A Content Analysis of Library Vendor Privacy Policies: Do They Meet Our Standards?

Librarians have a long history of protecting user privacy, but they have done seemingly little to understand or influence the privacy policies of library resource vendors that increasingly collect user information through Web 2.0-style personalization features. After citing evidence that college students value privacy, this study used content analysis to determine the degree to which the privacy policies of 27 major vendors meet standards articulated by the library profession and information technology industry. While most vendors have privacy policies, the policy provisions fall short on many library profession standards and show little support for the library Code of Ethics

Exploiting open standards in academic web services

In Digital Library-related technologies, there is a whole host of open standards and protocols that are at varying stages of definition or emergence and acceptance or agreement. Nevertheless, specifically in an academic context, these have led to some valuable improvements in the quality and value of services provided to teachers, learners and researchers alike. However, it often remains difficult for these information seekers to find relevant resources that are not immediately 'visible', they may be effectively hidden within database-driven web services or proprietary applications. The focus of this paper is upon a project based at the UK academic data centre, MIMAS, which provides web-based services to the education community in the UK, Ireland and beyond. The project's principle aim was to increase the visibility and accessibility of 'appropriate' resources by exploiting a number of relevant open standards and initiatives to ensure interoperability. This principally required focusing on machine-to-machine metadata interchange

Preparing LIS Students for a Career in Metadata Librarianship

This study examines the field of metadata librarianship and its emergence from the field of traditional MARC cataloging. Through a survey distributed to academic librarians, public librarians, digital librarians, special librarians, corporate librarians, archivists and others currently working with metadata, data was collected to determine what Library and Information Science students interested in metadata librarianship need to know to pursue a career in this field. The data collected includes job titles encompassing metadata work, the typical career trajectories of those working in the field, education and training received both prior to and after entering the metadata field, and the most frequently used metadata standards in modern library and information science environments. The results of the study revealed the LIS courses metadata specialists have found most useful to their current work, which standards are most frequently being used and areas where LIS programs could improve current course offerings to provide adequate preparation for LIS students interested in this area

Trading Virtual Legacies (Management of Tradition from Alexandria to Internet)

Will the reconstructed library of Alexandria prevent a forthcoming clash of civilizations? Inventing and re-inventing traditions requires total quality management and multiple networking in shifting alliances in the information space. Stock exchange of cultural forms has long abandoned the golden standards of Enlightenment and follows a theory of cultural relativity and an international political economy of attention.Virtual legacies;cultural relativity;detraditionalization;political economy of attention;re-enchantment

An in silico MS/MS library for automatic annotation of novel FAHFA lipids.

BackgroundA new lipid class named 'fatty acid esters of hydroxyl fatty acids' (FAHFA) was recently discovered in mammalian adipose tissue and in blood plasma and some FAHFAs were found to be associated with type 2 diabetes. To facilitate the automatic annotation of FAHFAs in biological specimens, a tandem mass spectra (MS/MS) library is needed. Due to the limitation of the commercial available standard compounds, we proposed building an in silico MS/MS library to extend the coverage of molecules.ResultsWe developed a computer-generated library with 3267 tandem mass spectra (MS/MS) for 1089 FAHFA species. FAHFA spectra were generated based on authentic standards with negative mode electrospray ionization and 10, 20, and 40 V collision induced dissociation at 4 spectra/s as used in in ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-QTOF mass spectrometry studies. However, positional information of the hydroxyl group is only obtained either at lower QTOF spectra acquisition rates of 1 spectrum/s or at the MS(3) level in ion trap instruments. Therefore, an additional set of 4290 fragment-rich MS/MS spectra was created to enable distinguishing positional FAHFA isomers. The library was generated based on ion fragmentations and ion intensities of FAHFA external reference standards, developing a heuristic model for fragmentation rules and extending these rules to large swaths of computer-generated structures of FAHFAs with varying chain lengths, degrees of unsaturation and hydroxyl group positions. Subsequently, we validated the new in silico library by discovering several new FAHFA species in egg yolk, showing that this library enables high-throughput screening of FAHFA lipids in various biological matrices.ConclusionsThe developed library and templates are freely available for commercial or noncommercial use at http://fiehnlab.ucdavis.edu/staff/yanma/fahfa-lipid-library. This in silico MS/MS library allows users to annotate FAHFAs from accurate mass tandem mass spectra in an easy and fast manner with NIST MS Search or PepSearch software. The developing template is provided for advanced users to modify the parameters and export customized libraries according to their instrument features. Graphical abstractExample of experimental and in silico MS/MS spectra for FAHFA lipids

KIIT Digital Library: An open hypermedia Application

The massive use of Web technologies has spurred a new revolution in information storing and retrieving. It has always been an issue whether to incorporate hyperlinks embedded in a document or to store them separately in a link base. Research effort has been concentrated on the development of link services that enable hypermedia functionality to be integrate into the general computing environment and allow linking from all tools on the browser or desktop. KIIT digital library is such an application that focuses mainly on architecture and protocols of Open Hypermedia Systems (OHS), providing on-line document authoring, browsing, cataloguing, searching and updating features. The WWW needs fundamentally new frameworks and concepts to support new search and indexing functionality. This is because of the frequent use of digital archives and to maintain huge amount of database and documents. These digital materials range from electronic versions of books and journals offered by traditional publishers to manuscripts, photographs, maps, sound recordings and similar materials digitized from libraries' own special collections to new electronic scholarly and scientific databases developed through the collaboration of researchers, computer and information scientists, and librarians. Metadata in catalogue systems are an indispensable tool to find information and services in networks. Technological advances provide new opportunities to facilitate the process of collecting and maintaining metadata and to facilitate using catalogue systems. The overall objective is how to make best use of catalogue systems. Information systems such as the World Wide Web, Digital Libraries, inventories of satellite images and other repositories contain more data than ever before, are globally distributed, easy to use and, therefore, become accessible to huge, heterogeneous user groups. For KIIT Digital Library, we have used Resource Development Framework (RDF) and Dublin Core (DC) standards to incorporate metadata. Overall KIIT digital library provides electronic access to information in many different forms. Recent technological advances make the storage and transmission of digital information possible. This project is to design and implement a cataloguing system of the digital library system suitable for storage, indexing, and retrieving information and providing that information across the Internet. The goal is to allow users to quickly search indices to locate segments of interests and view and manipulate these segments on their remote computers

The Quest for Electronic Resource Management Standards and Tools

Chapter 6 of 8.Libraries and vendors face significant challenges in the new digital publishing environment. One of these challenges is to manage the information and workflows necessary to acquire and provide access to electronic resources. The growth of electronic journals and databases has both complicated and transformed the acquisition and servicing of library materials. New information and workflows are required to evaluate, select, acquire, license, catalog, and manage electronic products throughout their life-cycle. Current library systems and standards have not kept pace with these changes. In the absence of existing software solutions, many libraries have begun to design and build local automated tools to address this gap. Surveys of locally developed electronic resource management systems reveal a high concentration of shared goals, issues and functional specifications, indicating that the time may be right for a collaborative approach and the establishment of best practices and standards. This chapter will describe the progress that is being made on this front by participants in the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Electronic Resource Management Initiative (http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm).Cornell University Librar

Library and information science publishing : global open access

Brief article describing E-LIS, an open access repository for library and information science material in a range of formats and languages. E-LIS was set up in 2003 with initial funding from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, in line with the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) and Eprints movements, and based on Open Archive Initiative (OAI) standards

Running and Maintaining an ICT-Based Library in a Developing Economy: The Covenant University Experience

Information and Communication Technology has revolutionized library and Information sen,ices delivery across the globe. The paper examines the Covenant University experience as a model to encourage libraries in developing economies that leveraging with international standards and benchmarks as well as best practices is possible. The superiority of ICT-based library over its manua