Understanding Ultimate Use Data and its Implication for Digital Library Management: A Case Study

Information professionals and librarians have been studying, discussing, and developing digital libraries for over two decades, but understanding ultimate use of images from digital libraries remains a mystery for many of them. Most articles written on digital library use focus on users’ search retrieval needs and behavior. Few mention how digital library patrons use the images they request. Like many digital libraries, archives, and special collections, the University of Houston Digital Library makes high resolution images available to their patrons. Image delivery is achieved by an automated system, titled the Digital Cart Service. An unexpected benefit of the Digital Cart Service is the reporting mechanism that produces data that includes intended use information. This article discusses the analysis of this data to determine why images were used, what products were created from the images, and what implications this has on digital library management. The authors believe that answering these questions creates an environment in which digital library innovators can better promote and design digital libraries, and describe and select the content in them

Finding Roots, Gems, and Inspiration: Understanding Ultimate Use of Digital Materials

The University of Houston Digital Library (UHDL) is the point of virtual access for digitized cultural, historical and research materials for the university’s libraries. UHDL developed a digital cart” system (DCS) that allow users to download high resolution images from its collections. The DCS records important information supplied by the user regarding the ultimate use of the downloaded images. Until now, no formal analysis of the transaction log for the DCS has been completed. This research is significant because little is known about the ultimate use of digital library materials. Current literature suggests that this problem is not uncommon among digital libraries around the world. Our analysis begins to fill a critical gap in the professional conversation on digital libraries by directly contributing to the small body of literature that is asking who uses digital libraries and for what purposes. This presentation will outline how researchers analyzed data from portions of the transaction logs from the DCS from 2010 to 2013. From this analysis, they will highlight some of the interesting and innovative ultimate uses by patrons. The researchers will discuss the study and offer audience members approaches for analyzing data to determine ultimate use and its ramifications inside and outside of the classroom

Embedded Metadata Patterns Across Web Sharing Environments

This research project tried to determine how or if embedded metadata followed the digital object as it was shared on social media platforms by using EXIFTool, a variety of social media platforms and user profiles, the embedded metadata extracted from selected New York Public Library (NYPL) and Europeana images, PDFs from open access science journals, and captured mobile phone images. The goal of the project was to clarify which embedded metadata fields, if any, migrated with the object as it was shared across social media

Report of an international workshop to explore the utility of the AGREE II instrument for appraisal of rare disease guidelines

No abstract available

Oral Cancer Prevalence in Virginia

Purpose. Oral and pharyngeal cancer affects 30,000 Americans a year and kills one fourth of those diagnosed. The primary risk factors for oral cancer are past or present cigarette and tobacco usage, and alcohol consumption in conjunction with tobacco use. Even though the prevalence of oral cancer is relatively low in the younger age groups, this group is most likely to benefit from intervention programs designed to change risky behavior such as smoking, and to prevent oral cancer in the later years. The goal of the study was to identify high-risk target areas for an oral cancer prevention program in Virginia. Methods and Materials. The specific objectives were to analyze the 1986 to 2001 Oral Biopsy Database from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry for diagnosed cases of oral cancer. To test the hypothesis that Hampton Roads, Virginia would be a high-risk target area, diagnoses were correlated with the 11 zip-code regions in Virginia to identify specific geographical areas with high numbers of oral cancer cases. The oral cancer data set consisted of 4,712 cases. Frequencies and cross-tabulations were calculated for all the variables using Statistical Package for Social Scientists software (SPSS Inc., version 10.1, Chicago, IL). Results. Results indicated that the Hampton Roads region had the second highest number of squamous cell carcinomas, with 231 total cases. The Richmond area had 435cases, almost twice as many. Conclusions. Therefore, Hampton Roads and Richmond are high-risk target areas that would benefit from an aggressive oral cancer prevention and intervention program in its public schools