Extracting Meaningful Metadata

The paper identifies the importance of context based metadata extraction for more meaningful web. It further discusses context thesaurus approach for metadata extraction

Electronic Collection Management and Electronic Information Services

This post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of the article submitted to IUPUI Scholar Works as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.As the life cycle of information products has become increasingly digital from “cradle to grave”, the nature of electronic information management has dramatically changed. These changes have brought new strategies and methods as well as new issues and challenges. At the bottom line the services are increasingly delivered to a desktop from distributed publishers or information providers. Information organizations act either as primary information providers or as brokers between the user and the primary service provider. This paper covers developments in the factors and strategies affecting collection management and access. It discusses major trends in electronic user services including electronic information delivery, information discovery and electronic reference. Finally, it addresses the challenges in user and personnel education in response to this electronic environment and an increasingly information literate user population

Establishing Twenty-First-Century Information Fluency

In an effort to infuse information fluency into programming and curriculum, consideration of the learning environment and methods for integrating technology is essential

Project-, problem-, and inquiry-based learning

Inquiry-based learning and related approaches such as project- and problem-based learning respond to the increased availability of information in a networked world by emphasizing the location and application of information by the learner rather than its transmission from teacher to learner. The role of teacher necessarily shifts toward being a designer and facilitator of projects through which students learn rather than the primary source of knowledge in the classroom. That shift is facilitated by the application of digital technologies to initiate learning activities, access and process information, and present results. It confronts teachers with challenges in relation to the relative emphases on content and process in learning and assessment, and the role of learners in deciding what is learned and how

Electronic resources and institutional repositories in informal scholarly communication and publishing

The aim of institutional repositories is to aid the management and dissemination of the increasingly copious amount of scholarly electronic resources produced by academics. To date most research has focused on the impact for formal scholarly publishing. The purpose of this exploratory study is to discover the impact of IRs on the visibility and use of digital resources with particular focus on resources outside the formal publishing framework. An online survey and interviews with repository managers were conducted. A link analysis study was undertaken to determine what types of web resources were linking to items within repositories. The findings show that a wide range of non-formal e-resources are accepted and repository managers’ attitudes are positive towards their importance. In practice the range of resources is limited and mainly text based. The development of typologies for non-formal resources is done in an ad hoc manner. Workflow processes for content acquisition in repositories vary considerably and are quite complex in particular for non-formal e-resources. The findings show a lack of cohesive discourse between repository objectives and collection policies and actual work flow processes. Repository managers consider usage data important and its most popular uses are for advocacy and securing funding. Interpretation of usage data focuses on formal resources but evidence suggests that non-formal resources play an important part in repository visibility. Blogs, academic pages and discussion forums are important web sources that link to items within repositories. The study demonstrates that institutional repositories are not particularly successful at handling resources outside the framework of formal publishing. The system caters largely towards eprints, in particular postprints. A fundamental challenge, if scholarly communication is to move towards new forms of communication and publishing enabled by digital technologies, is to find ways to effectively name, manage and integrate non-formal electronic resources into the institutional repository