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The increasing availability of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) financial statements motivates additional investigation of whether XBRL’s search-facilitating technology (SFT) and enhanced viewing capabilities facilitate information search and improve financial analysis decision quality and efficiency. This experiment investigates how using XBRL technology to view financial statements influences novice investors’ decision quality by affecting decision processes such as search strategy and effort, as well as decision efficiency (accuracy/effort) in a financial statement analysis task. In the experiment, randomly assigned student participants (n = 102) invested in companies using either static PDF-formatted or XBRL-enabled financial statements. No differences in decision quality (i.e., accuracy) due to technology use were observed. However, participants in the XBRL condition examined less information, used more directed search processes, and evidenced greater efficiency than did participants assigned to the PDF condition. Hence, the results suggest that XBRL SFT affects the use of differing decision processes relative to PDF technology.

On August 26, 1971, OCLC introduced the online union catalog and shared cataloging system. During the 1970s, OCLC focused its efforts on creating and expanding the online cataloging system and telecommunications network. It added an online interlibrary loan system in 1979. In the 1980s, OCLC began adapting distributed computing and microcomputing technologies as its product and service lines expanded to some 60 offerings. The organization also began looking at ways to move beyond bibliography by furnishing information not only to library staffs, but also to library patrons. In the 1990s, OCLC launched a new core business in reference services. (Smith, 1998, pp. 251–252). Now, in the 21st century, OCLC is introducing tools, services and infrastructure to manage the life cycle of digital content in libraries.

Mobile technology can offer new opportunities for online learning that extends beyond the learning management system. Advancing a teaching strategy that incorporates mobile technology for online classes does not need to require a large budget. Two adoption strategies are presented here: leveraging of mobile web 2.0 tools and use of native mobile tools. The paradigm of mobile learning brings new pedagogical affordances to context for authentic learning. We demonstrate an activity-based approach to provide learners with additional tools to create meaningful learning experiences anytime, anywhere. This approach fits nicely into learner-centered and constructivist environments because students are learning through their own active involvement. At the same time, it allows students to get excited about what they are learning. In addition, we discuss the institutional, architectural, and pedagogical challenges arising from the use of mobile technology in online courses.

In 1971 the second volume of Advances in Librarianship contained a chapter titled “Oral History: Problems and Prospects.” Written by Louis Starr, then director of the oral history program at Columbia University, it offered a wide-ranging assessment of a field of work that was just beginning to coalesce. The first national colloquium on oral history had been held only 5 years earlier, in 1966, and the term oral history had not achieved the popular distinction it enjoys today.

Prior studies have shown that terminology support can improve health information retrieval but have not taken into account the characteristics of the user performing the search. In this chapter, the impact of translating queries’ terms between lay and medico-scientific terminology, in users with different levels of health literacy and topic familiarity, is evaluated. Findings demonstrate that medico-scientific queries demand more from the users and are mostly aimed at health professionals. In addition, these queries retrieve documents that are less readable and less well understood by users. Despite this, medico-scientific queries are associated with higher precision in the top-10 retrieved documents results and tend slightly to generate knowledge with less incorrect contents, the researchers concluded that search engines should provide query suggestions with medico-scientific terminology, whenever the user is able to digest it, that is, in users above the lowest levels of health literacy and topic familiarity. On the other hand, retrieval systems should provide lay alternative queries in users with inadequate health literacy or in those unfamiliar with a topic. In fact, the quantity of incorrect contents in the knowledge that emerges from a medico-scientific session tends to decrease with topic familiarity and health literacy. In terms of topic familiarity, the opposite happens with Graded Average Precision. Moreover, users most familiar with a topic tend to have higher motivational relevance with medico-scientific queries than with lay queries. This work is the first to consider user context features while studying the impact of a query processing technique in several aspects of the retrieval process, including the medical accuracy of the acquired knowledge.

In light of Egypt’s expanding flow of online learning (OL), quality assurance (QA) has undoubtedly become a strategic priority. In the near future, QA strategy is anticipated to be a major topic of discussion in educational policy talks. Critical policy concerns must be addressed, like sustaining globally acceptable QA standards and responding to the government’s and other stakeholders’ goals and objectives for OL. Our chapter aspires to offer a contribution to current literature in this regard. This chapter aims to investigate the aspects of QA in maintaining OL, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Particularly, we analyze internal QA of OL in the Egyptian higher education (HE) sector through quality assurance and accreditation project (QAAP) and program of continuous improvement and qualifying for accreditation (PCIQA). We discuss the external quality assurance and accreditation of Egyptian HE institutions with a special focus on the national authority for quality assurance and accreditation of education (NAQAAE). We investigate the policies, practices, and quality standards that are employed by HE institutions to ensure the quality of online courses and programs through document analysis.