354,707 research outputs found
Revamping an Academic Library with Users’ Voice: A Pandemic Response
The paper discusses how a small academic library has incorporated user perspectives when redesigning and reimagining the library amid pandemic uncertainties. During the Fall of 2020, when the University of Calgary in Qatar (UCQ) library was reopening after the pandemic, the library space was moved to a much smaller space to accommodate additional physical space requirements for undergraduate classes. One of the immediate challenges of the library was to continue providing access to library resources with less disruption while keeping users informed of unexpected changes. The library primarily targeted keeping users informed of the changes and providing access to resources while following COVID safety guidelines. With Covid, the library had to quickly adapt to provide resources oriented toward online learning in addition to references and instructional services. That said, the library also faced limitations with the website for dynamic and frequent content changes and sharing certain resources like audio-visual materials. The library website was redesigned and migrated to a new platform with resources tailored for blended learning to overcome digital hindrances and enhance user engagement. As with the end of the academic term, the library conducted a user experience survey and informal discussions - with students, staff, and faculties - to compile feedback and perspectives on the physical and digital space of the library. We have brought extensive changes to the library by refurbishing study spaces, comfortable seating, unique reading corners, improved safety measures, revised policies, and additional technology resources. The inclusive approach of incorporating the user\u27s voice while recognizing the administrative challenges can significantly impact the library\u27s user experience
Planning the digital library development between tradition and innovation
Libraries, archives and museums are centuries old institutions which have been committed to physical, concepual and long term access to the artefacts of human knowledge, as books, objects, documents. These cultural institutions are now confronting with enormous challenges brought about by the shift of these artifacts from analog to digital format. It is not only a problem of dealing with technologies, or simply with a different support of information. Digital objects and resources, physical represented by digit, have different properties than information stored in stone, papyrus, paper. Since the vision of digital library, by Vannevar Bush, the functionalities requested to a digital library are more than a simple library. The new role of digital library is providing an information space which facilitates communication, resources sharing and knowledge creatio
Technology rich learning spaces - opportunities and risks
In this workshop participants explore the potential of the technology rich group learning spaces such as those in Bournemouth University’s SCONUL Library Design Award winning The Sir Michael Cobham Library. The development of these spaces was informed by the research undertaken by Educause1 and the outcomes of Bournemouth’s eRes2,3, which focussed on the pedagogies influencing e-learning with e-resources.
Participants will be assigned to groups and each group will be presented with different profiles such as netgen4 and digital immigrant 5. The concept of technology rich learning space will be introduced before the groups engage in a “learning activity” to consider the relationships between technology, space and learning outcomes. The group will then identify and share opportunities and challenges from the student and staff perspective.
This workshop was successfully used in November 2008 with Bournemouth University’s PGCert students, who have already begun to incorporate the opportunities presented by technology rich learning spaces into their teaching
Polishing the Dimond: changing spaces for enhanced services to the UNH community
In 2007 the UNH Library orchestrated several space redesign projects to enable new services and functions within the Library and adapt to changing academic support needs. These projects included the creation of a digital imaging lab in an unused preservation workroom, and the redesign of the Government Documents Department office to accommodate the transfer of its public service desk to the IT Support Center of the new Dimond Academic Commons. Creativity and flexibility by all participants as well as a shared goal of providing the best possible service to students, faculty, and staff helped meet challenges such as tight deadlines, coordination and communication of information among several units, loss of physical space, and a need for extensive infrastructure work.
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference - Space 2.0: Small-Scale Library Redesign Projects, Dartmouth, NH, October 3, 200
Digital and Physical: Coevolving Formats in Today\u27s Research Libraries
Academic libraries have been at pivotal crossroads for some years as deans and their staffers realize the perplexing shortage of shelf space for print volumes while at the same time determining the optimum balance of physical resources on shelves in light of the exploding world of online digital information. The question of what is the best format for the library users’ research, teaching, and scholarship continues to be analyzed, assessed, and discussed. As a result, new and innovative library business models are evolving that consider dramatically revisioning floors of library space to accommodate the ever‐changing needs of library users while at the same time providing a limitless quantity of research resources. Various methodologies, as it relates to library collections, have emerged from pioneering thinkers affiliated with such organizations as OCLC, ITHAKA with its JSTOR & Portico initiatives, the HathiTrust Digital Library, and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). There are a host of challenges and possibilities as library systems collaborate and dialogue with each other and with these organizations’ representatives. When actions are implemented to effectively accommodate what the evolving society of information‐seeking users must have for their educational and research needs, then positive perceptions of a library’s critical role in higher education can and will surface. The University of Maryland Library System, one of the newest members of the CIC, has been able to take enormous strides in its evolving business model. Perfecting the coevolution of formats—print and digital—thus meeting the demands of an ever‐growing number of users, paired with the libraries’ renewed confidence in reducing the physical collections’ redundancy based on the notion of shared print repositories (SPR) have been tested and the new model is working. This discussion will center around the various stages, some of the challenges, and a few promising outcomes resulting from co‐evolving information formats at the University of Maryland Libraries—one of the CIC’s east coast hubs of collective collections
Library, Disrupted: Virtual Engagement with the Academic Library in the Time of Quarantine
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the academic library as a place for learning, connection, and wellness. The shift to virtual services has significantly changed how students are interacting with the library space, introducing challenges and opportunities for library staff to revitalize and re-center the library beyond the physical constraints of brick and mortar. This session will provide a look at how two university libraries have responded to this call for re-centering the library as place through virtual programming and outreach services. Presenters will discuss their experiences and insights with creating new and unique virtual programming across health and wellness, teaching and learning, and community engagement. Participants will also take part during the session in creating a digital care package
National Union Catalog: Asset or Albatross?
Midsize academic libraries face many unique challenges, particularly in the greyer areas of collection management. This presentation addresses these challenges faced by libraries in midsize institutions and how they differ from those at larger research institutions. It focuses on the presenters’ study of midsize library attitudes toward retaining or weeding the iconic National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints and the reasoning behind each. The generations of librarians who used the NUC and other analog sets are passing from the scene in academic libraries, and the incoming digital native librarian knows little or nothing about them. The fate of the NUC is examined. The example of de-selection decisions regarding voluminous paper sets of pre-digital finding aids is also discussed. Ultimately, the presentation aims to discuss the ways in which midsize libraries can find in building midsize library collections, which will balance out the research needs against the demands of limited space and budgets
National Union Catalog: Asset or Albatross?
Summary of Conference Presentation: Midsize academic libraries face many unique challenges, particularly in the greyer areas of collection management. This presentation addresses these challenges faced by libraries in midsize institutions and how they differ from those at larger research institutions. It focuses on the presenters’ study of midsize library attitudes toward retaining or weeding the iconic National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints and the reasoning behind each. The generations of librarians who used the NUC and other analog sets are passing from the scene in academic libraries, and the incoming digital native librarian knows little or nothing about them. The fate of the NUC is examined. The example of de-selection decisions regarding voluminous paper sets of pre-digital finding aids is also discussed. Ultimately, the presentation aims to discuss the ways in which midsize libraries can find in building midsize library collections, which will balance out the research needs against the demands of limited space and budgets
Expert knowledge management based on ontology in a digital library
The architecture of the future Digital Libraries should be able to allow any users to access available
knowledge resources from anywhere and at any time and efficient manner. Moreover to the individual user,
there is a great deal of useless information in addition to the substantial amount of useful information. The
goal is to investigate how to best combine Artificial Intelligent and Semantic Web technologies for semantic
searching across largely distributed and heterogeneous digital libraries. The Artificial Intelligent and
Semantic Web have provided both new possibilities and challenges to automatic information processing in
search engine process. The major research tasks involved are to apply appropriate infrastructure for specific
digital library system construction, to enrich metadata records with ontologies and enable semantic
searching upon such intelligent system infrastructure. We study improving the efficiency of search methods
to search a distributed data space like a Digital Library. This paper outlines the development of a CaseBased
Reasoning prototype system based in an ontology for retrieval information of the Digital Library
University of Seville. The results demonstrate that the used of expert system and the ontology into the
retrieval process, the effectiveness of the information retrieval is enhanced
Makeshift: an experimental stage for spatial exchange
Underpinning this architectural design and discourse is the exchange of digital and physical space. An exchange that can be multi-directional, rapidly shifting embodiments of space between modes of digital and physical models. The parameters for translation are defined by a digital culture in flux, perpetually evolving new mediums for building real and virtual space. A new direct link has been established between design and construction, where digital methods of conceptualisation, modification and fabrication are questioning the historic relationship between architecture and its production systems. Sited at the University of the Witwatersrand, this thesis explores architecture’s role as a mediator for digital and physical translation. By proposing an experimental stage for spatial exchange, the building facilitates the collaborative and interdisciplinary integration of students, academics, industry partners and public around the archiving, projecting, conceptualising and fabricating of digital model space. As a hybrid, the building reimagines the factory, studio, library and archive typologies, subsequently speculating a new contextual role for university architecture that is educational, industrial, cultural and public.
As a by-product of an evolving digital culture, digitals models can be conceptualised, manipulated and embedded with intelligence. Advancing applications of virtual reality, however, free these digital models from conventional two-dimensional modes through immersive simulations that enable users to engage and interact with digital models of all scales. Furthermore, virtual projection mediums have the potential to transform how designers conceive, perceive and modify digital model space through the advent of intelligent sensor and tracking devices that allow human gestures to shape digital form. While digital models have traditionally been generated from nothing, new three-dimensional scanning technologies enable the capturing of small to large-scale physical space digitally. Finally, digital and robotic fabrication tools facilitate the shift from digital to real space by constructing physical objects with a greater complexity, speed, scale, affordability and material composition than previously possible.
Comprised of a sequence of interconnected ‘fields’ – namely scanning, projection, studio and fabrication fields – the building facilitates the local and global exchange of digital and physical model space. As a platform for integrating all the constituents of spatial exchange, this design and discourse challenges traditional modes of praxis by speculating an alternative future for architecture, technology, education and greater society
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