Tolga Çakmak

Awareness, Perceptions, and Expectations of Academic Librarians in Turkey about Resource Description and Access (RDA)

Resource Description and Access (RDA), as a new cataloging standard, supports libraries in their bibliographic description processes by increasing access points. The increasing importance of RDA implementation requires adaptation to a new bibliographic universe. Furthermore, many initiatives have been launched by countries who would like to keep themselves up-to-date by using and implementing RDA in their library catalogs. This study points out the awareness and expectations of catalogers in academic libraries in Turkey about the transition from Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2) to RDA and their potential problems in adapting RDA. The situation in Turkey in terms of academic libraries is evaluated and reported.

Metadata Literacy Skills: An Analysis of LIS Students

Resource description, one of the key components of the Library and Information Science (LIS) field, represents a set of processes based on standards and changes according to needs and new developments. Resource description processes and utilization of related standards require special skills and competencies for information professionals. Resource description skills are also known and described as metadata literacy skills. Metadata literacy skills are mainly composed of three sets of skills, namely basic skills, information object description skills and decision-making skills. LIS departments play an important role in equipping their students, in other words, future information professionals, with these skills. This study aims to explore the level of metadata literacy skills of undergraduate students in the Department of Information Management of Hacettepe University. A questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. Findings of the survey indicate that these students have a higher level of confidence regarding basic and information object description skills, in comparison with decision-making skills.

Evaluation of Organizational Literacy in Context of Organizational Learning: A Literature Review

Organizations constitute the restructuring conditions to maintain their functions and enable adaption to new competitive conditions for modern changes as a part of globalization. In this context, the emerging concept of learning organization and organizational learning provide opportunities for creating new information, access to information, sharing and transferring information issues. The concept of organizational literacy is considered as an important component of the information literacy for organizations in terms of surviving in the varying marketing conditions, keeping alive the organizational memorials, adapting to the organizational culture and gaining competitive advantage. In this study organizational learning and organizational literacy concepts were explored in the literature as related concepts in terms of organizational identity and organizational culture. The results were obtained via literature review and reflected the importance of two complementary concepts, organizational literacy and organizational learning, on learning organization.

Evaluation of Information Security Approaches: A Defense Industry Organization Case

Information security systems are important to ensure business continuity and protect organizations against potential risks. In this context organizations have to analyze their information system processes and they should develop their information systems according to results of the analysis. This paper aims to evaluate the current information security approaches in a defense industry organization in Turkey. The case of the assessment demonstrates information security standards and approaches and reflects the importance of information security implementation within the organizations. In order to achieve research objectives and aims, Information Security Assessment Tool for State Agencies (an information security assessment tool) was chosen as the research instrument for this study. The results obtained from the assessment tool revealed that major applications were implemented by the defense industry organization. According to the assessments, the study recommends that education and training programs and policies should be developed, and that interoperability of information security functions should be provided in the defense industry.

Overview of the Digitization Policies in Cultural Memory Institutions in Turkey

The advances in information and communication technologies have permitted societies to produce, store, arrange and effectively benefit from information in different environments. These advances have necessitated both the use of new environments for the production of information and transfer of information produced in other environments into the new ones. Cultural memory institutions fulfill an important function in transmitting information reflecting cultural values of a society to the future generations and in enabling its effective use by transferring already existing information into new environments. Cultural memory institutions realize these functions on the basis of policies in which they define digitization processes. In this framework, this study deals with the policies developed by cultural memory institutions for digitization practices and analytic studies of the issue; and it investigates the situation in Turkey through document analyses within the scope of information and culture policies. The results of the study show that there are considerable differences in digitization practices between Turkey and other countries and that, in spite of the many projects on digitization, there are no policies in Turkey which define digitization processes on an institutional or national scale.