Document Type : Original Article
Authors
Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman
Abstract
Background and Objectives: The general structure of human knowledge has a similar biological progress to living creatures. Through history, scientific ideas have lost their simplicity and appropriateness and become more complex. Adopting biological progress, scientific ideas go through some sort of such biological progress (birth to death) during their progress. Thus, such biological behavior could be seen in the scientific community; that is a scientific idea with a new perspective is put forward and the scientific community responds to that idea in different patterns so that the new idea is either accepted and goes through a development process or ignored after a little while so that it may appear again in another time. Scientific publishing are perceived to be fully reflecting the level of technical and specialized knowledge and information and are assumed to have a fundamental role in the complex system of scientific and technical exchanges and sharing the generated knowledge among different nations. For this mission, publishing scientific works, especially in form articles and journals, is one of the most important factors that responsible assessment agencies use for analysis of the level of generated knowledge. Through the development process of scientific systems, therefore, the world has reached a condition that the knowledge of any country has become the language and means for bolding out itself in the world in terms of science, such that it would become isolated and have nothing to say without such means, according to in Salehi and Rahimi, 2010 as cited in Abdekhoda, Mohammadi, Bigdeli, 2006). Considering the above mentioned and that all sciences, including information and knowledge studies, are constantly changing, the main concern of this study is whether we can analyze and assess the path that scientific ideas go through within their biological process in time using biological rules based on comprehensiveness, evolution, variety, and actions and reactions (Abraham, 2007 as cited in Zarei 2014) which are described as follows: Comprehensiveness means extensiveness and inclusion in which all subject areas in information and knowledge studies are categorized based on the subject categorization outline in this science (2014). Evolution means the gradual alteration of subject areas in proportion to time and evolutionary speciation (Groom, Meffe, Carroll, 2006). Dictionary of Bibliometric defines variety as a synonym for dispersion which describes the normal findings in a subject matter. Action and reaction mean identification and determination of subject areas and their interaction with the environment; that is the effect of the environment on subject areas and vice versa which is known as the information ecology or the known biological patterns and tenets (Vigneswaran et al., 2007).
As Busha and Harter (1980: 8) have argued, the main proportion of researches related to library and information science are applied in nature and the evidence for such conclusion can be found by analyzing reports of such researches (as cited in Zarei 2014). This paper is no exception to this, i.e. it is applied and conducted by taking a quantitative approach and a bibliometric-content analysis method. Analysis of the content grounded on this presumption, the lexicon used in the interviews, observations, and documents may be categorized into areas which share a common vocabulary, meanings, and concepts (Krippendorff, 1980).
Researchers in the field of Information and Knowledge Studies (former Library and Information Science) since the beginning until 2017 who have been profiled in the Web of Science constitute the population of this study. There were totally 374 articles. The researcher started to collect subject vocabulary from titles, abstracts, and keywords in March 2017. It is worth mentioning that no sampling was performed since all the above-mentioned articles were analyzed.
Subject Categorization Model of Zarei (2014) was used as the instrument for analysis of the data collected from Web of Science profiled until 2015. Instrument reliability was established by five specialists in the field of Knowledge and Information Science and the Cronbach's alpha was calculated as 0.889. Articles used for the research were used as the units of analysis and Wordstat v. 7.0, Excel 2013 and SPSS v. 20 were used to analyze the data and respond to research questions.
Methodology: According to the collected the data, the highest subject comprehensiveness in the studied population was as follows based on the frequency: 1) user studies with 59 frequencies (15.78%); 2) library and information and communication technology with 54 frequencies (14.44%); 3) libraries and data centers with 47 frequencies (12.57%). In the subject category of user studies outside Iran with Rana (2011), Sugimoto et al. (2011) and Cavalk (2013), where there is similar emphasis on study of the needs of users and user studies, comparison of the data of this paper with data outside Iran revealed that user studies have become the subject of interest for researchers in recent years. User studies include sub-subject categories, such as satisfaction measurement, information requirements, reference interview, information seeking behavior, study habits, web using abilities, user interface and information literacy of users. High comprehensiveness of user studies is explained by the high proportion of focus on the user comment-based researchers and the high importance given to it by the Library and Information Science community in Iran. Library and Information and Communication is the second sub-category that has the highest frequency and concordance with findings of Niazi (2001), Afghahi (2007), Horri (2002), Salk (2009), Vaziripour Keshmiri, Sedehi, and Saberi (2012), Erfanmanesh, Didgah, and Omidvar (2010), and Rana (2011), which indicates the crucial and supplementary role of information and communication technology in Knowledge and Information Science because it has gone through a revolution since information and communication technology has entered thereto..
Findings: According to the findings of this paper, the lowest subject comprehensiveness was user services with 3 frequencies (0.8%) and ranked 14th which is contrary to the findings of Yontar and Yalvac (2000), therefore, it is concluded that user services studies have decreased over time. It is recommended that researchers pay more attention to this area since it is conceived as one of the most important issues in the library profession.
The intended data were extracted according to the data in Table 2 in order to measure the subject evolution of the articles under study. Findings indicated that Basics of knowledge and Information Science subject category in 2000-2008 with 8 average score, User Studies in 2008-2015 with 6.75 and Knowledge Management in 2008-2015 with 55.44 average scores had the highest evolution. No evolution was seen in Information Ethics, Technical Services or Organization of Knowledge and Storage and Restoration of Information subject categories. Fall of evolution was observed in Education of Knowledge and Information Science and Publishing and Distribution Industry subject categories.
Basics of Knowledge and Information Science subject category is in line with Abdulaye (2002) and Sugimoto et al. (2011) indicating the importance of this category as the basis of Knowledge and Information Science and thus the researched conducted in this area. User Studies subject category was in line with Cavalk (2013) which emphasizes the equal focus on studying user needs and user studies. Contrary to Babalhavaeji et al. (2014) no subject variety was seen in Education of Knowledge and Information Science subject category which indicates a weak point and, in fact, the lack of attention to training professionals and theoretical and practical teachings by researchers which may lead to future challenges in Iran in this regard.
Discussion: Interactions of research community until 2015 was categorized into two groups based on the obtained data, as shown in table 2. 533 subject categories had interaction with another subject category. 487 subject categories had interaction with information and communication and 46 had interaction with other subject categories. Interactions of subjects of Iranian research articles profiled in Website of Science with information and communication technology was investigated separately because this subject area has had an influential role in the course of reforms and development of Knowledge and Information Science. It should be notified that with the introduction of new tools and software technology to the libraries, the librarian’s literacy level has extensively boosted. Having tried to learn new information technologies, librarians can introduce health-related databases to users by holding various training courses in libraries. In spite of librarians’ higher Health Information Literacy, the entrance of technologically advanced utensils and electronic resources to libraries create anxiety filled environments. Therefore, librarians need to promote their skills in different fields especially in health information to avoid physical and mental damages. Librarians could make libraries a certain, safe and trusted place through secrecy maintenance, affability and reliability and providing necessary facilities for easy accessibility to health information required for users. Authorities could also have determinant role in the augment of librarians' Health Information Literacy. They could carry out this task by; purchasing and sending various sources of health, psychology and hygiene for libraries; purchasing health related databases to librarians and users; holding different conferences about Health Information Literacy for librarians; holding educational courses for all librarians in city; making them familiar with tools and new technological soft wares; holding study circles among librarians in city; creating communicative relationship among librarians and professionals like physicians and psychiatrists and finally establishing a provincial counseling center to lead librarians settle their own and members problems.
Keywords
)