The purpose of this study is to enhance the access and the use of international information sources by analyzing the types and the characteristics of information services and resources of the UN specialized agencies. A brief review of the goals and activities of the 16 specialized agencies involving every aspects of international affairs, such as agriculture, food standards, alleviating poverty, financial stability, labor conditions and health care, are presented with the discussions of the useful documents and publications available at the each agency's WWW page as well as access tools for the resources and information services of the agencies. Finally, some suggestions for more effective international information services are made.
As affective barriers to library and information use, library anxiety(Mellon, 1986) has been studied in reference/information services and bibliographic instructions. The paper revisits Mellon's theory of library anxiety and Bostick's(1992) Library Anxiety Scale(LAS) in the digital library environment. In particular, this study attempts to address the inadequacy of the continued applications of LAS in the digital library environment, although the scale has been used unquestionably as the instrument measuring library anxiety. This contention was substantiated by three service trends in digital libraries(i.e., digital reference services, remote access, and transition from bibliographic instructions to information literacy) and by re-analyses of published library anxiety research papers in recent years. This study addresses the need for scale development that could measure anxieties of digital library users. It also suggests Information Literacy Anxiety Scale(ILAS) as a direction for the new scale.
In this study, it designated to grasp and analyse the status and problem regarding whole information service system in the object of specialized information center in scientific and technological fields which is designated and supported by KISTI(Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information). And with this basis, it presented the efficient information service plan which reflected and adopted recent information technology, of specialized information center in scientific and technical fields To acquisite and analyse about the status and problem regarding whole information service system of specialized information center in scientific and technical fields, it executed a preceding research analysis, a questionnaire investigation, conversation which leads a direct visit to corresponding agency, website analysis of home page related corresponding agency, and the brainstorming method which leads the conference of the regular discussion with specialist in related fields in parallel.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the administrative system and legislation of Canada's libraries with priority given to public library. Canada is a constitutional monarchy, a federal state and parliamentary democracy with 10 provinces and 3 territories and two systems of law(civil law and common law). There are about 1,045 public libraries in total and its governance and legislation is a provincial responsibility. For that reason, federal government did not legislate on public libraries and library act is the provincial public library statute authorizing the establishment and operation of public libraries and their management by boards. In Canada, each provincial library act provides for four types of public libraries : municipal libraries, regional libraries, districts libraries, and integrated public library systems.
By amending the Japanese School Library Law in 1997, teacher librarians were legally designated for school libraries in Japan. The most important problem of implementing the amended law is how to assigning tasks between teacher librarians and school librarians. It is because that the teacher librarian has not been full time librarian, and school librarian has actually contributed for activation of school library as a professional while there were no teacher librarian.This paper investigates issues and problems related to the amendment of the law, conflicts caused by juxstaposition of teacher librarian and school librarian, and the possibilities of new school librarianship in Japan.
The purpose of this study is to analyze cases of several academic libraries, both in Korea and other countries, which have outsourced part or all of cataloging operations and examine current trends and controversy over outsourcing. Contrary to expectations of reduced expenses and increased efficiency in cataloging, outsourcing often results in bibliographic records of low quality which require additional costs to correct errors and maintain consistency and accuracy of records, and therefore, fails to reach the goal. Due to the absence of high quality bibliographic utilities, union catalogs, and authority databases, and lack of expertise in cataloging among outsourcing service providers, it seems that outsourcing is not currently an appropriate tactic for cataloging in academic libraries in Korea.
In order to appreciate the varied activities of university libraries, this study assesses their efficiencies in the process of production and utilization of their services for two consecutive years, 1999 and 2000. Using a Data Envelopment Analysis with exogenously fixed factors, this study analyses separately efficiencies identified. The results show that efficiencies of libraries appear differently according to the year of evaluation, the dimension of evaluation as well as the difference of statute. The specialized libraries as CADIST are definitely higher in terms of use of services. In addition, inefficiency is mainly due to deficits of production of outputs rather than excesses of utilisation of inputs. For example, time devoted to user's training constitutes the most significant potentiality of increase in the production of services.
This study concerns DB quality of the Web databases which has been produced in medical science. For the quality evaluation of Embase and PubMed, 10 evaluating criteria were developed on the basis of literature review. The evaluation result showed that PubMed has superiority to the currentness, accuracy, completness, consistency, ease of use, customer support, searchability, cost, and network & H/W on DB, but Embase has only superiority to the coverage. It is needed for purchasing, user training, and library service based on the above evaluation result.
The purpose of this study is to design the meta search system and the curriculum-oriented directory system for youth in science and to prove the efficiency of the systems through evaluating the usability. To attain the purpose of this study, both of the quality and quantity research method were used and questionnaire, interview, observation, thinking aloud method were used to collect a data for research. The result of this study is that the meta search system supplying convenient information use environment about the distributed information sources has higher usability than the individual search system. And the curriculum-oriented directory system supplying accessibility related with the class has higher usability than the subject-oriented directory system.
Book review is a mean that provides qualitative evaluation and at the same time it plays a role as selection tools for libraries. Therefore, this study identified various media providing reviews on children's books, evaluated whether the reviews in the media were useful as selection tools of current books, and a desirable model for the book review media that would reform the existing problems was suggested. The efforts to make up for the above suggestions are needed, so that the current children's book review media can properly play a role as selection tools. Above all, at this point in time, it is necessary to publish review media made in the view of libraries and librarians.
The purpose of this study is to review the established research practices and managerial methods on the range of Knowledge that have been independently studied from the conventional information system(libraries) and the managerial information system(MIS, DSS and EIS) within the quantitative and the non-quantitative perspective. The information systems were developed through their own purpose since the 1950s and these days the corporate environments have become integrated due to the rapid creation and expansion of information. Therefore, to make fast decisions in this situation it is appropriate that these two systems, Library and the managerial information system, should be dealt within the same category. In other words, not only the quantitative data that become main sources of DSS or EIS, but also the qualitative data such as the text documents, video and audio data, which have been managed in the libraries and information centers and not extracted from the former, can be used as the new knowledge source. Also DSS/EIS can provide the splendid infrastructure for Knowledge Management(KM) while libraries/information centers manage the comprehensive range of explicit and tacit knowledge, which can be a facilitator or main driver for KM.
There are very few studies on the guidance service which is one of the important reference and information service function in the library. During the last decades, Readers’ Advisory Service has become one of the most interesting and demanding function in many public libraries of the western world. This paper introduces the background theory of Readers’ Advisory Service and the basic skills for readers’ advisors. Library managers and library schools can get ideas from this paper in planning reading programs for adult library users and training programs for library staff and LIS students.
Bookstart is a gifting project, which aims to provide free books to babies in order to promote the idea of early book sharing and to develop a life long love of books. Bookstart was initiated in the UK in 1992 by the independent charity Booktrust in co-operation with Birmingham Library Services, South Birmingham Health Authority and Birmingham University School of Education. The idea of Bookstart has begun to spread not only to Korea but also to other countries. Bookstart in Korea is due to actively operate in many local governments. Therefore, many library researchers, scholars and professionals, council officers and ordinary people who are involved in Bookstart in Korea are urgently looking for materials on Bookstart in the UK. Consequently, this study examines Bookstart in the UK and the main aims of this study are: to produce results applicable to the successful operation of Bookstart in Korea; to give Bookstart-related people an understanding of many aspects of the operation of Bookstart; and to provide ideas and information on the operation of Bookstart in Korea. In order to obtain useful data, the researcher used a questionnaire and interview method and reviewed the literature. The study revealed that Bookstart in the UK aims not only to promote babies’ interest in books and reading but also to improve family relationships and to tackle social exclusion.
Recently, the rapid increase of knowledge information resources and the advancement of information and communication technology has affected all libraries and the museums which collected knowledge and the information resources and provided service with indigenous for a long time. Hence, The library and the museum began to constructs the cooperative system with the cultural heritage agency such as international museums, libraries and archives after realizing the impossibility of physical self-sufficiency that the users are not able to obtain the knowledge resources and the library are not able to provide them. In this paper, some models are presented for the data cooperation system construction of the library and the museum and developmental plan in the future. The models are (1) Interchangeable model for autonomous noninterference (2) dispense mutual service model (3) intensive service center model (4) a mixture union model.