The potential of generic social outcomes in promoting the positive impact of the public library: Evidence from the National year of reading in Yorkshire

Objective - To present the development, planning and implementation of a qualitative research project on the impact of National Year of Reading in Yorkshire. Methods - Generic Social Outcomes (GSO) were used to develop a theoretical framework. Data were gathered via in-depth interviews and focus groups with National Year of Reading (NYR) steering group partners in Calderdale and North Lincolnshire, selected as the two case study authorities. The use of MAXQDA computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) enabled data and coding structures to be stored and facilitated comparison in this longitudinal study. Results - The findings using the GSO framework show considerable evidence of NYR related activities in supporting the three first-tier social outcomes: 'Stronger and Safer Communities', 'Health and Well-Being' and 'Strengthening Public Life.' Conclusion - The GSO framework can be used by practitioners to help provide evidence for how public libraries contribute to diverse agendas and demonstrate their value to the community. Public library authorities can use this evidence for planning and for advocacy with a range of audiences including local and central government. © 2012 Rankin

Planning A Future Workforce: An Australian

Libraries throughout the world are facing the dual challenge of an aging workforce and a workplace which is requiring significant reassessment of the skills base of its staff as a result of the impact of technology on the delivery of information services. The implications for libraries in responding to this environment are significant. This paper looks at the age profile of the library workforce and discusses the need for libraries to acknowledge and plan for the impending retirement of a significant proportion of their workforce. The paper argues that integral to this planning is the need to identify the skills and attributes required of library staff in both the short and long term. The response of some Australian academic libraries in preparing to address these challenges is described. Particular reference is made to strategies adopted at Queensland University of Technology Library in Brisbane, Australia to ensure that existing and new staff are equipped with the skills to be able to work in changing environments and that staff are provided with opportunities to develop leadership skills that will be required for the future

What Java Developers Know About Compatibility, And Why This Matters

Real-world programs are neither monolithic nor static -- they are constructed using platform and third party libraries, and both programs and libraries continuously evolve in response to change pressure. In case of the Java language, rules defined in the Java Language and Java Virtual Machine Specifications define when library evolution is safe. These rules distinguish between three types of compatibility - binary, source and behavioural. We claim that some of these rules are counter intuitive and not well-understood by many developers. We present the results of a survey where we quizzed developers about their understanding of the various types of compatibility. 414 developers responded to our survey. We find that while most programmers are familiar with the rules of source compatibility, they generally lack knowledge about the rules of binary and behavioural compatibility. This can be problematic when organisations switch from integration builds to technologies that require dynamic linking, such as OSGi. We have assessed the gravity of the problem by studying how often linkage-related problems are referenced in issue tracking systems, and find that they are common

Impact assessment for vulnerabilities in open-source software libraries

Software applications integrate more and more open-source software (OSS) to benefit from code reuse. As a drawback, each vulnerability discovered in bundled OSS potentially affects the application. Upon the disclosure of every new vulnerability, the application vendor has to decide whether it is exploitable in his particular usage context, hence, whether users require an urgent application patch containing a non-vulnerable version of the OSS. Current decision making is mostly based on high-level vulnerability descriptions and expert knowledge, thus, effort intense and error prone. This paper proposes a pragmatic approach to facilitate the impact assessment, describes a proof-of-concept for Java, and examines one example vulnerability as case study. The approach is independent from specific kinds of vulnerabilities or programming languages and can deliver immediate results

Meaningful measures for individuals' realities: evidence from the JUBILEE project

Reality differs according to the individual's perception : this is a statement of the obvious. How to deliver appropriate library and information services to fulfil those individuals' requirements is not obvious. Measures of success are needed to form the basis of service planning.These measures must be meaningful for individuals, both users and managers, if the goal of designing and delivering library and information services to meet individuals' realities is to be realised. Contexts are changing for individuals: the fast developing world of electronic information services (EIS) provides individuals with new opportunities and new threats. It is against this background that the JUBILEE project was launched.This paper will use evidence from JUBILEE to present the issues underlying the development of an evaluation toolkit for managers of EIS, which will take into account differences between individuals, between disciplines, and between institutions

Why can't every year be a National Year of Reading? An evaluation of the NYR in Yorkshire

An evaluation of the National Year of Reading in Yorkshire was conducted by Leeds Metropolitan University in response to a brief from Museums, Libraries and Archives, Yorkshire. This paper outlines the development and planning of phase one of this small scale qualitative research project and the analysis of the initial results which looks at the impact of NYR on the organisations that delivered the campaign and their work with target groups. The Generic Social Outcomes and the National Indicators were used to develop a theoretical framework. Data were gathered via in depth interviews and focus groups with NYR steering group partners in Calderdale and North Lincolnshire, selected as the two case study authorities. The use of MAXQDA computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) enabled data and coding structures to be stored and will facilitate comparison in this longitudinal study. This evaluation will provide material that local library authorities can use for advocacy with a range of audiences including local and central government

A Generic Alerting Service for Digital Libraries

Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. Proprietary and mediating alerting services fail to fluidly integrate information from differing collections. This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the differing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service. Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services for digital libraries, their design and use is greater than one may anticipate. We also show that, conversely, the requirements for an alerting service have considerable impact on the concepts of DL design. Our findings should be of interest for librarians as well as system designers. We highlight and discuss the far-reaching implications for the design of, and interaction with, libraries. This paper discusses the lessons learned from building such a distributed alerting service. We present our prototype implementation as a proof-of-concept for an alerting service for open DL software

Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

Bridging the gap between digital libraries and e-learning

Digital Libraries (DL) are offering access to a vast amount of digital content, relevant to practically all domains of human knowledge, which makes it suitable to enhance teaching and learning. Based on a systematic literature review, this article provides an overview and a gap analysis of educational use of DLs.The research work presented in this paper is partially supported by the FP7 Grant 316087 AComIn ”Advanced Computing for Innovation”, funded by the European Commission in the FP7 Capacity Programme in 2012-2016.peer-reviewe