Libraries and Museums in the Flat World: Are They Becoming Virtual Destinations?

In his recent book, “TheWorld is Flat”, Thomas L. Friedman reviews the impact of networks on globalization. The emergence of the Internet, web browsers, computer applications talking to each other through the Internet, and the open source software, among others, made the world flatter and created an opportunity for individuals to collaborate and compete globally. Friedman predicts that “connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network…could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation”. Networking also is changing the ways by which libraries and museums provide access to information sources and services. In the flat world, libraries and museums are no longer a physical “place” only: they are becoming “virtual destinations”. This paper discusses the implications of this transformation for the digitization and preservation of, and access to, cultural heritage resources

Scholarly Communication and the Use of Networked Information Sources

This paper examines the use of networked information sources in scholarly communication. Such use is reflected, among others, in the footnotes and bibliographies of scholarly articles published in print journals. Twenty-seven print journals representing a wide range of subjects were identified through the ISI's SCI and SSCI Journal Citation Reports. Journals that were selected were those that published the most influential papers in their respective fields during the period of 1990-1993, and thus consistently ranked at the top in terms of their impact factors. From these top journals, a total of 97 articles were selected for further review. Footnotes and bibliographies of those 97 articles were checked to determine if they contained references to networked information sources such as electronic journals and archives accessible through the network. Only two (out of 97) articles contained such references. Findings were discussed in light of other studies published in the relevant literature. Some explanations were also offered as to why references to networked information sources appear relatively infrequently in scholarly articles published in print journals

Interlending Services in Turkish University Libraries

The article begins with an overview of the current situation in Turkish university libraries, which were badly affected by the economic crisis of 1977-82. In 1982 the Higher Education Council (HEC) approved the centralization of university libraries, and HECDOC (HEC Documentation and International Literature Search Centre) was set up in order to develop a national collection of serials in support of university library collections. Up to now, interlending in Turkish university libraries has been largely neglected, not helped by a law which makes librarians personally responsible for all losses from their library. A survey of 28 university libraries has shown that current use of ILL services is not great, with the various libraries disagreeing in their attitudes to charging for ILL. HECDOC provides 55% of satisfied ILL requests and it is hoped that the creation of a union catalogue of serials, together with a standard photocopy request form, will increase this. Collection development in Turkish university libraries is seriously affected by declining budgets, rising literature costs and a shortage of hard currency. Resource sharing, including ILL, is seen as one way of solving these problems

Collection Development of Electronic Information Resources in Turkish University Libraries

The number of information sources available through both printed and electronic media are ever increasing. Even libraries with sizable collection development budgets are having difficulties in coping with this increase. Yet with the development of new technologies, the possibilities of innovative interlibrary cooperation projects emerge: libraries combining their efforts through various consortia are trying to get access to electronic information sources more economically. In this paper, we briefly review the state-of-the-art of Turkish university libraries and summarize the efforts to set up a university library consortium to provide consortial access to electronic information sources and services. We discuss some of the causes which are delaying the establishment of such a consortium

Contribution of Turkish Researchers to the World’s Biomedical Literature (1988-1997)

The contribution of Turkish researchers to positive sciences is increasing. Turkish scientists published more than 5.100 articles in 1998 in scientific journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information’s Science Citation Index, which elevated Turkey to the 25th place in the world rankings in terms of total contribution to science. In this paper, we report the preliminary findings of the bibliometric characteristics (authors and affiliations, medical journals and their impact factors, among others) of a total of 8.842 articles published between 1988 and 1997 by scientists affiliated with Turkish institutions and indexed in MEDLINE, a well-known biomedical bibliographic database

Contribution of Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine to the World’s Biomedical Literature (1988-1997)

The contribution of Turkish researchers to sciences is increasing. Turkish scientists published more than 6.000 articles in 1999 in scientific journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information’s Science Citation Index, which puts Turkey to the 25th place in the world rankings in terms of total contribution to science. The number of biomedical publications authored by Turkish scientists is increasing faster than that of engineering and other non-medical sciences, which might be one of the main causes of the steep rise in Turkey’s rankings that we have been witnessing in recent years. More specifically, researchers affiliated with Hacettepe University produce almost a quarter of all the biomedical publications of Turkey that appear in international biomedical literature. In this paper, we report the findings of the bibliometric characteristics (authors and affiliations, medical journals and their impact factors, among others) of a total of 1.434 articles published between 1988 and 1997 by scientists affiliated with Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine and indexed in MEDLINE, a well-known biomedical bibliographic database

Diffusion of Latent Semantic Analysis as a Research Tool: A Social Network Analysis Approach

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a relatively new research tool with a wide range of applications in different fields ranging from discourse analysis to cognitive science, from information retrieval to machine learning and so on. In this paper, we chart the development and diffusion of LSA as a research tool using Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach that reveals the social structure of a discipline in terms of collaboration among scientists. Using Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science (WoS), we identified 65 papers with “Latent Semantic Analysis” in their titles and 250 papers in their topics (but not in titles) between 1990 and 2008. We then analyzed those papers using bibliometric and SNA techniques such as co-authorship and cluster analysis. It appears that as the emphasis moves from the research tool (LSA) itself to its applications in different fields, citations to papers with LSA in their titles tend to decrease. The productivity of authors fits Lotka’s Law while the network of authors is quite loose. Networks of journals cited in papers with LSA in their titles and topics are well connected

Arts and Humanities Literature: Bibliometric Characteristics of Contributions by Turkish Authors

Scholarly communication in arts and humanities differs from that in the sciences. Arts and humanities scholars rely primarily on monographs as amedium of publication whereas scientists consider articles that appear in scholarly journals as the single most important publication outlet. The number of journal citation studies in arts and humanities is therefore limited. In this article, we investigate the bibliometric characteristics of 507 arts and humanities journal articles written by authors affiliated with Turkish institutions and indexed in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) between the years 1975–2003. Journal articles constituted more than 60% of all publications. One third of all contributions were published during the last 4 years (1999–2003) and appeared in 16 different journals. An overwhelming majority of contributions (91%) were written in English, and 83% of them had single authorship. Researchers based at Turkish universities produced 90% of all publications. Two thirds of references in publications were to monographs. The median age of all references was 12 years. Eighty percent of publications authored by Turkish arts and humanities scholars were not cited at all while the remaining 20% (or 99 publications) were cited 304 times (anaverage of three citations per publication). Self-citation ratio was 31%. Two thirds of the cited publications were cited for the first time within 2 years of their publications

Elektronik Yayıncılık, Bilimsel İletişim ve Kütüphaneler

This article deals with the electronic publishing and scientific communication and discusses, from various aspects, the impact of electronic publishing on libraries. It examines the technological, economic and legal problems which impede the implementation of a totally electronic environment for scientific communication. The impact of electronic publishing on libraries is discussed from the view points of, inter alia, information retrieval,indexing, dissemination of information through secondary reference sources and archiving

Research Assessment Using Bibliometric and Scientometric Measures: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Presentation at the 3-rd International Conference "Scientific communication at the Digital Age" (March, 10-12, 2015, NaUKMA