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For a long time, women have not been judged by the same standards as men when trying to enter a trade or profession reserved traditionally for men or even after becoming part of it, while progressing. This paper explores the concept of career progression of female staff in an academic institute. It seeks to answer the following research questions: What barriers are faced by women in career progression? What are the differences in perceptions among female sub‐groups regarding these barriers? What policies and improvement programs can be provided to promote women's career progression? What is the relationship between women's career progression and justice?

According to the research objectives, the best way to collect the required data was a questionnaire. In this research, three different questionnaires were used. Also, to rank women's career progression barriers, the TOPSIS technique was used.

The authors found that there is a significant relationship between career progression barriers with interactional and distributive justice. Our ranking results showed that lack of organisational support and job restrictions are the main barriers to women's career progression. Also, flexible working time options is the main support program for eliminating of these barriers.

The major research limitations of this study were the failure to collect and analyse data that would yield a quantitative assessment of organisational justice, and the distribution of questionnaires among women at work.

This is the first study of its nature conducted among female Iranian university staff to focus on barriers to women's career progression. The paper also offers practical guidance that can be used by management and women employees to facilitate career progression.

Internet and electronic networks tend to be used to provide customers with services and to facilitate understanding of common variable demands by which many organizations may increase services' quality from the customers' point of view. In addition, e‐libraries, though in some ways run for noncommercial goals, have been faced with great attention from customers, which makes them maintain and develop their services. The authors have come to a conclusion that the only way to increased financial benefits is through better service. Organizations as a part of the domestic information community therefore, have turned to implementation of new methods such as management of customer relationships. This paper aims to develop a valid and reliable method for evaluating and measuring the management relationship level with customers in e‐libraries. In addition, the research tries to find how successful Yazd University Libraries has been to meet students' expectations, as a guideline to take steps toward improving its services.

The research was conducted among 381 e‐library services users in Yazd University, using a questionnaire comprised of 78 items. Moreover, exploratory factor analysis was used to classify the CRM attributes into latent “CRM factors”. Finally, the study measures the gap between users' expectations and perceptions about each CRM factor at Yazd University.

The paper found only 37 of 78 items suitable enough to be used for CRM measurement in e‐libraries. Results of factor analyzing show that there are three main factors in e‐libraries' CRM; two of them may need revision for improvement in meeting students' demands.

The concept of customer relationship management assessment and improvement is relatively new among e‐institutions especially libraries, and there is a lack of studies focusing of CRM in the digital world. This is the first study of its kind to survey the CRM scale in digital libraries. In addition, the study provides useful insights and guidance for managers to measure and improve CRM system toward improving customer satisfaction.

Fuzzy logic provides a useful tool for dealing with decisions in which the phenomena are imprecise and vague. The purpose of this paper is to prioritize the library service quality indicators from the student's point of view at Ferdowsi University, Iran, using this method. It also aims to identify the main indicators that help users satisfaction and consequently, the best budget allocation by library managers.

This research was performed among students of the university and questionnaires were distributed to students that used the library service at least once each month. The basis of the questionnaire was a SERVQUAL model developed for academic libraries. The characteristics/quality components with fuzzy‐TOPSIS technique were prioritized to meet the requirements of students as customers of the academic libraries. Using fuzzy set theory, customers' perceptions of service quality are generally expressed subjectively in vague linguistic terms, and this paper tries to apply a fuzzy approach to service quality in Ferdowsi university libraries.

The results show that there is no equal importance between library service quality indicators. After prioritizing indicators it was found that having the ability to find information 24 hours a day has the most importance and a secure and safe place is the least important indicator for making a high quality library.

The results of this study will be helpful for planners to pay attention to some indicators that have most importance but low performance. With this result higher users can obtain satisfaction with lower efforts.

The concept in the paper can be useful for two reasons. The first is low budget of academic libraries. It is true that libraries are the heart of a university but there is not enough allocated budget to maintain this situation. The budget can then be allocated for the best indicators. Second is the freshness of fuzzy approach to service quality. In developing the use of this approach to academic libraries, it is hoped that the libraries can satisfy user demands and make the best strategies for improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review e-lending research studies in the digital library domain to identify their subjects, existing research gap and their research methods.

This is a systematic review. Through several stages of searching in related databases, 30 research works including journal and conference research papers, theses and dissertations, research and technical reports were identified and reviewed based on the guidelines of systematic review protocols.

It was found that research in e-lending domain is growing, and the subject will receive greater attention in the near future. Studies were in the following four categories: e-books (specifications, creation and software and viewpoints), business models, e-book status in libraries and copyright issues, e-book lending and inter-library loan. Some research gaps were identified including e-lending domain, business models and legislation. Little has been done with qualitative and mixed approaches in terms of research methods. Moreover, findings showed that this area has received less attention in developing countries.

This is the first review of the e-lending domain in digital libraries. It identifies the key works related to e-lending, categorizes them, provides an overview and identifies emerging research issues.

The purpose of this paper is to present the perception of service quality. The measurement of service quality has grown significantly in importance over recent years. However, since customers' perceptions of service quality are expressed subjectively in vague linguistic terms therefore, a fuzzy approach to service quality of an academic library is applied and the gap between the student's expectations and perceptions analyzed.

The LibQUAL method is applied to identify the gap between customer expectation and perceptions of the actual service received. The linguistic procedure is developed considering four dimensions of LibQUAL. The quality analyses are based on the non‐parametric rank‐based statistics (Wilcoxon's two‐sample rank sum statistic) and extended to fuzzy data which consequently reinforces results in comparison with crisp data.

It is found that there is no gap between the students' expectations and perceptions in three dimensions of “affect of service”, “library as a place”, and “personal control”. But, from the students' point of view, regarding the “access to information” dimension, there is a significant difference between the students' expectations and perceptions.

The instrument that is administered is a paper questionnaire version based on the 2002 model of LibQUAL.

It is felt that application of this fuzzy procedure has implications on possible constraints on the statistics of interest, as well as on the p‐value of any associated significance tests.

This paper is possibly the first to demonstrate the application of fuzzy logic to the LibQUAL model. This fuzzy procedure persuades possibility constraints on the statistic of interest, as well as on the p‐value of an associated significance test. This fuzzy procedure persuades possibility constraints on the statistic of interest, as well as on the p‐value of an associated significance test.

The important factors, which should be considered in the design of a hybrid system of photovoltaic and wind energy are discussed in this study. The current load demand for electricity, as well as the load profile of solar radiation and wind power of the specified region chosen in Iran, is the basis of design and optimization in this study. Hybrid optimization model for electric renewable (HOMER) software was used to simulate and optimize hybrid energy system technically and economically.

HOMER software was used to simulate and optimize hybrid energy system technically and economically.

The maximum radiation intensity for the study area is 7.95 kwh/m²/day for July and the maximum wind speed for the study area is 11.02 m/s for January.

This research is the result of the original studies.

The purpose of this study is to identify the situation of evaluating Iranian digital libraries using DigiQUAL protocol.

Evaluative survey research method is used in this study to assess digital libraries. In this way, digital libraries of Iranian research institutes constitute the study population. DigiQUAL protocol actually was used to evaluate eight Iranian digital libraries. Systematic observation and interview based on researcher-made checklist was used for data collection. In fact, checklist was constructed based on DigiQual protocol.

The results showed that Digital Library of Isfahan Science and Technology Town has the best performance and Noor digital library has the lowest operation in studied digital libraries. The overall score of all studied digital libraries was under 60 (out of 100) which shows the average performance of the digital libraries.

This study emphasizes on evaluating active digital libraries in Iran by DigiQUAL protocol. Because digital libraries are new in Iran and their progress need to evaluate their activity, this research was done to demonstrate their situation.