Search results

This study aims to investigate the relationship between customers’ knowledge management and their loyalty to academic libraries.

This study was conducted by the descriptive-survey method. After determining the validity and the reliability of the questionnaire, 400 questionnaires were distributed among the undergraduate students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) by stratified sampling method. Finally, 373 questionnaires were considered as the basis for data analysis. Structural equation method was used for data analysis.

In this study, nine hypotheses were examined and tested. The results of the path analysis indicated that factors such as perceived value, knowledge about customer, satisfaction, perceived quality, knowledge for customer and knowledge about customer had the most to least impact on customer loyalty to academic libraries. In addition, this study highlighted the role of perceived value. Data analysis showed the important role of perceived value as an interface between customers’ knowledge management and its direct and indirect relationship with them.

Based on the findings of this study, it seems that the managers and the librarians of academic libraries need to consider the relationship between customers’ knowledge management and perceived quality, as well as the satisfaction of their customers to use the customer knowledge management capacities for developing their loyalty.

In this case, an effective step can be taken toward developing the knowledge management of users and ultimately encouraging them to show their loyalty to academic libraries and satisfying their information needs and providing the justification for the survival of these types of libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of individual and organizational dimensions on creating the resistance to change according to the role of unlearning and knowledge stickiness in merging of libraries as planned change.

Borrowing from the Lewin’s field theory, knowledge stickiness theory and unlearning the framework of planned change process designed. The paper opted for a survey study using the questionnaire, five depth interviews and focus group discussion with librarians, middle and senior managers.

The paper provides empirical insights about pattern of planned change in the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad library. The role of knowledge stickiness and unlearning factors associated with process of planned change. It suggests that successful change act as overcoming forces of unlearning to knowledge stickiness on two dimensions: individual and organizational.

Because of the chosen research case, the research results may lack statistical generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The importance of managing obsolescence knowledge in individual and organizational dimensions in process of planned change is highlighted as managerial point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the existing state of practice in knowledge sharing in university libraries.

This is survey research which is based on an electronic questionnaire.

Results reveal that the majority of libraries investigated are quite friendly towards knowledge sharing, and the majority of librarians value the importance of knowledge sharing. Results also confirm that the knowledge that they mostly use is mainly intangible knowledge.

If knowledge‐sharing requirements of librarians while collaboratively performing reference and information services can be acknowledged, guidelines for enhancing conceptual collaborative process would be suggested.

The age of the information explosion, effective access to the most relevant resources available on the internet is one of the chief concerns for users. Familiarity with types of search tools is required. One of the search tools designed to solve this problem for internet users is the metasearch engine (MSE). The purpose of this paper is to assess how far this search tool is truly effective in solving users' problems of Internet access.

This research examines MSEs in terms of recall ratio in retrieving documents indexed and ranked highly (1–10) within their common underlying search engines (SEs). Five general MSEs in English, which are free of charge, were utilized in this research. In order to calculate the recall ratio of MSEs, five well known MSEs which have four common underlying SEs were chosen. Then, selected keywords were searched in each SE and MSE. Two lists were prepared: one list was based on the first ten results recalled by the SE, and the other was based on the first 40 results recalled by the MSE. These lists were compared with each other. An equation was utilized in this process.

The findings indicate that MSEs are more likely to find the same documents which are common in their underlying search engines.

This paper offers a rigorous quantitative method for comparative evaluation of MSEs.

Furthermore, MSEs which have a successful recall ratio are identified, which is a finding of great practical relevance to library and information practitioners helping users exploit the Internet to best effect.

This paper provides clear descriptive evidence for the underlying retrieval patterns of important search tools which are commonly used by internet users today.

One of the most effective ways information retrieval (IR) systems including Web search engines can improve relevance performance is to provide their users with tools for facilitating query expansion. Search engines such as Google provide users with keyword suggest tools. This paper aims to investigate users’ criteria in relevance judgment regarding Google’s keywords suggest tool and to see how such keywords would lead to more relevant results from the viewpoint of users.

Through a mixed method approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 60 postgraduate students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, using four different instruments (questionnaire, thinking aloud technique, query logs and interviews).

Among other criteria, the “relation between suggested keywords and the information need” (with the mean rate of 3.53 of four) was considered the most important by searchers in selecting suggested keywords for query expansion. Also, the “relation between suggested Keywords and the retrieved items” (with the mean rate of 3.62) was considered the second most important criterion in judging the relevance of the retrieved results. The participants agreed that the suggested keywords by Google improved the retrieval relevance. The content analysis of the participants’ aloud-thinking sessions and the interviews approved such findings.

This research makes a contribution to the need of designers of IR systems regarding the use of add words for query expansion. It also helps librarians how to instruct searchers with expanding their queries to retrieve more relevant results. Another contribution of the study is the identification of a number of new relevance judgment criteria for Web-based environments.