Data Driven Assessment Using Integrated Library System

Today’s libraries are more than the number of circulated items or number of patrons who step in to the library. Integrated Library Systems nowadays are partnered with libraries to better facilitate data delivery which are always valuable not only for content delivery to patrons but also for large scale assessments and administrative decision making. Every year libraries are adding thousands of books to their collections and technical services staff are working diligently to make them accessible to patrons as quickly as possible while keeping up with competing duties and other cataloging priorities. Our library’s cataloging department investigated the available coding fields in its ILS that could maximize data collection and data refinement. In a sense, this project was helpful in discoverability of items not only for patrons but also for the library staff/technical services by providing evidence based assessments and continuous operation improvement. This is a story of collaboration among different library departments to take advantage of the features and functionalities of their existing Integrated Library System, to enliven inter and intra-departmental workflow and to broaden the perspective of the library staff in utilizing the available tools beyond their past practices. We believe this workflow and the revitalization of ILS coding system not only enhances user accessibility but also increases the efficiency of the ILS and its coding system for a more data driven assessments to enhance best practices in library technologies

Information Literacy and Academic Libraries as Working Places

A power point about the assessment in the Cataloging department to assess staff’s performances, their critical thinking/decision-making effectiveness, and bringing solutions to time management and productivity of the department

Corporate Social Responsibility: Past, Present, And Success Strategy For The Future

Recently, scholars and managers have devoted greater attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its strategic implications. With more awareness surrounding the topic it would be expected for there to be a consensus on a definition, but as of yet none has been reached. The lack of a universally accepted definition has led some to define it as a term, a concept, a process, a theory, while others simply call it an activity or set of activities (Hazlett & Murray, 2007). CSR has been also captioned under many names. Terms such as corporate citizenship, global citizenship, corporate social responsiveness, strategic philanthropy, and even spiritual capitalism are sometimes used interchangeably, depending on the organization to use it. Often, these numerous monikers and interpretations lead to confusion amongst those intending to study or implement the practice into their business strategy. This uncertainty on how CSR should be defined has led some academics and practitioners to believe that the concept is void of any definition. Contrary to this belief, others find that there is an overabundance of definitions; many of which are “often biased toward specific interests and thus prevent the development and implementation of the concept” (Dahlsrud, 2008). Our study focuses on the importance of CSR and why it’s becoming so prevalent in any organizations. By studying the history of CSR, its many definitions, as well as its implementation methods, we attempt to suggest strategic alternatives for an effective corporate social responsibility. &nbsp

Bibliography for Women Authors: A Display of Books Authored/Edited by Women

A bibliography created to accompany a display about women authors in March 2022 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University

Metastatic Biomarkers in Synovial Sarcoma

Synovial sarcoma (SS) is an aggressive soft tissue sarcoma (STS) that typically occurs in the extremities near a joint. Metastatic disease is common and usually occurs in the lungs and lymph nodes. Surgical management is the mainstay of treatment with chemotherapy and radiation typically used as adjuvant treatment. Although chemotherapy has a positive impact on survival, the prognosis is poor if metastatic disease occurs. The biology of sarcoma invasion and metastasis remain poorly understood. Chromosomal translocation with fusion of the SYT and SSX genes has been described and is currently used as a diagnostic marker, although the full impact of the fusion is unknown. Multiple biomarkers have been found to be associated with SS and are currently under investigation regarding their pathways and mechanisms of action. Further research is needed in order to develop better diagnostic screening tools and understanding of tumor behavior. Development of targeted therapies that reduce metastatic events in SS, would dramatically improve patient prognosis

The impact of occupants’ behaviours on building energy analysis: A research review

Over the past 15 years, the evaluation of energy demand and use in buildings has become increasingly acute due to growing scientific and political pressure around the world in response to climate change. The estimation of the use of energy in buildings is therefore a critical process during the design stage. This paper presents a review of the literature published in leading journals through Science Direct and Scopus databases within this research domain to establish research trends, and importantly, to identify research gaps for future investigation. It has been widely acknowledged in the literature that there is an alarming performance gap between the predicted and actual energy consumption of buildings (sometimes this has been up to 300% difference). Analysis of the impact of occupants’ behaviour has been largely overlooked in building energy performance analysis. In short, energy simulation tools utilise climatic data and physical/ thermal properties of building elements in their calculations, and the impact of occupants is only considered through means of fixed and scheduled patterns of behaviour. This research review identified a number of areas for future research including: larger scale analysis (e.g. urban analysis); interior design, in terms of space layout, and fixtures and fittings on occupants’ behaviour; psychological cognitive behavioural methods; and the integration of quantitative and qualitative research findings in energy simulation tools to name but a few

Vision-based workface assessment using depth images for activity analysis of interior construction operations

Workface assessment –the process of determining the overall activity rates of onsite construction workers throughout a day– typically involves manual visual observations which are time-consuming and labor-intensive. To minimize subjectivity and the time required for conducting detailed assessments, and allowing managers to spend their time on the more important task of assessing and implementing improvements, we propose a new inexpensive vision-based method using RGB-D sensors that is applicable to interior construction operations. This is particularly a challenging task as construction activities have a large range of intra-class variability including varying sequences of body posture and time-spent on each individual activity. On the other hand, the state-of-the-art skeleton extraction algorithms from RGB-D sequences are not robust enough especially when workers interact with tools or self-occlude the camera’s field-of-view. Existing vision-based methods are also rather limited as they can primarily classify “atomic” activities from RGB-D sequences involving one worker conducting a single activity. To address these limitations, our proposed original method involves three main components: 1) an algorithm for detecting, tracking, and extracting body skeleton features from depth images; 2) A discriminative bag-of-poses activity classifier trained using multiple Support Vector Machines for classifying single visual activities from a given body skeleton sequence; and 3) a Hidden Markov model with a Kernel Density Estimation function to represent emission probabilities in form of a statistical distribution of single activity classifiers. For training and testing purposes, we also introduce a new dataset of eleven RGB-D sequences for interior drywall construction operations involving three actual construction workers conducting eight different activities in various interior locations. Our experimental results with an average accuracy of 76% on the testing dataset show the promise of vision-based methods using RGB-D sequences for facilitating the activity analysis workface assessment

Future of the Cataloging, RDA (Resource Description & Access)

A power point about RDA, Resource Description & Access and future of cataloging standards, presented at CALCON2009

Development of Resource Description and Access (RDA): The New Cataloging Standard

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a new standard for describing and accessing information specifically designed for the digital environment. It is a shift from Anglo American Cataloging Rules, AACR2 and it aims to provide a more user friendly service to library users in locating information in the library online catalogs. It is also targeting to facilitate a cataloging standard which can be shared globally and be edited simultaneously by the catalogers and other users when needed. There are similarities as well as differences between these two cataloging standards.Since the development of RDA started in 2005, there has been a hot discussion among catalogers about the advantages and disadvantages of the two standards against each other. There is also argument on the changes that RDA would introduce to the cataloging standards and questioning if this is the right time to move forward with these changes. This paper provides the reader an overview of the development of RDA standards and the outcome of this new standard yet to be adopted