library Science Students ” my blog is the 15th in the technology section.

Peter Drucker

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.” “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” “The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.” “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.” “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision” “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” “Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.” “One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Tim

Qualitative Research in Web 2.0

The international conference on Qualitative Research in Web 2.0 will be held on the 22 & 23 February 2011 in Macau, China. The conference will explore critical issues and opportunities of implementing online qualitative research. The themes are: What are the advantages and disadvantages of conducting qualitative research online? Integrating Web 2.0 into traditional qualitative research Understanding when to use online methods over traditional methods How to design, execute and report online qualitative research studies? Developing participant recruitment strategies Keeping stakeholders engaged: how to keep clients involved in your online research Discussing challenges while carrying out qualitative analyses in social media Developing engaging market research online communities for qualitative research Exploring the use online research community for understanding cultural assumptions Evaluating different types of approaches with the online research community Discussing the use of mu

Two Seminars in One Day

Yesterday I had a busy day, as I delivered two presentations in two different seminars. In the morning I was one of the speakers in a seminar in Tehran called “Public Libraries, Life Long Learning and Popularization of Science”. The title of my paper was: “The Role of Public Libraries in Enhancement of Science Acceptance in the Society”. In the afternoon, I attended ILISA monthly seminar at the National Library to make a speech about my experience of visiting the Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media at Tampere University in August. The seminar was organized for LIS scholars and students to share their experience and thoughts about the usefulness of sabbatical and study leaves. Reports about these two events are available here and here .

Digital Enabled Social Networks

The next special issue of Information Systems Journal (ISJ) will focus on “Interpreting Digital Enabled Social Networks”. According to the journal’s call for paper: “The aim of this special issue is to advance the state of social network research within the IS field by discussing and disseminating empirical results gained through interpretative studies ... topics may include, but are not limited to the following: New qualitative approaches to study digital enabled social networks Assessing the nature and quality of information exchange and knowledge creation in digital enabled social networks IS case studies that describe how digital enabled social networks can be harnessed in organisational settings Open innovation/co-creation through digital enabled social networks Interpretative studies investigating entrepreneurship and the rise of occupational communities through digital enabled social networks Interpretative insights of leadership and governance in digital enabled social network

Internet and Teacher Education

The latest issue of “Internet and Higher Education” was published. This is a Special Issue on “The Internet and Teacher Education: An Asian Experience”. Titles of some papers in this issue are: The Internet and teacher education: Traversing between the digitized world and schools, Exploring freshmen pre-service teachers' situated knowledge in reflective reports during case-based activities, Using wikis to develop student teachers' learning, teaching, and assessment, The integration of synchronous communication technology into service learning for pre-service teachers' online tutoring of middle school students, Virtual environments and the ongoing work of becoming a Singapore teacher, Promoting awareness of Internet safety in Taiwan in-service teacher education: A ten-year experience, The correlates of Taiwan teachers' epistemological beliefs concerning Internet environments, online search strategies, and search outcomes.

Reading Quotes

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” Victor Hugo “A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” Abraham Lincoln “When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.” Christopher Morley “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” Confucius “Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” Edmund Burke “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested.” Francis Bacon “Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” Marcel Proust “Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book”. Author

Reading Octagon

Recently I suggested a simple and tentative conceptual framework about the effectiveness of reading process. I called this framework the “Reading Octagon”, as it has eight components including: Independent and Continuous Reading Appropriate and Balanced Reading Diverse and Recreational Reading Authentic and Complementary Reading Parallel and Symmetrical Reading Coherent and Consistent Reading Critical and Meticulous Reading Efficient and Productive Reading I think a successful reader who is a lifelong learner usually passes these stages in her/his reading process. I know some of these phrases might seem a bit ambiguous or even odd, but I have specific definition for each element. To make them clear, hopefully, I’ll explain each one in the near future. However, I had an interview with LISNA and illustrate each element in more details. To read the interview, please take a look at this link .

The Value of Reading

While browsing a number of websites about “Reading”, I came across wonderful statements about the value and importance of reading, and I only mention a few of them here. The first one comes from the “New Zealand Book Council” and the second one from “The Reading Agency”: "Like no other human activity reading opens up our imagination. It enables us to understand those around us. It allows us to project the future and reach back into the past. Reading can entertain, challenge and educate. We believe that reading can transform people's lives." "We believe that reading can transform people's lives. The more you read the more you know. The more you read, the more you imagine. The more you read, the better you understand, and the better you can connect to people. Our mission is to inspire more people to read more." These statements seem really simple and obvious, but if you take a closer look at them, then you will find out how profoundly they have been written an

Internet Hidden and Obvious Paradoxes

I have written a brief note in the recent issue of Atf magazine entitled “Internet Hidden and Obvious Paradoxes”. In this note I explained 16 paradoxes in the online environment. For example, we have to deal with the increasing information overload and information scarcity at the same time, the scarceness which has happened as a result of too much information. Because we have to spend plenty of time to find useful information in a huge pool of useless and irrelevant data. To read the full text of this note, please follow this link .

INTECH 2011

The first "International Conference on Integrated Information Technology" ( INTECH 2011 ) will take place at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil. The proceedings will be published by Springer. The topics to be discussed are the following: Integrated Computational Science and Engineering, Distributed Computing, Integrated Communication Technology, Computer Graphics and Multimedia, Integrated System Administration, Networking, and Visualization, Integrated Software Models and Developments, Computing Technology in Education, Government, Business, Industry and other areas, Simulation and Modelling, Integrated Data Mining, Federated Networking, Federated Databases, Image Processing in High Tech Environments, Unified Programming Languages, Information Technology Applications in Different Domains and also Fusion of Information Technology.

BIS 2011

The 14th International Conference on Business Information Systems ( BIS 2011 ) will take place in Poznan, Poland, June 15-17, 2011. Topics include: * Business Process Management - Semantic business process management - Adaptive and dynamic processes - Supply chain processes - ERP implementations - Integration of data and processes - Collaborative BPM * Ontologies - Creation, learning, population, evolution and evaluation - Ontologies for enterprise content management - Natural language processing and cognitive science - Semantic integration of heterogeneous semi-structured sources - Interoperability of heterogeneous information systems - Business models for Web information integration and aggregation * Contexts - Location-aware and geography-centric information systems - Wireless and mobile applications - Multi-agent distributed systems - Semantic web personalization - Ambient computing * Content Retrieval and Filtering - Hidden Web search and crawli

Reports on My Book

The news of my book is available on both IBNA (Iranian Book News Agency) and LISNA (Library and Information Science News Agency) websites.

Process of Peer Review

Today afternoon I delivered a presentation at the third meeting of LIS journals’ chief editors in Tehran. The topic of my presentation was about the process of Peer Review and the possible challenges and difficulties that a journal’s editorial board in general, and reviewers in particular, might encounter during refereeing process. I also suggested a number of research topics on this issue that might be useful for those who are working on this field. I will upload the PowerPoint file of this presentation on my homepage for everyone who might be interested to find out more details about it.

Essential Skills for Teachers ...

Today morning I had a workshop in Tehran entitled "Essential Skills for Teachers and Students to Evaluate the Quality, Usability and Authenticity of Electronic Resources". I'll upload the PowerPoint file on my homepage for everyone who might be interested to find out more details about this event.

Basics of Academic Writing

My new book entitled "Basics of Academic Writing" was published. The book, which is in Persian, includes 75000 words in 263 pages and 9 chapters as follows: 1. An Introduction to Paper Writing (Basic Concepts and Definitions) 2. Principles of Academic Approach in Writing (e.g. Authenticity) 3. General Structure of Scientific Papers 4. Main Features of a Good Paper (100 Features in 20 Categories) 5. Research Originality (Avoiding Plagiarism) 6. Practice in Writing (e.g. Free Writing and etc.) 7. Evaluation Criteria to Select a Journal 8. Paper Submission and Addressing Referees’ Comments 9. Dissertation and Thesis Writing (Including 100 Hints)

Crowdsourcing for Information Retrieval

Information Retrieval Journal is going to publish a special Issue on "Crowdsourcing for Information Retrieval". In their Call for papers, it is mentioned that: "the advent of crowdsourcing is revolutionizing information technology by enabling a wide host of new methodology for data collection, annotation, and processing, as well as system design and evaluation. Given the massive datasets that are both ubiquitous and rapidly growing in today’s digital age, the field of information retrieval (IR) stands to particularly benefit from such advances as academic researchers and industrial practitioners alike leverage the wisdom of crowds to more effective cope with and exploit massive datasets. The novelty of crowdsourcing makes this is an especially exciting time to focus the IR community’s attention toward it and provide an opportunity for discussion and education on this key emerging area. Traditionally manual-labor intensive processes have been particularly impacted by dra

Multimedia Data Annotation and Retrieval

The Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal is going to publish a special issue on "Multimedia Data Annotation and Retrieval using Web 2.0". The main aim of this issue is to assess the current approaches and technologies, as well as to outline the major challenges and future perspectives, related to the use of Web 2.0 in providing automatic annotation and easing retrieval and access control of multimedia data. It aims to provide an overview of the state of the art and future directions in this field, by including a wide range of interdisciplinary contributions from various research groups. Topics of interest include the following: Semantic Web and Web 2.0, Social Networks, Multimedia Semantics, Contextual Multimedia Metadata, Annotation Enriching, Query Rewriting, Metadata Modeling and Contextual Ontologies for Multimedia Applications, Management of Multimedia Metadata (Relational and XML Databases, Semantic Stores, etc.), Multimedia Authoring, Multimedia-based Access Contr

LibrAsia 2011

The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global partners is going to hold the Inaugural Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship ( LibAsia ) from May 27-30 2011, at the Ramada Osaka, Japan. The main conference themes are: "Ancient and Modern" & "Journeys of Discovery". Regarding the conference’s announcement, LibrAsia 2011 is not only an academic conference, but also offer a number of talks, workshops, and readings of original works of interdisciplinary and intercultural discussion.”

Happiness

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. Mark Twain If you want to be happy, be. Leo Tolstoy Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. Immanuel Kant If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years. Bertrand Russell My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. William Shakespeare You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness. Author Unknown Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. Maxim Gorky Some pursue happiness, others create it. Author Unknown The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. Author Unknown Being happy is something you have to learn. I often surprise myself by saying "Wow, this is it. I guess I'm happy. I got

Public Libraries in the World Science Day

The World Science Day for Peace and Development (WSDPD) is celebrated on 10 November each year. Today, for this occasion, in an interview with IBNA I talked about the key roles of public libraries in the process of popularization of science in the society. The transcription of this interview is available here .

Evidence Based LIS

I have written a brief column in LISNA about the basics of Evidence Based Librarianship. This is the link to this note .

What is Success?

"The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. . . It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation , persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree." Alexander Graham Bell "Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives." Albert Einstein "The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary." Thomas Edison "I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to s

Value of Scholarly and Scientific Output

The workshop entitled “Assessing the Usage and Value of Scholarly and Scientific Output: An Overview of Traditional and Emerging Metrics” will take place on November 10, 2010 in Philadelphia. Experts in the fields of scientometrics will attend this event to discuss the new methods that are becoming increasingly important for measuring the usage and value of scholarly and scientific content, including large scientific data sets, and how those measures complement the more traditional, well-known approaches. The titles of some of the sessions and talks in this workshop are: The Usage Approach to Measuring Value; Evaluating the Use and Impacts of Scientific Data; The Eigenfactor; A New Perspective in Journal Metrics; The Citation Approach to Measuring Value: Citation Indexes, Journal Metrics, and the Impact Factors; Usage Statistics from the Librarian and Publisher Perspectives. The details of this event is available here .

Louis Pasteur

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity. Whether our efforts are, or not, favoured by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great goal: I have done what I could. Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence. There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science. I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity. In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind. (Louis Pasteur)

Victor Hugo

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. People do not lack strength; they lack will. Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time. To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it. If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away. (Victor Hugo)

Professor Saracevic’s 80th Birthday

The colleagues of Professor Tefko Saracevic have organized a one-day conference on November 8 at Rutgers University to celebrate his 80th birthday. Professor Saracevic is one of the most prominent scholars in Information Science, and has published many influential works in this field for more than four decades. In particular, his seminal papers on the concept of Relevance and the definition of Information Science made a great impact in our field. I always enjoyed reading his wonderful papers, and once had the chance of meeting him during SIGIR conference in 2004. The details of this birthday party is available here .

50 Topics in Scientometrics Research

Recently, I published a paper entitled “50 Research Topics in Scientometrics Studies”. The full text of this paper is available here .

External Examiner in Isfahan

This Tuesday (26 October) I was an external examiner for an MSc dissertation at the University of Isfahan. The title of this dissertation was “Designing a Model for Context-Aware Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries”. The researcher used Grounded Theory to investigate contextual factors influential in the process of the selection and decision making in recommender systems in digital libraries. The central concept developed in this research named Scientific Research Ground (SRG). SRG has contexts which situate individuals in a range of conditions when interacting with computerized systems. Users’ attributes such as purposes, activities, information literacy and skills, mental status, supposition, assumption, occupational condition, social status are some of such contexts. In general, it was a profound study with a good contribution to the area.

Overall Evaluation of Libraries’ Goodness

In an interview with IBNA, I talked about the main criteria that we need to evaluate the success and goodness of a library in general. The full text of this interview is available here .

Exploring Peoples and Places

Canadian Association for Information Science is going to hold its 39th Annual Conference at the University of New Brunswick/St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick in June 2 – 4th, 2011. The conference theme is “Coasts and Continents: Exploring Interactions of People, Places and Information”. In parallel with this theme, CAIS 2011 will focus the physical, virtual, social, intellectual, organizational, and documentary spaces and places in which informing is enacted and documents are created and used. Also, the people who inhabit these places and spaces and the work they do.

Information Fluency Conference

The 2011 Information Fluency Conference will take place March 9 –11 in Orlando. Possible topics for presentations include: What critical thinking skills are necessary to use the information technologies wisely?; Effectively developing IF skills in students; IF across the disciplines; Intellectual property & plagiarism in the digital age; Defining Information Fluency in a digital age; Assessment of IF initiatives & Retention of IF Skills; Academic Discernment on the Internet; Legal Issues in the Digital Age; Writing and Research Assignments in Large Classes; Librarian as Teacher; What Makes a Graduate Information Fluent?; Assessing Student Learning Outcomes and IF Instruction; Evidence Based Practice and Information Fluency; Using Interactive Technology in IF; Engaging the Undergraduate Audience in IF and Engaging the Graduate Student in IF.

Blogging across Borders and Cultures

International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies (IJICST) is going to publish a Special Issue on Blogging across Borders and Cultures. In the journal’s call for paper it has been mentioned that: " ... since the late 1990s, Internet users have utilized blogs as one of the most ubiquitous communication tools to connect with audiences worldwide. Today blogging is firmly entrenched into the fabric of contemporary society. Versatile blogging systems provide unlimited access to web-publishing platforms that are free, preprogrammed, and easy to use. An example of social interactive technologies application used for generating and distributing content, blogging offers people of diverse backgrounds and organizations from both public and private realms ample opportunities for communication, interaction, sharing, and collaboration." In the Objective of the Special Issue the journal announced that: “IJICST focuses on a broad spectrum of second-generation web-ba

How to Write a Research Proposal

Yesterday I had a workshop on "Research Proposal Writing" at the School of Economic Science in Tehran. In this workshop, which was held for a number of MA students from various Economic Science fields, I talked about the main features of a good research proposal, that they need to develop before the beginning of their dissertation. In general, I believe a good research proposal should firstly illustrate the originality, importance, necessity, and aims of the study. Moreover, it should include research questions, hypotheses, anticipated results, a brief review of the literature and research limits and limitations.

The Best Library in the World

I have written a note in Atf magazine entitled "Where is the Best Library in the World?". It was published today and now you can read it here .

EBLIP New Issue

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice has just published its latest issue . Some of the papers in this issue are: The Impact of the Acquisition of Electronic Medical Texts on the Usage of Equivalent Print Books in an Academic Medical Library; and Learning in Simulations: Examining the Effectiveness of Information Literacy Instruction Using Middle School Students’ Portfolio Products.

Weblog Changes the Web

While looking in my old files, I came across a piece of writing that I have written it in 2005 and as far as I remember, I never published it somewhere. I even can not remember why I wrote it five years ago! Anyway, I would like to upload it here now to share it with you. Weblog Changes the Web: a Personal View Since the early years of 1990s the Web has changed the world and now Weblog is changing the web. While writing this paper, the Microsoft Word programme puts a red line under the word “Weblog” indicating this is a wrong spelling and should be changed. However, weblog is one of our today’s buzzwords and probably will be consider in the next version of this software. It shows weblog has come to our daily conversation recently. Nevertheless, its growth and popularity has been extraordinary. Weblog is a convenient tool for publishing various kinds of information. It is a multidimensional phenomenon in the web environment. It represents diverse meanings and applications for different

Intensive Editing and Proofreading

Over the last 24 hours I have been proofreading the first fourth chapters of a book that I have been writing over the last two years, of course, not constantly. Now the book is in its final stages and I am doing its final works. I need a few more days to finish the proofreading. Now, this is the early hours of October, and hopefully, the book will come out before the end of this month.

2010 Best JASIST Paper Award

The paper "Evaluating Advanced Search Interfaces Using Established Information-seeking Models" written by Max L. Wilson, M.C. Schraefel, and Ryen W. White, and published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Vol. 60, No. 7, July 2009, pp. 1407-1422, won the Best JASIST Paper Award in 2010.

Collaborative Information Seeking in IPM

Journal of Information Processing & Management (IPM) published an especial issue on “Collaborative Information Seeking”. The titles of some of the papers in this issue are as follows: Social and interactional practices for disseminating current awareness information in an organisational setting; Breakdowns in collaborative information seeking: A study of the medication process; An elaborated model of social search; Do your friends make you smarter?: An analysis of social strategies in online information seeking; Microcollaborations in a social Q&A community; Search on surfaces: Exploring the potential of interactive tabletops for collaborative search tasks; Evaluating collaborative information-seeking interfaces with a search-oriented inspection method and re-framed information seeking theory; An asynchronous collaborative search system for online video search; CIRLab: A groupware framework for collaborative information retrieval research; Division of labour and sharing of know

Reference Interview

Today morning I had a half-day workshop for a group of librarians and archivists in Tehran about the basic skills that a reference librarian should possess to carry out successful reference interviews and deliver effective services to library users. In particular, I focused on essential techniques such as active listening, paraphrasing, clarification and confirmation that are very useful to supervise reference interviews.

Measures and Criteria for Evaluation

Yesterday I wrote a column in IBNA entitled “Measures and Criteria in Evaluation of Academic Resources”. The full text of this post is available here .

Journal of Academic Librarianship

The Journal of Academic Librarianship has published the fifth issue of its 36th volume. The titles of some of the papers appeared in this issue are as follows: The Impact of the Economic Downturn on Libraries: with Special Reference to University Libraries, The Current State of Middle Management Preparation, Training, and Development in Academic Libraries, Half Empty or Half Full? Staffing Trends in Academic Libraries at U.S. Research Universities, 2000–2008, “It Makes History Alive for them”: the Role of Archivists and Special Collections Librarians in Instructing Undergraduates, Using Pedestrian Choice Research to Facilitate Resource Engagement in a Midsized Academic Library, History of an Indian Library and Challenges for Today, Promoting Professionalism in Master's Level Teachers through Research Based Writing.

EBLIP6: Valuing Knowledge and Expertise

The sixth International Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Conference (EBLIP6): Valuing Knowledge and Expertise will be held at the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK from 27th-30th June 2011. Key themes include, but are not restricted to: Evidence Based Practice: Reflection * Reflective practice and its relationship to EBLIP * Reflection on EBLIP * Questioning and adapting the EBP model for the specific needs of EBLIP Evidence Based Practice: Impact and Value * Methods of demonstrating impact and value within an evidence based context * The use of EBLIP to demonstrate value or impact * Practising EBLIP in times of financial uncertainty * Maximising the value of the individual case study in library research * Outcome indicators: what must we measure, what should we measure and what could we measure Evidence Based Practice: Practicality and Applicability? * The practicality of using the EBLIP model * Is EBLIP applicable in your setting * Practical methods for EBL

MA Dissertations on Evaluation of Library Website

Two LIS master students, that I was their supervisor, passed their viva during this week. The topic of their research was on evaluation the different aspects of library websites and the titles of their dissertations were as follows: 1. Evaluation of Children and Teens’ Library Websites and Purposing Guidelines for Designing Suitable User Interface, 2. A Content Analysis of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in the National, Academic and Public Libraries’ Websites.

International Journal of Information Management

International Journal of Information Management has published the 5th issue of its 30th volume. Some of the papers in this issue are as follows: Web-based interaction: A review of three important human factors; Understanding users’ behaviours regarding supply chain technology; The role of the quality of shared information in inter-organizational systems use; What makes bloggers share knowledge? An investigation on the role of trust; Knowledge management: An information science perspective; Exploring the role of psychological safety in promoting the intention to continue sharing knowledge in virtual communities; Innovation and knowledge sharing across professional boundaries; A techno-cultural emergence perspective on the management of techno-change and Psychological traits and loyalty intentions towards e-Government services. This is the journal’s homepage .

Journal of Informetrics

Journal of Informetrics has published the fourth issue of its fourth volume. The titles of some research papers appeared in this issue are: The development of an AI journal ranking based on the revealed preference approach; Growth behavior of publications and patents: A comparative study on selected Asian economies; Word co-occurrences on Webpages as a measure of the relatedness of organizations: A new Webometrics concept; Can information ethics be conceptualized by using the core/periphery model? Publication point indicators: A comparative case study of two publication point systems and citation impact in an interdisciplinary context; The effect of scholar collaboration on impact and quality of academic papers; Ranking of library and information science researchers: Comparison of data sources for correlating citation data; and expert judgments; A relational database for bibliometric analysis; A research impact indicator for institutions and Geographic characteristics of the growth o

ITNG 2011

The 8th "International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations" will take place in April 11-13, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference’s main themes are: 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.

Journal of Academic Librarianship

The Journal of Academic Librarianship has published the 4th issue of its 36th volume. Some of the research papers in this publication are: Measuring Referrals: The Use of Paraprofessionals at the Reference Desk, How to Inspire University Librarians to Become “Good Soldiers”? The Role of Job Autonomy, The Readability of Information Literacy Content on Academic Library Web Sites, Can Web 2.0 Enhance Community Participation in an Institutional Repository? Information Illiteracy: Examining our Assumptions, Design and Development of Web-based Information Literacy Tutorials and A study Analyzing the Career Path of Librarians. Moreover in the perspective section they published Library Research on Campus: Examining a Fee-Based Library Service Within University Walls.

Digital Curation Conference

6th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC10) will take place 6 - 8 December 2010, in Chicago. The main theme of this event is “Participation & Practice: Growing the Curation Community through the Data Decade”. According to the conference’s website: “Digital curation manages, maintains, preserves, and adds value to digital data throughout the lifecycle, reducing threats to long-term value, mitigating the risk of digital obsolescence and enhancing usefulness for research and scholarship”. For more information please visit this site .

ICoLIS 2010

The third International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society (ICoLIS 2010) will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 9 -10 November. The conference’s main theme is: Towards Greater Information Accessibility. For more information about this event, please visit the conference’s website .

A-LIEP 2011

Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education and Practice: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities will take place from 22nd to 24th June 2011 at Pullman Putrajaya Lakeside, Putrajaya, Malaysia. For more information please visit the conference website .

Contextual Cocitation Analysis

It seems the importance of the "context" as a key factor in understanding different aspects of production, dissemination and usage of information; is being considered in more areas. I recently, read the following paper which describes a new method of citation analysis with a specific attention to the context: Contextual Cocitation: Augmenting Co-citation Analysis and its Applications, written by Alison Callahan, Stephen Hockema and Gunther Eysenbach, published in JSIST, Volume 61 , Issue 6 (June 2010), Pages: 1130-1143.

Evaluating Web Search Engines

Journal of Online Information Review (OIR) is going to publish a special issue on evaluating Web search engines. According to the journal's call for paper, "The aim of this special issue is to explore the importance and the many possibilities of evaluating Web search engines ... a web search is clearly the foremost method for finding information today. According to ComScore, more than 130 billion search queries were posed to search engines in a single month in 2009. This explains why search engine research is not only of interest to a community working on improving them, but also to a society whose members rely heavily on search engines. In contrast to the importance of search engines, there are still relatively few studies dealing with their quality. The question is how search engines can be best evaluated considering their wide use and the typical user behaviour towards them. Search engines are not only used for general-purpose queries, but in many different contexts. The sp

IBERSID 2010

The 15th edition of the International Conference on Information and Documentation Systems (IBERSID 2010) will take place in Zaragoza, Spain, from 4-6 October 2010. The list of papers all available here .

Students Writing Skills

Today afternoon I delivered a presentation in the Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media (INFIM), at the University of Tampere. The title of this presentation is “LIS Students’ Assessments of their own Writing Skills: A Qualitative Case Study”. If you are interested to have more details, please email me to have the slides.

ECDL 2010

The European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries ( ECDL ) will take place in 6th to 10th of September at the University of Glasgow. The conference main topics include Digital Libraries and Mobility, Digital Library Architectures, Digital Library Infrastructure, Digital Preservation and Curation, Information Mining in Digital Libraries, Information Retrieval in Digital Libraries, Interoperability of Digital Library Systems and Services, Knowledge Organization Systems, Metadata Standards and Protocols in Digital Library Systems, Multilinguality in Digital Libraries, Multimedia Digital Libraries, Personal Information Management and Personal Digital Libraries, Personalisation in Digital Library Systems and Settings, Policies for Digital Library systems, Social Networking, Web 2.0 and Collaborative Interfaces in Digital Libraries, User Interfaces for Digital Libraries, User Studies for and Evaluation of Digital Library Systems and Applications and Visualizat

Pioneer LIS Research Areas

I have written a column in Atf Magazine entitled “The Top 20 Pioneer Research Areas in the Current LIS Studies”. To read the column, please follow this link .

100 Hints in Thesis Writing

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I recently published a paper entitled “100 Hints in Thesis Writing” which summarizes the basic principles and advices for people who are writing a master dissertation or a PhD thesis. The paper is a summary of the handout that I have written for the workshops I run on this issue. I also have already delivered a presentation about this in February 2009 . Of course, I know several books have already been published on this issue; however, this paper can be used as a ready reference checklist for students who prefer having a brief guideline. The paper is in Persian. If you like to read it, please send me an email to have a copy of that.

IFLA 2010: World Library and Information Congress

The 76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly will be held from 10 to 15 August 2010, in Gothenburg, Sweden. The event’s theme is "Open Access to Knowledge: Promoting Sustainable Progress". More details are available on IFLA website.

How Scientometrics Helps LIS Dynamism

Today in an interview with IBNA, I talked about how information professionals can contribute in scientometrics research to play new roles in various scientific activities. The full transcription of this interview is available on this link .

ISSI 2011 in Durban

13th ISSI (International Society for Scientometrics and Infometrics) Conference will take place in Durban, South Africa from 4th to 8th July 2011. The conference topics include: theory, methods and techniques in Scientometrics and Infometrics, citation and co-citation analysis, indicators, Webometrics, mapping & visualization, research policy, productivity & publications, journals, databases and electronic publications, scholar collaborations, country level studies and patent analysis. For more details, please have a look at the conference’s website .

Science in Scientometrics Scale

I have written a column in IBNA today entitled “Science in Scientometrics Scale”. In this brief note, I explained that, regarding the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of science and science progress, this is a very challenging and difficult task to quantify scientific achievements. I believe Scientometrics will be more successful if experts in this area can develop more sophisticated and efficient tools to assess the scientific current trends and issues. The full text of this column is available here .

Integration in the Information Sciences: Unity in Diversity (CoLIS 7)

Seventh International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science ( CoLIS ) was recently held at University College London. This events’ main theme was "Integration in the Information Sciences: Unity in Diversity" and the sub-themes included: theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of the communication of information, including fundamental theory, methodological approaches, and new research agendas; convergence of theory and practice in the information disciplines, including the future of these disciplines, and their relation to practice in areas other than librarianship and information management; memory practices in physical and digital environments, including information collecting and organising practices, relation to information and document management; studies on participatory information and communication environments, including social media, participatory archives and digital libraries, and new information design practices and also educatio

Evaluating Web Search Engines

Journal of “Online Information Review” is going to publish a special issue on “Evaluating Web Search Engines”. The topics include: retrieval effectiveness, reliability of search results, language handling, index sizes and overlap comparisons, query log analysis, user behaviour, results presentation, user surveys, user guidance in the search process, ability of search engines to deal with different query types, index and/or results freshness, diversity of results, search features comparison, influence of search engine optimization (SEO) on results quality.

Effective, Sustainable, and Practical Assessment

The "Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment" will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, from 25 to 27 October, 2010. According the conference’s website , its goal is: “ ... to support and nurture the library assessment community through a mix of invited speakers, contributed papers and posters, workshops, and engaging discussion.” They will cover the following areas: Digital libraries, information resources and collections, learning and teaching, management information, methods and tools, organizational issues, performance measurement and measures, return on investment (ROI), services, space planning and utilization, usability, usage and e-metrics, user needs, value and impact.

Cross Language Evaluation Forum 2010

CLEF 2010: Conference on Multilingual and Multimodal Information Access Evaluation will be held from 20 to 23 September, in Padua. This event is an examples of research activities on Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) studies. According to their call for paper , the relevant topics for the conference include: novel methodologies for the design of evaluation tasks, especially user-centric ones; alternative methods for improving and automating ground-truth creation; task-oriented and easy to communicate metrics; innovative techniques for analyzing the experimental results, including statistical analysis, data mining, and information visualization; infrastructures for bringing automation and collaboration in the evaluation process; component-based evaluation approaches; analysis of the impact of multilingual/multicultural/multimodal differences on interface and search design; multilinguality and multimodality in relevant application communities – e.g. digital libraries, intellec

SimInt 2010: Simulation of Interaction

SIGIR Workshop on the Automated Evaluation of Interactive Information Retrieval will take place on July 23, at SIGIR to address themes such as: definitions of automated evaluation, methods and methodologies for automated evaluation, the ideal simulation (akin to the ideal test collection), types of experiments that can be performed, control and limitations of the different approaches, simulating queries, judgments, clicks, etc., user modelling and estimating models of interaction and research agenda with a road map of future challenges. According to their website , Interactive IR may be classified into four classes: (1) observing real users in real situations (real users, no simulation), (2) observing recruited users performing assigned tasks (real users/interactions, simulated tasks ), (3) performing simulations in the lab without users (simulation of interaction; no users), and, (4) traditional lab based (simulated) experiments (i.e. no users (or abstracted users), fixed interaction

ELAG 2010

The ELAG (European Library Automation Group) Conference discusses library and information management technology. Topics of the past conferences have included digital libraries, library portals, institutional repositories, web services, digital preservation and open source software. ELAG 2010 takes place in Helsinki with the main theme of “Meeting New User Expectations”. The sub-themes include: knowing our users, open linked data and library data re use, tweaking search results relevance ranking, fulfilment strategies, what’s in those libraries and how do I get to it, lending E-books, e-memory and discovery interfaces.

ICDIM 2010

The fifth International Conference on Digital Information Management ( ICDIM 2010 ) will take place from 5th to 8th July 2010, in Thunder Bay, Canada. The conference’s topics include: Temporal and Spatial Databases, Data Mining, Web Mining including Web Intelligence and Web 3.0, E-Learning, eCommerce, e-Business and e-Government, Web Metrics and its applications, XML and other extensible languages, Semantic Web, Ontologies and Rules, Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management, Ubiquitous Systems, Peer to Peer Data Management, Interoperability, Mobile Data Management, Data Models for Production Systems and Services, Data Exchange issues and Supply Chain, Data Life Cycle in Products and Processes, Case Studies on Data Management, Monitoring and Analysis, Security and Access Control, Information Content Security, Mobile, Ad Hoc and Sensor Network Security, Distributed information systems, Information Visualization, Web services,

ISMIR 2010

The Eleventh International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference ( ISMIR 2010 ) will be held in Utrecht, Netherlands, from 9th to 13th August. Some of the conference topics include: music perception and cognition, musical knowledge and meaning, content-based querying and retrieval, automatic classification, music recommendation and play list generation, fingerprinting and digital rights management, transcription and annotation, music summarisation, music structure analysis, optical music recognition, music signal processing, libraries, archives and digital collections, database systems, indexing and query languages, text and web mining, evaluation of MIR systems, knowledge representation, social tags, and metadata, user interfaces and user models, and methodological issues and philosophical foundations.

International Plagiarism Conference

The Fourth International Plagiarism Conference will take place between 21 and 23 June, 2010 at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The conference’s themes include: creating a culture of honesty, ensuring authenticity in non text-based disciplines and multimedia, addressing non-traditional learning styles, ensuring the integrity of research and published work, innovative assessment techniques beyond the essay, the changing nature of authorship in a Web 2.0 world, contract cheating, plagiarism detection, etc.

Emergent Digital Ecosystems

The International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems ( MEDES 2010 ) will take place in Bangkok, October 26-29, 2010. According the conference announcement: "... digital ecosystems composed of multiple and independent entities such as individuals, organizations, services, software and applications sharing one or several missions and focusing on the interactions and inter-relationships among them. The digital ecosystem exhibits self-organizing environments, thanks to the re-combination and evolution of its "digital components", in which resources provided by each entity are properly conserved, managed and used. The underlying resources mainly comprehend data management, innovative services, computational intelligence and self-organizing platforms. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of digital ecosystems and their characteristics, they are highly complex to study and design". Topics include: Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure, Web Technologies, Ser

Real Libraries and Real Users

Recently, I have written a paper entitled “Real Libraries, Real Users and Real Problems”. In this paper, I explained the importance of context and contextual elements in LIS research. The full text is available here .

Paper Contest: Global Information Ecosystem

The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) announced its competition for papers. The theme for this year’s paper contest is: "Navigating Streams in a Global Information Ecosystem". Topics include the following areas: “(1) Intercultural Information Ethics : Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies. (2) Information Behaviour : Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sense-making in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups. (3) Knowledge Organization : Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of informatio

Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics

Sixth International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS) and Eleventh COLLNET Meeting will take place 19-22 October, in Mysore, India.

LIS Research Landscape in 2010

The Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference ‘Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010’ takes place on Monday 28th June at the British Library Conference Centre. This event’s topics include: the diversity of LIS research opportunities, research funding sources, potential research collaborators, means of increasing the relevance of research efforts, avenues for publication of research output, research development opportunities for individuals and groups and techniques for integrating research activities into everyday work practice. The conference’s website is accessible here .

Thesis Writing Workshop

Today morning I ran a workshop for a group of students from various disciplines, about the basic hints to write a thesis. The workshop was held as part of the LIS activities in conjunction with the Tehran International Book Fair. Two brief reports of the workshop are accessible on IBNA and LISNA . Moreover, the PowerPoint file and the workshop handout will be freely available on ILISA website soon. However, if you need these files before that time, please email me.

Sport and Study Similarities

I wrote a column in IBNA about the similarities between sport and study (reading). I think there are at least 20 resemblances between these two activities. To read the note, please follow this link .

Preservation of Digital Objects

7th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects will be held in September 19 - 24, 2010, in Vienna. The topics of interest include: Theoretical, Formal and Conceptual Models of Information and Preservation, Trusted Repositories: Risk Analysis, Planning, Audit and Certification, Scalability and Automation, Metadata Issues for Preservation Processes, Business Models and Cost Estimation, Personal Archiving, Innovation in Digital Preservation: Novel Approaches and Scenarios, Training and Education, Domain-specific Challenges, Governmental & Medical Records, and Case Studies and Best Practice Reports.

JELIS, Vol. 51, No. 2

The Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS) published its volume 51, number 2. This issue's Research Articles include: Communities of Practice for Blended Learning: Toward an Integrated Model, Innovative Services Improvised During Disasters: Evidence-Based Education Modules to Prepare Students and Practitioners for Shifts in Community Information Needs, Social Networking Websites: An Exploratory Study of Student Peer Socializing in an Online LIS Program, Job Advertisements for Recent Graduates: Advising, Curriculum, and Job-seeking Implications.

Mixed Method Panel

Yesterday I was the co-ordinator of a panel, as part of LIS activities in conjunction with the Tehran International Book Fair. In this panel we talked about “Implications of Mixed Methods in LIS Research”. The transcription of this discussion will be published soon.

Advanced Search Tools

“Next Generation Search Engines: Advanced Models for Information Retrieval” is a book which will be written by a group of Information Retrieval experts and aims to explore the fields of advanced computer and information sciences for a better access to the online resources on the Web. According to this Call for Chapter , the topics include: Semantic Web, generation of large-scale search engine index, video, audio and graphics indexing, query user interface: controlled natural languages, natural language query, multilingual search, Index Data Structures, Multi-sources and multi-formats indexation, emergence of new axis in the next generation of search engines: real-time search, local search, GPS sensitive search, mobile search, search in the cloud, and other related topics.

Reading Materials for New Literates

One of the modules that I teach this semester is “Library Materials and Services for New Literates”. This module discusses various methods that different libraries, specially public and rural libraries, may employ to provide appropriate services for new literate users. Regarding they level of reading abilities, librarians must make sure that in the library collection there are enough good resources for them. For example, we should collect some simple reading materials to encourage them to practice on reading. We also can rewrite and paraphrase some recourse in a simple style to make them more readable for new literates. I wrote a brief note in IBNA, suggesting a number of aspects that we should consider in providing appropriate reading materials for newly literate people .

Inspirational Quotes 1

Since I have launched this weblog in 2005, or arguably in 2003, I always had a temptation to gather a collection of profound and thoughtful quotes here. However, for the sake of consistency in the weblog’s content, I always kepts my posts’ theme related to my research and teaching interests. Nevertheless, now I can not see any reason for not mentioning some inspirational quotes once in a while. Therefore, today I make a new category here and I call it “Inspirational Quotes”. I begin this new chapter by some insightful quotes from Helen Keller, the American author and educator who was blind and deaf (1880-1968): "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I ca

Information Interaction in Context

The Information Interaction in Context conference (IIiX 2010) will take place in August. According to the conference CFP, this event is going to “… explore the relationships between and within the contexts that affect information retrieval and information seeking, how these contexts impact information behaviour, and how knowledge of information contexts and behaviours improves the design of interactive information systems”. The conference’s topics include: Interactive information retrieval and interface issues, Qualitative approaches to the study of context-sensitive information seeking and information retrieval, Context-aware retrieval models, Relevance feedback (implicit & explicit) and query modification issues for capturing context, Novel approaches to eliciting, identifying, capturing and representing contextual information, Task-based interactive information retrieval and information seeking behaviour, Issues of genre, media, language, modality and structure in contextual inf

Management Fields

One of the modules that I teach in this semester is “The Basics of Organization and Management”. As in this course I have to illustrate an overall picture of a very broad subject, I needed to briefly describe main theories and trends in management, and then introduce various fields in this subject. Obviously, regarding the broadness of the subject, even in the best possible situation, we only can take a glance at each filed. For instance, the following topics are examples of these fields which are sorted alphabetically: Accounting Management, Applied Engineering, Change Management, Conflict Management, Commercial Operations Management, Communication Management, Cost Management, Crisis Management, Critical Management Studies, Customer Relationship Management, Decision Making Styles, Design Management, Disaster Management, Distributed Management, Educational Management, Engineering Management, Environmental Management, Facility Management, Financial Management, Human Resources Management

Creativity in Qualitative Research

Today, as part of my teaching in the "Research Methods" class, I was explaining the basics of open coding procedure in qualitative studies. Open coding, which is usually the first phase of data analysis in this approach, is a method to find concepts in the collected data. While this explanation, I noticed once again that "creativity" is an essential element for researchers in this stage. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult to get a good outcome in qualitative studies. Hopefully, in the future posts, I'll write some practical suggestions to enhance creativity in qualitative research.