4,510 research outputs found
21st-century scholarship and Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the worldâs fifth most-used Web site, is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, âWikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptanceâ, Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology. He concluded that âIf Wikipedia is the first port of call, as it already seems to be, for information requirement traffic, then there is a commitment to build on Open Educational Resources (OERs) of various kinds and improve their quality.â In a similar approach to the Geological Society event that Whalley describes, Sarah Fahmy of JISC worked with Wikimedia and the British Library on a World War One (WWI) Editathon. There is a rich discourse about the way that academics relate to Wikipedia
Responding to challenges: the training and educating of the information professional for the next millenium
â⊠in most fields the issue of the professional competence and qualification of individuals is viewed as an integral part of the quality assurance of organisations and the services that they provide.â This view has long been embraced within the librarianship profession. Librarians and information professionals have a strong culture of responding to new opportunities in professional development to ensure that their skills meet the continually changing environments in which they work. This is illustrated by initiatives such as the Library Associations programme of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Masters programmes for librarians entering management positions, increased availability of qualifications and training for paraprofessional staff and the adoption of the government instituted system of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SNVQs). Two further initiatives have been undertaken as a response to concern about the pace of change and the importance of sustaining an adequately skilled professional workforce. Firstly, the Library and Information Studies Training and Education Network (LISTEN), is working with employers, the profession and educational institutions to identify, CPD and post-qualification competencies required when staff have been in post for several or more years. Secondly, the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) which aims to accelerate the development and uptake of the âelectronic libraryâ has recognised the need for CPD and has funded a number of training and awareness projects including EduLib. This paper will examine the role, education and training of information professionals from two distinct points of view. First the paper will concentrate on initial undergraduate training which students receive at an established Department of Library and Information Studies â with particular regard to the training and education of business information in order to prepare students for the global business world. The second part of the paper will deal with an aspect of continuing professional development for which there is an increasing demand in academic libraries â teaching skills for librarians. The paper will focus on EduLib â a development project which aims to provide a nationally recognised and accredited network of trainers in academic libraries
INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report
INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives
Learning object metadata surrogates in search result interfaces: user evaluation, design and content
The purpose of this research was to evaluate user interaction with learning object
metadata surrogates both in terms of content and presentation. The main objectives of
this study were: (1) to review the literature on learning object metadata and user-centred
evaluation of metadata surrogates in the context of cognitive information
retrieval (including user-centred relevance and usability research); (2) to develop a framework for the evaluation of user interaction with learning
object metadata surrogates in search result interfaces; (3) to investigate the usability of metadata surrogates in search result interfaces
of learning object repositories (LORs) in terms of various presentation aspects
(such as amount of information, structure and highlighting of query terms) as a
means for facilitating the user relevance judgment process; (4) to investigate in-depth the type of content that should be included in learning
object metadata surrogates in order to facilitate the process of relevance
judgment; (5) to provide a set of recommendationsâguidelines for the design of learning
object metadata surrogates in search result interfaces both in terms of content
and presentation. [Continues.
Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices in Selected Disciplines
A cross-disciplinary examination of the user behaviours involved in seeking
and evaluating data is surprisingly absent from the research data discussion.
This review explores the data retrieval literature to identify commonalities in
how users search for and evaluate observational research data. Two analytical
frameworks rooted in information retrieval and science technology studies are
used to identify key similarities in practices as a first step toward
developing a model describing data retrieval
Implementing a resource list management system in an academic library
Purpose â The purpose of this paper is to review the key components of the introduction of a new resource list management system (RLMS) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) using the Aspire application from Talis Education. It explains the key service goals; the implementation milestones; the main technical challenges which needed to be addressed; and the dynamic relationship between the rollout of the RLMS and existing selection, acquisition and resource delivery processes
Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages
E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records.
This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.
AROMA: Automatic Generation of Radio Maps for Localization Systems
WLAN localization has become an active research field recently. Due to the
wide WLAN deployment, WLAN localization provides ubiquitous coverage and adds
to the value of the wireless network by providing the location of its users
without using any additional hardware. However, WLAN localization systems
usually require constructing a radio map, which is a major barrier of WLAN
localization systems' deployment. The radio map stores information about the
signal strength from different signal strength streams at selected locations in
the site of interest. Typical construction of a radio map involves measurements
and calibrations making it a tedious and time-consuming operation. In this
paper, we present the AROMA system that automatically constructs accurate
active and passive radio maps for both device-based and device-free WLAN
localization systems. AROMA has three main goals: high accuracy, low
computational requirements, and minimum user overhead. To achieve high
accuracy, AROMA uses 3D ray tracing enhanced with the uniform theory of
diffraction (UTD) to model the electric field behavior and the human shadowing
effect. AROMA also automates a number of routine tasks, such as importing
building models and automatic sampling of the area of interest, to reduce the
user's overhead. Finally, AROMA uses a number of optimization techniques to
reduce the computational requirements. We present our system architecture and
describe the details of its different components that allow AROMA to achieve
its goals. We evaluate AROMA in two different testbeds. Our experiments show
that the predicted signal strength differs from the measurements by a maximum
average absolute error of 3.18 dBm achieving a maximum localization error of
2.44m for both the device-based and device-free cases.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figure
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