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Observes that, despite the prevalent use of customer databases, very little academic research has examined the practice. Discusses the plethora of research opportunities in database marketing. First, defines database marketing, and second, promotes organizational learning theory as a useful tool by which database marketing research can advance. Finally reviews prior research, and presents research questions related to the design, maintenance and applications of customer databases.

In tertiary institution, some students find it hard to learn database design theory, in particular, database normalization. The purpose of this paper is to develop a visualization tool to give students an interactive hands‐on experience in database normalization process.

The model‐view‐controller architecture is used to alleviate the black box syndrome associated with the study of algorithm behavior for database normalization process. The authors propose a visualization “exploratory” tool that assists the learners in understanding the actual behavior of the database normalization algorithms of choice and also in evaluating the validity/quality of the algorithm. This paper describes the visualization tool and its effectiveness in teaching and learning normalization forms and their functional dependencies.

The effectiveness of the tool has been evaluated in surveys. It shows that students generally viewed the tool more positively than the textbook technique. This difference is significant to p<0.05 (t=1.645). The mean interactions precision and calculated value using expert judge relevance ratings show a significant difference between visualization tool and textbook performance 3.74 against 2.61 for precision with calculated t=6.69.

The visualization tool helped students validate/check their learning of normalization process. Consequently, the paper shows that the tool has a positive impact on students' perception.

This paper considers whether copyright has a future in an electronic environment. A number of issues face copyright owners in the networked environment, most of them caused by the ease with which materials can be copied. Some relevant examples of legal cases are considered. Some responses to the stresses, in terms of both attitudes and legislation, such as the EU Database Directive and the EU Draft Directive on Copyright, are considered. It is concluded that copyright is unlikely to survive in its present form, and that attempts to strengthen it by means of increasing owner rights could be counterproductive. Innovative thinking and ideas are necessary, together with increased owner‐user co‐operation, if copyright is to survive.

Outlines two distinct views of database marketing – as a total marketing strategy and as a tactical tool. Argues that a database marketing strategy can be realized only in companies with a genuine customer focus. As a result the tactical choice is more appropriate to most companies. Suggests that the problems of database saturation, where further cross‐selling using a database is not cost‐effective, can be overcome through widening the company′s credibility as a supplier as well as by increasing the size of the database. A database marketing strategy uses the tools of image and brand building to establish this credibility.

This paper sets out to investigate the meaning, role and implications of contextual information associated with digital collections.

This paper is based on an extensive review and analysis of both the scholarly literature from many disciplines about the concept of context and the professional literature (including standards) related to the description of information artifacts. The paper provides an analysis of context, distinguishing three main ways in which that term has been used within the scholarly literature. It then discusses contextual information within digital collections, and presents a framework for contextual information. It goes on to discuss existing standards and guidance documents for encoding information related to the nine classes of contextual entities, concluding with a discussion of potential implications for descriptive practices through the lifecycle of digital objects.

The paper presents a framework for contextual information that is based on nine classes of contextual entities: object, agent, occurrence, purpose, time, place, form of expression, concept/abstraction, and relationship.

Research and development about and in support of digital collections will benefit from a clear articulation of the types, roles, importance and elements of contextual information.

Future users of digital objects will probably have numerous tools for discovering preserved digital objects relevant to their interests, but making meaningful use and sense of the digital objects will also require capture, collection and management of contextual information.

This paper synthesizes and extends a previously diffuse literature, in order to clarify and articulate core concepts in the management of digital collections.

The purpose of the editorial is to remember Professor Alessandro D'Atri, a pioneering Information Systems Scholar with whom the author collaborated for about 15 years. The main outcome of such collaboration is the conference Ethicomp 1999 in Rome. Following that conference the author has started elaborating a paper “Metaethics and the future of computer ethics” (Marturano) which was widely cited and quoted in the field. Thence the author has discussed its impact in the field and discussed some following papers dealing with similar topics. It emerged that such a paper is still a valid one for its perspectives but still not understood as for most of its ethical suggestions.

The paper is mainly philosophical and critical. It uses mostly critical analysis of papers dealing with the same topics.

The perspectives and the seminal ideas of the author's paper “Metaethics and the future of computer ethics” (Marturano) are still valid and, in some extent, are more fruitful than some following papers covering the same topics.

The value of this guest editorial is in remembering a very valuable and pioneering scholar – Alessandro D'Atri and comparing the author's paper's findings with other similar papers, which results in a better understanding of theoretical problems in the discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to show how description logics (DLs) can be applied to formalizing the information bearing capability (IBC) of paths in entity-relationship (ER) schemata.

The approach follows and extends the idea presented in Xu and Feng (2004), which applies DLs to classifying paths in an ER schema. To verify whether the information content of a data construct (e.g. a path) covers a semantic relation (which formulates a piece of information requirement), the principle of IBC under the source-bearer-receiver framework is presented. It is observed that the IBC principle can be formalized by constructing DL expressions and examining constructors (e.g. quantifiers).

Description logic can be used as a tool to describe the meanings represented by paths in an ER schema and formalize their IBC. The criteria for identifying data construct distinguishability are also discovered by examining quantifiers in DL expressions of paths of an ER schema.

This paper focuses on classifying paths in data schemas and verifying their formalized IBC by using DLs and the IBC principle. It is a new point of view for evaluation of data representation, which looks at the information borne by data but not data dependencies.

This chapter explores how Jass Easterman (the author's avatar name) teaches education students concurrently, both pre-service teachers and postgraduate, in Second Life. It discusses how a virtual world can be a valuable teaching and learning tool for the whole group even though they have a variety of overall goals and learning outcomes. Jass brings distant university students located around the world studying at the one institution together to liaise with each other in Second Life. She has created an innovative tutorial model where students go on virtual tours, visit other educational institutions, attend guest lectures, undertake role play activities, and go on Web quests and learn basic building and scripting skills, all from their own homes. Adult learning theories and communities of practice, in a virtual world, underpin all activities. Why Second Life was chosen for these students and what the students say about this type of learning are discussed in this chapter. The value of this tutorial model will be explored and reflected upon and conclusions made of its efficacy.

The purpose of this study is to describe a framework of ontological techniques to restrengthen current content management systems of a natural science museum. The ontological approach is utilized to extend the service level from information to knowledge.

Two ontologies have been established to perform vascular plant and herbal drug knowledge bases that further facilitate knowledge integration and inference. Furthermore, this study presented ontology development processes, including knowledge acquisition, representation, and retrieval.

Empirical lessons related to development techniques are concluded as follows: first, the formal concept analysis can be used as a knowledge acquisition approach to acquire concepts and attributes from expertise. Second, the Ontology Web Language represents an XML‐based language which provides formal logic expressions for describing knowledge concepts. Finally, the Jena APIs can be further developed as an ontology reasoner to facilitate knowledge inference and retrieval.

The development of ontological knowledge base is time‐consuming and requires seamless collaboration among specialists, knowledge engineers, and information systems.

Empirical lessons indicate that ontological techniques provide potential approaches for library and museum communities to apply for next generation knowledge building.

This study indicates that ontological techniques have excellent potential for knowledge building.

Firms have only just begun to use the Internet to obtain customer information in their database marketing processes to enhance customer relationship management. This research uses an action research approach to develop a new framework about how they can do this. The action research project was carried out in a large Australian database company because no other sources of empirical information about the topic were available and it could provide rich findings about an under‐researched, practical area. Results showed that integration of the Internet and database marketing enhances the effectiveness of customer relationship management practices. For example, the Internet offers benefits such as increased consumer data collection accuracy and speed, cost savings, greater interaction and better relationships with customers. This research also identifies that organizational culture, top management support and collaboration between marketing and IT teams need to be in place to provide a supportive environment that is critical for the success of the integration.