The Invisible Web Weblog

The following paper was published recently: Mansourian, Y. (2008). Web search efficacy: definition and implementation, Aslib Proceedings , Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 349-363. Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to report a number of factors that are perceived by web users as influential elements in their search procedure. The paper introduces a new conceptual measure called “web search efficacy” (hereafter WSE) to evaluate the performance of searches mainly based on users' perceptions. Design/methodology/approach – A rich dataset of a wider study was inductively re-explored to identify different categories that are perceived influential by web users on the final outcome of their searches. A selective review of the literature was carried out to discover to what extent previous research supports the findings of the current study. Findings – The analysis of the dataset led to the identification of five categories of influential factors. Within each group different factors have been recognize...

Today I had a workshop at the Iranian Curriculum Studies Association ( ICSA ) on writing skills for academic journals. 20 lectures and researchers from the field of curriculum planning and programming, assessing and some of the other related areas attended there. While running the workshop through the discussions with the participants I learned more about this area of study and the various research interests that they explore. I think there are strong links between what they do and what we aim at the educational aspects of LIS and information literacy research and practice.

I recently published a paper in Shirazeh entitled “ Evaluation Criteria to Assess the Breadth and Quality of Services in Public Libraries ”. Shirazeh is an online newsletter published in Persian by the Iran National Library and covers various aspects of library and information science in Iran. In the first issue of this newsletter, I had an interview talking about my ten years career in LIS and how I became a librarian.

These days I am busy with marking a pile of exam papers and reading my students' assignments. This is very encouraging for me that some of them have done their coursework very well which shows their enthusiasm for learning. Hopefully, in the next semesters I can involve them with more inquiry-based and reflective learning tasks to prepare them to be independent and lifelong learners.

The 2nd ACM International Workshop on ‘ Improving Non English Web Searching ’ will be held in conjunction with ACM CIKM 2008. The main aims of this workshop are to identify the problems in web searching when working with non-English languages and to propose solutions and tools so as to improve web retrieval systems.

June came and this is the exam time again. Now, I am preparing my exams for the next week and will be busy very soon with a pile of papers to mark.

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