Managing the life cycles of the document and library collections in Finnish academic libraries, case Aalto and UEF

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On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction

While computers causing chaos is acommon social trope, nearly the entirety of the history of computing is dedicated to generating order. Typical interactive information retrieval tasks ask computers to support the traversal and exploration of large, complex information spaces. The implicit assumption is that they are to support users in simplifying the complexity (i.e. in creating order from chaos). But for some types of task, particularly those that involve the creative application or synthesis of knowledge or the creation of new knowledge, this assumption may be incorrect. It is increasingly evident that perfect order—and the systems we create with it—support highly-structured information tasks well, but provide poor support for less-structured tasks.We need digital information environments that help create a little more chaos from order to spark creative thinking and knowledge creation. This paper argues for the need for information systems that offerwhat we term ‘bounded chaos’, and offers research directions that may support the creation of such interface

Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for Serendipity

Serendipity is a key aspect of user experience, particularly in the context of information acquisition - where it is known as information encountering. Unexpectedly encountering interesting or useful information can spark new insights while surprising and delighting. However, digital environments have been designed primarily for goal-directed seeking over loosely-directed exploration, searching over discovering. In this paper we examine a novel physical environment - a bookshop designed primarily for serendipity - for cues as to how information encountering might be helped or hindered by digital design. Naturalistic observations and interviews revealed it was almost impossible for participants to find specific books or topics other than by accident. But all unexpectedly encoun-tered interesting books, highlighting a tension between findability and discoverability. While some of the bookshop’s design features enabled information en-countering, others inhibited it. However, encountering was resilient, as it occurred despite participants finding it hard to understand the purpose of even those features that did enable it. Findings suggest the need to consider how transparent or opaque the purpose of design features should be and to balance structure and lack of it when designing digital environments for findability and discoverability

Kaunokirjallisuuden sisällönkuvailun aspektit:kirjastoammattilaisten ja kirjastonkäyttäjien tekemien romaanien tiivistelmien ja asiasanoitusten yhdenmukaisuus

Abstract The subject of this study is the content description of fictional works, especially novels. Study is divided into two sections. In the first part of it the aim is to investigate the communicative process of fiction, the previous studies on the content description of fiction and the making of thesauruses for fiction. In the second part the aim is to create means for the analysis of fictional content description (based on the first part's theoretical discussion) and to make a general model for fiction search and retrieval system. The material for the empirical part of the study was gathered in Finnish public libraries. The aim of the empirical part of the study is to find out how the clients and the library professionals of public libraries describe novels by indexing and abstracting them - what differences they have and what is the consistency between them. The basic theoretical approach in this study is qualitative and specifically as seen within the grounded theory. The corpus of this study was analyzed both with qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods were mainly used when analyzing the abstracts and the indexings were analyzed with the the basic statistical methods as well as with the calculated consistency values for indexers. The main finding was that the abstracts and indexings were very unconsistent. One could also typify the abstracts in four categories: plot/thematical abstracts, cultural/ historical abstracts, abstracts that describe the reading experience and critical abstracts. Also, with the aid of statistics one could make a typical indexing string of each novel that consisted about 10-15 indexing terms which described the basic contents of each novel. In the end of the study a model for search and retrieval system for fiction is presented. Methodologically, the triangulative approach with different kinds of methods turned out to be fruitful. Especially when studying the human behaviour, both quantitative and qualitative methods are needed. When used together they test the findings and results and thus give more validity to the final results

Karjala-tietokanta : digitoitua demografista dataa vanhoista ja monimuotoisista genealogisista dokumenteista

Artikkelimme käsittelee tietokannan kokoamisen eli tallennusprosessin tiedonhallintaa. Aiheena on luovutetun Karjalan kirkollisista asiakirjoista vuosilta 1681-1949 kootun digitaatisen Karjata-tietokannan rakentaminen, Keskitymme erityisesti vanhojen genealogisten aineistojen digitoinnin haasteisiin ja siihen, kuinka niitä on pyritty hankkeessa hallitsemaan, Tietokanta sisältää digitoitua genealogista ja demografista dataa niistä suomalaisista seurakunnista, jotka jäivät toisen maailmansodan jälkeen rauhansopimuksen perusteelfa Neuvostoliitolle ja jotka lakkautettiin 31.12.1949. Karjala-tietokannan tiedot ovat siten peräisin luovutetun alueen 50 evankelisluterilaisen seurakunnan ja 20 ortodoksiseurakunnan arkistoaineistosta.peerReviewe