Into the Future:The Challenge and Promise of Technology for Digital Libraries

我们长期将数字图书馆作为一个独立的世界来构建,这个独立的世界中包括数字对象的创建、管理、发现、传递以及利用等。这种相对封闭的模式与高度发达的开放网络世界背道而驰。在网络世界中,用户可以通过大型的检索系统,如Google和Amazon来发现信息,还可以在管理这些信息资源的系统之外对其进行利用。当用户都涌向网络世界时,数字图书馆就面临着打破其固有封闭状态的挑战,以便适应开放的网络世界,否则将失去其实用性。当前,许多条件都给数字图书馆提供了改变现状、提高实用性的机遇。本文将讨论数字图书馆现存的典型模式以及该模式带来的后果,讨论数字图书馆工作改革的方式,并简要探讨数字图书馆建设中的成功技术实例。     

The Future of the Past: Archaeology and Anthropology on the World Wide Web

In the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a crate containing the object of Indiana Jones' quest is wheeled into an immense warehouse for indefinite storage and questionable research access. Unfortunately, this fate is not all that far from reality. Collections of archaeological and ethnographic materials ranging from stone axes, broken potsherds, and carved monuments to baskets, ceremonial masks, and skin canoes have been held by museums collections since the Renaissance. However, their inestimable value and unique conservation and curatorial requirements often conspire to remove them from the reach of all but the most diligent scholars. The potential of the Web to enhance the quality of research on archaeological and ethnographic collections is enormous. This paper will examine ways that one can use the Web to enhance research and improve access to a variety of materials; while there are many other resources for archaeology available on the Web, this paper focusses on museum-related sites. It will also explore the potential of the Web for innovative research strategies. Digitization of catalogs, associated documents, and images to help one locate and study collections and specific artifacts are just one approach. Others include the connection of devices to the Web, such as cameras and microscopes, the creation of virtual reference collections, and the establishment of research networks that will enhance the identification and analysis of material culture. This paper will also consider the role the Web could play in issues of cultural property, contributing to and in many ways intensifying ongoing debates of ownership, curation, conservation, and repatriation of sensitive materials.     

电子政务应"抓住"SaaS趋势

2003至2004年，全球在SaaS（软件即服务）上的支出增长了39％，Netcraft预测，未来12个月内的活动站点增长率将达到28％，Web服务增长率将达到19％；IDC预测，2009年，全球在SaaS上的支出将达到107亿美元；Gartner预测，到2009年，美国托管收入将增长13％——这些都表明，SaaS的应用前景确实美好．     

Unique unto itself: The records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation 1908 to 1945

This paper addresses several misunderstandings about the nature of the FBI's Central Records System. Although depicted in popular culture and much of FBI historiography as a tool for the Cold War suppression of American radicals, the FBI's records system grew out of Department of Justice systems already in place before J. Edgar Hoover became Director in 1924. The system grew in size and complexity according to the demands placed on it by the changing priorities of the FBI's criminal and intelligence missions, guided by a “progressive” drive for efficiency through centralization.     

Character N-Gram Tokenization for European Language Text Retrieval

The Cross-Language Evaluation Forum has encouraged research in text retrieval methods for numerous European languages and has developed durable test suites that allow language-specific techniques to be investigated and compared. The labor associated with crafting a retrieval system that takes advantage of sophisticated linguistic methods is daunting. We examine whether language-neutral methods can achieve accuracy comparable to language-specific methods with less concomitant software complexity. Using the CLEF 2002 test set we demonstrate empirically how overlapping character n-gram tokenization can provide retrieval accuracy that rivals the best current language-specific approaches for European languages. We show that n = 4 is a good choice for those languages, and document the increased storage and time requirements of the technique. We report on the benefits of and challenges posed by n-grams, and explain peculiarities attendant to bilingual retrieval. Our findings demonstrate clearly that accuracy using n-gram indexing rivals or exceeds accuracy using unnormalized words, for both monolingual and bilingual retrieval.     

迈向数字化企业

当您每年要向中国数千个地方发送1600万个包裹时,很多问题都可能出现。只要有百分之一的包裹被标示错误,就会有16万个包裹迷失目的地,势必引来大群客户的抱怨。