Data DNA: The Next Generation of Statistical Metadata

Describes the components of a complete statistical metadata system and suggests ways to create and structure metadata for better access and understanding of data sets by diverse users

How to Find Suitable Ontologies Using an Ontology-based WWW Broker

Knowledge reuse by means of outologies now faces three important problems: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, time-consuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called ReferenceOntology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) (ONTO)2Agent, the ontology-based www broker about ontologies that uses the Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints. (ONTO)~Agent is available at http://delicias.dia.fi.upm.es/REFERENCE ONTOLOGY

A Guide to Disability Statistics from the 2000 Decennial Census

This User Guide addresses disability data available in the 2000 Decennial Census. A decennial census of the United States is conducted every ten years to provide statistics at the national, state, and local levels. The short form of the decennial census collects basic demographic data from five out of six households, and the long form collects the same basic demographic data, plus social and economic data from the remaining one in six households. Data are also collected from group quarters (GQ), which include individuals living in institutions, a population that is rarely included in surveys. The primary purpose of the demographic data is to draw Congressional districts. The social and economic data from the long form is especially valuable because it provides social and economic statistics for small geographic areas (such as counties, towns, and Congressional districts) that are estimated in a uniform manner across the United States. The Census 2000 long form included six questions that are used to identify the population with disabilities. These data can be extremely useful to disability policymakers, disability service providers, and the disability advocacy community. This User Guide discusses the variety of information on disability, demographic characteristics, employment, and economic well-being available from Census 2000 long form data

Digital age: challenges for libraries

Information technology and globalization are the two most influential forces of the modern times. IT has given new meanings to the transmission, dissemination and storage of information; whereas globalisation is reducing the importance of geographical boundaries. Libraries as an important social institution have been affected by these changes. Information retrieval, information storage and information transmission are the core competencies of the libraries. Digital age characterized by efficient graphic user interface, digital imaging, efficient transfer and storage of texts, is presenting important challenges for the libraries. Information privacy, copyrights, and information security are some of the challenging issues faced by the libraries in digital age. This paper is an attempt to present as well as to discuss the implications of these issues so that strategies can be devised to address them effectively and efficiently

Inter-Domain Integration of Services and Service Management

The evolution of the global telecommunications industry into an open services market presents developers of telecommunication service and management systems with many new challenges. Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of service and management systems over multiple organisational domains. These integration issues have been examined in the ACTS project Prospect by developing a working set of integrated, managed telecommunications services for a user trial. This paper presents the initial results of this work detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services

Post processing of multimedia information - concepts, problems, and techniques

Currently, most research work on multimedia information processing is focused on multimedia information storage and retrieval, especially indexing and content-based access of multimedia information. We consider multimedia information processing should include one more level-post-processing. Here &quot;post-processing&quot; means further processing of retrieved multimedia information, which includes fusion of multimedia information and reasoning with multimedia information to reach new conclusions. In this paper, the three levels of multimedia information processing storage, retrieval, and post-processing- are discussed. The concepts and problems of multimedia information post-processing are identified. Potential techniques that can be used in post-processing are suggested, By highlighting the problems in multimedia information post-processing, hopefully this paper will stimulate further research on this important but ignored topic.<br /