Integrating E-Books into the Collection: Some Practical Considerations

About five years ago, when many believed digitization would become the panacea for libraries, some of our colleagues predicted that e-books would supplant print. For example, Andrew Pace wrote in 2000: “In five years e-book sales will match those of traditional print; in ten years, e-books will outsell print. There is little doubt left in my mind – e-books are among us and are here to stay.”1 While the proliferation of e-books has not matched the lofty predictions, the availability and usability of e-books is expanding each year. The options for reader and search platforms have increased, more titles are becoming available, prices have stabilized, and selection options have evolved. Library information infrastructure has likewise matured. Remote access by proxy authentication is more widespread than five years ago; some libraries are part of a wireless network enabling students to conduct distributed research; and online distance education is burgeoning. E-books are finally a reasonable option for supplementing the library collection. This paper will provide a short primer on cataloging and access for librarians who are planning to add e-books. While several platforms for e-books exist (such as a digital book on a CD-ROM or a digitized book that the library itself has created), this paper will limit the discussion to the prevalent platform model: a vendor-supplied, web-accessible content, such as NetLibary

A Multingual Web-based Educational System for Professional Musicians

This paper presents the main results of the eContent HARMOS project. The project has developed a webbased educational system for professional musicians. The main idea of the project consists of recording master classes taught by highly recognised maestros and annotate this multimedia material using an educational musical taxonomy and automatic annotation tools. Users of the system access a multi-criteria search engine that allows them to find and play video segments according to a combination of criteria, which include instrument, teacher, composer, composition, movement and pedagogical concept. In order to preserve teachers and students rights, a DRM and protection system has been developed. The system is being publicly exploited. This model preserves musical heritage, since these valuable master classes are usually not recorded and it also provides a sustainable model for musical institutions

Social capital and health: the problematic roles of social networks and social surveys

Social capital, social networks, social support and health have all been linked, both theoretically and empirically. However, the relationships between them are far from clear. Surveys of social capital and health often use measures of social networks and social support in order to measure social capital, and this is problematic for two reasons. First, theoretical assumptions about social networks and social support being part of social capital are contestable. Second, the measures used inadequately reflect the complexity and ambivalence of social relationships, often assuming that all social ties and contacts are of similarly value, are mutually reinforcing, and, in some studies, are based on neighbourhoods. All these assumptions should be questioned. Progress in our understanding requires more qualitative research and improved choice of indicators in surveys; social network analysis may be a useful source of methodological and empirical insight

Escaping the Trap of too Precise Topic Queries

At the very center of digital mathematics libraries lie controlled vocabularies which qualify the {\it topic} of the documents. These topics are used when submitting a document to a digital mathematics library and to perform searches in a library. The latter are refined by the use of these topics as they allow a precise classification of the mathematics area this document addresses. However, there is a major risk that users employ too precise topics to specify their queries: they may be employing a topic that is only "close-by" but missing to match the right resource. We call this the {\it topic trap}. Indeed, since 2009, this issue has appeared frequently on the i2geo.net platform. Other mathematics portals experience the same phenomenon. An approach to solve this issue is to introduce tolerance in the way queries are understood by the user. In particular, the approach of including fuzzy matches but this introduces noise which may prevent the user of understanding the function of the search engine. In this paper, we propose a way to escape the topic trap by employing the navigation between related topics and the count of search results for each topic. This supports the user in that search for close-by topics is a click away from a previous search. This approach was realized with the i2geo search engine and is described in detail where the relation of being {\it related} is computed by employing textual analysis of the definitions of the concepts fetched from the Wikipedia encyclopedia.Comment: 12 pages, Conference on Intelligent Computer Mathematics 2013 Bath, U

Undergraduate student perceptions of a free textbook alternative

Version of RecordCourse content for business students should be relevant, accessible and affordable. Business and library faculty collaborated to provide undergraduate students enrolled in three sections of Introduction to Marketing with a free online content option. This option included embedded links for all course key terms and concept strategically placed in a Blackboard course site. The 87 enrolled students earned extra credit by participating in 10 surveys throughout the semester. Using content format (traditional textbook, e-book only or combination of both) as an independent variable, authors measured student perception of content quality and convenience. Findings indicate that students who used the embedded ebook links prefer this option to traditional textbooks for relevancy, accessibility and affordability. This paper discusses findings and proposes a model that promotes business and library faculty collaboration, the harnessing of existing electronic library resources and distribution of those resources to students in face-to-face, hybrid and online course environments. Recommendations for application of this model to other courses and disciplines are also discussed.Lynch, A. & Ratto, B. (2012). Undergraduate student perception of a free textbook alternative. Business Education & Accreditation, 4(1), 25-32

E-reading in organizations: Users' satisfaction and preference

This paper defines electronic reading (e-reading) and then continues to discuss the diverse definitions of the main resource of e-reading, which are, electronic books (e-books). It then proceeds to describe the formats and standards of existing e-book initiatives, which are gaining wider interest since the introduction of portable electronic reading devices and software-based readers that provide users with a more realistic book reading experience. Advantages, disadvantages, and problems with paper-based reading are also explained. In addition, a study concerning an evaluation of e-reading satisfaction is described. Three different e-book formats (LIT, PDF, and HTML) were utilised to accomplish the primary aims of the study, which were to identify the most preferred format, associated software-based reader (Microsoft Reader, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer), and the potential of e-reading in the workplace. Based on a proposed preferred index, the results seem to suggest that Microsoft Reader is more preferable when compared to the other two. However, most participants preferred reading on paper rather than on screen. Although this was the case, some participants would e-read depending on resources and situations

Integrating Traditional Research-Journal Based Sources with Trade and Web-Based Sources in Coursework

Due to the rapidly changing nature of telecommunications, it is challenging to be able to introduce timely topics into this curriculum. At the same time, educators are challenged with preparing students to function in the workplace where change is a given, as on average workers spend an average of 9.25 hours per week looking for or analyzing data [4]. Initiatives to keep instruction relevant and prepare students to be information literate mandate that students be able to discover, digest, and put into context new information about technologies. This skill is developed and enhanced through the use of research projects. This work describes the reengineering of the traditional research paper project for a telecommunications course

Developing a Taxonomy of Semantic Relations in the Oil Spill Domain of Knowledge Discovery

The paper presents the rationale, significance, method and procedure of building a taxonomy of semantic relations in the oil spill domain for supporting knowledge discovery through inference. Difficult problems during the development of the taxonomy are discussed and partial solutions are proposed. A preliminary functional evaluation of the taxonomy for supporting knowledge discovery was performed. The study proposes more research problems than solutions