Volume 18, Issue 2

The study uses research-based resources listed in two published bibliographies on “Women in development in Malaysia” produced between the pre 1970 years and 2004 to describe the growth and pattern of women’s studies in Malaysia. A total 4037 resources formed the basis of the study. Bibliometric measure are used to indicate the annual growth of literature over the periods, the preferred publication channels used by the authors, the subject areas of research interests, the active authors and the inference of collaboration based on co-authored works. The results indicate a growth in women’s studies especially between 1990 and 2004 totaling 3346 publications, averaging about 258 titles per year compared to the average of 36 titles for the pre 1970 and 1989 years. There were heavier activities in economic studies, social-cultural studies, women’s health and welfare and women in literature. The main types of publication produced are undergraduate academic research reports, master dissertations and doctoral theses. Conference presentations and journal articles are equally popular. Most authors in this field are one time contributors and only 18 authors produced 10 or more publications each. The majority of authors work alone indicating a low collaboration rate. The study proposes a collaborative e-bibliographic initiative to serve and sustain researchers’ information needs in this field.

Five library journals were analyzed for North American institutional affiliation of authors between the years 2000 and 2005 to find the institutions most frequently represented. The five journals were selected for having consistent high impact factors over five years. Of those institutions represented in the five journals, less than ten percent of academic libraries accounted for nearly forty-two percent of all author affiliations in the five highest impact journals. A list of thirty-eight libraries—the top ten percent—was compiled and correlation analysis was performed to determine if any characteristics, such as size of professional staff, Association of Research Libraries (ARL) membership, or the presence of a PhD-granting library school influenced location in the ranking.

This study investigated the various techniques used in the preservation and conservation of library materials in selected university libraries in Nigeria. Particularly, it examined the causes and nature of deterioration, patterns and strategies used in their control, existence of preservation and conservation policies and constraints limiting effective preservation and conservation. The survey method was used. Fifteen (15) university libraries were purposively selected. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Collected data were structured into grouped frequency distributions using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.

Knowledge of the extent to which information sources are used allows library managers to evaluate a library’s collection and to make holding, archiving and purchasing decisions. The major objectives of this study were to identify a) the format of materials used in Iranian medical research, b) the age of cited items, c) the most frequently used journal titles which are critical to maintaining the core collection; and d) the half-life of the most cited journals. The results show the pattern of citation by type of media cited to have remained constant over the three years of the study, with journals being the most preferred format, accounting for 77.34% of all citations, followed by books (18.67 %) and theses (1.5%). The results show that the age of cited materials varied from one type to the other. However there is a slight tendency to cite more recent issues within each type of media except web resources. The citation half-life of non- Iranian journals was 9 years whilst, on average, 50% of Iranian journals were cited within the last 6 years; however, the trend tends towards more recent issues. Web resources have the lowest half-life of three years. The 108 most cited internationally published journals (zone 1), providing 33% of Iranian medical researchers information needs, were extracted on the basis of their citation frequency. These can be used by Iranian medical libraries as a baseline for subscription. Their corresponding quartiles of usage can be a criterion for storage policy.

Meida content analysis studies have historically focused on the portrayal of librarians on television and film. However, with the recent popularity of YouTube, there is an emerging, end-user created media that has not been thoroughly analyzed for its treatment of our profession. It is discovered that portrayals of libraries and librarians on YouTube are almost exclusively negative, raising the question whether efforts to combat negative librarian stereotypes have been effective.