Search results

To provide a selective bibliography in the emerging area of library content personalization for the benefit of library and information professionals.

A range of recently published works (in the period 1993–2004), which aim to provide pragmatic application of content personalization rather than theoretical works, are discussed and sorted into “classified” sections to help library professionals understand more about the various options for formulating content as per the specific needs of their clientele.

This paper provides information about each category of tool and technique of personalization, indicating what is achieved and how particular developments can help other libraries or professionals. It recognises that personalization of library resources is a viable way of helping users deal with the information explosion, conserving their time for more productive intellectual tasks. It identifies how computer and information technology has enabled document mapping to be more efficient, especially because of the ease with which a document can be indexed and represented with multiple terms, and confirms that this same functionality can be used to represent a user's interests, facilitating the easy linking of relevant sources to prospective users. Personalization of library resources is an effective way for maximizing user benefit.

This is not an exhaustive list of developments in personalization. Rather it identifies a mix of products and solutions that are of immediate use to librarians.

A very useful source of pragmatic applications of personalization so far, that can guide a practicing professional interested in creating similar solutions for more productive information support in his/her library.

This paper fulfils an identified need for a “review of technology” for LIS practitioners and offers practical help to any professional exploring solutions similar to those outlined in this paper.

This paper aims to explore the realm of literature about personalization of digital library services. This paper focuses on users’ unique needs and will identify different types of personalized services. Therefore, this study has identified different types of services personalization in the context of digital academic libraries.

In this research, the systematic review method has been used to obtain the relevant indicators of different types of personalization in the context of libraries. To explain basic indicators, a Delphi method has been used. The Delphi panel’s members consisted of 15 experts (faculty members, researchers, professional users and software designers). A purposeful sampling and the Delphi fulfillment process were performed in three rounds. After collecting data, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), inferential statistics (binomial distribution test) and the Kendall coordination coefficient were used to determine the consensus rate among experts.

A total of 103 indicators were extracted for different types of personalization through a systematic literature review. Of these, 90 indicators were considered significant in the experts’ view. Generally, content personalization, interactive personalization, collaborative personalization and information retrieval personalization are the main components of personalization types, each of which has its own indicators.

This study has dealt with the issue of what is personalized in the context of digital academic library. The findings should be helpful and effective in the development of a holistic view on personalization of services in digital libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine personal digital libraries (PDL) as a self-archiving approach, mainly based on individuals’ activities. Literature presents a wide range of perceptions of the term PDL. The rationale of using PDL and the capabilities that PDL should offer are also discussed. The key questions we focus on are: “What are the critical features of PDL?” and “Are there technologies that enable the implementation/incorporation of such capabilities in a low cost software product?”

We focus on “a user centred view of information process”, and examine how PDL could assist individuals to “create, seek, share and manage the life of information” (Foster et al., 2010). The capabilities that PDL should support, and the related technologies, are also discussed. Then, we describe experimentation with a prototype implemented to support/provide the mentioned capabilities. It is used to clarify our view for the creation of PDL. Finally, further discussion and conclusions are presented.

The technology is mature enough for building up PDLs with the specified features/capabilities.

A new perception of the term PDLs is presented. This perception tries to combine the self-archiving approach of information, based on a low-cost tool, and the user-centred approach to manage the “life of information”. This type of library is mainly used to cover personal needs. Users benefit from this type of PDL by personalised handling of information, reduced time to search and seek specific documents in their personal collections and less possibility for broken links or unavailable documents. We must also mention that new opportunities seem to appear for offering PDL as a service in the cloud.

This study explores the implementation of personalised information access, driven by machine learning, in Nigerian public libraries. The purpose of this paper is to address existing challenges, enhance the user experience and bridge the digital divide by leveraging advanced technologies.

This study assesses the current state of Nigerian public libraries, emphasising challenges such as underfunding and lack of technology adoption. It proposes the integration of machine learning to provide personalised recommendations, predictive analytics for collection development and improved information retrieval processes.

The findings underscore the transformative potential of machine learning in Nigerian public libraries, offering tailored services, optimising resource allocation and fostering inclusivity. Challenges, including financial constraints and ethical considerations, are acknowledged.

This study contributes to the literature by outlining strategies for responsible implementation and emphasising transparency, user consent and diversity. The research highlights future directions, anticipating advancements in recommendation systems and collaborative efforts for impactful solutions.

People often engage in different information-seeking strategies (ISSs) within a single information-seeking episode. A critical concern for the design of information retrieval (IR) systems is how to provide support for these different behaviors in a manner which searchers can easily understand, navigate and use, as they move from one ISS to another. The purpose of this paper is to describe a dialogue structure that was implemented in an experimental IR system, in order to address this concern.

The authors conducted a user-centered experiment to evaluate the IR systems. Participants were asked to search for information on two different task types, with four different topics per task, in both the experimental system and a baseline system emulating state-of-the-art IR systems. The authors report here the results related explicitly to the use of the experimental system's dialogue structure.

For one of the task types, most participants followed the search steps as predicted in the dialogue structures, and those who did so completed the task in fewer moves. For the other task type, predicted order of moves was often not followed, but participants again used fewer moves when following the predicted order. Results demonstrate that the dialogue structures the authors designed indeed support effective human information behavior patterns in a variety of ways, and that searchers can effectively use a system which changes to support different ISSs.

This study shows that it is both possible and beneficial, to design an IR system which can support multiple ISSs, and that such a system can be understood and used successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate indexers’ evaluation on the usability of ontology vs thesaurus in representation of concepts and semantic relations. To do so, “searching” category of ASIS&T thesaurus was selected and ASIS&TOnto was built based on it.

The usability examination method is used in order to compare the two semantic tools. Nine indexers were recruited as participants, who were proficient in English language, had experience in using the thesaurus and all had successfully passed the course of “information representation.” They were asked to think aloud while working with the tools and to answer a semi-structured interview. The data gathering was continued until it reached its saturation point.

The results of this study revealed that the definitions and scope notes represented in indexing tools such as thesauri and ontologies have an important role in improvement of indexers’ understanding. On comparing the hierarchical relations, results show that converting the structure of hierarchical relationships of ASIS&T thesaurus can enhance the indexers understanding of them, and also enriching the associative relations of ASIS&T thesaurus can cause indexers to have a better understanding and evaluation of the presented concepts and relations.

This study shares our findings on the usability of ASIS&T thesaurus as a core set of vocabulary for building a “searching” domain as a prototype ontology in the area of library and information science and provides the indexers viewpoints of the two semantic tools in this area.

Despite the major information technology investments made by public institutions, the reuse of e-government services remains an issue as citizens hesitate to use e-government websites regularly. The purpose of this study is to investigate the cross-country determinants of e-government reuse intention by proposing a theoretical model that integrates constructs from (1) the Delone and McLean IS success model (i.e. system quality, service quality, information quality, perceived value and user satisfaction); (2) the trust and risk models (i.e. citizen trust, overall risk, time risk, privacy risk and psychological risks); and (3) Hofstede's cultural model (i.e. uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism and cross-cultural trust and risk).

Based on data from interviews with 81 Kuwaiti citizens and surveys of 1,829 Kuwaiti and Polish citizens, this study conducted comprehensive, cross-cultural and comparative analyses of e-government reuse intention in a cross-country setting.

The results show that trust is positively associated with citizens' intention to reuse e-government services, whereas risk is negatively associated with citizens' perceived value. This study also found that masculinity–femininity and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with the intention to reuse e-government services and that individualism–collectivism has no significant relationship with reuse intention. This study's findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and improve e-government success in cross-country settings.

This study developed a parsimonious model of quality, trust, risk, culture and technology reuse that captures country-specific cultural contexts and enables us to conduct a comprehensive, cross-cultural and comparative analysis of e-government reuse intention in the cross-country setting of Kuwait and Poland.

Institutional repositories (IR) are usually used to archive and manage digital collections including research results, educational material, etc. Learning management systems (LMS) form a popular basis for e-learning and blended learning. This paper aims to study how to integrate IR and LMS to support accessibility of disabled students and students with learning difficulties (dyslexic students) in higher education. Customised ontologies focusing on disabled students can be used to facilitate indexing, and access of items in the repository.

The authors propose a simple methodological approach to establish an integrating system for supporting accessibility. First, the authors review research works related to adaptive learning environments (ALEs) and blended learning, and discuss issues of the interoperability of IR and LMS. Then, based on the review, the authors discuss the use of an integrated ALE for supporting disabled students in the domain of higher technological education. The integrated system is based on IR, LMS and assistive and adaptive technology. The open source software platform DSpace is used to build up the repository applications Use of the web ontology language (OWL) ontologies is also proposed for indexing and accessing the various, heterogeneous items stored in the repository. Various open source LMS (e.g. openeclass) could be used to build up the integrated system. Finally, the authors describe experimentation with a prototype implemented to provide the mentioned capabilities.

The technology is mature enough for building up integrated systems, combining capabilities of IR and LMS, for supporting disabled students. The use of ontologies focused on disabled students could facilitate the use of such integrated systems. Customisation and operation of a platform, for the selection and use of portions of OWL ontologies, could be based on the open source software Protégé. Such a platform forms a basis to create an appropriate ontology suitable for specific domains, e.g. the domain of technological education. Finally, the authors argue that the combined use of the OWL platform and the DSpace repository with open source LMS platforms could support domain experts for creating customised ontologies and facilitating searching.

A new perception of the term integrated system for supporting disabled students in the higher education context is presented. This perception tries to combine the IR technology that supports the self-archiving approach of information, open LMS technology and the user-centred approach to support students and manage the “life of information”.

Considering the shortcomings of the ASIS&T Web-based thesaurus in representing concepts and semantic relations, there is a need to use more effective semantic tools, such as ontologies. The purpose of this paper is to build a prototype ontology (ASIS&TOnto) based on a Web-based thesaurus.

The prototype ontology was built based on the ASIS&T Web-based thesaurus by using the methodology developed by Noy and McGuinness (2001) and with the use of Protégé 4.3.3. With regard to the purpose of the study and the massive amount of concepts represented in the ASIS&T thesaurus, the focus of term selection for creating the core source of vocabulary for the prototype ontology was the “searching” area. The knowledge engineering approach (Na and Neoh, 2008) was used to extract concepts and semantic relations. The criterion for extracting semantic relations from each concept pair was one-sentence statement, one-paragraph statement and one-page statement. Finally, the extracted relations were analysed by subject experts.

Based on the findings of this research, the possibility of using the methodology developed by Noy and McGuinness (2001) for building an ontology based on a Web-based thesaurus in the field of LIS was investigated and the prototype ontology (ASIS&TOnto) was constructed in the area of “searching”.

The primary implication of ASIS&TOnto is aligned with Web 3.0 research where implications of semantic modelling are a priority for community equity of access to information as a basic human right. ASIS&TOnto ends up with an ontology that is comprehensive, at least with respect to expressivity of the current ASIS&T thesaurus user interface definition languages; that is, it can be universal and can be extendable to future user interfaces that do not exist at the moment.

For the first time, a new enriched semantic tool (ASIS&TOnto) was constructed based on the ASIS&T Web-based thesaurus.

“Library,” as a place, will give way to “library” as a transparent knowledge network providing “intelligent” services to business and education through both specialized librarians and emerging information technologies. Libraries will rely heavily on computers and peripherals to facilitate electronic document imaging, publishing, telecommunications, and information delivery in addition to networked collection management and reference services.