The 7 steps to support teaching, learning and research from Digital Libraries

Libraries are well-positioned in order to work in cross-disciplinary teams in teaching and learning as well as in research landscape. The new trends and significant challenges in education and the important developments in technology are drivers for developing and changing libraries. For instance, among others, the economic and political pressures, the evolving nature of the scholarly record and the research data management areexamples of areas that are affected by this change. The seven steps described in the following pages were selected by the authors after a thorough bibliography review, the application of previous professional knowledge and experience within the field of libraries and further discussion of the topic. These steps are intended to be a roadmap to accelerate the transformation of digital libraries aiming to support teaching, learning and research.Las bibliotecas están bien posicionadas para trabajar en equipos interdisciplinarios en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje, así como en el campo de la investigación. Las nuevas tendencias y retos importantes en la educación y los importantes desarrollos tecnológicos son motores para el desarrollo y el cambio de las bibliotecas. Por ejemplo, entre otras, las presiones económicas y políticas, la naturaleza evolutiva del registro académico y la gestión de datos de investigación son ejemplos de áreas que se ven afectadas por este cambio. Se seleccionaron los siete pasos descritos en las siguientes páginas. Los autores después de una exhaustiva revisión bibliográfica, aplicación de los conocimientos y experiencias profesionales anteriores dentro del campo de las bibliotecas y una mayor discusión del tema. Estos pasos están destinados a ser una hoja de ruta para acelerar la transformación de bibliotecas digitales con el objetivo de apoyar la enseñanza, aprendizaje e investigación.Les biblioteques estan ben posicionades per a treballar en equips interdisciplinaris en l'ensenyament i l'aprenentatge, així com en el camp de la recerca. Les noves tendències i reptes importants en l'educació i els importants desenvolupaments tecnològics són motors per al desenvolupament i el canvi de les biblioteques. Per exemple, entre unes altres, les pressions econòmiques i polítiques, la naturalesa evolutiva del registre acadèmic i la gestió de dades de recerca són exemples d'àrees que es veuen afectades per aquest canvi. Es van seleccionar els set passos descrits en les següents pàgines. Els autors després d'una exhaustiva revisió bibliogràfica, aplicació dels coneixements i experiències professionals anteriors dins del camp de les biblioteques i una major discussió del tema. Aquests passos estan destinats a ser un full de ruta per a accelerar la transformació de biblioteques digitals amb l'objectiu de recolzar l'ensenyament, aprenentatge i recerca

Gathering Background Knowledge for Story Understanding through Crowdsourcing

Successfully comprehending stories involves integration of the story information with the reader\u27s own background knowledge. A prerequisite, then, of building automated story understanding systems is the availability of such background knowledge. We take the approach that knowledge appropriate for story understanding can be gathered by sourcing the task to the crowd. Our methodology centers on breaking this task into a sequence of more specific tasks, so that human participants not only identify relevant knowledge, but also convert it into a machine-readable form, generalize it, and evaluate its appropriateness. These individual tasks are presented to human participants as missions in an online game, offering them, in this manner, an incentive for their participation. We report on an initial deployment of the game, and discuss our ongoing work for integrating the knowledge gathering task into a full-fledged story understanding engine

DEVELOPING AN ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY. THE CASE OF THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS

The amount of digital content produced nowadays, is enormous. Academic institutions produce and make available a plethora of digital objects like research articles, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual collections and many others. In addition, academic libraries digitize materials to create collections of historical, political and scientific significance and are responsible for keeping, preserving, archiving and publishing the content produced by their students and academic personnel. Aiming in that direction, the Open University of Cyprus, an institution responsible for delivering distance learning at the Republic of Cyprus, designed and deployed “Kypseli” Institutional Repository. In this work, the authors depict the methodology and tools used for building an academic institutional repository using open source tools at the Open University of Cyprus. Moreover, the procedures used for publishing content and the integration of the repository to the rest of the university’s infrastructure are analysed, along with the challenges faced during the implementation and deployment phase. In addition, a number of metrics are presented, accompanied by statistics of usage

v-trel: Vocabulary Trainer for Tracing Word Relations : An Implicit Crowdsourcing Approach

In this paper, we present our work on developing a vocabulary trainer that uses exercises generated from language resources such as ConceptNet and crowdsources the responses of the learners to enrich the language resource. We performed an empirical evaluation of our approach with 60 non-native speakers over two days, which shows that new entries to expand Concept-Net can efficiently be gathered through vocabulary exercises on word relations. We also report on the feedback gathered from the users and an expert from language teaching, and discuss the potential of the vocabulary trainer application from the user and language learner perspective. The feedback suggests that v-trel has educational potential, while in its current state some shortcomings could be identified.Peer reviewe