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A session at the recent National Online Meeting in New York, chaired by Laurence Lannon of DynCorp ATS, looked at the subject of electronic publishing and electronic delivery. The speakers were Bill Thornburg of Dataware Technologies Inc., Carol Tenopir and Donald King of the University of Tennessee, Thomas R. Kochtanek of the University of Missouri, and Mounir A. Khalil of the City College, City University of New York.

Wireless LANs (WLAN) offer network flexibility and end‐user mobility, making them one of the hottest technologies today. They have great impact on individuals and organizations. Now people can use wireless networks in every application where recent findings indicate that growth in WLAN market continues to be driven by the corporate and educational sectors, where the desire to increase productivity and the benefit of enhanced mobility and learning outcomes continue to fuel demand. A questionnaire was developed to survey the behavior of end‐users, especially students and faculty, in using wireless laptops in accessing information from the Internet, digital libraries and many electronic sources in their education and research. The paper presents the advantages and disadvantages of using wireless network laptops as well as barriers for not using them in Higher Education. Special new update on wireless network security will be included. Guidelines for implementing wireless laptops in higher education are discussed.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the traditional mentoring practices of mentors and protégés.

As a matter of fact students with disabilities, as a group, have the lowest participation in postsecondary education programs and the highest unemployment rates. Effective mentoring programs can change these outcomes. These students need knowledgeable mentors who are familiar with technology and disabilities to help them in their fields of education. Access to technology and emphasis on using the technologies for mentors will be discussed.

Traditional in‐person mentoring is problematic because of transportation problems with appointment or location. In addition, mentors can help their protégés explore career options, set academic and career goals develop social and professional contacts, identify resources, and strengthen interpersonal skills. Using technology between mentors and protégés makes it easy to exchange information at anytime from anywhere.

The paper discusses in detail two widely used e‐mentoring programs. The first program is DO‐IT, a program which is sponsored by the University of Washington and the second program is MentorNet, which deals with mentoring and increasing diversity in the engineering and science fields.

As one writer stated: “mentoring is a win‐win situation”. This article describes the need for intervention, mentoring and retention of students with disabilities in Higher Education.

In May this year at the 17th National Online Meeting in New York the main authors presented a paper (Khalil & Jayatilleke 1996) on ‘The use of electronic journals in libraries’. More recently they conducted a survey to elicit information from and the reactions of end‐users about mis comparatively new medium by posting a questionnaire on a number of listservs, including ASIS‐L, BUSLIB‐L, LIBADMIN‐L and SERIALST‐L.

In this paper, we describe a novel approach for ontology distribution in ubiquitous environments. We present the Context Aware Explorer (CAE) framework we have developed which allows building context aware applications. Our approach, while built upon Web Ontology Language OWL and RDF Schema, is aiming at modeling context ontology for supporting context reasoning and the design of a Smart Rule Engine that maintains a shared model of context for all computing entities in the smart space. The CAE main contribution is its ability to distribute ontology based on abstract parameters related to situation and to user profile. The ultimate goal is to decrease the response time of the reasoning engine with regards to reasoning accuracy. We also describe the implementation of CAE, and its associated ontology, in a prototype demonstrator of smart environment handling indoor and outdoor context aware services. The validation of the ontology distribution approach was applied to assistive environment dedicated to people having motor disabilities and tested within laboratory conditions. Preliminary performance results are presented to highlight the impact of distributed ontology concept.

Describes the PC‐Fax‐Scan Interlibrary Loan (ILL)‐Document Delivery Project, highlighting the advantages of using the newly developed system. Briefly discusses the necessary hardware and software for the conversion and how to select it.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key project delivery method selection factors to assist water industry decision-makers in selecting the most appropriate delivery method for their water treatment plant projects.

The selection factors were identified by compiling and validating key project delivery selection factors across various industries through an extensive literature review and two industry expert workshops. This resulted in the development of a web-based decision-support tool to facilitate project delivery method selection within the water industry.

The research effort led to the identification of 13 key project delivery method selection factors (seven primary factors and six secondary factors) for water treatment plant projects. These factors were utilized to develop EXPRSS-TP, a pioneering web-based project delivery method decision-support tool for the water industry.

A project delivery method selection process is typically an informal process that may range from days to weeks at a time. Based on this work, the assessment can now be completed in about one hour and provides decision-makers with the most favorable delivery method for their project. And with the new tool that encompasses the new knowledge, not only is the decision reached at an accelerated pace, EXPRSS-TP also documents the entire selection process, allowing for a written and retained record of this key decision and its procedure.

This paper contributes to the exisiting body of knowledge by identifying key project delivery selection factors across numerous industries, assessing and combining them, and finally incorporating them into one comprehensive process. EXPRSS-TP improves the traditional project delivery method selection process and provides evidence-based project delivery method selection recommendations.

Over the last three decades, construction projects have increasingly been delivered through alternative delivery methods. As a result, many owners have a range of delivery methods to choose from and aim to use the right one for each of their projects. Researchers have developed several tools and decision-support processes to facilitate this selection procedure. The purpose of this study is to review and discuss differences and common themes across selection tools developed by academic researchers and project owners.

The study reviews prominent selection processes and tools used for infrastructure projects by conducting an in-depth literature review and using the content analysis method to elicit findings on the methodologies and criteria presented in the literature.

This study presents three principal findings. First, findings show three common themes emerge within the selection criteria—characteristics, goals and risks. Second, while academic studies most commonly suggest employing multi-attribute analysis, this study reveals that, in practice, selection tools most frequently employ a staged or gated evaluation based on the type of criteria and their importance to the decision. Finally, this review further highlights the importance of institutional context in decision-making.

This work contributes to the body of knowledge by providing guidance to practitioners and opening new directions for researchers around the way selection criteria are categorized in the relevant literature and the institutional context considerations when structuring or evaluating a selection process or tool.

Most research studies have examined financial inclusion from a supply-side perspective, which measures access and usage of formal financial services by banking outreach indicators, the number of borrowers and the availability of other financial services in a given area. However, this approach is often insufficient to nuance the degree of financial exclusion faced by segments of the population. This study's overall objective is to empirically examine demand-side determinants of financial inclusion.

This research examines the impact of these variables on the level to which an individual is financially included. Notably, the metric employed goes beyond the basic ownership of a bank account and measures the usage of financial services rather than just access. Quantitative data were collected through self-administered surveys targeting 456 individuals in Egypt in order to test the proposed hypotheses. Three different econometric models were tested using regression analysis.

The findings imply an insignificant relationship between financial literacy and financial inclusion. Results suggest that financial exclusion is associated with low trust in financial institutions, low-income level, low education level and being elderly, with a more substantial influence on income and education.

Egypt suffers from a lack of up-to-date demand-side data and data available at hand allow us to know very little about the factors underpinning financial inclusion. This study is contributing demand-side, up-to-date primary data, that provides multiple insights for Egypt regarding the subject, which helps provide answers and suggestions to policy implications.