Guide to the professional literature

Citation

(2006), "Guide to the professional literature", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2006.26430aae.001

Guide to the professional literature

This column is designed to alert readers to pertinent wider journal literature on digital information and research.

Digital Imagery for Significant Cultural and Historical Materials: An Emerging Research Field Bridging People, Culture and Technologies

Chen, C. et al. in International Journal on Digital Libraries, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2005, pp. 275-86http://www.springerlink.com/(skuwto550v14my45mhwo1s2b)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,4,9;journal,2,20;linkingpublicationresults,1:100475,1

Digital imagery for significant cultural and historical materials is an emerging research field that bridges people, culture, and technologies. In this paper, we first discuss the great importance of this field. Then we focus on its four interrelated sub-areas: creation and preservation; retrieval; presentation and usability; and applications and use. We propose several mechanisms to encourage collaboration and argue that the field has high potential impact on our digital society. Finally, we make specific recommendations on what to pursue in this field.

The Development of Children’s Web Searching Skills: A Non-linear Model

Enochsson, A. in Information Research, Vol. 11 No. 1, 2005http://InformationR.net/ir/11-1/paper240.html

The aim of this article is to determine the various skills necessary for seeking information on the internet in educational settings. Throughout the article there is also an aim to present the students’ perspective on possibilities and difficulties when using the internet. The approach is ethnographic, which requires various data collection methods. In total 110 students in four different settings have participated. The analyses were partly made with the help of the software NUD*IST for qualitative analyses, where sentences both from interviews and field notes were coded. Some analyses were of qualitative nature and based on selected material from the coded texts. Others were strictly quantitative and compared data from coded qualitative material with questionnaires and computer logs in a database sheet. In ethnographic analyses the material is read several times and compared in different ways to see what themes will emerge. In this case the respondents have also commented upon the result. The students regard six different skills as fundamental: language, knowledge about the technology, knowledge about different ways of information seeking, how search engines work, setting goals and being critical.

The Commercialized Web: Challenges for Libraries and Democracy

Edited by Fabos, E. in Library Trends, Vol. 53 No. 4, 2005http://puboff.lis.uiuc.edu/catalog/trends/53_4.html

This important issue of Library Trends focuses on the links between online information resources and the commercial economy. Papers cover, inter alia, the political economy of linking on the web, student use of academic resources and Google, the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting, gateway standardisation, contributor-run archives, and many other topics. Among the authors are Peter Brophy, Edward Almasy and Debra Hiom.

Web Development over the Past 10 Years

Fichter, D. in Online, Vol. 29, No. 2005, pp. 48-50http://www.infotoday.com/online/nov05/index.shtml

The author sets forth a number of guidelines for web site design. Worth noting is her advice about making “tough choices” as to what the user sees initially, how help screens are less helpful than they should be, and that we ignore Website conventions to our detriment. Fichter also brings back the idea of “aesthetics matter” as an important consideration.

Education Goes Digital: The Evolution of Online Learning and the Revolution in Higher Education

Hiltz, S.R. and Turoff, M. in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 48 No. 10, 2005, pp. 59-64http://www.acm.org/pubs/cacm/toc/2005/octobertoc.html

Hiltz and Turoff suggest that a transformation in education will occur through a gradual process of substitution. Blending face-to-face and online learning is already occurring in many courses, and the authors project that digital methods initially employed to augment lecture will be adopted gradually for delivery of core content. They take for granted a point which is currently bring debated: the effectiveness of computer-mediated education being equal to that of human interaction. They make a convincing case that the tools are there and will be used in ways that will increase accessibility to higher education and are likely to revolutionize teaching.

As We May Search – Comparison of Major Features of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar Citation-Based and Citation-Enhanced Databases

Jacsó, P. in Current Science, Vol. 89 No. 10, 2005, pp. 1537-47http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1537.pdf

Google Scholar provides little or no information that can be used to evaluate it as an information source, so people such as Jacsó are left to do the best they can to determine the coverage of the service, its accuracy and user options. Jacsó has published previous evaluations of Google Scholar, but this one is a more in-depth review, and the comparison with similar commercial services is instructive.

Professors Online: The Internet’s Impact on College Faculty

Jones, S. and Johnson-Yale, C. in First Monday, Vol. 10 No. 9, 2005http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue109/jones/

The authors assess the findings of a nationwide survey of internet use by US academics. The goals of the survey were to determine the impact of the internet on the professional lives of academics in terms of teaching, research and personal information use. The survey covered a broad spectrum: e-mail, instant messaging, web use and instructional technologies. Not surprisingly, academics appreciate the internet and use it heavily, but the survey also reveals some perennial concerns. Infrastructure is a constant issues, and it is difficult to keep up when technologies change rapidly. Teaching and research are influenced in both obvious and unexpected ways by the internet – there is a need for more research on how to optimise the challenge of integrating the internet into academia.

Web-based Learning: Factors Affecting Students’ Satisfaction and Learning Experience

Kim, K-S. and Moore, J.L. in First Monday, Vol. 10 No. 11, 2005http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue1011/kim/index.html

This study investigates how students’ characteristics and behaviour affect their satisfaction and learning experience within web-based courses. A total of 82 graduate students taking a web-based course from a Midwest university participated in the study. Web-based questionnaires were used to collect data on student demographics as well as learning experiences and styles. Findings suggest that students’ interaction with classmates and their instructor may have an impact on their satisfaction with web-based courses. In addition, students’ gender and their perceived level of course difficulty seem to be correlated with interaction.

Separation of Concerns: A Web Application Architecture Framework

Kong, X., Liu, L. and Lowe, D. in Journal of Digital Information, Vol. 6 No. 2, 2005, article no. 332http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v06/i02/Kong/

Architecture frameworks have been extensively developed and described within the literature. These frameworks typically support and guide organisations during system planning, design, building, deployment and maintenance. Their main purpose is to provide clarity to the different modelling perspectives, abstractions, and domains of consideration within system development. In doing so they allow improved clarity with regard to the connections between the different models, and the selection of models that are most likely to capture salient features of the system. In this paper we present an Architectural Framework which takes into account the specific characteristics of web systems. The framework is based around a two dimensional matrix. One dimension separates the concerns of different participants of the web system into perspectives. The second dimension classifies each perspective into development abstractions: structure (what), behaviour (how), location (where) and pattern. The framework is illustrated through examples from the development of a commercial web application.

Re-imagining Web Analysis as Circulation

Paul, C.A. in First Monday, Vol. 10 No. 11, 2005http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue1011/paul/index.html

Many forms of internet analysis grew out of literary and textual criticism that focused on interpreting meaning(s) in particular texts. In extending a meaning-based approach to web texts, analyses have artificially constructed borders around texts to produce stable research objects. This paper refocuses criticism, shifting from meaning to critical analysis of circulation and the ways that movement is either facilitated or impeded in particular web texts. This analytical move respects the dynamic borders of Web texts whose hypertextual links defy precise definitions. By focusing on circulation, web analysts can study the politics of pathways in web sites, retaining the dynamism promised by the technology of the web, yet enabling productive criticism.

Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems: A Bottom-Up Approach

Rosenthal, D.H.S. in D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 11 No. 11, 2005http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosenthal/11rosenthal.html

The field of digital preservation is being defined by a set of standards developed top-down, starting with an abstract reference model (OAIS) and gradually adding more specific detail. Systems claiming conformance to these standards are entering production use. Work is underway to certify that systems conform to requirements derived from OAIS. We complement these requirements derived top-down by presenting an alternate, bottom-up view of the field. The fundamental goal of these systems is to ensure that the information they contain remains accessible for the long term. We develop a parallel set of requirements based on observations of how existing systems handle this task, and on an analysis of the threats to achieving that goal. On this basis we suggest disclosures that systems should provide as to how they satisfy their goals.

Preservation Research and Sustainable Digital Libraries

Ross, S. and Hedstrom, M. in International Journal on Digital Libraries, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2005, pp. 317-24http://www.springerlink.com/(skuwto550v14my45mhwo1s2b)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,8,9;journal,2,20;linkingpublicationresults,1:100475,1

The National Science Foundation and DELOS, the European Commission sponsored Network for Digital Libraries, supported a working group to define a research agenda for digital archiving and preservation (DAP-WG) within the context of digital libraries. The report of this group, Invest to Save, has laid out a range of research challenges that need to be addressed if we are to make progress in the development of sustainable digital libraries. DAP-WG considered archiving and preservation needs and the research that had been conducted to address these. It concluded that research in this domain could benefit from being expanded and refocused – new research communities must be engaged, the approaches to conducting the research must be made more rigorous, and a significant shift in what was being researched needed to be taken. The Group identified twenty-two key research activities worthy of investigation.

Interoperability of Bioinformatics Resources

Vyas, H. and Summers, R. in VINE, Vol. 35 No. 3, 2005, pp. 132-9http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&contentId=1523914

This paper aims to supply an introduction to the bioinformatics discipline for information professionals, outlining how current information management issues are hampering the effective integration and interoperability of resources. The approach taken is to outline some of the more challenging issues to illustrate their consequences, such as syntactic and semantic heterogeneity, data storage formats and media, and the existence of inconsistencies in information content in bioinformatics resources. A discussion of these topics indicates how semantic web concepts and technologies, together with e-science initiatives, can be used to address these problems. The paper reveals that, if one considers the use of semantic web technologies such as XML and ontologies for the development of information standards that allows integration of different information systems, these systems could then be placed into applications such as web services and GRIDS tailored for biological studies. Such applications would provide automated functionality for database integration, workflow management, inclusion of provenance data, and notification of services.

The Dublin Core Metadata Registry: Requirements, Implementation, and Experience

Wagner, H. and Weibel, S. in Journal of Digital Information, Vol. 6 No. 2, 2005, article no. 330http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v06/i02/Wagner/

Metadata registries are an important digital library research area with the promise of satisfying the needs of metadata designers, practitioners, and users. This paper describes the deployment experience involving the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) metadata registry and discusses the opportunities and prospects for metadata registries as part of the evolving Web-based metadata infrastructure. The motivation and architecture of the DCMI registry are discussed. Benefits and beneficiaries are described, as well as barriers to installation and adoption of metadata registry technology. In addition, prospects for further development are discussed.