The research was focused on bibliographic records for children's picture books. Parents of preschool children were first asked to select books based on bibliographic records, then they could choose among actual books. In 80% parents were not satisfied with their choice based on bibliographic records and changed their mind when they say actual books. Essential missing data elements were identified.
COBISS.SI-ID: 58544482
User studies are a rather neglected field in the archival area. This is becoming problematic, as more and more archives are developing online services and collections, becoming available to wider public. We can assume that this transformation will affect archival practice, much like in libraries, and require more knowledge of users' needs, behavior, and skills. It is unclear how much archivists are aware of these developments. This is particularly the case in those countries where archives have only recently started to consider digitization and online presence and where no user studies have yet been made, like Slovenia (SLO) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH), the focus of this study. A qualitative study is presented which deals with the archivists' perceptions, within the context of physical and digital archives, of the characteristics of the users, archivists' educational opportunities regarding user-related issues, and competences needed by professional archivists and by users. Data were collected with interviews and surveys. The results enable an initial insight into archival user types and their characteristics, and the formation of a competence model for a professional archivist. The results have implications for archival theory, practice and education and can also be used in planning future archival user studies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 57851490
Purpose: We present an adapted form of a qualitative research method, focus group interview, for use with small children, and demonstrate its use in a small-scale study. Researchers often avoid direct study of children, and study them indirectly by asking adults. This was frequent before 1990s, but today, researchers increasingly discuss research with children rather than on children. Nevertheless, in research with young children it is not possible to use all research methods, therefore we modified and tested one. Our additional research objectives, besides verification of methodology, were to determine the pre-school children%s attitudes to books, book-related places, reading. Design/methodology/approach: The adaptation of the focus group interview involved merging the content questions of our research with a story and using a toy as the storyteller. This resembled storytelling and enabled the children to directly participate by talking to the animation toy instead of the researcher. We tested the method on a purposive sample of 13 pre-school children aged 4 and 5 in one public kindergarten. Findings: Despite of the belief of some experts, who claim that focus group interview is not an appropriate method to explore habits or opinions of children, we found that adaptation of this method for the use with small children by means of storytelling and toy animation brings positive results because it enabled gathering data directly from the children.. The content results show positive attitudes toward books and reading, differences in reading interests between boys and girls, daily exposure to books and reading, both in kindergarten and at home, and quite good knowledge of book-related places, especially libraries, somewhat less bookstores. Research limitations/implications: Since this is only the first attempt to use this adapted methodological approach, it is necessary that the method is tested on different user groups and in different circumstances to further validate its suitability for this user group. Regarding the content of the study, the results cannot be generalized due to non-probability purposive sampling. Originality/value: This is the first attempt to use the adapted methodological approach for researching young children. Our research may serve as a beginning and incentive for further research in this area, since only high quality results provide good modifications and adaptations of educational programs and activities to ensure proper development of children's reading competences and attitudes to books and reading.
COBISS.SI-ID: 58201698
A random sample of 1000 records from WorldCat was used to analyze the frequency and types of aggregates (collections, augmentations and parallels). The results show a large proportion of aggregates in spite of missing data in current bibliographic records. This is the first large scale study on real data. Several theoretical issues with modelling of aggregates were identified.
COBISS.SI-ID: 58021730
This article discusses fiction reading trends in Slovenia as established by Slovenian surveys of reading habits conducted between 1973 and 2014, and compares them with the results of similar European and US surveys. It compares the respondents' answers against the book market and library statistics to analyze the relations between the private and public sectors with regard to books, whereby it establishes a positive correlation between reading fiction and an increase in the population's inclusion in the educational systems, and a negative correlation between reading fiction and the spread of audiovisual media.
COBISS.SI-ID: 59248226