New Year Greetings

Let's meet on Sun, 1st January, 2006 at 11:00 A.M. (kuwait Time), 8:00 A.M. (GMT) in LIS Cafe's Chat Room. It will be a good opportunity to celebrate, share our thoughts, and recieve your comments and suggestions.
Best wishes to all of you in the year ahead!

Everyone is welcome to join

Information Professionals Oath?!

What gives a professions its distinctive nature is its service orientation which necessities intensive training, continued education, and a sincere adherence to a code of ethics.

Although entry to our professions is not as strict as other professions such as medicine or law or engineering, yet there is a wide spreading awareness about the importance of a degree in LIS before entering the field.

The adherence to the code of ethics is exemplified by the oath that professionals take upon graduation, so since LIS is a professions, why not see an oath taken by our graduates?

Do you think?

Wassalaam,
Hayat

Shocking News

Some news shocked me the other day and I would like to share it with my dear collogues. A few days ago, I was invited for an interview to work at one of the Kuwait university libraries. After having some conversation I was told, “If you are accepted to work at one of these libraries, your MA will not be considered and you would be hired according to your BA. Moreover, since your BA is not in Library and Information Science, you will not be entitled to a librarian position and its benefits. You will assume the responsibilities of an MA holder librarian while having an administrative title- and of course with a lower salary.” Any comments!?

Websites Worth a Click!

Let's build our own collection of websites related to the field (whether English or Arabic). I recommend that each one of you contributes and provides his/her favorte list of links. This way we can preserve them in a common place. I'll start with providing the following links (will provide more later on):

1. Al-Arabia 3000 (Qurterly Specialized in Information Science in the Arab world)
2. Cybrarians (البوابة العربية للمكتبات والمعلومات)
3. The New York Public Library
4. Bibliotheca Alexandrina (مكتبة الاسكندرية)
5. UNESCO Libraries Portal
6. Libraries FAQ
7. Internet Library for Librarians
8. Librarian's Internet Index
9. BookFinder.com
10. Conservation Online
11. Library Automation Systems and Vendors on the WWW
12. Library Privacy Cartoons

By the way, I borrowed the title of my post from Carolyn J. Sosnowski's column in "information Outlook" which I like most.

Public Lecture in DLIS

On Tuesday, a public lecture was presented in the International Hall in KU @ 6 pm. Dr. Laila Marouf presented an interestig lecture about ' The Role of Social Networks in Organizational KS'. She started her lecture by an introduction about the concepts of knowledge, information and knowledge management.
During her presentation, Dr. Laila illustrated different stages of her doctoral study. In her study, she was trying to find the relationship between the sharing of Public knowledge and the strength of business relations. In addition, she also tested the relation between the sharing of Private knowledge and social relations.
She illustrated the methodology of Social Network Analysis that she used, the data collection process and the statistical analysis and results.
She came up with a conclusion that Public KS exists more than Private KS in her sample and that KS is affected by the kinds of relations available in the organization, whether these are formal business relations or informal social ones.

Note

Dear LIS_Cafe~ members :
I heared that some of our friends were upset because the blog did not inform them about the LIAK reception. Actualy, we where informed before a few days of the celebration that it will be held on Sat. We did not have an idea about the right time, wether there are invitation cards or not ? We did not know if everybody is invited or not!
We recieved the right informatiom on the same day of the celebration @12 o'clock. It was late yes, but was not our fault.