The Invisible Web Weblog

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 .