International Legal Collections at U.S. Academic Law School Libraries

This study examines how law librarians are participating in the process of creating new fields of international legal research and training. It investigates the current state of international legal collections at twelve public and private U.S. academic law school libraries, illuminating in the process some of the significant shifts that characterize the nature of professional librarianship and information science in the twenty-first century. Included in the study is a discussion of the reference works, research guides, and databases that make up these international legal collections. This is followed by a brief assessment of the trends and challenges that librarians face who work in the field of professional legal education and scholarship

The challenges of scientific communication

Scientific communication faces a number of challenges, many of them not solved by the rise of the Internet: use and presence in social media networks, publication as a measur eof research, open access and its evolution, quality validation, academic marketing and audiovisual content. These challenges are discussed, together with some trends and developments, concluding with the importance of Information Science to solving some of the problems and answering the questions that are generated

E-science and libraries (for non science librarians)

Information Technology is rapidly changing the world of scientific research. We have entered a new era of science. Some call it e-science, while others call it the 4th paradigm of science. Scientists, with the aid of technology, are continually amassing larger and more complex datasets. These data are accumulated are at an ever-accelerating rate. How will this information be organized? What, if any of it should be preserved for future use? How will it be preserved? If it is preserved, how will it be made publically accessible? The NSF and others describe the solving of problems such as these as some of the major challenges of this scientific generation. They also state that tackling these problems will take expertise from many fields, including library and information science. A recent movement of this new era of science is an increasing requirement for scientists to archive and make their research data public. For example, the National Science Foundation (as of January 18, 2011) is requiring scientists to articulate how they will accomplish these goals within data management plans that must be submitted with each grant proposal. What role can libraries play in this new realm of science? What role are libraries already playing? Several libraries have taken the lead in initiating efforts in assisting scientists with a variety of data management needs. This presentation will include a brief overview of the current trends as well as possible future directions in librarianship that this new era of science may lead

Building Machines That Learn and Think Like People

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed interest in building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or even beats humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly human-like learning and thinking machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn, and how they learn it. Specifically, we argue that these machines should (a) build causal models of the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely solving pattern recognition problems; (b) ground learning in intuitive theories of physics and psychology, to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned; and (c) harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete challenges and promising routes towards these goals that can combine the strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive models.Comment: In press at Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Open call for commentary proposals (until Nov. 22, 2016). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/information/calls-for-commentary/open-calls-for-commentar

Big Data and Regional Science: Opportunities, Challenges, and Directions for Future Research

Recent technological, social, and economic trends and transformations are contributing to the production of what is usually referred to as Big Data. Big Data, which is typically defined by four dimensions -- Volume, Velocity, Veracity, and Variety -- changes the methods and tactics for using, analyzing, and interpreting data, requiring new approaches for data provenance, data processing, data analysis and modeling, and knowledge representation. The use and analysis of Big Data involves several distinct stages from "data acquisition and recording" over "information extraction" and "data integration" to "data modeling and analysis" and "interpretation", each of which introduces challenges that need to be addressed. There also are cross-cutting challenges, which are common challenges that underlie many, sometimes all, of the stages of the data analysis pipeline. These relate to "heterogeneity", "uncertainty", "scale", "timeliness", "privacy" and "human interaction". Using the Big Data analysis pipeline as a guiding framework, this paper examines the challenges arising in the use of Big Data in regional science. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future activities to realize the possibilities and potential for Big Data in regional science.Series: Working Papers in Regional Scienc

A Survey of Modelling Trends in Temporal GIS

The main achievements of spatio-temporal modelling in the field of Geographic Information Science that spans over the past three decades are surveyed. This article offers an overview of: (i) the origins and history of Temporal Geographic Information Systems (T-GIS); (ii) relevant spatio-temporal data models proposed; (iii) the evolution of spatio-temporal modelling trends; and (iv) an analysis of the future trends and developments in T-GIS. It also presents some current theories and concepts that have emerged from the research performed, as well as a summary of the current progress and the upcoming challenges and potential research directions for T-GIS. One relevant result of this survey is the proposed taxonomy of spatio-temporal modelling trends, which classifies 186 modelling proposals surveyed from more than 1450 article

Trends and challenges of e-government chatbots: Advances in exploring open government data and citizen participation content

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00) and the Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20). The authors thank all people who participated in the reported studies.In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework composed of a number of e-government, implementation and evaluation-oriented variables, with which we jointly analyze chatbots presented in the research literature and chatbots deployed as public services in Spain at national, regional and local levels. As a result of our holistic analysis, we identify and discuss current trends and challenges in the development and evaluation of chatbots in the public administration sector, such as focusing the use of the conversational agents on the search for government information, documents and services –leaving citizen consultation and collaboration aside–, and conducting preliminary evaluations of prototypes in limited studies, lacking experiments on deployed systems, with metrics beyond effectiveness and usability –e.g., metrics related to the generation of public values. Addressing some of the identified challenges, we build and evaluate two novel chatbots that present advances in the access to open government data and citizen participation content. Moreover, we come up with additional, potential research lines that may be considered in the future for a new generation of e-government chatbots.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-108965GB-I00)Regional Government of Andalusia (P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20

The Transition Experiences of International Graduate Students in Clark University School of Professional Studies

In the last decade, the School of Professional Studies at Clark University has witnessed a sharp increase in international students. More and more international students in the millennial generation have entered the School of Professional Studies pursuing one of the two-year graduate programs: Master of Science in Professional Studies, Master of Science in Public Administration, and Master of Science in Information Technology. In the past, working adult student dominant the program. These students already had a career outside the classrooms before them came to study. The millennial international students have generated new adjustment problems. Some of the transition issues of international students have been described in the literature, and these issues can be categorized into three types: academic challenges, social isolation, and cultural adjustment. In response to these new trends, the School of Professional Studies has been providing departmental support services for international students since the 2016 fall semester. This Capstone project researched strategies offered by other American universities in dealing with international students’ transition issues and suggested a series of practical solutions for the School of Professional Studies. These practices include the School of Professional Studies International Students Page, Buddy Program, Academic Training Program, and American Survival Program. We hope these strategies will help the School Professional Students to improve inclusion and the environment for international students

Bibliometric Analysis on Research Trends of International Journal of Computers Communications & Control

International Journal of Computers Communications & Control (IJCCC) is an international journal in the fields of automation control systems and computer science. According to Web of Science (WoS), the first document of IJCCC was published in 2006. In this paper, we study the research trends of publications in IJCCC by performing bibliometric analysis from 2006 to 2019. 982 publications are selected from WoS after data preprocessing by VOS viewer and CiteSpace. Firstly, fundamental information of publications is explored including the type, the annual trend and the most cited publications in IJCCC. Secondly, characteristics of countries/ regions, institutions and authors are presented in terms of evaluation indicators. Next, landscape analysis is conducted to show the development of IJCCC at level of countries/regions, institutions, authors and references, such as co-authorship analysis, bibliographic coupling analysis, co-citation and burst detection analysis, cooccurrence and timeline view analysis. Based on which, discussions about current challenges and possible research trends of IJCCC are provided. Finally, some main findings are summarized. This paper offers a valuable reference for scholars to understand the research trends of IJCCC and grasp hot topics related to relative fields

E-learning and digital libraries : How to link science with information in a networked society

In this paper we try to explain the relation between e-learning and e-libraries, and how trends in both could mutually benefit, in order to link science with information in a networked society. We start with describing the context in which the new evolutions take place. We then define e-learning, especially networked e-learning, and we investigate the role of e-libraries. Next we consider the major challenges of e-learning and link them with digital libraries. We give examples of mutual interaction, in trying to give possible, although partial answers. Because no definitive solutions are proposed yet, some criticism in the end is in place