Are We There Yet? Moving to an E-Only Collection Development Policy for Books

Kate Moore’s presentation gave audience members an overview of the current e-book environment in academic libraries. Her presentation included a review of the literature on motivations for moving to an e-preferred collection development policy, information on user preferences and behavior with e-books, and technological barriers and other obstacles that still impede library uptake of e-books. She concluded with a list of items to consider when incorporating e-books into a collection development policy.     

Search Engines for Tomorrow's Scholars,Part Two

In 2009, the Technology Development Team at the New York-based Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project created IDS Search, a consortial catalog that promoted the group's collection and interlibrary loan features equally with the local collection and local availability. Because the success of IDS Search relied heavily on users fully understanding the different types of availability, the authors conducted usability studies to investigate how well users could determine how to locate materials and understand the availability of items. Eye-tracking analysis was used to determine how well users understood availability, related text, and meanings of terms. The studies found that users had difficulty navigating the functions of the online public access catalog (OPAC) and could not easily differentiate among items that were immediately available, available in a few days, or available online as a preview.     

Lost in Translation or Lost in Publishing: Introduction of World Literature in Early Modern Bulgarian Publishing via Russian Language Editions

Bulgarian book publishing starts developing as commercial system as early as the second half of nineteenth century. With the increasing of competition after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, as main problem the lack of texts for publishing emerges. The Bulgarian literature was still too young to provide texts for the publishers with the required quality and quantity. That’s why the publisher’s main goal remains the translation of popular (in any sense of meaning) foreign authors. In relation with this policy two main problems emerged—the lack of translators from the main European and World languages and appearance of many intellectuals who pretended to have good Russian language skills. This resulted in Russian book editions of world literature being the main source for Bulgarian translations. The paper focuses on to the process of retransmission and republishing of texts from language to language and from place to place. Interesting conclusions are made on how the publishing market strategies affect readers and their perception of the most popular titles of world literature. The main thesis is that the language skills (or lack of skills) of the translator are important for the reader’s perception of the text but the publisher’s choice of foreign editions through the mediation of second country’s publishing system had critical importance for the perception of Bulgarian readers of classical and popular examples of Western literature.     

Interlending Services: Trends,Languages, and use for Collection Development at North-West University

This paper uses the bibliometrics methods to analyse the interlending service trends, language and collection development at the North-West University. The results show that despite some challenges, ILS services at the NWU decreased. More than 98.5% of all documents requested are in English language followed by Setswana and Afrikaans. Out of the 535 books requested by the Mafikeng Campus, 138 were added to the collection of the library. These results point to a need for academic libraries in Africa to adopt strategies for the development of African languages. The results support the continued use of ILS data for collection development purposes.     

Networked Resources, Assessment and Collection Development

This project provides a critical evaluation of networked resources as they relate to the library's collection development policy, identifies areas of the curriculum not well represented, establishes a reliable method of assessing usage across all resources, and develops a framework of quantitative data for collection development decision making.     

Soviet Rock Collection and International Counterculture Archive at the Global Resources Center of the George Washington University Libraries

ABSTRACT

This memoir is my personal story about how I created and came to curate on the International Counterculture Archive collection, which is held in the Global Resources Center of the George Washington University’s (GWU) Gelman library. The first person narrative relates my first encounters with Soviet rock culture and describes how I turned my initial interest into a Ph.D. dissertation on the subculture of Soviet hippies and traditions of Soviet rock music, which subsequently led to my later work as a librarian and curator. I tell the story of my initial encounters with the members of Soviet/Russian rock music subculture and other countercultural personalities and activists during my first trip to Moscow in 1993 to collect samples of Soviet rock music recordings and rock music zines for the European Division of the Library of Congress. During this formative trip I met with a number of counterculture producers and collectors who were instrumental in helping me build the International Counterculture Archive. Upon leaving the Library of Congress, I continued collecting Soviet/Russian countercultural materials on behalf of the Global Resources Center of GWU’s Gelman Library. I talk about the process of creating the Archive at Gelman library, about bureaucratic and financial aspects of this work, and about my many acquisition trips to Moscow, former Soviet republics, and East Central Europe. Much of the narrative centers on my work with Russian collectors and content producers and describes the type of materials that are included in the collection. I also describe how I built the collection of historical Soviet/Russian rock music recordings, focusing on the phenomenon of Soviet/Russian rock music zines and the history of the unique zine collection within the International Counterculture Archive.     

The Research Value of Siberia Content Monographs in Polar Collections of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks

This assessment of the Siberia content monographs in polar collections of the Rasmuson Library of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks identifies language holdings and collection strengths, evaluates research potential and compares holdings with selected Pacific Rim libraries. Data indicate that Russian language titles outnumber English titles seven to one and other languages for to one. Two LC classes, science and history, comprise 44% of the holdings, while the four largest classes constitute 60% of the collection. The Siberiana collection can support research in selected subjects: history, anthropology/physical geography, Eskimo linguistics, agriculture, permafrost, and geology. The collection is about half the size of those at the University of Hawaii and Hokkaido University. It contains nearly as many Siberiana titles as do the Slavic ccollections of the University of California, Berkeley, and is a third larger than holdings in the collections of the University of Washington, Seattle, and several times larger than those of the universities at Oregon, British Columbia, Melbourne, and Stanford. Currently Rasmuson Library owns 4,333 titles, 2,064 cataloged and 2,269 partially processed.     

GFL:用于族性化学结构的标引图形形式语言

为了满足日益增长的对专利检索的需求,国家高技术研究发展计划(863计划)启动了族性化学结构数据库系统的研究与开发。族性化学结构数据库系统主要涉及两方面的关键技术:(1)族性化学结构的计算机表达, (2)族性化学结构的检索算法。本文主要讨论族性化学结构的计算机表达。存在于化学专利原始文献中的族性化学结构是用具有一定规范的自然语言表述的。为了能在计算机系统中储存与检索这些信息,自然语言表述的族性化学结构必须转换为计算机可以接受的无歧义的形式语言。这个过程叫做族性化学结构的标引。国际上一般采用的基于结构片断的族性化学结构标引形式语言开发于20世纪70～80年代,这种形式语言与化学家采用的图形自然语言相去甚远,标引速度慢,成本高。本文介绍在ISIS/Draw绘图功能基础上发展起来的标引族性化学结构的图形形式语言,它的主要特点是与化学家日常使用的图形自然语言接近,规则简单易于掌握,从而提高标引效率,降低族性化学结构数据库系统的实现成本。     

A longitudinal investigation into the changing citing behavior of geomatics postgraduate students at Wuhan University,China, 1988–2004: Implications for collection development

Aim:The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the citing behavior of geomatics postgraduate students at the Wuhan University in China. These students constitute one of the main user groups of Wuhan University Library and the analysis of their use of literature (through the means of citation analysis) can yield valuable insights against which to benchmark and inform collection development policy and other services at the Information Technology Library (ITL) at Wuhan University.Design/methodology/approach:In this project, 9317 citations in 21 PhD and 180 MSc theses submitted at the Wuhan University in the years of 1988, 1996, and 2004 were analyzed. All cited materials were divided by output format (monographs, proceedings, journal articles) and the more in-depth analysis was conducted for all cited journals. The following characteristics of the cited journal literature were analyzed: subject, age, language, and dispersion of journal titles.Findings:An increased use of journal literature in bibliographies of geomatics theses was observed over time. A trend to increase citations to international conference proceedings was also noted as well as a trend to cite more journals in disciplines other than surveying and mapping. It was also noted that, over time, citations to documents in languages other than Chinese and English have significantly decreased (in some cases, disappeared). Large dispersion among the most frequently cited journals in different time periods (only 25% of titles were repeated in 1988, 1996, and 2004 top ranking journal lists) was also noted. It was also noted that the core of geomatics literature is expanding (it now takes 42% of journal titles to cover 80% of all citations).Practical implications:By analyzing citation patterns of the graduate students of geomatics in China, we can track the developments and changes within that discipline in China and can compare these trends internationally (e.g. increased role of a journal, the importance of conference proceedings, domination of the English-language sources, dispersion of journal literature, and increasing multidisciplinarity of the discipline). The techniques and methods used in this study can be replicated to study other disciplines. Also, it is hoped that the findings of this research will inform collection development planning, development of reference services, and information literacy training.     

Agile Project Management in Libraries: Creating Collaborative,Resilient, Responsive Organizations

Libraries must continually adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of users. Doing so requires the ability to be flexible and respond quickly. This is a case study of how The George Washington University Libraries rethought its approach to collection development using a cross-functional, team-based strategy that leveraged the benefits of Agile project management. Adopting an Agile approach to collection development maximized the impact of the library’s financial resources and enabled staff to develop new skills. This project underscores the value of collaboration, agility, and experimentation in libraries.     

Journals on nanotechnologies in the system of scientific periodicals in Russia

This paper presents the analysis of domestic journals on nanotechnologies for 1998–2011. Data collection was performed using the Google.ru search system on the internet sites of the leading Russian libraries: the Russian State Library (RSL), State Public Scientific Technical Library of Russia (SPSTL), eLIBRARY.RU, OJSC Rospechat’ and Periodicals.com, as well as Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication. The following parameters are analyzed: the title of a journal, the first year of publication, a publishing organization, subject sphere, and the periodicity of publication. The goal of the research is to determine the appearance, development, and modern state of the journal system on nanotechnologies as a new discipline in Russia.     

The Foundation of Russian History,Jordanville, New York: A Decade-Long Travel Account

This column piece describes the Foundation of Russian History located on the grounds of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York and the author’s knowledge of the state of the collections today, how things have changed over the past decade, as well as future possibilities for development, collaboration and use.     

香港地区高校图书馆馆藏发展政策研究

馆藏发展政策是图书馆规划馆藏发展,合理安排购书经费的基本依据。文章通过对香港地区4所高校图书馆馆藏发展政策的主要内容和基本项目的阐述分析得出,大陆图书馆应设置专门的馆藏发展机构,尽快制定科学合理的馆藏发展政策和电子馆藏发展政策,并根据信息环境、服务对象信息需求的变化不断更新修订。     

Use of Louisiana's Digital Cultural Heritage by Wikipedians

Analysis of how cultural heritage institutions' (CHI) digital assets are being cited on Wikipedia can be beneficial to understanding user needs and interests as well as priorities for collection development and digitization. This case study details an analysis of Wikipedia links to online resources from Louisiana cultural heritage institutions in order to determine what types of cultural heritage resources users are citing on Wikipedia, what is the content of the Wikipedia articles with Louisiana CHI citations, and how this can influence the work of CHI. The results of the study include findings that digital library items and archival finding aids are the most cited sources from cultural heritage institutions on Wikipedia and are particularly popular for Louisiana-specific Wikipedia articles on society and the social sciences and culture and the arts. Some possible strategies for determining digitization and collection development priorities based on these findings are also detailed.     

科技文献跨语言推荐模型研究

信息超载和语言障碍影响我国科研人员对外文科技文献的有效获取,如何提高获取效率成为亟待解决的问题。个性化推荐能很好地处理信息超载现象,但当前国内外相关研究都基于单一语种进行,多语种环境下的推荐研究非常缺乏。本文提出网络环境和海量数据背景下的科技文献跨语言推荐模型,并论证用户兴趣特征抽取、语言转换和混合推荐等步骤。利用Web日志挖掘技术,分析基于多种信息行为的整合分析方法抽取用户兴趣特征,以分类表作为参考体系建立用户兴趣表示模型,在用户—特征词转化为用户—类目矩阵的基础上开展推荐研究。     

A user-centric approach to identifying best deployment strategies for language tools: the impact of content and access language on Web user behaviour and attitudes

The number of Web users whose first language is not English continues to grow, as does the amount of content provided in languages other than English. This poses new challenges for actors on the Web, such as in which language(s) content should be offered, how search tools should deal with mono- and multilingual content, and how users can make the best use of navigation and search options, suited to their individual linguistic skills. How should these challenges be dealt with? Technological approaches to non-English (or in general, cross-language) Web search have made large progress; however, translation remains a hard problem. This precludes a low-cost but high-quality blanket all-language coverage of the whole Web. In this paper, we propose a user-centric approach to answering questions of where to best concentrate efforts and investments. Drawing on linguistic research, we describe data on the availability of content and access to it in first and second languages across the Web. We then present three studies that investigated the impact of the availability (or not) of first-language content and access forms on user behaviour and attitudes. The results indicate that non-English languages are under-represented on the Web and that this is partly due to content-creation, link-setting and link-following behaviour. They also show that user satisfaction is influenced both by the cognitive effort of searching and the availability of alternative information in that language. These findings suggest that more cross-language tools are desirable. However, they also indicate that context (such as user groups’ domain expertise or site type) should be considered when tradeoffs between information quality and multilinguality need to be taken into account.     

Automated Classification to Improve the Efficiency of Weeding Library Collections

Previous studies have shown that weeding a library collection benefits patrons and increases circulation rates. However, the time required to review the collection and make weeding decisions presents a formidable obstacle. This study empirically evaluated methods for automatically classifying weeding candidates. A data set containing 80,346 items from a large-scale weeding project running from 2011 to 2014 at Wesleyan University was used to train six machine learning classifiers to predict a weeding decision of either ‘Keep’ or ‘Weed’ for each candidate. The study found statistically significant agreement (p?=?0.001) between classifier predictions and librarian judgments for all classifier types. The naive Bayes and linear support vector machine classifiers had the highest recall (fraction of items weeded by librarians that were identified by the algorithm), while the k-nearest-neighbor classifier had the highest precision (fraction of recommended candidates that librarians had chosen to weed). The variables found to be most relevant were: librarian and faculty votes for retention, item age, and the presence of copies in other libraries.     

台湾地区图书馆馆藏发展政策实践研究

简述近年来我国台湾地区图书馆馆藏发展政策的概况;以该地区15所图书馆的馆藏发展政策为案例,对其基本项目进行比较分析;认为台湾地区藏书发展政策制旬方面的经验和教训值得我国大陆图书馆界参考。     

Evaluating hierarchical organisation structures for exploring digital libraries

Search boxes providing simple keyword-based search are insufficient when users have complex information needs or are unfamiliar with a collection, for example in large digital libraries. Browsing hierarchies can support these richer interactions, but many collections do not have a suitable hierarchy available. In this paper we present a number of approaches for automatically creating hierarchies and mapping items into them, including a novel technique which automatically adapts a Wikipedia-based taxonomy to the target collection. These approaches are applied to a large collection of cultural heritage items which is formed through the aggregation of other collections and for which no unified hierarchy is available. We investigate a number of novel user-evaluated metrics to quantify the hierarchies’ quality and performance, showing that the proposed technique is preferred by users. From this we draw a number of conclusions as to what makes a hierarchy useful to the user.