Driving usage – what are publishers and librarians doing to evaluate and promote usage?

Although a relatively recent phenomenon, measuring the usage of published research has rapidly become one of the most important ways to evaluate the relative value of different publications. Libraries and publishers are also investigating the impact of interface and technology provision in improving resource discovery and content usage. Demand for such data is increasing throughout the industry, partly in response to greater scrutiny of return on investment. As a result the techniques used by publishers and librarians to promote and evaluate usage are also developing. This paper looks at some of the methods currently adopted and examines the issues faced by the industry in driving forward the application of usage data

World Wide Web Metasearch Clustering Algorithm

As the storage capacity and the processing speed of search engine is growing to keep up with the constant expansion of the World Wide Web, the user is facing an increasing list of results for a given query. A simple query composed of common words sometimes have hundreds even thousands of results making it practically impossible for the user to verify all of them, in order to identify a particular site. Even when the list of results is presented to the user ordered by a rank, most of the time it is not sufficient support to help him identify the most relevant sites for his query. The concept of search result clustering was introduced as a solution to this situation. The process of clustering search results consists of building up thematically homogenous groups from the initial list results provided by classic search tools, and using up characteristics present within the initial results, without any kind of predefined categories.search results, clustering algorithm, World Wide Web search

When a Librarian's Not There to Ask: Creating an Information Resource Advisory Tool

It is 2am. A professor wakes up with a new direction for her research; she must immediately learn about bioethics. In a dorm a student is finally ready to begin a paper on Cuba. Where do they turn? The library web site presents them with a bewildering array of resources and no librarian on hand to serve as intermediary. How can librarians facilitate research in their absence? What interfaces can be designed to educate users in their search? What metadata is needed to enable accurate retrieval? What is the librarian’s role in the increasingly indirectly-mediated information-seeking environment? Can the reference interview be effectively translated into a search interface? This paper describes a step towards resolving these issues by creating an on-line tool to assist users in selecting the database(s) most germane to their research needs

How find (and where) GIS data

These notes are for the sole purpose of describing the GIS data discovery proces

Is Integrated Search the answer of libraries to Google?

Estudio sobre el proyecto de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Tilburg para mejorar la recuperación de la información por parte de los usuarios a través de las distintas opciones de búsqueda integrada, las s llamadas herramientas de descubrimiento, dadas por las diferentes plataformas actualmente en el mercado: EBSCO Discovery Service, Primo / Primo Central (Ex Libris), Summon (Serials Solutions), Worldcat Local (OCLC). Se intenta encontrar una herramienta que haga frente a Google a la hora de la búsqueda y recuperación de la información por parte de los usuarios de la biblioteca.Place, T. (2010). Is Integrated Search the answer of libraries to Google?. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/867

Multimedia Chinese Web Search Engines: A Survey

The objective of this paper is to explore the state of multimedia search functionality on major general and dedicated Web search engines in Chinese language. The authors studied: a) how many Chinese Web search engines presently make use of multimedia searching, and b) the type of multimedia search functionality available. Specifically, the following were examined: a) multimedia features - features allowing multimedia search; and b) extent of personalization - the extent to which a search engine Web site allows users to control multimedia search. Overall, Chinese Web search engines offer limited multimedia searching functionality. The significance of the study is based on two factors: a) little research has been conducted on Chinese Web search engines, and b) the instrument used in the study and the results obtained by this research could help users, Web designers, and Web search engine developers. By large, general Web search engines support more multimedia features than specialized one