Archives - Page 2

Vol. 17 No. 2 (2021)

Lately, an increasing number of countries have set up national bibliographic databases, which aim to achieve more comprehensive coverage of the national research outputs. These databases both increase the visibility of national publications and compensate the limited coverage of traditional citation databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science. National bibliographic databases are being increasingly used by a wide variety of stakeholders for numerous purposes, ranging from basic information retrieval and research outputs overview to bibliometric analysis, evaluation and research funding.

The Republic of Moldova set up its national bibliographic database – National Bibliometric Instrument (IBN) in 2011. Nowadays, IBN includes over 113.000 articles published in national scientific journals, as well as conference proceedings from the Republic of Moldova starting from 1993 to date, with over 90% of publications indexed by Google Academic. IBN is used for the evaluation of national scientific journals and provides valuable insights on the overall evolution and trends of national research outputs, but is not being used for research funding.

This paper aims to describe the history, actual structure and user possibilities of IBN. It also aims to analyse IBN design, organisation, maintenance and usage from the perspective of the Manual of good practices regarding national bibliographic databases, developed in the context of the ‘European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and Humanities’ ENRESSH. Finally, the paper intends to provide a set of recommendations for IBN reengineering and improvement. (Irina Cojocaru, Gheorghe Cuciureanu, Igor Cojocaru)

The literature review is the most important step in achieving scientific research. The large amount of information can be analyzed using scientometric methods. It was downloaded a database of scientific production published in the last five years in the Clarivate Analitycs database — Web of Science - in the field of copyright. The downloaded database is analysed with VOS Viewer, scientometric analysis software. The subject analysed is used in many areas of research, as well as pure copyright, but also associated with the fields of medicine, nanoelectronics, genetics. The method used can be multiplied for any topic or domain.(Ionela Maria Bârsan)

Information literacy must be an innovative discipline, adapt to technology and the information requirements of the academic community. Introducing new chapters and then assessing their impact on students and their informational behavior is the best way to improve the content and the way of teaching the course. The authors present a model for investigating a part of the students’ perception in Transilvania University of Brasov. The paper was presented at the Romanian Librarians Association Conference in September 2021. (Angela Repanovici, Ionela Maria Bârsan, Eleonora Dinu)
Vol. 17 No. 1 (2021)
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2020)
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2020)

The reference librarian and the services provided hold more than ever the attention of users at the “Dunărea de Jos” University Library of Galati (DJULG). The Internet, technology and struggle for survival left a significant mark on both librarians' skills and reference services in the new context of the information society. In order to align with new trends in librarianship and to respond effectively to the increasingly complex demands of users, the reference librarians had to move beyond the traditional and reinvent themselves. As a result, new skills have been acquired and new services emerged in the information landscape of the university library. The paper examines the evolution of the reference services at DJULG over the last ten years, emphasizing the changes of the librarian profile in this area. The variety of information sources, the emergence of new information technologies, the movement on open access have been the main elements that contributed to the professional development of the reference librarian and the implementation of new models of services for users. The case of the university library in this study reveals different profiles of the reference librarian: researcher, educator in information literacy, bibliometrician, wikilibrarian, digital resources manager, reference manager etc. Not far from the truth, we can say that the reference librarian became a chameleon, from the perspective of information evolution and ensuring sustainable library services (Lenuța Ursachi).

Libraries are a natural hotspot for volunteer work, they can act as both beneficiaries and organizers of volunteers and their work. Volunteer programs in the libraries cover an important range of possibilities, from basic library work (moving books, assisting users that need help) to specialized activities (language courses, computer courses, specialized activities with persons with disabilities) and everything in between.This study aims to offer an overview of the situation regarding volunteer work in Romanian public libraries. It seeks to find out whether and how the county libraries and the two national libraries use volunteers.This study presents a brief analysis of the online presence of Romanian libraries (Mihai Constantinescu, Alina Danciu, Dana Haimana)

We inaugurate through the material below the interview section of the Romanian Journal of Library and Information Science. This new section aims to bring opinions and comments directly from specialists in the field and other interested people. The first interview is with Mrs. Delia Pantea, librarian in charge with methodological assistance, "Gheorghe Șincai" County Library Bihor. The interview comes in the context in which the Bihor County Council decided to cut 17 occupied positions from the organizational chart of the county library and to abolish two branches (Mihai Constantinescu)
Libraries and the COVID-19 crisis
Vol. 16 No. 1 (2020)

Topics discussed in this special issue include an investigation into the ways in which an academic library from Norway adapted to the COVID-19 crisis (How an academic library worked during the Covid-19 pandemic by Ane Landøy and Trude Færevaag) and an „analysis of the online presence of Romanian libraries” (LIBRARIES IN THE CONTEXT OF A PANDEMIC: CRISIS AND OPORTUNITY by Elena Tîrziman). The reader will also find an article regarding RDA (Resource Description and Access) and its functionalities (RDA – THE LONG WAY TO A CHANGE OF VISION by Victoria Frâncu).
Vol. 15 No. 3-4 (2019)

Our approach is unique, as the official activity reports published by the National Library are lacking the qualitative studies which would have helped establishing the directions of development of the services dedicated to different types of users. The quantitative reports officially reveal that the users tend to favor the free reading spaces in spite of the reading rooms. These statistics lead us to the idea that the library must operate changes in its public policies, considering new services and healthy conditions for 54,000 free spaces users per year. (Mădălina Lefter)

More and more in Romania the need to have well-trained teaching and administrative staff in order to transform schools, universities and libraries into inclusive environments is felt. Often, not only the material base is missing (for example: access technologies), but a large part of staff also feels that they do not have the skills necessary to ensure effective communication with people with disabilities and their families. This research aims to investigate the training needs of teaching staff and librarians, both in schools and universities. (Daniela Popa, Angela Repanovici)

The article surprises elements of novelty and needs in the activity of scientific research and communication, identifies the needs and their practical settlement. We identified the needs and behavior of the academic staff involved in research and we analyzed trends in contemporary research. (Ionela Maria Bârsan)
Vol. 15 No. 2 (2019)

The main scope of this study is the evaluation of the research performance in Computer Science in the Republic of Moldova between 2013 and 2018, through the prism of Moldovan authors scientific publications. The specific objectives of this study:

- Examining the dynamics of national and international publications in Computer Science between 2013-2018;

- Examining the distribution of publications in ICT by scientific field;

- Identifying top ICT researchers and top ICT research institutions from the Republic of Moldova, with the main goal to ensure smart specialization in this research area;

- Analysing publication collaborations of Moldovan authors in the Computer Science field. (Nelly Țurcan, Ion Coșuleanu, Mihai Grecu, Rodica Cujba)

The evaluation and protection in time of the valuable digitized collections of documents from libraries (archives and museums) represents methodologically, but above all practically, a field of document protection with recent data requirements and structures, as a result of speeding up the digitization of valuable documents on organic support. The transfer of information from organic support to digital (electronic) support involves the development and use of cutting-edge techniques and methodologies, a modern infrastructure, as well as a flawless training of the specialists involved in this very demanding activity. (Vasile Deac, Ionela Burz, Alexandru Deac)

Despite its overwhelming popularity as the leading social network site in the past few years, the educational value that Facebook provides has not been fully determined, and results are still contradictory. Moreover, systematic reviews about the educational usage of Facebook are still lacking some aspects. This article provides a critical overview of the international studies focusing on Facebook as educational environment, carried out in order to examine if and how this popular social network may contribute to teaching and learning within formal education. (Laura Mihaela Pascariu, Marius Cristian Ceobanu)
Vol. 15 No. 1 (2019)

In this paper, the authors report findings from a survey in Romania and interviews in Norway, on what innovative issues students are imagining in future libraries. Among the trends students and academics are foreseeing are found green libraries, including green information literacy, bibliometrics/scientometrics, library as "home", makerspace (3D-printing) and libraries as centers for documentation, for academic writing and for other necessary skills. (Ane Landoy, Angela Repanovici)

Considering that there is no separate information literacy course adopted in Department of Comparative Literature and Library Science, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo curricula, but the information literacy-related content is distributed across curricula, the main purpose of this paper was to obtain insight in students’ perception of their information literacy competencies, to detect to what degree student improve their information literacy skills during studies, what possible difficulties they face in acquiring information literacy competencies in above explained circumstances. (Lejla Hajdarpašić, Džejla Khattab)

We shall present in the ongoing a few arguments in favor of separating the library collections, look at some membership criteria for sets of documents to particular collections and tackle the problem of customized access to them. All considerations will be illustrated with examples from real academic library catalogues.(Victoria Frâncu)
Vol. 14 No. 4 (2018)

This study aims to offer a global image of the top Romanian Open Access journals. After the identification of the Romanian journals included in the most widely-used bibliometric databases (Web of Science and Scopus), some characteristics, such as their inclusion in DOAJ and/or ROAD, the use of Open Access licenses and the existence of processing/submission charges are analysed. (Robert Coravu, Mihai Constantinescu)

The study is investigative in nature aiming to extract the traits out of the trends leading to a possible specialisation having a broad scope in searching possible career paths for librarians in data science. (...) Out of many possible roles envisaged for the librarians, there are a few which trigger some focus on the future skills needed to be acquired. These possible scenarios involve data management planning guidance, data stewardship and curation, and data visualisation. (Nicolaie Constantinescu)

One can notice a growing interest regarding the discovery and the highlighting of the forms of cultural resistance in the 1950-1989 period, especially the highlighting of the importance and significations of the post-war Romanian exile, in the communist period, based on the conservation and development of the interior existence together with keeping the modernist reaction regarding the autonomy of the aesthetics to its political insubordination. The Romanian Library of Freiburg constitutes an essential starting point in highlighting the types of cultural resistance of the exile. (Cristina Pârvu)
Vol. 14 No. 3 (2018)

The paper aims to focus on the UDC auxiliary tables and their contribution to improved expressiveness of the subjects represented by the UDC main class numbers. Our purpose is to demonstrate that despite the limitations of an analytico-synthetic classification system designed more than one hundred years ago, successive developments of the scheme along with the consistent updating of its functionalities enables it to be successfully used in modern information retrieval systems both from bibliographic and non-bibliographic domain. (V. Frâncu)

In the literature on the protection of documents, pre-digitization represents the set of investigations and preventive-curative interventions performed in library environments, especially in the morphological structure of documents, in order to investigate, stop and eradicate the complex of identified degradation factors, of physical, mechanical, chemical and biological etiology. In the case of the Library of “Ştefan cel Mare” National College, Suceava, pre-digitization is the essential stage of preparation of the documents, in order to carry out digitization operations under appropriate conditions. (V. Deac, C. Dominte, I. Burz)

Scientific communication can be achieved only by approving new models that remove barriers to access to information (financial, legal and technical) as well as barriers to information sharing. The study (...) demonstrates the rather weak involvement of Romanian higher education institutions in policy making and involvement in Open Access publishing. (I.M. Bârsan)
Vol. 14 No. 2 (2018)

The study aims at understanding better older people’s digital information seeking, their source preferences and how they evaluate the quality of the information. An improved awareness of the issue may help to increase the efficiency of disseminating information to seniors and enhance their abilities to adopting healthier lifestyles. (Ágústa Pálsdóttir)

The paper reflects on a few scenarios and brings practical, inexpensive and innovative approaches in terms of reference management. (...) Online reference managers such as EndNote and Mendeley can easily manage the results retrieved from the well-known scientific databases Web of Science and Scopus. Moreover, these results can be automatically added in ORCiD record or Publish or Perish software by export-import actions and this way researchers can easily populate their scientific profile or compare metrics. (Lenuța Ursachi)

This article aims at portraying the contemporary library from the perspective of its role in the community. It aims at synthesising opinions and results of sociological research in North American literature, thus pointing out theories and good practices for the Romanian space. (Elena Tîrziman)