GAELS Project Final Report: Information environment for engineering

The GAELS project was a collaboration commenced in 1999 between Glasgow University Library and Strathclyde University Library with two main aims:· to develop collaborative information services in support of engineering research at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde· to develop a CAL (computer-aided learning package) package in advanced information skills for engineering research students and staff The project was funded by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) from their Strategic Change Initiative funding stream, and funding was awarded initially for one year, with an extension of the grant for a further year. The project ended in June 2001.The funding from SHEFC paid for two research assistants, one based at Glasgow University Library working on collaborative information services and one based at Strathclyde University Library developing courseware. Latterly, after these two research assistants left to take up other posts, there has been a single researcher based at Glasgow University Library.The project was funded to investigate the feasibility of new services to the Engineering Faculties at both Universities, with a view to making recommendations for service provision that can be developed for other subject areas

Optimising metadata workflows in a distributed information environment

The different purposes present within a distributed information environment create the potential for repositories to enhance their metadata by capitalising on the diversity of metadata available for any given object. This paper presents three conceptual reference models required to achieve this optimisation of metadata workflow: the ecology of repositories, the object lifecycle model, and the metadata lifecycle model. It suggests a methodology for developing the metadata lifecycle model, and illustrates how it might be used to enhance metadata within a network of repositories and services

City Magazine Editors and the Evolving Urban Information Environment

The urban information environment in which city magazines operate is changing dramatically, with the decline of local newspapers and the growth of user-generated local content. City magazine editors are re-envisioning their purpose as local information providers. This study provides a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with senior editors at 15 award-winning city magazines. The editors’ responses speak to the changing role of their publications today; the function of new technologies in informing local communities; and the public service that local journalism organizations offer in a constrained economic situation

The Centre for Digital Library Research and the Common Information Environment

This paper presents some of the current research and service development projects being carried out by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR), with particular reference to shared services which bring together archives, libraries and museums in a Common Information Environment

Conspectus and the Scottish Collections Network : landscaping the Scottish common information environment

The article briefly gives the background to the concept of a common information environment, followed by a history of the development of two major components of a common information environment for Scotland in the form of the Scottish Collections Network, a collections description service, and the Cooperative Information Retrieval Network for Scotland, a distributed union catalogue for meta-searching. The article discusses the application in Scotland of the Conspectus methodol-ogy for the subject mapping of general library collections, and describes how Conspectus data has been integrat-ed in the information environment to allow the identifi cation and selection of collections and associated catalogues with strength in specifi c subjects

Does the information environment affect the value relevance of financial statement data?

Recent studies demonstrate that the usefulness of financial statement data for valuation of stocks varies depending on specific economy- and firm-level conditions. This empirical study identifies a novel firm-level influential condition. It hypothesizes and finds that for firms that trade at a premium to book value the value-relevance of two fundamental financial statement value drivers (i.e. earnings and book value), is negatively related to the level of sophistication of the firm's information environment. However, for firms that trade at a discount to book value, the level of sophistication of information environment does not affect the value-relevance of these financial statement value drivers. The level of complexity of the firm's information environment is proxied by the firm's capitalized value. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of nonfinancial firms listed on the London Stock Exchange

Firm's information environment and stock liquidity: evidence from Tunisian context

This paper analyzes the relationship between public disclosure, private information and stock liquidity in the Tunisian market. We use a sample of 41 listed firms in the Tunis Stock Exchange in 2007. First, we find no evidence that there is a relation between public and private information. Second, Tunisian investors do not trust the information disclosed in both annual reports and web sites, consequently it has no effects on stock liquidity, in contrast with private information.corporate information disclosure, private information, stock liquidity, emerging market.

Mafia: A theoretical study of players and coalitions in a partial information environment

In this paper, we study a game called ``Mafia,'' in which different players have different types of information, communication and functionality. The players communicate and function in a way that resembles some real-life situations. We consider two types of operations. First, there are operations that follow an open democratic discussion. Second, some subgroups of players who may have different interests make decisions based on their own group interest. A key ingredient here is that the identity of each subgroup is known only to the members of that group. In this paper, we are interested in the best strategies for the different groups in such scenarios and in evaluating their relative power. The main focus of the paper is the question: How large and strong should a subgroup be in order to dominate the game? The concrete model studied here is based on the popular game ``Mafia.'' In this game, there are three groups of players: Mafia, detectives and ordinary citizens. Initially, each player is given only his/her own identity, except the mafia, who are given the identities of all mafia members. At each ``open'' round, a vote is made to determine which player to eliminate. Additionally, there are collective decisions made by the mafia where they decide to eliminate a citizen. Finally, each detective accumulates data on the mafia/citizen status of players. The citizens win if they eliminate all mafia members. Otherwise, the mafia wins. We first find a randomized strategy that is optimal in the absence of detectives. This leads to a stochastic asymptotic analysis where it is shown that the two groups have comparable probabilities of winning exactly when the total population size is $R$ and the mafia size is of order $\sqrt{R}$. We then show that even a single detective changes the qualitative behavior of the game dramatically. Here, the mafia and citizens have comparable winning probabilities only for a mafia size linear in $R$. Finally, we provide a summary of simulations complementing the theoretical results obtained in the paper.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AAP456 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Future information environments: deserts, jungles or parks?

This paper discusses the basic functions of a common information environment and how they are supported by metadata. Several distinct categories of information landscapes are described, characterised by the availability and quality of metadata at the item and collection level. The paper suggests elements of professional practice which can improve the functionality of landscapes, and presents an illustrative scenario of how a common information environment might be effective

A model of adaptive decision making from representation of information environment by quantum fields

We present the mathematical model of decision making (DM) of agents acting in a complex and uncertain environment (combining huge variety of economical, financial, behavioral, and geo-political factors). To describe interaction of agents with it, we apply the formalism of quantum field theory (QTF). Quantum fields are of the purely informational nature. The QFT-model can be treated as a far relative of the expected utility theory, where the role of utility is played by adaptivity to an environment (bath). However, this sort of utility-adaptivity cannot be represented simply as a numerical function. The operator representation in Hilbert space is used and adaptivity is described as in quantum dynamics. We are especially interested in stabilization of solutions for sufficiently large time. The outputs of this stabilization process, probabilities for possible choices, are treated in the framework of classical DM. To connect classical and quantum DM, we appeal to Quantum Bayesianism (QBism). We demonstrate the quantum-like interference effect in DM which is exhibited as a violation of the formula of total probability and hence the classical Bayesian inference scheme.Comment: in press in Philosophical Transactions