Australian Approaches to Policy Development and Resulting Research Issues

This paper is in two parts. The first outlines the context in which the Archives Authority of New South Wales (State Archives) is implementing electronic recordkeeping as part of a recordkeeping regime across the New South Wales public sector. The second part is an attempt to identify what I feel are unresolved issues, which may be resolved by practical or pure research, and as they relate to electronic recordkeeping, that we are facing in implementing the regime.     

LIBQUAL+TM-图书馆服务质量评价方法新进展

LibQUAL+~(TM)是美国研究图书馆协会正在实施的试验项目,试图对SERVQUAL进行改造,从而建立适合于图书馆的服务质量评价体系。本文对LibQUAL+~(TM)的产生背景、发展历史、评价项目、作用等方面进行了较为详细的介绍。     

An On-Demand and Cloud-Based Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard

Building on the findings of a 2013 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up funded project, in early 2016 we began working on an IMLS Sparks! funded project: Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard. The project is a collaborative initiative between University IT and the Library's Center for Digital Scholarship. We are currently evaluating an efficient and user-friendly dashboard solution that will allow faculty and student to easily choose, configure, deploy, and evaluate any of a set of common web applications in a shared and virtual hosting environment. The service is similar to those offered by commercial hosting providers for deployment of popular web applications, but our Scholars Dashboard service will focus on tools more relevant to digital scholarship and digital humanities. The prototype leverages OpenNebula, an open source cloud-computing platform for managing distributed data center environments, and Amazon Web Services for deploying virtual machines. In this article, we will describe the work we have done in the last year and further discuss the role of digital scholarship teams within academic libraries in providing cloud-based infrastructure for digital scholarship and research.     

Assessing the Health Information Needs of Unaffiliated Health Professionals and Using Training on Openly Available Search Tools and Resources to Provide Solutions to Their Information Access Challenges and Barriers

This article will describe a year-long (2010–11) joint project between Columbia University Medical Center's Health Sciences Library and the Institute for Family Health (IFH), a network of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serving disadvantaged populations in New York State. This National Institutes of Health-funded pilot project aimed to (a) determine the medical literature and training needs of IFH personnel, (b) develop generic licensing agreements with publishers that would enable a health sciences library to provide access to electronic resources for FQHC personnel, and (c) develop reference/education services for IFH personnel. How the reference and education aims were met will be described and discussed here as the lessons learned from this project may be useful to librarians considering doing instructional outreach to unaffiliated health professionals working at FQHCs nationwide.     

Public sector information system project failures: Lessons from a New Zealand hospital organization

Information system (IS) project failures are so common as to be almost expected by planners. There is an expanding literature on IS project failures including both theory and case studies. This literature, however, is largely derived from private sector IS failures, despite the fact that the likelihood of failure appears higher in the public sector. This article seeks to fill the public sector case study void. It details the failure and abandonment of a large New Zealand public hospital IS development. The case corroborates findings from the private sector literature, namely that ill-planned and managed, large and multifaceted projects are more likely to fail and that contextual issues are highly influential. It also shows how much more complex project commissioning and development is in situations of public governance where political and organizational elements come to the fore. Finally, the article offers lessons for public sector IS planners.     

Building bridges between New York city public high schools and a college: The cooperative library project

This article describes a successful cooperative project involving the Brooklyn College Library and two New York City high schools. In spring and fall of 1995, college librarians provided selected honors students, their teachers, and their librarians with basic BI and access to the college library for a semester. The teachers assigned projects requiring college-level research. The preparation and instruction are outlined, and responses of the students and college     

Capturing business intelligence required for targeted marketing,demonstrating value,and driving process improvement

The University of Wollongong (UOW) in New South Wales, Australia, has undertaken an innovative and collaborative research project to demonstrate the value that can be provided by academic libraries through a tool called the “library cube”. The library cube consists of two major components: a backend system containing a multidimensional data warehouse linking student borrowing and use of electronic resources to students' academic marks (grades); and a frontend system that allows users to quickly and easily create cross tabulated data views, such as average student marks by frequency of library resource usage and gender. The project is different from the efforts of other institutions to link usage to student outcomes, in that the library cube is not an isolated research project, but is now an ongoing part of UOW's systems and performance reporting. The library cube represents a fundamental shift in evaluating the student experience through the integration of discrete systems and datasets. It has revealed a very strong relationship between student library usage and academic performance. This information will improve UOW library's ability to demonstrate value to clients and stakeholders. The library cube has also delivered some anticipated and unexpected findings on the relationship between social variables, such as gender, age, and citizenship, and library usage behaviors; and in doing so has also identified potential target audiences for library promotions and engagement strategies.     

Improving textbooks and teachers’ editions to meet the needs of diverse students

This article summarizes research findings on instructional strategies and textbook features that benefit diverse students. It then reports the conduct and findings of a study in which educators, researchers, and publishers collaborated to improve the usability of textbooks. Jean Ciborowski was the director of the project “Improving Textbook Usability.” She currently directs the educational services in the school function clinics at Boston Children’s Hospital. Mary Antes has served on a variety of curriculum development and educational projects at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), and was project assistant on the textbook project. Judith Zorfass, technical monitor of the project, is currently directing two federally funded research projects at EDC. One studies the integration of technology into the curriculum for handicapped adolescents and the other investigates reading development in language disordered students. Nancy Ames is director of EDC’s Center for Family, School, and Community, and helped in the initial design of the textbook project on which this article is based.     

Developing Family-Friendly Exhibits

How can museums encourage active family learning? Four Philadelphia area science institutions—The Franklin Institute Science Museum, the New Jersey State Aquarium, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Philadelphia Zoo—have investigated the answer to this question as part of the PISEC (Philadelphia-Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative) Family Learning Project. PISEC is conducting research and exhibit development aimed at increasing understanding of family learning in science museums and identifying the characteristics of successful family learning exhibits. The PISEC project has three phases, two of which have been completed: (1) a research study to establish behavioral indicators for family learning; (2) the development and evaluation of four exhibit enhancements aimed at achieving family learning goals; (3) a research study of the impact of the four enhanced exhibits. This article will describe the results of formative evaluation conducted during Phase 2 of the project. “Family learning components,” or exhibit enhancements, designed to help adults and children learn together, were developed, field-tested, revised, and installed at each of the four museums. PISEC has identified seven characteristics of successful family learning exhibits: multi-sided, multi-user, accessible, multi-outcome, multi-modal, readable, and relevant. The four PISEC family learning components, embodying these characteristics, appear to have increased active family learning.     

Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition: setting the scene for a major study

The paper provides the results of the first phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how they determine authority and trustworthiness in the sources they use, cite, and publish in. The first phase of the study utilized focus groups to formulate research questions for the project as a whole. It provided the direction for the literature review, interviews, and questionnaires studies that would follow. Fourteen focus groups were held in the UK and US in order to obtain this information. A total of 66 science and social science researchers participated. The main findings were: (a) researchers play down difficulties of establishing trustworthiness, not because there are none, but because they have well‐developed methods of establishing trust; (b) citation‐derived metrics are becoming more important in regard to where researchers publish; (c) social media are ancillary to research, but are used for promotion of research and idea generation; (d) researchers are suspicious and confused about open access, but less so if produced by a traditional publisher; (e) there was a uniformity of perceptions/behaviour of researchers irrespective of differences in subject, country, and age; (f) although some early career researchers behave the same as their more senior colleagues this is because of a fear of the system: they actually think differently.     

“Excellent Library”—A Holistic Quality Model and Certificate for Libraries: Concept and Experiences from Germany

In Germany, more than 15 libraries are operating successfully with the quality model Excellent Library. They are part of a research project at Stuttgart Media University where the quality model and certificate have been developed since 2008. The article reflects the experiences of the project: A short introduction to the German library system and quality projects in German libraries will be followed by an overview over the model and certificate. Furthermore, the challenging process of becoming an Excellent Library and related effects will be described.     

Portable Computers & Interactive Multimedia: A New Paradigm for Interpreting Museum Collections

This paper describes a GEMISIS doctoral research project nearing completion at the University of Salford, U.K. and offers some preliminary findings. The aim of the project was to design an interactive multimedia application for a portable computer in a museum setting, to assess the application as an aid to interpretation and to examine its impact on the visitor's understanding and enjoyment of the museum experience. It will discuss the introduction of portable computers into museum galleries, briefly describe the design and development process of the interactive multimedia application, review the methodology employed and provide a summary of preliminary findings.     

Keeping Up with the Flow: Electronic Resource Workflow and Analysis

This article describes a project documenting and analyzing the electronic resource workflows for the library at Baruch College, CUNY (City University of New York). The presenter discusses her approach, how background research informed the documentation process, and explains the methodology and framework used to analyze the lifecycle of the electronic resources. Multiple interviews conducted with staff, faculty, and stakeholders involved in these workflows offered clarification of the steps involved and afforded the opportunity to delve into lengthier discussions about the process. This presentation highlights some outcomes of the project, focusing on “gaps” in the lifecycle, indications of where the workflow could be streamlined, and examples of beneficial conversations within library departments.     

The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI): The Evolving Future of Name Authority Control

This article describes the project to build the initial International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) database by deploying the techniques used to develop the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). It focuses particularly on the work of the OCLC team in transforming the VIAF “resource file” model of matched data into a robust, operational, and authoritative file of uniquely assigned ISNIs as a base for an ongoing ISNI assignment system, and on the quality assurance validation of the database provided by the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The need for future interaction between ongoing ISNI assignment and name authority control in libraries is also explored.     

Electronic information for students ‐the Elinor project

The article presents an overview of recent developments in mentoring in the library and information services (LIS) community in the United Kingdom (UK). The article discusses the concept of mentoring, provides a review of relevant literature and summarises a recent fourteen‐month project (May 1995‐July 1996) investigating mentoring as a staff development tool. The project was funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) and was carried out by the Centre for Information Research and Training (CIRT) in the School of Information Studies at the University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE). Project results relevant to academic libraries are particularly drawn out in this article. The article makes some comparisons between findings in the general literature on mentoring and findings in the recent Birmingham research. It concludes with a discussion of some possible advances in mentoring in the UK LIS community, and a substantial bibliography.     

Understanding student article retrieval behaviors: Instructional implications

This study evaluates the use of full-text databases amongst 425 undergraduate and graduate students in western New York. A review of literature implicated convenience, time issues, article retrieval option knowledge, and the appreciation and understanding of research article quality as potential predictors of full-text reliance. These variables were then evaluated via survey response and frequency counts, by conducting correlations, a one-way ANOVA, and stepwise regression analyses. The findings suggested that convenience, appreciation and understanding of research quality, and time management issues played a significant role in the prediction of student full-text reliance. These findings as well as the relationships among independent variables are discussed. Implications for instruction are then addressed.     

Collaboration and Education: Engaging High School Students With EAC-CPF Research

The Special Collections Research Center at Johns Hopkins University received a Council on Library and Information Resources Hidden Collections grant from March 2013 to March 2014 for processing the archives of the Roland Park Company. The grant included partnerships between the Archives and Technical Services to create a Best Practices for EAC-CPF records, as well as a local high school history class to complete the required research. Rather than simplify International Standard Archival Authority Record For Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families and EAC-CPF for the students, project staff distilled them into discrete, easy-to-understand tasks that allowed for the production of controlled data in a high school environment.     

Electronic Document Delivery: The Ibadan University Library Experience

New information communication technologies, such as the Internet and electronic publishing, not only enhance the range of publications that libraries can provide for their users but also increase the speed with which such requests can be met. This article describes the development of electronic document delivery (EDD) at the Kenneth Dike Library at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. A successful EDD program depends upon good intranet and Internet network systems, document availability, user awareness and training, and ease of use. The major challenge to this service is inconsistent power supply, which the university is addressing with the aid of a grant from the MacArthur Foundation for backup electric generators and a university solar energy project. It is hoped that this will assure better and more reliable power service in support of EDD in future. New information delivery regulations and laws guiding adequate service will also emerge but must be properly applied for effective and positive results.     

文件的概念及其在数字环境中的演变:InterPARES观点

InterPARES是一个长达12年的致力于电子/数字文件研究的国际项目,其研究点之一的文件概念在这12年的研究中始终占据着一个主导和核心的地位。本文追溯该概念在快速变化的技术环境中的演变历史,并由此呈现由项目研究成果转化而来的概念深化及扩展。     

An Issue of Trust: Are Commercial Databases Really Reliable?

Entrepreneurial researchers utilize databases on new and emerging businesses that provide the contact data and other demographic information for research samples. Based on a literature review, the integrity of this data is often assumed, and the vendor's claims as to its accuracy are relied upon. This article tests the accuracy and reliability of one such database, the U.S. New Business database from ReferenceUSA. Specifically, these businesses were contacted to test the validity of the information provided. The research findings suggest that the U.S. New Business database from ReferenceUSA is not a vetted database, and researchers cannot rely on the vendor's promise of accuracy.