Building information modeling – A game changer for interoperability and a chance for digital preservation of architectural data?

Digital data associated with the architectural design-andconstruction process is an essential resource alongside -and even past- the lifecycle of the construction object it describes. Despite this, digital architectural data remains to be largely neglected in digital preservation research – and vice versa, digital preservation is so far neglected in the design-and-construction process. In the last 5 years, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has seen a growing adoption in the architecture and construction domains, marking a large step towards much needed interoperability. The open standard IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) is one way in which data is exchanged in BIM processes. This paper presents a first digital preservation based look at BIM processes, highlighting the history and adoption of the methods as well as the open file format standard IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) as one way to store and preserve BIM data

Revitalizing the library for the nation : proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society held on 18-19 April 2019 at Hatten Hotel, Melaka

Organised by: Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya and University of Malaya Library

Australian votes in the making: a critical review of voter behaviour research in Australia

Raphaella Kathryn Crosby conducted a critical review of the theory and method of voter behaviour research, with a focus on the 2019 Australian federal election. She found there was little agreement or consensus among the research, and no common narrative of the election. Using a Grounded Theory approach she identified five distinct battlegrounds of the 2019 election, and proposed two new theories to explain seemingly illogical voter behaviour

A framework for preservation of digital resources in academic libraries in South Africa

The aim of the study was to examine the implementation of digital preservation practices in academic libraries in South Africa in the light of the rapid changing information environment. The study looked into the strategies, systems and tools being employed to support digital preservation programmes and the costs associated with the various digital preservation programmes. The study was guided by various digital preservation theories and models,namely Davies’ (2000) Policy, Strategy and Resources (PSR) troika model, Kenney and McGovern’s (2003) three leg stool, Corrado and Moulaison‘s (2014) preservation triad and the Carnegie Mellon University’s (1990) Digital Preservation Capability Maturity (DPCM) model and Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model by OCLC (2002), underpinned by the survey research design, triangulation of questionnaires and document analysis as data collection methods. Out of 27 questionnaires distributed to academic institutions, 22 (81.5%) were completed. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive analysis whilst content analysis was used for qualitative data obtained from document analysis. Findings revealed that academic libraries in South Africa were significantly affected by the changes to the digital environment. Most academic libraries face many challenges that hinder the effective implementation of digital preservation. The problems include: lack of funding, lack of skills and training and technology obsolescence. The study identified migration, bit preservation, replication and risk management approaches as the most widely implemented preservation strategies to address preservation challenges faced by academic libraries in South Africa. Although various preservation systems and tools are being developed to enable description, discovery, delivery and preservation of digital collections, there was expressed lack of awareness about digital preservation standards and preservation support organisations. The study also observed that, in some instances, the academic institutions were not fully involved in collaborative and partnerships with other institutions. By collaborating and partnering with other institutions, they would be exposed to new ideas, strategies and tools, and be able to acquire knowledge and skills needed to successfully preserve and manage their digital resources. The findings revealed that the implementation of policies and strategies, provision of adequate resources, sufficient funding and digital preservation knowledge and skills are some of the major factors influencing digital preservation sustainability in academic libraries. This study, therefore, recommends that these institutions can address some of the digital preservation challenges if they leverage on these factors. The study also made several recommendations on how digital preservation can be successfully implemented, and it further proposed a framework for preservation of digital resources in academic libraries, mapped to international preservation models and standards.Information ScienceD. Litt. et Phil. (Information Science

Library buildings around the world

"Library Buildings around the World" is a survey based on researches of several years. The objective was to gather library buildings on an international level starting with 1990

Fostering flowers: Women, landscape and the psychodynamics of gender in 19th Century Australia

It is said that when the Sphinx was carved into the bedrock of Egypt it had the head as well as the body of Sekhmet lioness Goddess who presided over the rise and fall of the Nile, and that only much later was the head recarved to resemble a male pharaoh. Simon Schama considered the \u27making over\u27 of Mount Rushmore to resemble America\u27s Founding Fathers constituted \u27the ultimate colonisation of nature by culture … a distinctly masculine obsession (expressing) physicality, materiality and empirical externality,… a rhetoric of humanity\u27s uncontested possession of nature. It would be comforting to think that, although Uluru has become the focus of nationalist myths in Australia, to date it has not been incised to represent Australia\u27s \u27Great Men\u27 - comforting that is, if it were not for the recognition that if Australia had had the resources available to America in the 1920s a transmogrified Captain Cook and a flinty Governor Phillip may have been eyeballing the red heart of Australia for the greater part of a century. My dissertation traces the conscious and unconscious construction of gender in Australian society in the nineteenth century as it was constructed through the apprehension of things which were associated with \u27nature\u27 -plants, animals, landscape, \u27the bush\u27, Aborigines, women. The most important metaphor in this construction was that of women as flowers; a metaphor which, in seeking to sacralise \u27beauty\u27 in women and nature, increasingly externalised women and the female principle and divorced them from their rootedness in the earth - the \u27earth\u27 of \u27nature\u27, and the \u27earth\u27 of men\u27s and women\u27s deeper physical and psychological needs. This had the consequence of a return of the repressed in the form of negative constructions of women, \u27femininity\u27 and the land which surfaced in Australia, as it did in most other parts of the Western World, late in the nineteenth century. What I attempt to show in this dissertation is that a negative construction of women and the female principle was inextricably implicated in the accelerating development of a capitalist consumer society which fetishised the surface appearance of easily reproducible images of denatured objects. In the nineteenth century society denatured women along with much else as it turned from the worship of God and ‘nature\u27 to the specularisation of endlessly proliferating images emptied of meaning; of spirituality. An increasing fascination with the appearance of things served to camouflage patriarchal assumptions which lopsidedly associated women with a \u27flowerlike\u27 femininity of passive receptivity (or a ‘mad\u27 lasciviousness) and men with a \u27masculinity\u27 of aggressive achievement - and awarded social power and prestige to the latter. The psychological explanation which underlies this thesis and unites its disparate elements is that of Julia Kristeva who believed that in the nineteenth century fear of loss of the Christian \u27saving\u27 mother - the Mother of God - led to an intensification of emotional investment among men and women in the pre-oedipal all-powerful \u27phallic\u27 mother who is thought to stand between the individual and \u27the void of nothingness\u27

The Australian Indigenous foodscape from missions to media: food as a tool in the Australian colonial project

This dissertation investigates key social, ethical and environmental challenges faced by the developing Australian Indigenous food industry. I highlight areas of concern that have, or will in the future have, an impact on attitudes towards Indigenous food and culture. Ethical strategies are essential for the development of state and federal food security and bio-knowledge policies, food production and hospitality development. Additionally, diverse media and social discourse prioritising Indigenous perspectives is needed to disrupt Australian leadership, and business and consumer attitudes to Indigenous knowledge, spirituality and food. Using critical discourse analysis and a food systems approach, I explore culinary cringe and how narrative representations made by Australian food system actors form a malleable contemporary foodspace. I explore the use of food as a tool in the Australian colonial project focusing on early missions. I utilise benefit-sharing models to address contemporary native foods businesses and provide a more complete assessment of the impact of historical food systems on contemporary foodscapes, the hospitality industry and digital media space. The following questions drive this research: 1. How have past and contemporary Indigenous communities worked with edible flora and fauna as part of cultural and economic practice? 2. How has the shame and stigma perpetrated by colonising forces on Indigenous Australians impacted the development of the Australian foodscape? 3. How is information on, and representation of, Indigenous foods disseminated by media? 4. Is Indigenous food at risk of colonisation rather than the subject of a productive, benefit-sharing relationship? 5. What are the responsibilities of hospitality businesses and consumers in their interactions with Indigenous communities and cultural knowledge when developing business models

Cosmos, culture and landscape : documenting, learning and sharing Aboriginal astronomical knowledge in contemporary society

Contemporary Australian Aboriginal astronomical knowledge, its documentation, sharing and communication is investigated, primarily from three Western Australian locations (1) Murchison region (associated with Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory), (2) East Kimberley (Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater) and (3) the South West of Western Australia. Astronomical knowledge is examined via three surveys and in-depth interviews with 27 participants. Digital imaging (360° & timelapse) is applied to create new and original Aboriginal astronomy resources (virtual tour and exhibition videos)

Museums as fashion media: Assembling fashion in Australasian museums

Using Actor Network Theory, this research project examined how fashion knowledges and material identities are assembled, through the materialities and practices of fashion in museums, using the context of Australasia. The thesis proposed a refocus on museum visitors, and a need to use museum materialities and practices to their fullest