The panel discussion was held on Monday May 10 in the pavilion of House of Authors in a marquee in Tehran International Book Fair where Iran's Publication Records were on show, according to the House's press office.

 

The panel discussion was moderated by Abbas Rajabi, director of information office in Imam Sadeq University, and was joined by several Iranian publishing figures including Amir Reza Asnafi, a post graduate student and a faculty member, Hamid Mohseni, a university instructor and director of Nashr-e Ketabdar publisher, and Mariam Asadi, a post gradate student and head of department of librarianship services and information at Sharif University.

 

Mohseni opened the discussion by discussing several challenges facing electronic journals, saying that an emergence of electronic resources triggered a massive change in publishing industry and subsequently in librarianship mechanisms and procedures, placing a question mark over the function and efficiency of physical libraries.

 

He noted that Iranian librarians fell short of adapting the technology by among others to modify training materials and procedures.

 

"Some digital resources are on offer free of royalty however we still lag behind the service and could not direct resources," he said, adding that in order to find any remedy to the glitch, librarians were required to identify the existing obstacles and follow standards.

 

Next Asadi took the discussion, hailing electronic journals as one of the most significant information tools. He said E-journals were among the primary source of information as they offer latest scientific findings.

 

The librarian executive then delivered an account of E-journals history, saying that electronic journals expanded in 1990 to the extent that more than 40 percent of global budgets were assigned to promote the technology.

 

Asadi He believed that the existing challenges in use of digital resource in the country must be tackled through a precise policy which identifies point of departures, promotes management-style patience, knows user's requirements and integrates different publishers under a single umbrella.

 

The publishing figure blamed the existing glitches on insufficient fund, unsustainable managerial tenures, poor knowledge of university graduates, poor contracts, and lack of a computer-assisted system of choice and collection of publications.

 

He went on to say that librarians can play a major part in improving the situation, adding that librarians must receive necessary training in this regard and assist in relevant electronic enquiries.

 

In the same regard, he noted that related authorities have yet to adapt the technology of E-journals and any resolution of the problem requires an integrated drive.

 

Asnafi, as next panelist to speak, expanded his colleague's discussion on essentiality of a change, urging librarians to embrace a change and drive through the challenges before it is too late.

 

The faculty member said any individual with any level of experiences can run a website and operate an E-journal, "although a primary challenge is the quality of such materials."

 

He said scientific materials are available on the web in any languages, "only we must have a set of standards in order to make a systematic use of such materials." He elaborated that title specificity, existence of table of contents, article accreditation, bibliography and fine methodology are among the standards for tackling and using E-journal.

 

The faculty members held that librarians are every conservative in adapting modern technologies and pay no serious heed to electronic resources, and therefore there is no sustainable basis for any effort.

 

"In contrast, western librarians have been exploiting digital resources for years," the expert noted, adding that the concerted effort in the past decade has led to development of comprehensive inventories of publications data.