A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LAND TENURE, PROPERTY BOUNDARIES, AND DISPUTE RESOLUTION: EXAMPLES FROM BOLIVIA AND NORWAY

This paper compares and contrasts patterns of land tenure, property boundaries, and dispute resolution regarding property using examples from two diverse social and economic regions: Bolivia and Norway. The goal of the paper is essentially a comparative one. By placing the examples of Bolivia and Norway side by side, the authors hope to shed light on common strategies while recognizing the diversity to be found in the ways that people relate to land. It is hoped that readers will be able to compare the material here with examples from other regions. By using data based on field research and related methods from two regions starkly distinguished from each other by language, socioeconomic levels, political histories, and extent of integration into world markets, the authors present a picture of how people interact with their bounded environments and the various meanings that they construct through such environments. Norway has one of the highest standards of living in the world and is in many ways a model of economic and social efficiency; Bolivia, by contrast, is characterized by extreme ecological zones and has struggled for most of its 170 years of independence to both maintain its population at the most basic of levels and to achieve social stability. Yet, despite these significant historical and contemporary differences, the ways in which people relate to land in both countries are often remarkably similar, particularly in rural areas.Land tenure -- Bolivia, Land tenure -- Norway, Dispute resolution -- Bolivia, Dispute resolution -- Norway, Land conflicts -- Bolivia, Land conflicts -- Norway, Land Economics/Use,

The PATHS System for Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage

Over the past years large digital cultural heritage collections have become available, however access paradigms have not kept pace with this development and are still primarily constructed around simple keyword search. This works well for users familiar with the collections, but for new users who are unfamiliar with the collection they present a significant hurdle. The PATHS (Personalised Access To cultural Heritage Spaces) project addresses these issues by providing a novel framework for exploring large digital cultural heritage collections, built around the metaphor of a path through the collection. In this paper we present the initial user requirements analysis that was used to determine what a path is in the cultural heritage domain. From this we developed a conceptual model of path interaction, which was turned into a system design and implementation. Finally we present the evaluation of the resulting system and draw a number of conclusions as to what systems supporting exploration in digital cultural heritage collections must support to enable the users to satisfy their information needs

PATHS in Context: User Characteristics and the Construction of Cultural Heritage Narratives

There is ample evidence of the influence of individual differences on information-seeking behaviours. Trailways and paths are increasingly important objects to support internet navigation. The EU-funded PATHS (Personalised Access to Cultural Heritage) project is investigating ways of assisting users with exploring a large collection of cultural heritage material taken from Europeana, the European aggregator for museums, archives, libraries, and galleries. A prototype system has been developed that includes innovative functionality for exploring the collection based on Google map-style interfaces, data-driven taxonomies, and supporting the manual creation of guided tours or paths along with the use of personalised (and nonpersonalised) recommendations to promote information discovery. After analysing the paths created by participants during an extended user evaluation, this paper discusses the effect of individual differences on path creation and characteristics

PATHS in Context: User Characteristics and the Construction of Cultural Heritage Narratives

There is ample evidence of the influence of individual differences on information-seeking behaviours. Trailways and paths are increasingly important objects to support internet navigation. The EU-funded PATHS (Personalised Access to Cultural Heritage) project is investigating ways of assisting users with exploring a large collection of cultural heritage material taken from Europeana, the European aggregator for museums, archives, libraries, and galleries. A prototype system has been developed that includes innovative functionality for exploring the collection based on Google map-style interfaces, data-driven taxonomies, and supporting the manual creation of guided tours or paths along with the use of personalised (and nonpersonalised) recommendations to promote information discovery. After analysing the paths created by participants during an extended user evaluation, this paper discusses the effect of individual differences on path creation and characteristics

Generating Paths through Cultural Heritage Collections

Cultural heritage collections usually organise sets of items into exhibitions or guided tours. These items are often accompanied by text that describes the theme and topic of the exhibition and provides background context and details of connections with other items. The PATHS project brings the idea of guided tours to digital library collections where a tool to create virtual paths are used to assist with navigation and provide guides on particular subjects and topics. In this paper we characterise and analyse paths of items created by users of our online system. The analysis highlights that most users spend time selecting items relevant to their chosen topic, but few users took time to add background information to the paths. In order to address this, we conducted preliminary investigations to test whether Wikipedia can be used to automatically add background text for sequences of items. In the future we would like to explore the automatic creation of full paths

Cognitive Styles within an Exploratory Search System for Digital Libraries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cognitive style on navigating a large digital library of cultural heritage information; specifically, the paper focus on the wholist/analytic dimension as experienced in the field of educational informatics. The hypothesis is that wholist and analytic users have characteristically different approaches when they explore, search and interact with digital libraries, which may have implications for system design. Design/methodology/approach – A detailed interactive IR evaluation of a large cultural heritage digital library was undertaken, along with the Riding CSA test. Participants carried out a range of information tasks, and the authors analysed their task performance, interactions and attitudes. Findings – The hypothesis on the differences in performance and behaviour between wholist and analytic users is supported. However, the authors also find that user attitudes towards the system are opposite to expectations and that users give positive feedback for functionality that supports activities in which they are cognitively weaker. Research limitations/implications – There is scope for testing results in a larger scale study, and/or with different systems. In particular, the findings on user attitudes warrant further investigation. Practical implications – Findings on user attitudes suggest that systems which support areas of weakness in users’ cognitive abilities are valued, indicating an opportunity to offer diverse functionality to support different cognitive weaknesses. Originality/value – A model is proposed suggesting a converse relationship between behaviour and attitudes; to support individual users displaying search/navigation behaviour mapped onto the strengths of their cognitive style, but placing greater value on interface features that support aspects in which they are weaker

PATHS: A System for Accessing Cultural Heritage Collections

This paper describes a system for navigating large collections of information about cultural heritage which is applied to Europeana, the European Library. Europeana contains over 20 million artefacts with meta-data in a wide range of European languages. The system currently provides access to Europeana content with meta-data in English and Spanish. The paper describes how Natural Language Processing is used to enrich and organise this meta-data to assist navigation through Europeana and shows how this information is used within the system

User-Centred Design to Support Exploration and Path Creation in Cultural Heritage Collections

In this paper, we present the results of the user requirements and interface design phase for a prototype system, designed to enhance interaction with cultural heritage collections online through means of a pathway metaphor. We present a single user interaction model that supports various work and information seeking tasks undertaken by both expert and non-expert users within the context of collection exploration and path creation. The user interaction model is shown to enable seamless movement between interaction modes, with the potential over time to encourage deeper engagement and learning