Stakeholders' perspectives of institutional repositories in National Research Universities in Thailand

Unrestricted accessible scholarly resources are increasingly considered essential to knowledge creation and socio-economic development. In order to facilitate this, university libraries at National Research Universities (NRUs) in Thailand have established institutional repositories (IRs). The development of the Open Access publishing movement also provides opportunities and challenges to NRUs’ IRs and scholarly community. Like others, the IR projects in Thailand have experienced low awareness and content contribution from stakeholders. Accordingly, this study aims to optimize the established IR projects in NRUs in Thailand by exploring the stakeholders’ research publishing behaviour, and the perception, participation, and utilisation of IRs. This study advances the understanding of IRs in NRUs in Thailand from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups. This inductive qualitative study employs Constructivist Grounded Theory as a research methodology. Theoretical sampling, convenient sampling, and purposive sampling were used to recruit key participants in Thai scholarly communication at three NRUs. An in-depth semi-structured interview method was used to collect data and Charmaz’s Grounded Theory Method of Open coding and Focused coding was used to analyse it. The analysis resulted in the generation of the 4Cs (/foresee/) Model for the Development of University-based IRs. It composes of “Communication” “Collaboration”, “Copyright understanding”, “Control” and “Local academic culture”. This innovative model provides an explanatory framework identifying the factors for the availability and accessibility of full-text digital research publications in Thai university-based IRs. Moreover, the 3Rs – Rethinking, Redefining, and Re-collaborating- are recommended as key activities to be considered when confronting the difficulties in the development of IRs. In addition, this study also proposes the “2PSC model for operational excellence – Policies, Procedure, Services, and Competencies” as a practical and effective mechanism for managing IRs. Further, the study offers theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the understanding of IRs in NRUs in Thailand from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder groups

Metadata Practices for Digital Photographic Collections in Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Norway

This thesis aims to explore the current state of metadata practices for digital photographic collections in archives, libraries, and museums in Norway in terms of the awareness of metadata and metadata types, the availability of guidelines, the chief source of information on cataloging digital photographic items, the metadata scheme used, subject cataloging standards and the opinions of staff on the problems and factors regarding cataloging digital photographic collections. A descriptive survey is used as the research method. Data was collected by using an online questionnaire. A survey link was distributed to archives, libraries, and museums in Norway which have digital photographic collection projects. A total of 45 returned questionnaires were analyzed into descriptive statistics by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program The findings indicate that most of the responding memory institutions have guidelines for cataloging digital photographic collections available at their workplaces (in print format more often than digital format). In the opinion of respondents, cataloging digital photographic materials is similar to cataloging photographs in other formats. Further, metadata is very important for organizing digital collections in their perspective. The Standard for Fotokatalogisering is the most adopted metadata scheme for digital photographic collections and responding memory institutions assign free keywords more often than using standardized subject heading lists. For the most part, the respondents agree that the mandatory elements in the Standard for Fotokatalogisering are the most important. Considering problems facing the digital collection projects of responding institutions, an insufficient budget is the most problematic, with the highest mean response. Inadequate existing data on the materials and a high demand for specialized knowledge and skills also greatly challenge them. As future challenges facing such projects, respondents most frequently point out user needs, policies on digital photographic collection development, and technology. Respondents highlight knowledge, skills and work resources as their potential contributions of institutions to collaborative projects.Joint Master Degree in Digital Library Learning (DILL

Undergraduate Students\u27 Information Literacy Behaviour in Chulalongkorn University

This paper examines the ways in which Thai undergraduate students in Chulalongkorn University find, evaluate, manage, and apply the needed information for doing their course-related assignments and everyday life research. The information literacy behaviour studied includes the undergraduates’ use of information resources, evaluation of information, research styles, and difficulties encountered during research practices. The survey instrument originally developed by Project Information Literacy of the University of Washington Information School was used as the basis for designing a questionnaire of this study. The questionnaire, then, was distributed to sophomores, juniors, and seniors enrolling at Chulalongkorn University. The sample for the student survey was 378 respondents from 18 faculties. Data collection was completed by the end of March 2011. Overall a 95% response rate was achieved. The findings of this study indicate that the most frequent source of information the majority of the undergraduates used for their course-related assignments and everyday life research is search engines. Most undergraduates always pay attention to credibility of library materials and web content when evaluating information in hand. Regarding the survey respondents’ research styles, they usually make action plans and create search terms before writing term-papers. They also have problems with deciding what to do at the early stage of research process, narrowing down a topic, and determining credibility of information resources

Metadata Practices for Digital Photographic Collections in Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Norway

This thesis aims to explore the current state of metadata practices for digital photographic collections in archives, libraries, and museums in Norway in terms of the awareness of metadata and metadata types, the availability of guidelines, the chief source of information on cataloging digital photographic items, the metadata scheme used, subject cataloging standards and the opinions of staff on the problems and factors regarding cataloging digital photographic collections. A descriptive survey is used as the research method. Data was collected by using an online questionnaire. A survey link was distributed to archives, libraries, and museums in Norway which have digital photographic collection projects. A total of 45 returned questionnaires were analyzed into descriptive statistics by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program The findings indicate that most of the responding memory institutions have guidelines for cataloging digital photographic collections available at their workplaces (in print format more often than digital format). In the opinion of respondents, cataloging digital photographic materials is similar to cataloging photographs in other formats. Further, metadata is very important for organizing digital collections in their perspective. The Standard for Fotokatalogisering is the most adopted metadata scheme for digital photographic collections and responding memory institutions assign free keywords more often than using standardized subject heading lists. For the most part, the respondents agree that the mandatory elements in the Standard for Fotokatalogisering are the most important. Considering problems facing the digital collection projects of responding institutions, an insufficient budget is the most problematic, with the highest mean response. Inadequate existing data on the materials and a high demand for specialized knowledge and skills also greatly challenge them. As future challenges facing such projects, respondents most frequently point out user needs, policies on digital photographic collection development, and technology. Respondents highlight knowledge, skills and work resources as their potential contributions of institutions to collaborative projects

Capturing Research Output in the Field of Anthropology: Metadata Design and Lessons Learned

To advocate open science and knowledge development, the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) recognizes the significance of collocation of scattered research outputs funded by the SAC for the public use. The SAC Research Database was developed and launched in March 2019 to provide free access to digital full-text research outputs under the creative common license (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0). The ease of use and interoperability are taken into consideration when selecting the metadata scheme. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set was chosen with some modified elements for the SAC Research Database. This paper presents the lesson learned from the development of this database