Search results

This paper aims to study integrated metadata access infrastructure for a network of federated curated data repositories. With the increase in collaborative initiatives among diverse scientific discipline, infrastructure should be in place to facilitate effective information sharing. Scientific data sharing involves provisioning, curation and dissemination of information about the various datasets for discovery and access by other peers, which is achieved using metadata services. The heterogeneous nature of various distributed dataset repositories has resulted in the use of heterogeneous metadata services. This poses some challenges in efficient dataset sharing and information retrieval. To allow for universal accessibility of these autonomous curated data repositories, it is important to establish cross-integration on these data repositories for information sharing.

The authors address this problem through provisioning of a universal metadata interface design that can be integrated with some popular metadata services such as integrated rule-oriented data system (iRODS), OpenDap/THREDDS and MERCURY. Given a network of federated heterogeneous distributed metadata services over autonomous curated data repositories, the authors present an implementation of a universal interface system that can probe and query different metadata databases to access the essential information provided for data discovery and enable data migration.

The authors present the architecture that integrates and allows communication between our interface and the various autonomous data repositories. The authors show how they can integrate their system with THREDDS and iRODS to accomplish data discovery and access operations without altering the implementations of the metadata services at their remote locations.

Their system provides unique architecture for information discovery and metadata searches which employs the application programming interfaces for the respective metadata services and communicates using the Zero C Internet communication engine (ICE) protocol.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of the emergence of virtual research environments (VREs) and related e‐research tools for scholarly work and communications processes.

The concepts of VREs and of e‐research more generally are introduced and relevant literature is reviewed. On this basis, the authors discuss the developing role they play in research practices across a number of disciplines and how scholarly communication is beginning to evolve in response to the opportunities these new tools open up and the challenges they raise.

Virtual research environments are beginning to change the ways in which researchers go about their work and how they communicate with each other and with other stakeholders such as publishers and service providers. The changes are driven by the changing landscape of data production, curation and (re‐)use, by new scientific methods, by changes in technology supply and the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research in many domains.

The paper is based on observations drawn from a number of projects in which the authors are investigating the uptake of advanced ICT in research. The paper describes the role of VREs as enablers of changing research practices and the ways in which they engender changes in scholarly work and communications.

Librarians and other information professionals need to be aware of how advanced ICTs are being used by researchers to change the ways they work and communicate. Through their experiences with the integration of virtual learning environments within library information services, they are well placed to inform developments that may well change scholarly communications fundamentally.

The paper contributes to emerging discussions about the likely trajectory and impact of advanced ICTs on research and their implications for those, such as librarians and other information professionals, who occupy important support roles.

Effective synthesis of learning material is a multidimensional problem, which often relies on handpicking approaches and human expertise. Sources of educational content exist in a variety of forms, each offering proprietary metadata information and search facilities. This paper aims to show that it is possible to harvest scholarly resources from various repositories of open educational resources (OERs) in a federated manner. In addition, their subject can be automatically annotated using ontology inference and standard thematic terminologies.

Based on a semantic interpretation of their metadata, authors can align external collections and maintain them in a shared knowledge pool known as the Learning Object Ontology Repository (LOOR). The author leverages the LOOR and show that it is possible to search through various educational repositories’ metadata and amalgamate their semantics into a common learning object (LO) ontology. The author then proceeds with automatic subject classification of LOs using keyword expansion and referencing standard taxonomic vocabularies for thematic classification, expressed in SKOS.

The approach for automatic subject classification simply takes advantage of the implicit information in the searching and selection process and combines them with expert knowledge in the domain of reference (SKOS thesauri). This is shown to improve recall by a considerable factor, while precision remains unaffected.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the idea of subject classification of LOs through the reuse of search query terms combined with SKOS-based matching and expansion has not been investigated before in a federated scholarly setting.

The purpose of this research is to show that federated content collections are important for providing access to multiple content repositories, including image, video, audio and Web sites.

This paper presents findings from an analysis of differences in users' Web searching patterns as they access various federated content collections. A dataset of 4,056,374 records submitted to the Dogpile.com Web meta‐search engine were analysed. An analysis was conducted of search session length, query length, number of results pages viewed, use of systems' assistance and the frequency of repeat queries.

Overall, users entered two to three terms per query and examined only the first pages of results. However, findings include differences in users' access patterns to various content collections. Web, news and audio queries were longer sessions but shorter queries. More users seeking images and videos sought systems assistance.

This is a large‐scale original study using data from a commercial Web search engine. The paper provides a valuable comparison of different types of search – text v. audio, image, etc.

The purpose of this study is to explore current practices, challenges and technological needs of different data repositories.

An online survey was designed for data repository managers, and contact information from the re3data, a data repository registry, was collected to disseminate the survey.

In total, 189 responses were received, including 47% discipline specific and 34% institutional data repositories. A total of 71% of the repositories reporting their software used bespoke technical frameworks, with DSpace, EPrint and Dataverse being commonly used by institutional repositories. Of repository managers, 32% reported tracking secondary data reuse while 50% would like to. Among data reuse metrics, citation counts were considered extremely important by the majority, followed by links to the data from other websites and download counts. Despite their perceived usefulness, repository managers struggle to track dataset citations. Most repository managers support dataset and metadata quality checks via librarians, subject specialists or information professionals. A lack of engagement from users and a lack of human resources are the top two challenges, and outreach is the most common motivator mentioned by repositories across all groups. Ensuring findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data (49%), providing user support for research (36%) and developing best practices (29%) are the top three priorities for repository managers. The main recommendations for future repository systems are as follows: integration and interoperability between data and systems (30%), better research data management (RDM) tools (19%), tools that allow computation without downloading datasets (16%) and automated systems (16%).

This study identifies the current challenges and needs for improving data repository functionalities and user experiences.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2021-0204

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usability effectiveness of a webware for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) in Nigerian repositories. The webware (etdsearch.com.ng) is a web application system that curates ETDs from three sampled Federal government-owned universities. The system also links users to the repositories where the theses and dissertations are hosted.

The case study research strategy was adopted for the study. Sixty postgraduate students from three universities were randomly selected. A usability evaluation questionnaire based on the ISO 9241-11 framework was used to collect data after performing pre-defined queries/tasks based on the informational and transactional query models. The research questions were analysed using the median of the performance score (f_x) of the three universities for each item evaluated, while the Kruskall–Wallis test by ranks was used to test the null hypothesis at a 5% level of significance.

The study answered two research questions and tested two null hypotheses on the usability effectiveness of the webware based on the informational and transactional queries. The participants found the ETD search system effectively useable. In addition, there was no significant difference in the opinions of the participants.

The webware used simulated repositories as a feed bed for the ETDs in order to have control over the workability of the repositories. Thus, the results may differ slightly when “live” repositories are used.

The effectiveness of a webware that aggregates ETDs in Nigerian repositories will present libraries in Nigeria with evidence on how these systems work and can be improved upon.

There is a dearth of literature on practical usability studies of digital information systems in Nigerian libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to present how, in May 2008, the Ad Hoc Committee on Federated Search was formed to prepare a preliminary report on federated searching for a special meeting of Librarians Academic Council at Memorial University Libraries. The primary purpose is to discuss current implementation of federated searching at this institution, explore what other institutions have done, examine federated search technologies, and offer recommendations for the future of this resource.

Information was drawn from a recent usability study, an informal survey was created, and a literature/technology review was conducted.

These four recommendations were proposed and unanimously accepted: actively develop the current federated search implementation by developing a web presence supporting “federated search in context”, re‐evaluating the need for consortial purchase of a federated search tool, continuing to assess the current federated search marketplace with an eye to choosing a next‐generation federated search tool that includes effective de‐duping, sorting, relevancy, clustering and faceting, and that the selection, testing, and implementation of such a tool should involve broad participation from the Memorial University Libraries system.

Provided is an inside look at one institution's experience with implementing a federated search tool. The paper should be of interest to anyone working in academic libraries, particularly the areas of administration, public services, and systems.

The fusion energy research in Europe is developed by a set of laboratories of different countries and organisations. EFDA is an organisation whose main objective is to promote and improve the coordination and collaboration among these laboratories. This paper sets out to describe a working federation (EFDA‐Fed) that gathers EFDA (as organisation) and a set of fusion research laboratories: EURATOM/CIEMAT (Spain), CEA (France), JET (UK), IST (Portugal) and KFKI/HAS (Hungary).

To achieve the objective a federation among all the organisations has been implemented based on PAPI as the authentication and authorization infrastructure that provides a security layer for accessing data among organisations.

During the implementation of EFDA federation some improvements in distributed single sign on systems have been achieved such as the integration of JAVA applications and a single sign off mechanism.

Users who belong to one of the federated organisations will be able to access from any IP address to resources located in any organisation of the federation in a secure way. On the other hand, new resources can be shared for federated users and access policies to these services can be implemented.

The paper describes a successful use of an open source technology (PAPI) for implementing a real multi‐organisation infrastructure for sharing services in a secure way, and integrating client applications and with a complete single sign off mechanism.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework and system to address the inability to discover new and authentic learning material and the lack of a single access point for search and browsing of remote learning object repositories (LORs).

The authors develop a framework for keyword-based query expansion using SKOS domain terminologies and implement a federated search mechanism integrating various disparate LORs within a learning management system (LMS).

The authors show that the expanded query achieves improved information gain and it is applied for federated information access, by simultaneously searching within a number of repositories. Results can be seamlessly aggregated back within the LMS and the course context.

It is possible to retrieve additional learning objects (LOs) and achieve a corresponding increase in recall, while maintaining precision. SKOS expansion behaves well in a scholarly setting, which, combined with federated search, can contribute toward LOs’ discovery at a balanced cost. The system can be easily integrated with other platforms as well, building on open standards and RESTful communication.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time SKOS-based query expansion is applied in a federated setting, and for the discovery and alignment of learning objects residing within LORs. The results show that this approach can achieve considerable information gain and that it is possible to strike a balance between search effectiveness, query drift and performance.