38,489 research outputs found
Employment in the Online Industry: Personal Reflections on a Nontraditional Library Career
published or submitted for publicatio
Archiving the Relaxed Consistency Web
The historical, cultural, and intellectual importance of archiving the web
has been widely recognized. Today, all countries with high Internet penetration
rate have established high-profile archiving initiatives to crawl and archive
the fast-disappearing web content for long-term use. As web technologies
evolve, established web archiving techniques face challenges. This paper
focuses on the potential impact of the relaxed consistency web design on
crawler driven web archiving. Relaxed consistent websites may disseminate,
albeit ephemerally, inaccurate and even contradictory information. If captured
and preserved in the web archives as historical records, such information will
degrade the overall archival quality. To assess the extent of such quality
degradation, we build a simplified feed-following application and simulate its
operation with synthetic workloads. The results indicate that a non-trivial
portion of a relaxed consistency web archive may contain observable
inconsistency, and the inconsistency window may extend significantly longer
than that observed at the data store. We discuss the nature of such quality
degradation and propose a few possible remedies.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, CIKM 201
Impact of Digital Technology on Library Resource Sharing: Revisiting LABELNET in the Digital Age
The digital environment has facilitated resource sharing by
breaking the time and distance barriers to efficient document delivery. However, for the librarians, this phenomenon has brought more challenging technical and technological issues demanding addition of more knowledge and skills to learn and new standards to develop. The overwhelming speed and growing volume of digital information is now becoming unable to acquire and manage
by single libraries. Resource sharing, which used to be a side business in the librarianship trade, is now becoming the flagship operation in the library projects
National Library (Republic of Mauritius) : Strategic Plan
The National Library of the Republic of Mauritius was established as a body corporate under the National Library Act 1996 No. 32. The main role of the National Library of Mauritius is to build the most comprehensive collection of our national heritage by collecting, receiving and preserving all publications and productions printed and produced in Mauritius for present and future generations. The main source of its acquisition is by means of the legal deposit system as per the National Library Act 1996 which stipulates that every printer in Mauritius is required to deposit free of charge with the Director of the National Library six copies of each publication, be it a book, periodical, report, newspaper or any other printed document. The same rule applies to all the producers in Mauritius who have to deposit six copies of any non-print materials produced. To ensure that access is given to the most comprehensive collection of Mauritiana materials, the National Library has also to acquire all print and non-print materials published abroad, whose subject matter is related to Mauritius. Along with, the National Library will build a collection of foreign reference materials on different subjects of interest to Mauritius. Equally of vital importance to the National Library is the conservation of our cultural heritage – ways and means are being worked out to preserve and conserve documents for generations to come. The aim of the National Library is to become the premier library in Mauritius in the dissemination of both retrospective and current information, utilizing modern techniques and other technological advances. The National Library is at the service of the Mauritian people, for the purpose of their research, scholarship and creativity. This Strategic Plan sets out the vision, strategic management principles, goals, objectives and plan of action that will govern the National Library for the next three years
Electronic Information in School Libraries
Microcomputers have progressed from toys to tools in managing school
libraries. Equipment inventory, circulation, online catalogs, acquisitions,
and serials management/check-in have all been affected. In
addition, high technology has presented new possibilities for educating
young people, and school librarians are faced with a role change as
they rise to meet this challenge.published or submitted for publicatio
Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review
Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its
SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a
significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS)
(including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of
codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made
their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS"
as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight
ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of
what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These
are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and
providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying
the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service
providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers
in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper
examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications)
and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and
ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of
different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple
dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary
producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on
Digital Librarie
Characterization of Microbial Communities Associated with Ceramic Raw Materials as Potential Contributors for the Improvement of Ceramic Rheological Properties
Technical ceramics are being widely employed in the electric power, medical and engineering
industries because of their thermal and mechanical properties, as well as their high resistance qualities.
The manufacture of technical ceramic components involves complex processes, including milling
and stirring of raw materials in aqueous solutions, spray drying and dry pressing. In general, the
spray-dried powders exhibit an important degree of variability in their performance when subjected
to dry-pressing, which affects the efficiency of the manufacturing process. Commercial additives, such
as deflocculants, biocides, antifoam agents, binders, lubricants and plasticizers are thus applied to
ceramic slips. Several bacterial and fungal species naturally occurring in ceramic raw materials, such
as Sphingomonas, Aspergillus and Aureobasidium, are known to produce exopolysaccharides. These
extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) may confer unique and potentially interesting properties
on ceramic slips, including viscosity control, gelation, and flocculation. In this study, the microbial
communities present in clay raw materials were identified by both culture methods and DNA-based
analyses to select potential EPS producers based on the scientific literature for further assays based
on the use of EPS for enhancing the performance of technical ceramics. Potential exopolysaccharide
producers were identified in all samples, such as Sphingomonas sp., Pseudomonas xanthomarina,
P. stutzeri, P. koreensis, Acinetobacter lwoffi, Bacillus altitudinis and Micrococcus luteus, among bacteria.
Five fungi (Penicillium citrinum, Aspergillus niger, Fusarium oxysporum, Acremonium persicinum and
Rhodotorula mucilaginosa) were also identified as potential EPS producers.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia-EXPL/CTM-CER/0637/201
User Needs and Library Services in Agricultural Sciences
published or submitted for publicatio
A molecular insight into algal-oomycete warfare : cDNA analysis of Ectocarpus siliculosus infected with the basal oomycete Eurychasma dicksonii
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Access and usability issues of scholarly electronic publications
This chapter looks at the various access and usability issues related to scholarly information resources. It first looks at the various channels through which a user can get access to scholarly electronic publications. It then discusses the issues and studies surrounding usability. Some important parameters for measuring the usability of information access systems have been identified. Finally the chapter looks at the major problems facing the users in getting access to scholarly information through today's hybrid libraries, and mentions some possible measures to resolve these problems
- …