513 research outputs found

    The rare books catalog and the scholarly database

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    The article is a researcher's eye view of the value of the library catalog not only as a database to be searched for surrogates of objects of study, but as a corpus of text that can be analyzed in its own right, or incorporated within the researcher's own research database. Barriers are identified in the ways in which catalog data can be output and the technical skills researchers currently need to download, ingest, and manipulate data. Research tools and datasets created by, or in collaboration with, the library community are identified

    The Future of Cloud-Based Library Systems

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    The limits of the now-aging integrated library system (ILS) software model are constraining the presence of the library within the new reality of the Internet and interconnected World Wide Web. Whether they are called cloud-based ILS or library services platforms, developing and future systems will move beyond shared library resources on shelves to establishing a shared technological infrastructure for supporting all that libraries do. Cloud-based systems will provide means for management of all library systems, including circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, electronic resources, authentication, the public interface, and analytics for data in the system. All this will allow for greater cooperation among libraries and a strengthening of patron-driven print and digital services, thus getting the information to the user and fulfilling her information needs

    The Rare Books Catalog and the Scholarly Database

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    Methodological Rationale for the Taxonomy of the PO.EX Digital Archive

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    The PO.EX Digital Archive aims to create a digital representation of large corpus of intermedia literary works produced by Portuguese authors since the 1960s. In the process of remediating these works for the current digital networked environment we address metadata issues in a way that satisfies both our material and textual analysis of intermediality, and also the interoperability requirements of current information systems. The creation of a taxonomy for organizing and classifying a diverse array of materials such as those that constitute the digital archive of Portuguese Experimental Poetry (which includes Performance, Digital, Concrete, Spatial, Sound, Video, and Visual poetry) is a challenging task for the present researchers. The purpose of this article is to offer a brief rationale for our decisions, and to explain and illustrate our classification system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Still a Lot to Lose: The Role of Controlled Vocabulary in Keyword Searching

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    In their 2005 study, Gross and Taylor found that more than a third of records retrieved by keyword searches would be lost without subject headings. A review of the literature since then shows that numerous studies, in various disciplines, have found that a quarter to a third of records returned in a keyword search would be lost without controlled vocabulary. Other writers, though, have continued to suggest that controlled vocabulary be discontinued. Addressing criticisms of the Gross/Taylor study, this study replicates the search process in the same online catalog, but after the addition of automated enriched metadata such as tables of contents and summaries. The proportion of results that would be lost remains high

    OCLC Research: 2015 Activity Report

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    OCLC Research supports the work of the Membership and Research Division by forging breakthroughs in library practice and benefits OCLC Members with evidence, insight and thought-leadership for an increasingly complex and changing network environment. We have collaborated with partner librarians and information experts to move our research agenda forward and have shared our knowledge with the library community.OCLC Research: 2015 Activity Report highlights significant accomplishments of OCLC Research in five thematic areas.Understanding the System-wide LibraryResearch Collections and SupportUser StudiesData ScienceScaling Learnin

    Big data-driven investigation into the maturity of library research data services (RDS)

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    Research data management (RDM) poses a significant challenge for academic organizations. The creation of library research data services (RDS) requires assessment of their maturity, i.e., the primary objective of this study. Its authors have set out to probe the nationwide level of library RDS maturity, based on the RDS maturity model, as proposed by Cox et al. (2019), while making use of natural language processing (NLP) tools, typical for big data analysis. The secondary objective consisted in determining the actual suitability of the above-referenced tools for this particular type of assessment. Web scraping, based on 72 keywords, and completed twice, allowed the authors to select from the list of 320 libraries that run RDS, i.e., 38 (2021) and 42 (2022), respectively. The content of the websites run by the academic libraries offering a scope of RDM services was then appraised in some depth. The findings allowed the authors to identify the geographical distribution of RDS (academic centers of various sizes), a scope of activities undertaken in the area of research data (divided into three clusters, i.e., compliance, stewardship, and transformation), and overall potential for their prospective enhancement. Although the present study was carried within a single country only (Poland), its protocol may easily be adapted for use in any other countries, with a view to making a viable comparison of pertinent findings

    Research Data: Who will share what, with whom, when, and why?

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    The deluge of scientific research data has excited the general public, as well as the scientific community, with the possibilities for better understanding of scientific problems, from climate to culture. For data to be available, researchers must be willing and able to share them. The policies of governments, funding agencies, journals, and university tenure and promotion committees also influence how, when, and whether research data are shared. Data are complex objects. Their purposes and the methods by which they are produced vary widely across scientific fields, as do the criteria for sharing them. To address these challenges, it is necessary to examine the arguments for sharing data and how those arguments match the motivations and interests of the scientific community and the public. Four arguments are examined: to make the results of publicly funded data available to the public, to enable others to ask new questions of extant data, to advance the state of science, and to reproduce research. Libraries need to consider their role in the face of each of these arguments, and what expertise and systems they require for data curation.

    Semantic Assistance for Data Utilization and Curation

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    We propose that most data stores for large organizations are ill-designed for the future, due to limited searchability of the databases. The study of the Semantic Web has been an emerging technology since first proposed by Berners-Lee. New vocabularies have emerged, such as FOAF, Dublin Core, and PROV-O ontologies. These vocabularies, combined, can relate people, places, things, and events. Technologies developed for the Semantic Web, namely the standardized vocabularies for expressing metadata, will make data easier to utilize. We gathered use cases for various data sources, from human resources to big enterprise. Most of our use cases reflect real-world data. We developed a software package for transforming data into these semantic vocabularies, and developed a method of querying via graphical constructs. The development and testing proved itself to be useful. We conclude that data can be preserved or revived through the use of the metadata techniques for the Semantic Web

    Semantic Assistance for Data Utilization and Curation

    Get PDF
    We propose that most data stores for large organizations are ill-designed for the future, due to limited searchability of the databases. The study of the Semantic Web has been an emerging technology since first proposed by Berners-Lee. New vocabularies have emerged, such as FOAF, Dublin Core, and PROV-O ontologies. These vocabularies, combined, can relate people, places, things, and events. Technologies developed for the Semantic Web, namely the standardized vocabularies for expressing metadata, will make data easier to utilize. We gathered use cases for various data sources, from human resources to big enterprise. Most of our use cases reflect real-world data. We developed a software package for transforming data into these semantic vocabularies, and developed a method of querying via graphical constructs. The development and testing proved itself to be useful. We conclude that data can be preserved or revived through the use of the metadata techniques for the Semantic Web
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