International Journal of Information Science and Management
Volume:7 Issue: 2, Jul-Dec 2009

One of the most important factors challenging the issue of "information storage and retrieval" in the Internet environment is the lack of control on authorities, i.e. subject authority control. The present research aims at examining the feasibility of subject authority control of Persian medical databases available on the Net. Based on research methodology, we have randomly chosen 50 keywords utilized by users searching databases for articles. In the pre-test stage, these keywords were searched through Iranmedex, a database for Persian medical articles. Comparing them with Persian medical thesaurus, those keywords exactly matched to the thesaurus words were entered in a designed database using Microsoft Access software. Then, we entered these authorized keywords in Iranmedex. Findings of new search sessions revealed that control of authorities on the one hand, makes information retrieval more precise and accurate and, on the other prevents false drops. The research findings can be used for modifying the process of information storage and retrieval on the Internet. The research concludes with a model for applying thesauruses as authority control tools for other databases available at Internet.

The article presents an account of the Library and Information Science (LIS) education in Iran. It briefly reviews the growth and development of the LIS education in the periods: 1939-1978, as the Pre- Islamic Revolution period, and 1979- 2007, as the Post –Islamic Revolution period. The paper covers an up-to-date list of the 29 universities in Iran offering various LIS programs including Post-Diploma / Associate Diploma; Bachelor of Library and Information Science; Master of Library and Information Science and Ph.D., and the establishment of the LIS departments in a chronological order (84 depts.). It also emphasizes the re-designing of the curriculum based on the emerging needs to match the new technological age. It highlights the current trends in the last 10 years. The paper concludes that Post Islamic-Revolution LIS education witnessed more progress comparing to the Pre-Islamic Revolution period, particularly in the last decade (1997- 2007). At the end, some suggestions are given for improving the LIS education in Iran.

The need for intercultural awareness and skills emerges strongly in both distance learning courses, and in social life in multicultural societies. The study of online language transactions is therefore an important aspect of the emerging culture and sociolinguistics of computer mediated communication. The research reported in this paper concerns perceptions held by students in an Iranian university about intercultural discourse in virtual learning environments. The research is the first phase of a larger project concerned with the nature of online discourse. Results are reported of a questionnaire survey of 200 students’ experiences of, and beliefs about, communication in a virtual learning environment. The results show that, notwithstanding the dangers of miscommunication, students generally view virtual learning environments positively and perceive them to offer possibilities of effective and harmonious communication and productive learning.

Member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) have committed themselves to promote a program of action to improve and reform their educational institutions and curricula on the basis of the "OIC Vision 1441". As part of this commitment, a process has been initiated to review current international university ranking systems and to create a specific mechanism for ranking universities of the OIC countries. In this study, we explore the criteria that emerged as an outcome of this process and have been adopted for the purpose of ranking OIC universities. We raise the challenge that, although the idea of an OIC-specific ranking mechanism is a potentially valuable initiation for the Islamic countries to converge and cooperate, the whole endeavor tends to deal only with rudimentary issues in science, education, and research. The core conceptions, taken for granted and almost left untreated, continue to exist under the disguise of the newly fabricated criteria. For each one of the five major sets of criteria (Research, Education, International out-look, Facilities, and Socio-economic impact) we discuss why we believe they deal with the ''cover'' rather than the ''core'' of quality in higher education and research. We further discuss that truly alternative practices in the context of specific socio-cultural values, require revisiting underlying and taken for granted understandings of science, research, and technology. To walk our own way and to challenge the dominant mainstream global forces, we need a fundamentally alternative view of the quality and value of knowledge and basically of the value of the human being.

Iran’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been widely introduced in the market these days. In the emerging trend of electronic data interchange, Iran’s political, economical and social issues have been diverted to a more aggressive approach to the world of e-commerce, that despite the shadowing issues of the past, Iran already internalized the promising craft of e-commerce through various IT adoption techniques and skills. In line with this, this study is aimed to the growing emergence on Iran’s SMEs and how e-commerce contributes to the success of IT adoption. (Ajdari, 2007).This paper would further identify the ways and reasons how Iran thrived to its current status as a raising e-commerce country (Powers and Carvar, 1990) It’s the main responsibility of governmental forces to enable organizational and national forces to gain dynamic control over resources and markets for a better e-Commerce take off (Moor & Benbasat, I996). Also, we will investigate fifty SMEs and surveys along with personal interviews will be conducted to locate findings, reasons, causes and effects in this regard. Study will focus on three main areas of SMEs including organizational, environmental and technological aspects. Results indicate the significant perceived value of government support in SMEs development in Iran (Dearing, 1990).

As the e-commerce sites are being more secure and reliable in recent years and the number of transactions is rising rapidly, parallelism can help us to reduce response time and increase throughput for e-commerce transactions. This paper will investigate parallelism in on-line transaction processing. It aims to specify those aspects of e-commerce transactions that would profit from parallel processing and analyze current parallel processing techniques to determine those which can be used for e-commerce transactions. The parallel processing techniques proposed in this paper can be easily applied to B2C and B2B on-line transaction processing. Although some parallel implementations of databases have been proposed, to the best of our knowledge, parallel implementations of on-line transaction processing specific to e-commerce are rarely existed.

This paper analyses and compares the performances of Business-to-Business e-Commerce data quality and service quality among the use of the ‘Push’ and ‘Pull’ models. RosettaNet’s original Partner Interface Processes use the ‘Push’ model which suffers from data redundancy when the volume of business-to-business transaction increases. However, when the ‘Pull’ model is used, although it reduces data redundancy, it has a greater chance of not getting the latest updates. It is then argued that if the ‘Push’ and ‘Pull’ models are combined, the resulting model would further enhance the overall trade document interchange performance with improved data quality and greater personalizability, especially among the smaller non-Electronics industries.