This paper presents the results of a study conducted with the aim of identifying competencies needed by special librarians in Iran at three different levels of library and information science education. A list of competencies was initially identified from the literature and 21 semi-structured interviews with managers of special libraries in Iran.…

Today data is everywhere. Businesses, governments, universities, scientists, and individuals are creating it at an unprecedented level and pace. Everybody is talking about it. We were just getting used to the concept of gigabytes of data. Then, it changed to petabytes. Now, various technology firms claim that more than an exabyte of data is…

This is the second of two articles that reports aspects of a study that was undertaken to assess the information industry and job market needs that the curriculum of the proposed programme must target. The first article specified the research problem and objectives, reviewed some key definitions and methodologies that were used, and the findings,…

This study is a comparison of the descriptive tagging practices among library, archive, and museum professionals using an inter-indexing consistency approach. The first purpose of this study was to determine the extent of the similarities and differences among professional groups when assigning descriptive tags to a wide variety of objects that…

Information and IT are central to virtually every industry in which the United States plays a leadership role--financial services, entertainment engineering, aerospace, medicine, law, agriculture, and dozens of other fields--yet colleges have failed to attract, teach, and produce a new generation of information professionals to meet the growing…

Collaboration is widely promoted in school librarianship and education, yet little is known about the talk it entails. This intrinsic case study of eight planning meetings employed a discourse analysis and socio-cultural perspective to examine the school librarian's role as a broker for learning in the discourse of collaborative planning with…

This dissertation contributes to the society by providing mechanisms that can potentially increase the availability of valuable personal level information without sacrificing the privacy of citizens. We consider two settings by which personal level data can be made available to its users such as researchers, who then may use it for the benefit of…

The rapid adoption of information technology and ubiquitous networking has transformed the research and education landscape. Central to this transformation are scientific and engineering digital data collections. The life cycle management challenges associated with these intellectual assets are substantial. This is a report of a two-day workshop…

Introduction: This research is the first to investigate the experiences of teacher-librarians as evidence-based practice. An empirically derived model is presented in this paper. Method: This qualitative study utilised the expanded critical incident approach, and investigated the real-life experiences of fifteen Australian teacher-librarians,…

Introduction: The role of library and information science professionals as knowledge facilitators is solidly grounded in the profession's theoretical foundations as much as connected with its social relevance. Knowledge science is presented in this paper as a convenient theoretical framework for this mission, and knowledge engagement…

Introduction: Theorist Howard D. White has made a call to action for "scientist-poets" to synthesize concepts and oeuvres in the centrifugal literature of information science. In response, this paper interprets the work of canonical information scientist Marcia J. Bates through the original metaphor of "castles and inverted…

School library media specialists have seen more fundamental changes in their jobs and in their roles within their schools than any other group of education professionals. The author started her first job as a school librarian when there were no desktop computers, and card catalogs were the order of the day. Over the course of the thirty-seven…

The present study investigated the processes information professionals, working in a business environment, follow to meet business clients' information needs and particularly their involvement in information synthesis and analysis practices. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data was collected via a survey of 98 information…

Amid the sea change that libraries and information centers currently face, people are starting to see compelling solutions and bold initiatives from their colleagues. The challenge now becomes how to "spread the gospel"--how to inform widely dispersed information professionals about the successes they record. In 2011, volunteers within the Special…

In recent years, many technological interventions have surfaced, such as virtual worlds, games, and digital labs, that aspire to link young people's interest in media technology and social networks to learning about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) areas. Despite the tremendous interest surrounding young people and STEM education,…