Microfade Testing for Heritage Institutions: A Canadian Experience

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) has provided microfade testing (MFT) as a service to more than 13 Canadian museums, archives, and galleries. In addition to obtaining lightfastness data for objects and collections planned for exhibition, MFT is also used for research and for training. This article summarizes the experiences and practices that arose from the variety of objects tested, the demand for the service, and the lessons learned. These include protocols to ensure reliable and reproducible results with multiple users, ways to report large number of results, and how MFT data are used with the CCI Light Damage Calculator for effective communication of the results with other museum staff for exhibit planning.     

A general model of performance and quality for one-stop e-Government service offerings

This paper introduces a framework and methodology for establishing indicators and metrics in order to assess the quality and performance of one-stop e-Government service offerings. The set of quality and performance indicators and metrics proposed has been derived in an outcomes assessment approach, based on the perspectives of e-Government service providers and end-users and following a goal-question-metric line of work that departs from some key quality and performance benefits. A methodology that employs the proposed framework to set improvement targets according to alternative scenarios is presented, and a strategy is elaborated for analyzing root causes of potential quality and performance shortcomings and undertaking appropriate countermeasures. Some results of application in a real case study, in the context of an EU-funded R&D project, are also provided. Finally, recommendations are given about usefulness of the proposed approach for e-Government service providers, as well as policy and decision-makers, and directions of future work are discussed in order to enhance the conceptual coverage of this approach, while at the same time not compromising its simplicity of application and generality of purpose.     

Evaluating Online Real-Time Reference in an Academic Library

Summary

Online real-time or “chat” reference, while still in its infancy when compared to traditional reference services is beginning to come of age. The time has come to move beyond the earlier challenges and issues debated at length in the library profession and begin to consider how to evaluate real-time reference. This article will consider obstacles to evaluating chat reference and present practical recommendations. These obstacles are presented in four basic areas including; organizational structure, scarcity of resources, newness of the service, and difficulty developing techniques of assessment or applying existing methodology.     

Efficient fault tolerant cache memory design

In this paper we firstly discuss the consequences of cache memory defects/faults in the operation of the system and we show that cache tag defects/faults compared to cache data defects/faults may cause significantly more serious consequences on the integrity and performance of the system. A possible solution is the use of a single error correcting-double error detecting (SEC/DED) code in the cache tag memory. However, the classical implementation of the SEC/DED code is proved to be inappropriate for the tag memory due to the required silicon area and time delays. In this paper we propose a new way of the SEC/DED code exploitation well-suited to cache tag memories. During fault free operation the proposed technique does not add any delay on the critical path of the cache, while in the case of a single error the delay is so small that the cache access time is increased by at most one CPU cycle. An example design shows the superiority of the proposed technique against the classical one. The application of the proposed scheme to real and virtual addressed caches of one or two levels is also discussed.     

A study of the light sensitivity of birch bark

Birch bark is commonly found in indigenous collections in Canadian museums. It is empirically known that light can cause the cambium side of birch bark to change colour. The purpose of this research is to better assess the light sensitivities of various colours of birch barks, and the manner, degree, and rate of colour change during light exposure. Six barks with different colours were used: beige, yellow, orange, orange-brown, red, and brown. Samples were exposed to daylight through a north-facing window (window), LED light from an enclosed chamber (LED), and the Newport-Oriel microfade tester (MFT). Window and MFT samples received a total light dose of approximately 25 Mlux-hours, and LED samples, 182 Mlux-hours. Colour monitoring of the samples showed that almost all barks initially darkened and then faded. Daylight through window caused the most rapid and extensive darkening and fading. Bluewool (BW) ratings for window samples were the lowest (most light sensitive). The MFT and LED samples showed a similar degree of colour change, with the same dose, despite the difference in intensity. Ratings of MFT samples are within one BW step difference compared to LED samples. The rate and extent of initial darkening depended on the colour of the bark; the middle range orange-toned barks showed the most rapid and extensive darkening followed by fading.     

Service quality: An unobtrusive investigation of interlibrary loan in large public libraries in Canada

The quality of interlibrary loan services was investigated from the dyadic perspective of the library and the library customer. The study paired the use of a valid, reliable measuring instrument, SERVQUAL, with an unobtrusive approach related to 130 contrived interlibrary loan transactions in 38 large public libraries in Canada. Library measures of quality produced a fill rate of 52% and a turnaround time of 38 days. Customer expectations of quality proved higher than their perceptions of the quality of services they had received. Reliability, the dimension of quality ranked most important by customers for evaluating service quality, scored lowest in performance. Overall attitudes about the public library were higher than levels of satisfaction with interlibrary loan services. The study found a mismatch between library measures of interlibrary loan performance, based on fill rate and turnaround time, and customer measures of quality, based on disconfirmation theory.     

Evaluating clinical librarian services: a systematic review

Background: Previous systematic reviews have indicated limited evidence and poor quality evaluations of clinical librarian (CL) services. Rigorous evaluations should demonstrate the value of CL services, but guidance is needed before this can be achieved. Objectives: To undertake a systematic review which examines models of CL services, quality, methods and perspectives of clinical librarian service evaluations. Methods: Systematic review methodology and synthesis of evidence, undertaken collaboratively by a group of 8 librarians to develop research and critical appraisal skills. Results: There are four clear models of clinical library service provision. Clinical librarians are effective in saving health professionals time, providing relevant, useful information and high quality services. Clinical librarians have a positive effect on clinical decision making by contributing to better informed decisions, diagnosis and choice of drug or therapy. The quality of CL studies is improving, but more work is needed on reducing bias and providing evidence of specific impacts on patient care. The Critical Incident Technique as part of a mixed method approach appears to offer a useful approach to demonstrating impact. Conclusions: This systematic review provides practical guidance regarding the evaluation of CL services. It also provides updated evidence regarding the effectiveness and impact of CL services. The approach used was successful in developing research and critical appraisal skills in a group of librarians.     

Database cache requirements calculation using near-line data access traces in a 500+ user transaction system

A pragmatic way is shown to calculate database cache sizes for a given desired level of cache performance, without use of application information. Treating applications as black boxes allows focusing on higher order structures of database accesses to classify applications. Online tracing of all database accesses allows a near-line simulation of cache performance for various cache sizes. These simulations result in typical patterns for application groups which point to areas with strong gradients in the relation between cache size and cache efficiency which can be exploited. The near-line-ness of this calculation lends itself to automatic adaptive cache size regulation.     

Hierarchical emulation of well-coded programs through the use of streams of instructions buffered in on-chip associative memories and distributed control

Due to the rapid development of the VLSI technology, it is feasible to place the cache memory on the processor chip. This paper proposes an associative sequencer containing an on-chip cache memory. The sequencer emulates operations by streams of instructions and is hence called ‘associative stream emulator’. The associative cache memory stores emulation streams for operations belonging to several lexical levels. This includes also microinstruction streams. The individual instructions in the streams are frequency coded. This leads to code compaction, which increases the effective instruction transfer rate on the memory-processor bus enhancing by that the performance. A possible emulator architecture and its instruction stream processing principles are described. The structure of the associative cache cell is outlined. The operations on the cache memory are explained. Statistical measurement and their results are shown. These results prove that in order to obtain a reasonable performance it is enough with 50–150 cells in the cache memory.     

Towards end-to-end government performance management: Case study of interorganizational information integration in emergency medical services (EMS)

A recent line of e-government research has emphasized the importance of interorganizational information sharing in the public domain. This research extends these information-sharing dimensions to explore information sharing relative to service performance. It utilizes a time-critical information services (TCIS) conceptual framework as an analytical lens. TCIS highlights multiple dimensions of information sharing, including operational, organizational, and governance factors as well as timeliness and quality as key performance metrics. A case study approach was employed to examine the exchange of performance-related information in a key time information critical service: a county-wide emergency medical services (EMS) system. The paper first explains the theoretical foundations for the study, stemming from interorganizational systems (IOS) literature, e-government IOS, and even more specifically, IOS in emergency medical services (EMS). The paper discusses performance measures in EMS, describes the TCIS analytical lens, the study methodology, and the case study under investigation. Case study findings are reported along operational, organizational, and governance dimensions. In general, the case study illustrates promising factors that can enhance information sharing across organizations, while noting that considerable gaps remain in achieving an end-to-end IT-enabled performance approach. Future research should aim to better understand how to overcome these gaps, including addressing the usability constraints that can confront professionals working in time information critical circumstances, such as trauma conditions.     

Evaluating title coverage of full-text periodical databases

This article provides a methodology for evaluating title coverage of full-text periodical databases in relation to a library’s print journal collection. A pretest of that methodology is presented along with a discussion of collection development principles for an effective evaluation of full-text databases.     

A neural network-based replacement strategy for high performance computer architectures

We propose a new scheme for the replacement of cache lines in high performance computer systems. Preliminary research, to date, indicates that neural networks (NNs) have great potential in the area of statistical predictions [1]. This attribute of neural networks is used in our work to develop a neural network-based replacement policy which can effectively eliminate dead lines from the cache memory by predicting the sequence of memory addresses referenced by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer system. The proposed strategy may, therefore, provide better cache performance as compared to the conventional schemes, such as: LRU (Least Recently Used), FIFO (First In First Out), and MRU (Most Recently Used) algorithms. In fact, we observed from the simulation experiments that a carefully designed neural network-based replacement scheme does provide excellent performance as compared to the LRU scheme. The new approach can be applied to the page replacement and prefetching algorithms in virtual memory systems.     

企业竞争情报工作的评价方法

采用文献资料研究、向国内外专家咨询相结合的研究方法,提出将竞争情报最佳实践企业评价与企业竞争情报工作评价融为一体的、既可以定性评价又可以定量评价的、既可用于企业自身评价也可用于外部第三方进行评价的企业竞争情报工作评价方法。评价方法理论模型包括7个大类指标、23个分指标,对于指标含义及其度量进行说明。此方法既可用于一般意义上的单体企业竞争情报工作评价,也可用于多个企业之间竞争情报工作的定标比超。     

6σ管理法在图书馆服务绩效管理中的应用——基于LibQual＋评价之后

IJibQual＋是一种图书馆服务质量评价方法。利用LibQual＋评价方法通过对读者满意度的分析评价,图书馆管理者可以掌握用于改善服务管理绩效的第一手数据。6σ管理法是代表高质量水平的管理方法,可有效提高服务质量．把其作为图书馆评价体系之后的业务流程改进的方法十分有益。     

公共档案馆服务绩效模糊综合评价实现模型研究

构建科学合理的评价模型是公共档案馆服务绩效评价工作开展的关键。本文从公共档案馆服务绩效的特性分析入手,采取模糊综合评价方法的思想,按照设置指标体系、确定指标权重、建立评价数学模型的思路构建了公共档案馆服务绩效综合评价模型,并以我国某市A区公共档案馆为例,对该模型进行了验证。     

图书情报机构知识服务能力及评价研究(Ⅱ)——评价指标体系设计与权重赋值

知识服务能力是图书情报机构赢得竞争优势的作用力,以服务机构的要素结构因素为载体,依赖知识服务流程而滋生成长,支撑着知识服务体系的有效运转,决定着服务机构知识服务资源的转化和绩效,所以通过评价知识服务能力可以衡量知识服务活动的效果。本文以课题组提出的图书情报机构知识服务能力构成为基础,探讨知识服务能力评价的目的、内容、思路与原则。具体研究知识服务的获取能力、吸收能力、创新能力和服务应用能力评价的一级和二级指标,并借助于问卷调查和统计软件对设计的指标权重赋值进行调查与统计分析,最后提出评价四个子能力的指标体系。     

ISA Server在图书馆数字化方面的应用--作为代理服务器

ISA Server是企业级的应用服务器 ,是安全与速度的结合。它在安全快速的 Web访问 ,统一灵活的管理 ,开放性和扩展性方等各面都能满足用户的应用需求。     

新时期我国科技创新情报需求转变的分析与思考

当前,新一轮世界科技革命和产业变革正在孕育兴起,我国经济发展进入了新常态,正在深入实施以科技创新为核心的创新驱动发展战略,使得科技创新情报需求也正在发展着新的变化。本文对我国科技创新发展的新趋势,科技创新情报需求发生的新变化进行了分析,在此基础上,从资源建设、服务模式、研究方法、组织方式和服务对象等方面,就如何更好地开展科技创新情报研究与服务工作进行了分析和探讨。     

近7年合作数字参考咨询研究的国内外文献定量分析

以<剑桥科学文摘>(CSA)中的usA数据库和中国期刊网中的<电子技术及信息科学>子数据库为论文来源;以"亚马逊网上书店的外文图书搜索引擎"和"读秀图书搜索引擎"为图书来源,运用文献计量分析的方法并结合文献内容,从文献的咨询系统案例、管理概况、服务质量、服务模式、其它问题等方面对2000-2006年合作数字参考咨询领域研究进行了统计分析,以期对该领域今后的研究提供一些参考和启示.     

An experiment in unmediated document delivery: EbscoDoc™ at Wichita State University

Commercial document suppliers are used by many libraries, usually to supplement interlibrary loan services. Wichita State University (WSU) offers a document delivery service, EbscoDoc™, directly to faculty members. Faculty order documents online and receive them from EbscoDoc™ without library mediation. The process of evaluating document delivery services is described. The library’s experience in establishing a document delivery service, training users, and keeping usage statistics is also discussed. Data from 18 months of use were collected and analyzed. A survey of WSU’s registered EbscoDoc™ users was conducted and those results are presented and discussed here.