Abstract

It is expected that one of the topics that will have a greater impact in this 21st century will be the training of graduate students, information professionals and users in general on information skills. This will underscore the value that universities and libraries offer to citizens. According to recent scientific literature the main trends that currently affect and will affect information trainers and professionals in the near future include: learning based on competencies and multi-literacy; pedagogic and didactic changes; technological developments; and all the aspects related to education, information, economic and technology policies and movements. Training in these matters and awareness of the theoretical and practical advances in information literacy are needed so that information professionals can achieve better information literacy and consequently be better information literacy trainers.

Abstract

Aproximately twenty years ago the electronic journals appeared. Since then, scientific publication system has been undergoing a slow transition, though it seems that its destiny is not exactly what was predicted. Now that social sciences are changing the way they disseminate knowledge, becoming increasingly similar to the basic and applied sciences, it is important to consider whether all of those sciences publish in the same way. To answer this, various parameters related to Open Access (OA), e-journals and repositories are studied related to Physics and Chemistry, two disciplines with differences in their publication behaviour and use. From the results, it can be concluded that what differentiates Physics from Chemistry is mainly the success and functionality of their digital repositories, rather than their OA journals.

Abstract

Insights from the recent wealth of popular books on neuroscience are offered to suggest a strengthening of theory in information science. Information theory has traditionally neglected the human dimension in favour of ‘scientific’ approaches often derived from the Shannon-Weaver model. Neuroscientists argue in excitingly fresh ways from the evidence of case studies, non-intrusive experimentation and the measurements that can be obtained from technologies that include electroencephalography, positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and magnetoencephalography (MEG). The way in which the findings of neuroscience intersect with ideas such as those of Kahneman on fast and slow thinking and Csikszentmihalyi on flow, is tentatively explored as lines of connection with information science. It is argued that the beginnings of a theoretical underpinning for current web-based information searching, as opposed to established information retrieval methods, can be drawn from this. It is proposed that collaborative research programmes between neuroscientists and information scientists could be extremely revealing.