Organizing Interpretive Text for a Digital Library: How User Testing Found the Lost Frontier

SUMMARY

This paper looks at exercises done with user focus groups and how they have influenced the reorganization of Meeting of Frontiers' interpretive text content. Meeting of Frontiers is an international collaborative digital library project at the Library of Congress. Testing consisted of a user survey and card sorting exercises in order to refine the site hierarchy and identify problems with design proposals.     

Implementing an Image Database for Complex Russian Architectural Objects: The William Brumfield Collection

SUMMARY

With support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Reference Materials Program grant for 2006–2008, faculty and librarians at the University of Washington (UW) are collaborating with William Brumfield (Tulane University) to preserve and catalog the latter's unmatched collection of Russian architectural photographs, create metadata describing the photographs, and make images and text widely accessible as part of an innovative web-based educational and research resource. Building on experience gained through the creation of an experimental pilot database, project staff are adapting emerging standards (METS and CCO) to a custom design that presents images from the Brumfield Collection within their architectural, geographic, and chronological contexts, both as interrelated views of individual structures, and as buildings that share certain structural and stylistic features with other buildings within and beyond the Russian cultural continuum.     

Encoded Archival Description: Are Finding Aids Boundary Spanners or Barriers for Users?

ABSTRACT

The article reports the results of a usability study of an EAD interface. Findings indicate that subjects had trouble understanding archival terminology and how best to search for information in finding aids. Furthermore, they were not familiar with the structure or contents of finding aids. In addition to building interfaces that minimize archival jargon and rely heavily on users' prior understanding of hierarchical finding aids, this study indicates that users require new forms of virtual reference assistance in the online environment.     

Evolving Reference,Changing Culture

Abstract

Analyzes the new Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California in terms of the experience in developing new ideas and confronting new problems in reference service. Argues that developing a merged public-university reference service encounters important problems that are similar to the challenges that face reference services everywhere in the 21st century. Introduces the problem of how a merged public-academic reference service must develop a new reference culture in order to succeed. Links the development of the reference culture to the ideas of Life Long Learning and Information Literacy.     

Scopus™: The Product and Its Development

ABSTRACT

Scopus is a new all-science abstracting and indexing (A&I) database. It is the result of a two-year collaboration with librarians and researchers from all over the world. Scopus covers over 14,000 scientific, technical, medical and social science titles from 4,000 publishers. It offers new sorting and refining features so that researchers can easily find and access more than 27 million abstracts and citations stretching back to the mid-1960s.

This article recounts the development of Scopus from its inception in 2002 to its success in securing over 100 customers within weeks of its recent launch. The story is told by one of the librarians heavily involved in testing and shaping the product and by one of the Product Managers who built it.     

Why library cards offer more privacy rights than proof of citizenship: Librarian ethics and Freedom of Information Act requestor policies

This paper demonstrates the divergent requestor privacy policies of professional librarians and the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and urges the federal government to adhere to librarian ethics in order to protect FOIA requestors. Section 1 of the paper provides information about the origins and purpose of the FOIA. Section 2 offers an overview of the philosophical and historical origins of library patron privacy ethics, discussing both the ethical basis for patron privacy and actual instances where library records have been sought for government surveillance of private citizens. Section 3 describes the state library laws that protect library requestors, as well as federal laws that protect non-FOIA requestor privacy rights, including the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which protects video rental records. Section 4 of the paper warns that, in the digital era, it is more important than ever to safeguard personal information like that contained in FOIA requests to prevent the stifling of information seeking activities in the United States. By modifying laws tomeet the needs of the “information age,” the United States government can embrace and utilize the ethical standards that are at the foundation of librarianship, and protect the principle that information should be free and available to the American populace.     

User centric cloud service model in public sectors: Policy implications of cloud services

This study examines the acceptance of cloud computing services in government agencies by focusing on the key characteristics that affect behavioral intent. The study expanded upon the technology acceptance model by incorporating contextual factors such as availability, access, security, and reliability. The research model was empirically verified by investigating the perception of users working in public institutions. Modeling results showed that user intentions and behaviors were largely influenced by the perceived features of cloud services. Also these features were found to be the significant antecedents of cloud computing usefulness and ease of use. The findings should guide governments' promotion of cloud public services to increase user awareness by enhancing usability and appeal and ensuring security.     

The e-government research domain: A triple helix network analysis of collaboration at the regional,country, and institutional levels

This study introduces a hybrid approach (i.e., a social network analysis technique and triple helix indicators) to study certain aspects of the e-government (EG) domain that would otherwise remain hidden when using conventional analytic tools. Particularly, we provide network analysis of the EG research domain by focusing on the network collaboration between regions, nations and institutions. We collected and analyzed 1091 scholarly papers which were classified as being about “e-government” by the Web of Science database. The results indicate that hybrid method can be used to understand certain network-level structures and patterns in the EG domain which are beyond the scope of the predominantly-used systematic literature review (SLR) method. Particularly, the hybrid method is useful in understanding collaboration patterns between countries, institutions and regions in the EG domain, identifying key players by studying their network properties (i.e., degree centralities); and in understanding the pattern of relations among universities, industries, and government. The implications of these results in terms of research and practice, and study limitations are discussed.     

Intentional Informationists: Re-envisioning Information Literacy and Re-designing Instructional Programs Around Faculty Librarians' Strengths as Campus Connectors,Information Professionals,and Course Designers

This article adds to the recent literature that questions, and hopes to redefine, the information literacy notions and practices in academic libraries and their institutions. The authors draw on research in the area of social justice to express the need for academic libraries to explore new avenues to insure their institution's graduates are not merely competent consumers of information. The authors put forward the notion of the intentional informationist, who they define as having the contextual, reflective and informational skills to identify information opportunities, tackle complex information problems and pitfalls, and provide solutions or considerations that do not just meet her individual needs. In addition, they pose questions and detail opportunities, partnerships, and examples of curricular and co-curricular integration to engage students beyond the library, instruction sessions, a single course, or graduation requirement.