Applying Seven Images of Science in Exploring whether Information Systems Is a Science

This paper contributes in two parts to a debate that McBride (2018) initiated. The first part focuses on clarifying the discussion topic. It defines science, information system, and the scope of the IS discipline because McBride does not define those terms clearly. The second part responds to particular aspects of McBride’s arguments. It is framed around a multi-metaphor approach that proposes and applies seven “images of science”

Transparent authentication methodology in electronic education

In the context of on-line assessment in e-learning, a problem arises when a student taking an exam may wish to cheat by handing over personal credentials to someone else to take their place in an exam, Another problem is that there is no method for signing digital content as it is being produced in a computerized environment. Our proposed solution is to digitally sign the participant’s work by embedding voice samples in the transcript paper at regular intervals. In this investigation, we have demonstrated that a transparent stenographic methodology will provide an innovative and practical solution for achieving continuous authentication in an online educational environment by successful insertion and extraction of audio digital signatures

Towards the disintermediation of creative music search: Analysing queries to determine important facets

Purpose: Creative professionals search for music to accompany moving images in films, advertising, television. Some larger music rights holders (record companies and music publishers) organise their catalogues to allow online searching. These digital libraries are organised by various subjective musical facets as well as by artist and title metadata. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of written queries relating to creative music search, contextualised and discussed within the findings of text analyses of a larger research project whose aim is to investigate meaning making in this search process. Method: A facet analysis of a collection of written music queries is discussed in relation to the organisation of the music in a selection of bespoke search engines. Results: Subjective facets, in particular Mood, are found to be highly important in query formation. Unusually, detailed Music Structural aspects are also key. Conclusions: These findings are discussed in relation to disintermediation of this process. It is suggested that there are barriers to this, both in terms of classification and also commercial / legal factors

ImageSieve: Exploratory search of museum archives with named entity-based faceted browsing

Over the last few years, faceted search emerged as an attractive alternative to the traditional "text box" search and has become one of the standard ways of interaction on many e-commerce sites. However, these applications of faceted search are limited to domains where the objects of interests have already been classified along several independent dimensions, such as price, year, or brand. While automatic approaches to generate faceted search interfaces were proposed, it is not yet clear to what extent the automatically-produced interfaces will be useful to real users, and whether their quality can match or surpass their manually-produced predecessors. The goal of this paper is to introduce an exploratory search interface called ImageSieve, which shares many features with traditional faceted browsing, but can function without the use of traditional faceted metadata. ImageSieve uses automatically extracted and classified named entities, which play important roles in many domains (such as news collections, image archives, etc.). We describe one specific application of ImageSieve for image search. Here, named entities extracted from the descriptions of the retrieved images are used to organize a faceted browsing interface, which then helps users to make sense of and further explore the retrieved images. The results of a user study of ImageSieve demonstrate that a faceted search system based on named entities can help users explore large collections and find relevant information more effectively

Recent Developments in Cultural Heritage Image Databases: Directions for User-Centered Design

published or submitted for publicatio

#Socialtagging: Defining its Role in the Academic Library

The information environment is rapidly changing, affecting the ways in which information is organized and accessed. User needs and expectations have also changed due to the overwhelming influence of Web 2.0 tools. Conventional information systems no longer support evolving user needs. Based on current research, we explore a method that integrates the structure of controlled languages with the flexibility and adaptability of social tagging. This article discusses the current research and usage of social tagging and Web 2.0 applications within the academic library. Types of tags, the semiotics of tagging and its influence on indexing are covered