Sometimes the Internet reads the question wrong: children’s search strategies & difficulties

When children search for information on a given topic, how do they go about searching for and retrieving information? What can their information seeking strategies tell us about the development of search interfaces for children's digital libraries, search engines and information repositories? We interviewed New Zealand (NZ) school children to seek insights into how they are conducting information searches during their education

A Further Performance Comparison of Operations in the File System and in Embedded Key-Value Databases

A routine scenario when developing PC applications is storing data in small files or records and then retrieving and manipulating that data with a distinctive identifier (ID). In these scenarios, the developer can save the records using the ID as the filename or use an embedded on-disk key-value database. However, many file systems can have performance issues when handling many small files. As a result, developers would rather avoid depending on an embedded database if it offers little benefit or has a detrimental effect on performance for their use case. Our contribution is to compare several key-value databases—SQlite3, LevelDB, RocksDB, and Berkeley DB—based on many parameters, including the file system—NTFS, as opposed to ext4, the file system utilized on a previous project \cite{pastpaper}—and explain the outcomes. Moreover, the metrics and technologies to be evaluated extend the metrics evaluated in our previous research work. We compare these key-value databases on two machines: a solid-state drive and a hard disk drive. Our research used the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) to work with

How to take a book off the shelf: Learning about ebooks from using a physical library

Little is known about how people select ebooks or books. This paper reports initial results of a study in which we observe patrons of two libraries when selecting books. From the results of the study we aim to gain insights into book selection strategies, which may be used to support ebook selection and purchasing

Book selection behavior in the physical library: implications for ebook collections

Little is known about how readers select books, whether they be print books or ebooks. In this paper we present a study of how people select physical books from academic library shelves. We use the insights gained into book selection behavior to make suggestions for the design of ebook-based digital libraries in order to better facilitate book selection behavior

Performance Comparison of the Filesystem and Embedded Key-Value Databases

A common scenario when developing local applications is storing many records and then retrieving them by ID. A developer can simply save the records as files or use an embedded database. Large numbers of files can slow down filesystems, but developers may want to avoid a dependency on an embedded database if it offers little benefit for their use case. We will compare the performance for the insert, update, get and delete operations and the space efficiency of storing records as files vs. using key-value embedded databases including RocksDB, LevelDB, Berkley DB, and SQLite

Personal digital libraries: Keeping track of academic reading material

This paper discusses optionsfor tracking academic reading material and introduces a personal digital library solution. We combined and extended the open source projects Zotero and Greenstone such that material can be easily downloaded and ingested into the combined system. Our prototype system has been explored in a small user study

Judging a book by its cover: interface elements that affect reader selection of ebooks

Digital library research has demonstrated the impact of content presentation on both search and reading behaviours. In this paper, we scrutinise the influence of ebook presentation on user behaviour, focussing on document thumbnails and the first page view. We demonstrate that flaws in presentation increase the volume of short time-span reading, and reduce the likelihood of long-span reading when compared to other documents. This reflects other patterns of information seeking behaviour that demonstrate increased short-term reading when information content is uncertain, and suggests an ineffective use of reader time on less useful content