976 research outputs found
The social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach: a paramount concept for research in library and information science (LIS)
Get PDFThis paper analyses the social class struggles concept with an interdisciplinary approach to be used by theorists and practitioners of library and information science (LIS). This concept emerged as part of the theoretical framework employed by the author in his doctoral thesis (Muela-Meza, 2010): An Application of Community Profiling to Analyse Community Information Needs, and Providers: Perceptions from the People of the Broomhall Neighbourhood of Sheffield, UK. This concept is complemented from philosophy (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1976a), and the natural sciences (Hauser, 2006; Sagan and Druyan, 1992), and it served the author to understand better the bigger dimensions of the underlying issues behind social classes and human conflicts. It also served to understand better the contradictions between people (e.g. LIS users with contradictory and mutually exclusive information needs to be provided by libraries and other institutions of information recorded in documents), and how these intensify when these are interrelated with the social class they belong to (Muela-Meza, 2007). This paper also criticises some competing views whose proponents by pretending fallaciously and deceitfully to deny the presence of social class divides in society, such as those rhetorical ploys of post-modernism that propose capitalist-class-driven ideologues of “community cohesion” based on “social capital” (Putnam, 1999). It shows evidence of how those followers (e.g. Pateman, 2006; Contreras Contreras, 2004; Bryson, Usherwood and Proctor, 2003) of capitalist-class ideologues, by doing so they aligned their discourse to that of dominance hierarchies and hegemony against working class people, in LIS and other sciences, and the humanities. It also criticises the postmodern pseudoscience because it pretends to undermine the logical rationality fundamental in LIS and all other sciences. It recommends that LIS theorists and practitioners employ the social class struggles concept as configured here in order to understand better contradictions, conflicts, and struggles within LIS theory and practice, and also to search for broader epistemological aims such as justice and wisdom (Fleissner and Hofkirchner, 1998), concealed by the capitalist or bourgeois and middle classes for their benefit against working class
A Semiotic View of Information: Semiotics as a Foundation of LIS Research in Information Behavior
Get PDFTraditional information behavior studies in library and information science (LIS) research have focused on primarily two trends: one is to provide physical access to material objects and the other is to direct users to certain thoughts and ideas. Both focuses are two sides of the same problem that LIS researchers have worked to address: how to provide a better system or service to accommodate people’s need for information. Among the domains of users, material objects,
and meaningful ideas, applying the concept of information as sign with semiotics not only joins these two trends in the analysis of the pragmatic-syntactic relationship and the pragmatic-semantic relationship, but it also gives an
additional focus on the syntactic-semantic relationship. It is this additional focus that helps LIS professionals/researchers understand an individual’s states of knowing and ways of obtaining knowledge through physical and mental interactions with informative objects. The author conducts a review of information studies, the epistemological concerns and pragmatic traditions in
LIS, and semiotics in an attempt to seek a holistic principle that will incorporate both the traditional trends of LIS research and provide an additional awareness
in assisting users to make connections between material objects and ideas in information behavior studies. By applying a semiotic view of information and the concept of information as sign, LIS researchers of information behavior will find semiotics a useful epistemological framework
Bibliographics for the 983 eprints in the live archives of E-LIS : trends and status report up to 7th July 2004, based on author-self-archiving metadata
Get PDFThe priority for ideas and philosophy related to "Network Theory" have been traced back and documented by Braun(2004),and credit goes to Karinthy(1929).The IT has empowered to realise it, as the most practical phenomena and it is no more a humour. The OAI (Open Archives Initiatives)and ACIS (Academic Contributor Information System)are progressive in the direction ,which may lead to realise the "Collective Genius" at global level. Focus of present study is on Author-Self-Archiving (A-S-A)Metadata of the 983 Eprints in the Live Archives of the E-LIS (EPrints of Library and Information Science),which were approved till 7th July 2004.The A-S-A Metadata was used for librametric analysis. Self-explanatory bibliographics are illustrated.The highlights include: Conference papers (34%); highest approval, June 2004 (28%); published archives (76%);not refereed (52%); not in public domain (60%); highest self-archiving-author (De Robbio, Antonella).The Nos. of EPrints having single JITA domain specifications were: Theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information(27); Information use and sociology of information(80);Users,literacy and reading(13);Libraries as physical collections(30);Publishing and legal issues(57);Management(13);Industry, profession and education(36);Information sources, supports, channels(113) ; Information treatment for information services, Information functions and techniques (101); Technical services libraries, archives and museums(25); Housing technologies(1); Information technology and library technology(92); and Inter-domainery (395) i.e. having specifications of two or more than two JITA classes
An introduction to the applicability of qualitative research methodologies to the field of Library and Information Sciences
Get PDFThis is the original pre-print written on the 17 November 2003 which eventually got published in 2006 –see its history of publication inside the actual document--, and since the article got originally reduced by the editors of Liber of the Mexican Association of Librarians then this original pre-print includes many examples excluded there by Liber's editors. This is an introductory work to the qualitative research methodologies and methods aplied to the Library and Information Studies (LIS) field, as a way to expand the horizons of librarians so they might be able to explore different roads to improve the common telology of LIS which is basically to fuse the library (informational - cognitive) services with the needs and issues, wishes and dreams of society in its respective communities. It argues for the demystification of LIS research which is impregnated with an halo and cult almost mystical that far from motivating librarians both practical and teorethical to carry out research work in a daily basis, it plays an inhibitor role affecting not only the development of LIS research, but the LIS profession itself; this demystification implies that research could be for everyone who wants it to. It also argues that it is necessary to study in depth the epistemological debate in LIS to promote LIS research as a sub-discipline and the education and training of LIS researchers in order to transform such a plausible activity into an attractive one that becomes even a fun thing to do. The author considers that the examples of applicabilities of qualitative research in LIS given here, but which they could not be included in the published version due to the barriers impossed by the editors of Liber the journal of the Mexican Association of Librarians, are worthwhile to be known by the community interested in these methodologies and it is for them that this original draft is open to the public, thanks to the request of a colleague.
This draft, after many unexplained acts of negligence and censorship by the Chairs of the Mexican Association of Librarians and the other editors of their association journal Liber, during the period of 2004-2005, finally was partly published by this Peruvian journal:
Muela-Meza, Zapopan Martín (2006) Una introducción a las metodologías de investigación cualitativa aplicadas a la bibliotecología. BiblioDocencia : Revista de Profesores de Bibliotecología 2(12):pp. 4-12.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006732
Taking stock of open access : progress and issues
Get PDFPurpose - Aims at providing a broad overview of some of the issues emerging from the growth in open access publishing, with specific reference to the use of repositories and open access journals. Design/methodology/approach - A paper largely based on specific experience with institutional repositories and the internationally run E-library and information science (LIS) archive. Findings - The open access initiative is dramatically transforming the process of scholarly communication bringing great benefits to the academic world with an, as yet, uncertain outcome for commercial publishers. Practical implications - Outlines the benefits of the open access movement with reference to repositories and open access journals to authors and readers alike and gives some food for thought on potential barriers to the complete permeation of the open access model, such as copyright restrictions and version control issues. Some illustrative examples of country-specific initiatives and the international E-LIS venture are given. Originality/value - An attempt to introduce general theories and practical implications of the open access movement to those largely unfamiliar with the movement
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Are Library and Information Science Journals Becoming More Internationalized? A Longitudinal Study of Authors' Geographical Affiliations in 20 LIS Journals from 1981 to 2003
Get PDFThis paper examines journal publications in the field of library and information science (LIS) to assess the level of
internationalization in their publications authorship pattern. The international production and communication of
scholarly knowledge is crucial to the growth of a discipline. Recent advancement in communication technology and the rise of globalization have led to the hope of a more balanced flow of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, scholars also cautioned the possibility of a global digital divide and a widening knowledge gap. This study analyzed the geographical affiliations of authors in 20 international LIS journals to track the longitudinal changes in LIS authorship pattern. Findings suggest an increase in the internationalization of LIS authorships over the years. However, the LIS authorship distribution was still highly uneven in 2003 (Gini coefficient = 0.95). Economic power is still found to be a moderate predictor of publication performance. The findings of this study suggest that, at the moment of the writing, there is still room for the LIS field to be more internationalized. Further research is needed to identify the barriers in international scholarly communication and to explore the implications of such a communication pattern on scientific development and global equality
Collaboration in LIS education in the Asean region and beyond: issues and trends
No full textThe paper describes the author’s experience in regional collaboration activities in LIS education. The author found that networks and relationships formed through organizing and participating in conferences and workshops provide a basis for regional collaborative activities. A taxonomy of collaboration in LIS education is presented, listing the different types of collaborative activities that LIS schools can engage in, and the benefits that schools can derive from them. The main benefit of regional collaboration has been in giving students international and cross-cultural exposure, and in the training of PhD students. Continuing effort is needed to internationalize LIS education, as well as encourage research collaborations and formation of research clusters in the region.Published versio
Collaboration in LIS education in the Asean region and beyond: issues and trends
No full textThe paper describes the author’s experience in regional collaboration activities in LIS education. The author found that networks and relationships formed through organizing and participating in conferences and workshops provide a basis for regional collaborative activities. A taxonomy of collaboration in LIS education is presented, listing the different types of collaborative activities that LIS schools can engage in, and the benefits that schools can derive from them. The main benefit of regional collaboration has been in giving students international and cross-cultural exposure, and in the training of PhD students. Continuing effort is needed to internationalize LIS education, as well as encourage research collaborations and formation of research clusters in the region.Published versio
Co-authorship Network of Scientometrics Research Collaboration
Get PDFThis paper examines the co-authorship network in the field of scientometrics using social network analysis techniques with the aim of developing an understanding of research collaboration in this scientific community. Using co-authorship data from 3125 articles published in the journal Scientometrics with a time span of more than three decades (1980-2012), we construct an evolving co-authorship network and calculate three centrality measures (closeness, betweenness, and degree) for 3024 authors, 1207 institutions, 68 countries and 22 academic fields in this network. This paper also discusses the usability of centrality measures in author ranking, and suggests that centrality measures can be useful indicators for impact analysis. Findings revealed that scientometrics was not dominated by a couple of key researchers as quite a significant number of popular researchers were identified. The United States occupies the topmost position in all measures except for degree centrality. The most active, central and collaborative academic discipline in scientometrics is Information & Library Science
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