Using IODyne: Illustrations and Examples

"IODyne (pronounced ""iodine"") is an Internet client program that allows one to retrieve information from servers by dynamically combining information objects. Information objects are abstract representations of bibliographic data, typically titles (or title keywords), author names, subject and classification identifiers, and full-text search terms. IODyne is being developed as part of a library research project, and so the emphasis on bibliographic data. The retrieval paradigm described here can be extended to other kinds of data as well."published or submitted for publicatio

The civilizing process in London’s Old Bailey

The jury trial is a critical point where the state and its citizens come together to define the limits of acceptable behavior. Here we present a large-scale quantitative analysis of trial transcripts from the Old Bailey that reveal a major transition in the nature of this defining moment. By coarse-graining the spoken word testimony into synonym sets and dividing the trials based on indictment, we demonstrate the emergence of semantically distinct violent and nonviolent trial genres. We show that although in the late 18th century the semantic content of trials for violent offenses is functionally indistinguishable from that for nonviolent ones, a long-term, secular trend drives the system toward increasingly clear distinctions between violent and nonviolent acts. We separate this process into the shifting patterns that drive it, determine the relative effects of bureaucratic change and broader cultural shifts, and identify the synonym sets most responsible for the eventual genre distinguishability. This work provides a new window onto the cultural and institutional changes that accompany the monopolization of violence by the state, described in qualitative historical analysis as the civilizing process

The JRC-Acquis: A multilingual aligned parallel corpus with 20+ languages

We present a new, unique and freely available parallel corpus containing European Union (EU) documents of mostly legal nature. It is available in all 20 official EUanguages, with additional documents being available in the languages of the EU candidate countries. The corpus consists of almost 8,000 documents per language, with an average size of nearly 9 million words per language. Pair-wise paragraph alignment information produced by two different aligners (Vanilla and HunAlign) is available for all 190+ language pair combinations. Most texts have been manually classified according to the EUROVOC subject domains so that the collection can also be used to train and test multi-label classification algorithms and keyword-assignment software. The corpus is encoded in XML, according to the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines. Due to the large number of parallel texts in many languages, the JRC-Acquis is particularly suitable to carry out all types of cross-language research, as well as to test and benchmark text analysis software across different languages (for instance for alignment, sentence splitting and term extraction).Comment: A multilingual textual resource with meta-data freely available for download at http://langtech.jrc.it/JRC-Acquis.htm

Trends in legislations affecting library and information practice in Uganda

Introduction: legislation and ethics as one of the top five themes that preoccupied LIS scholars and practitioners in the first decade of the 21st century. This is true for Library and Information Science and its related disciplines such as Records, information and archives, archeology and museum study. Objective: This paper attempts to discuss the various trends in legislations relating to the Library and Information Science discipline and profession. Methodology: In this research, reviewing literature was used to define the main concepts of this research. Findings: There is a noticeable attribute that more legislations are likely to be drafted and passed. Indeed, there are noticeable trends in the nature of legislation relating to LIS which include the shift from a more right based form of legislations to legislations concerned with social order; a shift towards embracing changing technologies with in the legislations; thirdly, there is a shift towards the internationalisation; a shift towards open access to LIS material from closed access; the adoption of the Western values of LIS values; and adoption of LIS perspectives in other legislations Conclusion: Professionals cannot afford the comfort of waiting for new developments to be handed down to them but rather equip themselves with competences to; locate and evaluate primary and secondary material, understanding its value as a professional decision-making resource; apply existing legal tenets to various library environments and develop practical compliance; and express professional responsibility, views concerning the legal problems in the library and information sciences in which one is situated

The NASA scientific and technical information system: Its scope and coverage

A general description of the subject areas covered in the NASA scientific and technical information system is presented. In addition, it establishes subject-based selection criteria for guiding decisions related to the addition of new documents to the NASA collection

Interactive tools for the preservation, dissemination and study of silk heritage : an introduction to the SILKNOW Project

Silk was a major factor for progress in Europe, mostly along the Western Silk Road's network of production and market centers. The silk trade also allowed for the exchange of ideas and innovations, having impacts at economic, technical, functional, cultural and symbolic levels. However, silk has today become a seriously endangered heritage. Although many European specialized museums are devoted to its preservation, they usually lack the size and resources to take advantage of state-of-the-art digital technologies. The aim of this paper is twofold; firstly, we introduce SILKNOW, an interdisciplinary project that has been recently funded by the H2020 Programme of the European Union in order to preserve and promote the heritage of silk textiles; secondly, we introduce a set of interactive tools related to the projec