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Steel structures and pipelines can be saved from environmental effects by epoxy based coating. This research has been focused to reinforce locally developed nanoparticles of silica sand in epoxy ba...

Effects on RCS of perfect electromagnetic conductor (PEMC) sphere by coating with anisotropic plasma layer are studied in this paper. The incident, scattered and transmitted electromagnetic fields ...

Competencies of the entry-level professionals for the Malaysian public libraries were defined and validated for the next five years. The exercise of competency determination was accomplished by focusing on the peculiarities of the Malaysian context by adopting a number of methodological innovations. Each competency statement was an identifiable and measurable performance unit. The top and middle managers of the ten largest Malaysian public library systems were interviewed to validate knowledge and skill competencies by indicating their perceived degree of importance of each statement. The competencies were presented in the categories of foundation core and five operational areas of cataloging, circulation, information services, collection development, and serial control. The primary thrust for the future public library professionals is on the contextual, managerial, technological, and service capabilities.

Kantor's availability analysis method was applied in the academic library setting of the International Islamic University Library, Malaysia, to measure the degree of success or failure of its users in having available the documents they needed at a particular time. It was found that the users had a success rate of 52.83%. The factors having the highest failure rates were: poor user skills (77.67% availability performance), materials in circulation (82.28%), and acquisition activity (88.43%). The results were compared with the findings of five availability studies in academic libraries based on the same methodology. The paper also reports the strategic actions taken by the library management in order to improve the availability situation.

Background A recent thrust on the development of a network for library and information services in the Arab world becomes evident from the conceptual design of the Arab Information System-Network (ARIS-NET), proposed in the 1987 Conference of Arab League Documentation Centre (ALDOC) held in Tunisia on the theme "Information for Development in the Arab World"[1]. This may be termed a fresh impetus to an idea already floating for the last few years. In 1982, the First International Information Conference held in Cairo contained specific proposals for the realisation of a similar network[2]. The 1987 conference may be seen as a progressive continuation of the same proposition. Earlier initiatives can even be traced in the late 1970s when serious discussions for the establishment of regional or sectoral databases were held[3]. While the need for and importance of the establishment of a network catering to the library and information needs of the Arab world are being recognised, certain understandings also prevail about the prerequisites of such an undertaking. There appears to be a consensus among the thinkers and designers of the proposed network that resource sharing can only take place in the presence of an infrastructure at the grass-roots level. It has been increasingly emphasised that any multinational regional network would operate through the organisational and professional apparatus available within each member nation. Existing networking trends serve as an outgrowth or extension of the early efforts at resource sharing which had prompted the concepts of universal bibliographic control and universal access to publications. These concepts were translated into international initiatives by some international agencies like FID, IFLA, UNESCO, UNISIST and UNIDO which developed a strategy of approaching individual nations to develop the fundamental infrastructure of library and information services. A national system of bibliographic control and access was considered the nucleus of these initiatives. During the 1970s, IFLA launched two universal campaigns of UBC (Universal Bibliographic Control) and UAP (Universal Access to Publications). The underlying theme has been the development of basic institutions at national

Books published in the fields of the social sciences and humanities are reviewed by two types of journals-trade and professional. No significant study has investigated similarities and dissimilarities between these two types of reviewing journals. This study compares the performance of the two types of reviewing media by using the variables of review length, lag-time, orientation, evaluative slant, and reviewer identity. Appropriate statistical tests reveal that the two types of reviewing journals show significant differences in the case of four variables and offer no significant differences with regard to evaluative slant.