The Invisible Web Weblog

This week I have been involved in several thesis related activities. Today I was the external examiner for a master dissertation about self archiving patterns of highly productive scholars in science and social science areas. Also, today I accepted to be the adviser of a PhD thesis on the cognitive aspects of scholars’ information seeking behaviors. Moreover, yesterday one of my students passed his viva and his dissertation was about evaluation of an e-learning system in the field of entrepreneurship management. Furthermore, in this week I became the adviser of another PhD study about semantic networks of core concepts in Hafiz poets with an ontological view on this issue. Finally, during this week, I had a workshop on thesis writing skills!

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries ( TPDL ) will take place September 26-28, 2011 in Berlin. 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). The conference main themes include: Foundations: Technology and Methodologies • Digital libraries: architectures and infrastructures • Metadata standards and protocols in digital library systems • Interoperability in digital libraries, data and information integration • Distributed and collaborative information spaces • Systems, algorithms, and models for digital preservation • Personalization in digital libraries • Information access: retrieval and browsing • Information organization • Information visualization • Multimedia information management and retrieval • Multilinguality in digital libraries • Knowledge organization and ontologies in digital libraries Digital Humanities •...

The recent issue of the International Journal of Information Management, includes the following research papers: On the motivating impact of price and online recommendations at the point of online purchase, The cognitive selection framework for knowledge acquisition strategies in virtual communities, Knowledge management and communication in Brazilian agricultural research: An integrated procedural approach, The intellectual development of the technology acceptance model: A co-citation analysis, The scope of external information-seeking under uncertainty: An individual-level study Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and farmers’ decision-making across the agricultural supply chain, Understanding the dynamics of users’ belief in software application adoption, Enterprise Information Portals in support of business process, design teams and collaborative commerce performance.

Colloquium on the Comparative Epistemology of Information & Communication in scientific disciplines will take place 8 April 2011 at the University of Lyon 3. In the conference’s aims and objectives it is mentioned that: “ ... Although no consensus exists on a common definition of the concepts of information and communication, few can reject the hypothesis that information – whether perceived as «object» or as «process» is a pre-condition for knowledge. Epistemology is the study of how we know things or the study of how scientific knowledge is arrived at and validated. To adopt an epistemological stance is to commit one to render an account of what constitutes knowledge or in procedural terms, to render an account of when one can claim to know something. An epistemological theory imposes constraints on the interpretation of human cognitive interaction with the world. It goes without saying that different epistemological theories will have more or less restrictive criteria to disting...

The international conference of Information Science and Social Media (ISSOME) will take place August 24-26, by the Department of Information Studies at Åbo Akademi University. Topics of interest include: * Social media in information science * Information aspects of social media * Library 2.0 and Librarian 2.0 * Social networking sites * Information Management * Knowledge Management * Knowledge Organization * Reputation Management * Information Behaviour and Information Use * Information dissemination in social media

The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) announced its eleventh competition for papers to be submitted for the 2011 Annual Meeting. Topics include the following 7 core 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 information in any form, tagging (expert, user-based, automatic), filt...

Reference Services Review (RSR) is going to publish a special issue on learning landscapes and the new reality. Learning landscapes encompass the physical and virtual spaces where today’s library users encounter information and learn to use it effectively. Papers might focus on the following topics: The interplay of physical and virtual learning landscapes and what this means for teaching, reference, collaboration, and management – new learners, new faculty, and new roles; The impact of library/information commons’ spaces on learning, service design and delivery, collections, and library administration – planning, implementation, assessment, re-examination and evolution; Research on user expectations, needs and perceptions as next generation users interact with next generation information environments – what do library staff need to know to meet their needs? Other aspects of learning, working and researching at the intersection of place and placelessness where libraries exist in the di...

Today, in an interview with IBNA, I talked about the differences between popularity and prestige in citation analysis studies. Popular papers receive many citations, regardless where they were published. While prestigious papers are published in highly recognized journals, even if they do not get as many citations as the popular ones. Of course, a paper might be both popular and prestigious at the same time. I also talked about how we can make use of citation analysis research in practical fields like collection developments in libraries, and for ranking journals and scholars in various subjects. The full transcription of this interview is available here .

Today I had a workshop at the main library of our university about Current Awareness Services (CAS) and Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) in academic libraries. In this workshop I tried to introduce a number of simple and practical steps that we can employ in our libraries to develop these services and provide our users with more relevant and pertinent information resources. I believe librarians should not necessarily wait for the advanced and perfect infrastructure facilities to develop these services. In contrary, we can put these services into operation through a number of creative and simple steps. As a result we will be able to make a positive difference in the level and usefulness of what we do.

Library & Information Science Research has published the first issue of its 33th volume. The titles of some papers in this issue are: Collaboration in information and library science doctoral education, Gracious space: Library programming strategies towards immigrants as tools in the creation of social capital, Trends in information behavior research, 1999–2008: A content analysis, “I did not realize so many options are available”: Cognitive authority, emerging adults, and e-mental health, Information behaviors of Latinos attending high school in East Los Angeles, Neighborhood disparities in access to information resources: Measuring and mapping U.S. public libraries’ funding and service landscapes, Evaluation of strategic plans in academic medical libraries, Users' perceptions of university library websites: A unifying view, Asking and sharing information in the blogosphere: The case of slimming blogs, Towards an understanding of the use of an institutional repository with int...

The first issue of Information Processing & Management (IMP) is available online now and includes 146 pages. The title of research articles in this issue are: Enhancing query translation with relevance feedback in translingual information retrieval, Modeling information sources as integrals for effective and efficient source selection, Select-the-Best-Ones: A new way to judge relative relevance, Mining and modeling linkage information from citation context for improving biomedical literature retrieval, Medical query generation by term–category correlation, Popular and/or prestigious? Measures of scholarly esteem, Measuring the interestingness of articles in a limited user environment, The skewness of computer science, Discovering author impact: A PageRank perspective, Patterns of bibliographic references in the ACM published papers.

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 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...

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.

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...

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 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 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.

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.

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.