Investigating the Effect of Familiarity with Target Document on Retrieval Success in Group Information Repositories

system they are not familiar with in order to retrieve a file they were told about (for example, a new member of an organization who has to fill out a form may be instructed to look for a template on the organization’s network drive). This individual may encounter difficulties finding the file or experience frustration during the process, as their incomplete knowledge of where the file is in the folder hierarchy or how to start looking for it may lead them to spend a lot of time looking in the wrong places or trying to ‘work out’ where the most likely location of the file might be. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing how successfully and effectively a user is able to retrieve a file from a shared information repository when they may not be fully aware of its contents or location. The re-finding context was a desktop hierarchical folder structure linked to a cloud-based group information repository (Dropbox). RQ1: How does familiarity with the retrieval target influence retrieval success and retrieval efficiency? o Hypothesis: Familiarity with the retrieval target is positively correlated with retrieval success and retrieval efficiency. RQ2: What are common characteristics of re-finding experiences in shared folders? In this study, an elicited personal information retrieval method (detailed in the Literature Review and Section 3.2) is used in conjunction with qualitative methods; as the quantitative data obtained on retrieval outcomes can be linked to the qualitative data gathered from the same participants, this procedure generates explanatory in addition to descriptive information.Bachelor of Scienc

Social Influences on User Behavior in Group Information Repositories.

Group information repositories are systems for organizing and sharing files kept in a central location that all group members can access. These systems are often assumed to be tools for storage and control of files and their metadata, not tools for communication. The purpose of this research is to better understand user behavior in group information repositories, and to determine whether social factors might shape users' choices when labeling and organizing information. Through interviews with group information repository users and analysis of system log data, I found that users tend to restrict their activities in a repository to files they "own," are reluctant to delete files that could potentially be useful to others, dislike the clutter that results, and can become demotivated if no one views files they uploaded. I also conducted an online experiment in which participants labeled and organized short text files into a file-and-folder hierarchy, and later completed search tasks in the hierarchies created by others. Participants came from two intellectual communities, and were instructed to organize the files for one of three different audiences: themselves, someone from the same intellectual community, and someone from the other community. I found that when participants created hierarchies for an audience they imagined was like them, everyone searched more efficiently, regardless of whether they shared community membership with the hierarchy's creator. Further, analyses of the hierarchies showed that users performed better when file and folder labels were more similar to the text of the documents they represented. These results show that audience design, a communication process, can affect group information management tasks. The findings from both studies suggest that sharing files via a group information repository is more complicated than simply making them available on a server. Processes that affect spoken communication also impact word choices when the "interaction" is mediated by a repository. With this new knowledge, it is possible to begin design work on a new class of systems that go beyond mere storage, and better support the social aspects of user behavior in group information repositories.Ph.D.InformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64758/1/ejrader_1.pd

Selecting an Electronic Records Repository Platform at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History

In the 2014–2015 fiscal year the South Carolina Department of Archives and History decided to embark on the journey to creating a repository that would house and preserve incoming state agency electronic records. This case study discusses the journey of the newly hired electronic records archivist in researching, evaluating, and recommending a digital repository platform. It also provides a set of take-away lessons learned through the process in the hope that it will help other archivists investigating repository platforms

Secure Digital Asset Repository

As the industry evolves into technology driven businesses, an increasing number of companies are reaching a critical pain in needing to control and manage their vast amounts of digital media assets. Technically speaking, a digital asset is any form of media that has been turned into a binary source. Digital assets, which for textile mills include everything from artwork, logos, photos, text documents and even email, are proving to be valuable assets in terms of both productivity and company valuation. Many organizations thought that secure digital asset repository as part of their business-critical strategy for managing and sharing digital assets. They need dedicated solution to help overcome operational and organisational challenges unique to them. Secure digital asset repository allows company to create a custombranded, password-protected area where company can exchange business files with clients easily, securely, and professionally. Whether company deal with files that are simply too large to transfer by email, need secure file transfer or just need a certain data being revealed, secure digital asset repository can provide a solution. This paper focuses several features in the secure digital asset repository application

Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages

E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records. This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.

E‐ARK Dissemination Information Package (DIP) Final Specification

The primary aim of this report is to present the final version of the E-ARK Dissemination Information Package (DIP) formats. The secondary aim is to describe the access scenarios in which these DIP formats will be rendered for use

African American Archival Resources: Representation in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia

The breadth, scope, security, evaluation, and preservation of African American archival resources in the United States are all understudied. Moreover, the scope and contents of the majority of African American resources are likely unknown. The purpose of this study was to compile a record of collections holding primary resources on African Americans to conducting research on African American Archival Resources in three states, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia

Strategies for digital preservation of information

With the advent of the digital era, the digital information produced has grown exponentially. According to Seamus Ross, digital information is a cultural product [1]. The growing dependency on digital information is changing the way our culture is recorded. There is no longer a strict relation between the logical structure of information, the physical storage support and its interpretation. Internet provided the right environment not only for the thriving of new communities but also for the growth of the information produced by them. Software and hardware have also evolved. Along with them came new capabilities of producing more accurate and space demanding information. One good example is multimedia content, audio and video, but there are many more. This new reality rose an awareness for the need to preserve all this information for future generations to come. Unlike their analogue peers, digital formats require a different effort to maintain as they are exposed to such threats as the deterioration of the medium they are stored in or formats obsolescence. A number of actions must be taken to ensure their long-term access. To address this need, digital repositories have evolved, accommodating now sets of features capable of implementing different strategies for the digital preservation of information. This thesis presents an analysis of the current state of the art open source repository software for the digital preservation of information identifying the five most relevant solutions. From those solutions, we picked the most feature rich and broader user community software, RODA, to which we propose and implement further improvements to an existing preservation strategy: federation. These improvements consist in building into the system an interoperability mechanism capable of allowing RODA to interact with other systems. This improvement is made by implementing a prototype composed by a CMIS server inside the repository, which communicates with client applications through the implementation of the CMIS protocol. We name this prototype RODA OpenCMIS Server, or in short, RODA-OCS. The prototype allows RODA to expose contents stored inside it publicly, under a controlled environment, in an authenticated and secure way. This goal is achieved by integrating our prototype with RODA native permissions system. RODA-OCS not only implements a file browser mechanism for content navigation but also a query engine capable of searching and retrieving contents based on their metadata, either technical or descriptive. Finally, we present a demonstration of the functioning of RODA-OCS. Through the use of a dataset conceived to test the functionalitie

Knowledge-based document filing for texpros

This dissertation presents a knowledge-based document filing system for TEXPROS. The requirements of a. personal document processing system are investigated. In order for the system to be used in various application domains, a flexible, dynamic modeling approach is employed by getting the user involved in document modeling. The office documents are described using a dual-model which consists of a document type hierarchy and a folder organization. The document type hierarchy is used to capture the layout, logical and conceptual structures of documents. The folder organization, which is defined by the user, emulates the real world structure for organizing and storing documents in an office environment. The document filing and retrieval are predicate-driven. The user can specify filing criteria and queries in terms of predicates. The predicate specification and folder organization specification are described. It is shown that the new specifications can prevent false drops which happen in the previous approach. The dual models are incorporated by a three-level storage architecture. This storage architecture supports efficient document and information retrieval by limiting the searches to those frame instances of a document type within those folders which appear to be the most similar to the corresponding queries, Specifically, a. three-level retrieval strategy is used in document and information retrieval. Firstly, a knowledge-based query preprocess is applied for efficiently reducing the search space to a small set of frame instances, using the information in the query formula. Secondly, the knowledge and content-based retrieval on the small set of frame instances is applied. Finally, the third level storage provides a platform for adopting potential content-based multimedia document retrieval techniques. A knowledge-based predicate evaluation engine is described for automating document filing. The dissertation presents a knowledge representation model. The knowledge base is dynamicly created by a learning agent, which demonstrates that the notion of flexible and dynamic modeling is applicable. The folder organization is implemented using an agent-based architecture. Each folder is monitored by a filing agent. The basic operations for constructing and reorganizing a folder organization are defined. The dissertation also discusses the cooperation among the filing agents, which is needed for implementing the folder organization