Group items tagged

Introduction. It is argued that the actual elements of typical browsing episodes have not been well captured by common approaches to the concept to date. Method. Empirical research results reported by previous researchers are presented and closely analysed. Analysis. Based on the issues raised by the above research review, the components of browsing are closely analysed and developed. Browsing is seen to consist of a series of four steps, iterated indefinitely until the end of a browsing episode: 1) glimpsing a field of vision, 2) selecting or sampling a physical or informational object within the field of vision, 3) examining the object, 4) acquiring the object (conceptually and/or physically) or abandoning it. Not all of these elements need be present in every browsing episode, though multiple glimpses are seen to be the minimum to constitute the act. Results. This concept of browsing is then shown to have persuasive support in the psychological and anthropological literature, where research on visual search, curiosity and exploratory behaviour all find harmony with this perspective. Conclusions. It is argued that this conception of browsing is closer to real human behaviour than other approaches. Implications for better information system design are developed.

Should the Library of Congress (LC) jettison Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the longstanding professional taxonomy? That’s one of the provocative suggestions in a new report released last month by LC. “The Changing Nature of the Catalog and Its Integration with Other Discovery Tools,” commissioned by LC and written by associate university librarian Karen Calhoun of Cornell University, was making waves weeks earlier, thanks to a critical review of a draft of her paper, written for AFSCME 2910, the LC Professional Guild, by Thomas Mann (author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research). It warned of “serious negative consequences for the capacity of research libraries to promote scholarly research.”

The goal of the Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project (DREW) is to create a large database of reference transactions so that researchers might better understand the process and then create tools for measurement and evaluation that managers of reference services could employ.

A Seattle-based security researcher has devised a way to test for Net neutrality. Dan Kaminsky will share details of this technique, which will eventually be rolled into a free software tool, on Wednesday at the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas. The software can tell if computers are treating some types of TCP/IP traffic better than others -- dropping data that is being used in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, for example, or treating encrypted data as second class.

Starting in 2003, researchers at ISI have been collecting data about the Internet address space. As part of this work we have been probing all addresses in the allocated Internet address space. This web page summarizes this research, the datasets, and related papers. A second web page shows our plot of the entire internet at scale (one square is one host).

The 5th International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM 2008) carries on the ICKM tradition of bringing together academics, researchers, developers, practitioners, and users in the areas of knowledge management and information processing. It offers an excellent opportunity to network with accomplished colleagues, exchange research ideas, discuss practical applications, and stay current with the latest in best practices and international trends.

Technology is transforming the way in which researchers gain access to archives, not only in the choices archivists make about their uses of technology but in the portable technologies researchers bring with them to the archives. This essay reviews the implications of electronic mail, instant messaging and chat, digital reference services, Web sites, scanners, digital cameras, folksonomies, and various adaptive technologies in facilitating archival access. The new machines represent greater, even unprecedented, opportunities for archivists to support one of the main elements of their professional mission, namely, getting archival records used.

This international study, conducted jointly by OCLC and the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, will investigate factors influencing the selection and use of chat-based VRS study user and staff perceptions of satisfaction investigate why non-users of these services do not choose VRS seek to develop research-based recommendations for VRS staff to increase satisfaction.

Folksonomies, or user-created taxonomies, are currently used as collaborative tools to describe images, films, hyperlinks, and other objects and documents. LibraryThing is a website that lets users catalog their own book collections through the use of Library of Congress Subject Headings and social tagging. This paper records the results of exploratory research focusing on the connection between folksonomies and controlled vocabulary and utilizing LibraryThing as a possible benchmark to measure tagging’s efficacy and accuracy as an instrument for subject analysis.

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

University of California researchers are claiming they’ve added “common sense” to computers’ ability to recognize objects in photographs. 

Presenting a wide range of literature, this article explores the state of art in book research, paying particular attention to John B. Thompson’s interpretation of digital transformations within the book industry, as depicted in Books in the Digital Age (2005). Claiming that Thompson’s analyses are one–sided, the article applies alternative perspectives and a model of a text cycle, contending that the diminishing role of paper in text production and text distribution makes the dominant position of printed books particularly vulnerable to advances in digital reading technologies.

Creating a digital library might seem like a task best left to a large research collection with a vast staff and generous budget. However, tools for successfully creating digital libraries are getting easier to use all the time.

This annotated bibliography was commissioned to support the NSDL Evaluation Workshop (planned for October 2003) that will 1) explore the issues around evaluating the impact of digital libraries on education and that will 2) begin developing a strategy to evaluate the impact of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) on STEM education. The bibliography’s purpose, then, is to identify research to date on evaluating the impact of digital libraries on learning and teaching. It contains a Summary & Analysis section, which defines terms, makes observations about the literature, reviews the resources included, highlights issues, and suggests areas for further consideration.