Assessment of ICT Literacy Skills of Digital Library Users and Staff in Salem University Lokoja, Kogi

Purpose: This study examined ICT literacy skills of digital library users and staff in Salem University (SU) Lokoja, Kogi State. Design/Method/Approach: The descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. It was appropriate for this study as a useful method for assessing attitudes or opinions towards programmes, individuals, organizations and events. Four objectives and four research questions were formulated to guide this study. The population of the study was 53 digital library users and staff which required no sampling due to the manageable size of the population. Instruments for data collection include a well structured questionnaire designed to elicit information from the library users and staff. Observation checklist was also designed to support the results of the questionnaire. A total of 53 questionnaires were distributed to users and staff of the library with a return rate of 100%. The study employed the use of frequency table, percentages, mean scores and ranking as statistical measures for data analysis. Findings: From the findings of the study, it was observed that the following ICT facilities and resources are available in SU digital library: computer systems, inverter, high capacity printers, projectors, scanners, photocopier machines, multimedia, Wide Area Network (WAN) i.e. WIFI, CD-writer, The World Wide Web (www), search engines, online databases, online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), CD-ROMs, portals, online indexes and abstracts, e-journals and e-books. However, the library has no facilities and resources such as digital cameras, power generator, facsimile transmission systems and telephone, VSAT based Internet connectivity and video CDs. Respondents possessed ICT literacy skill such as turning on computer, connecting to the Internet, opening a computer file, word processing, sending an email messages, deleting a file from computer, using a www search engine but lack adequate ICT literacy skill on using more advance searching techniques than keywords, saving an image or graphic from a www page, creating a directory or file folder, PowerPoint presentation, installing program software, using CD-ROM to find information, database navigation and downloading files from databases. Challenges with the acquisition of ICT literacy skills are attributed to inadequate funding, inadequate ICT in curriculum, lack of commitment to learning ICT skill, lack of training opportunity, poor ICT facilities, high cost of ICT literacy training and lack of interest in digital information while strategies for enhancing ICT literacy skill among users and staff were identified by the study as follows: there should be adequate funding of ICT literacy skill of the university staff and students, ICT facilities of the university should be upgraded to encourage ICT literacy, ICT should be integrated in curriculum etc. It was therefore recommended that the library should try to provide different ICT facilities and resources such as digital cameras, power generator, facsimile transmission systems and telephone, VSAT based Internet connectivity and video CDs etc. in order to capture users and staff interest in acquisition of ICT literacy skills.; library staff, students and faculty members should be provided with ICT literacy programmes such as workshop, seminars and in-house training to enable them learn how to access various digital information resources and services; the use of newsgroups and online forums to discuss and create awareness of the emerging technologies in the library and their uses should also be adopted. In addition, a sort of communication and feedback mechanism should also exist between the SU and the library to see to the effective maintenance and sustainability of the digital library and also there should be continuous evaluation of the digital library system to determine the exact state of the library at any given point in time. Implication: This study has obvious implications for libraries in Nigerian higher education institutions as the lack of requisite ICT literacy skill among library users and staff in the use of digital library is very glaring. In more advanced countries these gap is at the barest minimum or non-existence, because most library users and staff are ICT literate. Manpower training in the use of technology is another issue that is being raised here. Library staff and users must be trained in the use of current technologies to enable them operate in the digital library environment. The results of this study have implications for the university management and staff, university library administrations, researchers, lecturers and students. Originality/Value: The originality of this study lies in its assessment of the facilities, resources and ICT literacy skills of the respondents in SU digital library. This study identifies critical issues related to the effective operation of the digital library system and the utilization of its facilities and resources. Its values relate to its immense contributions to students, digital library and Nigerian universities especially in this information age where Nigerian educational institutions face the challenges of globalization and information explosion

Quality of Service for Information Access

Information is available in many forms from different sources, in distributed locations; access to information is supported by networks of varying performance; the cost of accessing and transporting the information varies for both the source and the transport route. Users who vary in their preferences, background knowledge required to interpret the information and motivation for accessing it, gather information to perform many different tasks. This position paper outlines some of these variations in information provision and access, and explores the impact these variations have on the user’s task performance, and the possibilities they make available to adapt the user interface for the presentation of information

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

Adaptive constrained clustering with application to dynamic image database categorization and visualization.

The advent of larger storage spaces, affordable digital capturing devices, and an ever growing online community dedicated to sharing images has created a great need for efficient analysis methods. In fact, analyzing images for the purpose of automatic categorization and retrieval is quickly becoming an overwhelming task even for the casual user. Initially, systems designed for these applications relied on contextual information associated with images. However, it was realized that this approach does not scale to very large data sets and can be subjective. Then researchers proposed methods relying on the content of the images. This approach has also proved to be limited due to the semantic gap between the low-level representation of the image and the high-level user perception. In this dissertation, we introduce a novel clustering technique that is designed to combine multiple forms of information in order to overcome the disadvantages observed while using a single information domain. Our proposed approach, called Adaptive Constrained Clustering (ACC), is a robust, dynamic, and semi-supervised algorithm. It is based on minimizing a single objective function incorporating the abilities to: (i) use multiple feature subsets while learning cluster independent feature relevance weights; (ii) search for the optimal number of clusters; and (iii) incorporate partial supervision in the form of pairwise constraints. The content of the images is used to extract the features used in the clustering process. The context information is used in constructing a set of appropriate constraints. These constraints are used as partial supervision information to guide the clustering process. The ACC algorithm is dynamic in the sense that the number of categories are allowed to expand and contract depending on the distribution of the data and the available set of constraints. We show that the proposed ACC algorithm is able to partition a given data set into meaningful clusters using an adaptive, soft constraint satisfaction methodology for the purpose of automatically categorizing and summarizing an image database. We show that the ACC algorithm has the ability to incorporate various types of contextual information. This contextual information includes: spatial information provided by geo-referenced images that include GPS coordinates pinpointing their location, temporal information provided by each image\u27s time stamp indicating the capture time, and textual information provided by a set of keywords describing the semantics of the associated images