Educational supplementary bibliographic relationships from FRBR point of view: A Canadian Case Study

Purpose: One of the aims of library catalogs is to clearly represent the relationships existing between two or more bibliographic entities, enabling users to make sense of these relationships. Educational bibliographic relationships are the relationships between an educational work, such as a textbook, and its related works. The main interest of this study was to understand the nature of the supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationships among educational works and the constitution of educational bibliographic families in the Canadian context using AMICUS (the Canadian national catalog). A thorough understanding of educational bibliographic relationships is required for understanding the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) supplementary relationships. Design/methodology/approach: We studied the extent and size of educational bibliographic relationships in the bibliographic universe found in the AMICUS catalog. This is an empirical investigation into the nature and extent of educational work-to-work bibliographic relationships by examining title of works, notes and added entries in bibliographic records. The study was carried out between September 1st 2010 and December 22nd 2010 and examines educational bibliographic relationships between Canadian 2009 publications in each class of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). In other words, this study poses two main questions: What is the structure of educational supplementary bibliographic relationships in Canadian publications? Do significant differences exist across the ten DDC classes? Findings: Results show that 595 works of the 2009 bibliographic records in the AMICUS catalog contain an educational supplementary bibliographic relationship. Of the Canadian publications with an educational supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationship that were studied, the rates of educational bibliographic relationships were relatively high in the fields of Science (27%), Technology (22%), Social Sciences (20%), and Language (19%). The results of this study suggest a set of guidelines for the establishment and maintenance of educational bibliographic relationships. Originality/value: This is the first research to examine the educational bibliographic relationships, as supplementary relationships

An Activity Theory Evaluation of a User Interface for a Web-based Virtual Research Environment (VRE)

Activity Theory is a framework or descriptive tool which is commonly used in Human-computer Interaction. In particular, it is used more and more in the design and evaluation of some collaborative systems such as a modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment. Activity Theory offers many advantages to interface design for interactive systems when compared with the traditional cognitive psychology approach. This is because the traditional cognitive method cannot penetrate the human side. Therefore, the thorough analysis of human activities in Activity Theory makes it an effective and efficient method for evaluation and design of a system. There is currently some ongoing research work on the design or evaluation of interactive systems, in particular commercial information systems. However, none of them are about online virtual research environments. Therefore, this project aims to evaluate the interface of an online virtual research environment called CRADLE using Activity Theory. We will conduct a humanities study in this project, which seeks to find contradictions between the current interface and user expectations, which will in turn be used to design the next generation of CRADLE. In order to find a better way to represent the human community in CRADLE’s digital humanities context, we proposed two candidate proposals and refined them based on participants feedback

Vermont Agency of Transportation Employee Retention and Knowledge Management Study

In 2015, the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) developed a new strategic plan that included five goals that would support the agency’s mission and vision. Goal 5 of the plan is: Develop a workforce to meet the strategic needs of the agency. VTrans leaders were concerned with the loss of employees due to turnover and the subsequent impact of knowledge loss on the operations of the agency. This applied research study used a mixed methods approach in data gathering to help determine the state of employee retention and knowledge management (KM) at VTrans and to provide tools that could help with both retention and KM issues. Key steps in this study involved an organizational assessment of turnover and KM practices at VTrans, a scan of other state DOTs concerning retention and KM practices, and a pilot project to address both issues. With guidance provided by a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), the decision was made to focus most of the research in specific units of the Highway Division

Brief Lives

Owen Fiss has led an enviable life. The Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale Law School is a revered teacher; author of dozens of books and articles on procedure, constitutional law, and legal theory; and one of the most cited legal scholars of all time. Devotion to Brown v. Board of Education, the liberalism it fostered, and the Warren Court pervade Fiss\u27s life as a law clerk, lawyer, and professor. They also pervade his writings, even his magisterial Holmes Devise volume on the Fuller Court. In Pillars of Justice: Lawyers and the Liberal Tradition, a book written to inspire and instruct the young, Fiss introduces us to his legal liberalism, Yale, and heroes - Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, John Doar, Burke Marshall, Harry Kalven, Eugene Rostow, Arthur Leff, Catharine MacKinnon, Joseph Goldstein, Robert Cover, Morton Horwitz, Carlos Nino, and Aharon Barak

Sustainable intensification in smallholder agriculture: an integrated systems research approach

First published 201