Research on Information Seeking and Use in Pakistan: An Assessment
The paper describes the beginning of research activity on information needs and presents an analysis of the literature on information needs in Pakistan to discover that no research has so far been published. It reviews 14 student-research projects produced from 1975 to 1982 at the University of the Punjab which have remained unpublished; Laments the loss of impetus given to this topic in 1974-75; and urges the LIS academics and practitioners to promote and conduct research on this critical topic.
Research in Library Science at the University of the Punjab, Lahore (Pakistan)
A review of the volume and dimensions of research being done in the field of librarianship in Pakistan has recently been published in an article written by Syed Jalaluddin Haider. Research conducted by library science students is also discussed but it is confined to the work done in the Department of Library Science, University of Karachi. The author provides a subject break down of 275 master's theses submitted from 1967 to 1975. He deplores the fact that a large proportion of these theses (36.3 per cent to be precise) is of bibliographical nature. Towards the end of the article, the author writes that "Information about Masters* theses submitted at the Universities of Punjab and Sind is not available". What efforts, if any, he made to procure this Information, he does not say. However, even in the absence of this Information, äs he would make us believe, he feels no hesitation in observing that: "The Universities of Panjab and Sind offer thesis äs an optional course in M.A. (final). The majority of these submitted so far are bibliographical in nature". Since this comment cannot be regarded äs accidental, it is, to say the least, most unkind, particuiarly when it has been made without any palpable attempt to reach the basic Information. The purpose of this writing is to briefly review the academic research done at the University of the Punjab and to provide a listing of theses completed in the Department of Library Science. A number of theses dealing with the subject of library science have been written by the students of other departments of the University. Some of these were submitted prior to the Institution of the master's programme in library science. The author is familiär with the theses submitted by S. Muhammad Shah (1964), Muhammad Ashraf (1966), Muhammad Rashid (1966), and Zehra Zaidi (1967). Details of these studies are listed in Appendix 2. This listing, however, is not complete. Master's programme in library science at the University of the Punjab began in 1974. During the 1974-75 Session the thesis (then termed Research
Diskless linux system with unionfs for an educational computer center
The total cost of ownership is a major concern for computer centers that maintain hundreds of PCs. From our experience, it would be most important to reduce hardware faults, particularly the troubles of hard disk drives. This paper describes how we built our educational computer system using diskless PCs. Before constructing our system, the following items were listed as the objectives of client PCs: (1) run Linux, (2) work without local HD, (3) deploy a single OS image to all PCs, (4) be easy to update the OS image, (5) be applicable to as many device configurations as possible, (6) become clients for unix servers (Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc.), and (7) use open sources. We chose Vine Linux 3.1, which is a derivative of RedHat Linux and is well organized for Japanese language environment. To satisfy (3) and (5), we introduced unionfs which has stackable file system feature. The system directories and files dependent on each PC such as /tmp, /dev, /var, /etc/mtab, and /etc/fstab are generated as memory files systems in the boot procedure, and are stacked on the common OS image using unionfs. Since this stack mechanism was implemented only by adding some hook codes to /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, our idea, we believe, is applicable to other Linux distributions. Our educational computer system consists of 8 servers, 12 boot servers and 500 diskless PCs, and is now in operation.