Search results
11 – 20 of over 2000
Jezmynne Westcott, Alexandra Chappell and Candace Lebel
The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of implementing LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) at the Claremont University Consortium's libraries, the first US academic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of implementing LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) at the Claremont University Consortium's libraries, the first US academic library to try LTFL.
Design/methodology/approach
The objectives are to share CUC's experience with LTFL, sharing a list of pros and cons about the tool, implementation of the tool, experiences with the tool, and future steps planned by LTFL.
Findings
Claremont University Consortium finds the tool to be a helpful overlay of user‐generated tags and suggested readings based on tags over the current bibliographic information provided in the traditional library catalog. Implementation of LTFL is easy, LTFL provides significant and immediate support, and is useful for finding items for research as well as for browsing.
Originality/value
The paper is valuable for libraries considering LTFL as a catalog overlay, as well as for libraries interested in learning about next generation cataloging concepts.
Details
Keywords
Chao Lu, Chengzhi Zhang and Daqing He
In the era of social media, users all over the world annotate books with social tags to express their preferences and interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore different…
Abstract
Purpose
In the era of social media, users all over the world annotate books with social tags to express their preferences and interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore different tagging behaviours by analysing the book tags in different languages.
Design/methodology/approach
This investigation collected nearly 56,000 tags of 1,200 books from one Chinese and two English online bookmarking systems; it combined content analysis and machine-processing methods to evaluate the similarities and differences between different tagging systems from a cross-lingual perspective. Jaccard’s coefficient was adopted to evaluate the similarity level.
Findings
The results show that the similarity between mono-lingual tags of the same books is higher than that of cross-lingual tags in different systems and the similarity between tags of books written for specialties is higher than that of books written for the general public.
Research limitations/implications
Those who have more in common annotate books with more similar tags. The similarity between users in tagging systems determines the similarity of the tag sets.
Practical implications
The results and conclusion of this study will benefit users’ cross-lingual information retrieval and cross-lingual book recommendation for online bookmarking systems.
Originality/value
This study may be one of the first to compare cross-lingual tags. Its methodology can be applied to tag comparison between any two languages. The insights of this study will help develop cross-lingual tagging systems and improve information retrieval.
Details
Keywords
Sarandis Mitropoulos, George Dimitrios Baltasis, Michalis Rodios and Christos Douligeris
The purpose of this paper is to present the SociaLib system, which is a collaborative digital library system. The system uses Drupal content management system to implement Web 2.0…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the SociaLib system, which is a collaborative digital library system. The system uses Drupal content management system to implement Web 2.0 functionalities and facilitate collaboration and cooperation between its users. It offers a variety of functions, like wikis, forums and it is also accessible from microbrowsers.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper starts with a reference to collaboration in Digital Libraries and states related work. Then, it introduces the SociaLib system, including implementation and functionalities. There is also an example of how such a system can be used in a real-world situation. Ideas for future work are also included.
Findings
The system was evaluated using a usability questionnaire on a subject of 50 people. The results were promising, showing user acceptance and satisfaction.
Originality/value
This paper offer collaborative solutions to Digital Library users, helping them communicate and cooperate with colleagues on their research. The system uses Web 2.0 functions that enable the user to be more productive and also work mobile if he wishes.
Details
Keywords
Social library systems are Web 2.0 sites where users discover interesting books, movies, and music, etc., collect these resources to their personal libraries, and share their…
Abstract
Purpose
Social library systems are Web 2.0 sites where users discover interesting books, movies, and music, etc., collect these resources to their personal libraries, and share their collections with others. The purpose of this study is to identify the information seeking modes adopted by users in this context as well as to reveal the characteristics of the users who are dominated by each mode.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was conducted to capture the background and behavior data of regular users from Douban, the most influential Chinese‐language social library system. The “friend‐of‐a‐friend” recruitment technique resulted in a total of 129 responses, 112 of which were valid and analyzed to generate both descriptive and inferential statistics.
Findings
Searching, browsing, encountering, and monitoring are the four major information seeking modes adopted by social library system users. The majority of the users tend to combine two or more modes, but each user has a dominating one that helps define him/her as a searcher, browser, encounterer, or monitor. While searching is the most widely adopted mode, browsers are the most prevalent type of information seekers. Different information seekers do not demonstrate significantly different characteristics by and large, however with some exceptions.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to investigate how users look for resources in social library systems, a problem neglected by previous studies mostly focusing on how users organize and tag resources. The research findings enrich our understanding of social library systems as diverse and dynamic information seeking environments. This in turn will provide useful implications for their interface design to more effectively address the needs and expectations of special types of information seekers.
Details
Keywords
This article aims to set a context for blogging within academic libraries in order to identify key themes and examples of good practice for others considering blogging as a future…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to set a context for blogging within academic libraries in order to identify key themes and examples of good practice for others considering blogging as a future activity.
Design/methodology/approach
The study encompasses a literature review to identify relevant evidence around blogs within academic libraries, followed by a content analysis of a sample of the UK-based blogs which aims to provide an overview of common activity and a brief survey to blog authors to set the outcomes of the literature review in a “real world” context.
Findings
Blogging appears to be a worthwhile activity for academic libraries looking to present information or connect with users in new ways; however lessons can be learnt from the experience of early bloggers, as presented in the literature. While blogs can fulfil many purposes, it is clear that creating a two way interaction between the library service and its users is difficult within the academic library environment.
Originality/value
The paper presents an up-to-date review of the literature from 2005 to 2012 and includes a detailed analysis of a sample of the UK blogs, comparing their content and activity and a survey of the UK-based academic library bloggers. The article concludes with five key tips for potential bloggers.
Details
Keywords
Vanja Bogicevic, Wan Yang, Anil Bilgihan and Milos Bujisic
Considering the complexity of the airport industry service palette, it is important to identify which air travel factors are distractors and which factors are enhancers of…
Abstract
Purpose
Considering the complexity of the airport industry service palette, it is important to identify which air travel factors are distractors and which factors are enhancers of passenger satisfaction. Building on Herzberg's two-factor motivation theory, this study aims to explore most frequently mentioned attributes of airport service quality and distinguish key drivers for passenger satisfaction/dissatisfaction in the airport context.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis of 1,095 traveler comments posted between 2010 and 2013 on an airport review web site was performed in order to identify satisfiers/dissatisfiers. The web spider randomly selected consumer comments related to 33 popular destinations.
Findings
The study results indicated key satisfiers in the airport context such as cleanliness and pleasant environment to spend time in. On the other side, security-check, confusing signage and poor dining offer are recognized as major dissatisfiers in the airport setting.
Practical implications
The study findings provide insight on predominant satisfiers, dissastisfiers and performance factors of airport service quality from passengers' perspectives. Airport management teams may use the study results to renovate airport facility and improve service quality.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to utilize the visual data mining techniques in examining airport users' experience. Visualization produced summaries of qualitative comments in the form of tag clouds, word networks, and word tree images that help discover the most emerging themes of travelers' complaints and compliments.
Details
Keywords
Dengdeng Wanyan and Tong Shang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant advantages of cloud technology in digital cultural heritage construction by analyzing public culture cloud platforms in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant advantages of cloud technology in digital cultural heritage construction by analyzing public culture cloud platforms in China. The authors hope to provide references for other countries and regions on the applications of cloud computing techniques in digital cultural construction.
Design/methodology/approach
The primary research methods involved interview and case analysis. A comprehensive understanding of cloud technology and China’s culture cloud platforms were gained through research into extensive amounts of literature. Analyzing 21 culture cloud platforms offers a general understanding of culture clouds, while the Hunan Public Culture Cloud acts as a representative sample that gives detailed insight.
Findings
This paper explores the considerable advantages of cloud computing in digital cultural construction from four aspects: integration of decentralized heterogeneous resources, coordination and cooperation, accurately matching user needs and promotion of balanced service development.
Originality/value
Existing studies fall short of comprehensive investigations of culture cloud platforms and in-depth analysis of the advantages of cloud technology applications. This paper uses the construction of public culture cloud platforms in China as the research object. Further, this paper compares the construction status of different culture cloud platforms.
Details
Keywords
Aameek Singh, Bugra Gedik and Ling Liu
To provide mutual anonymity over traditionally un‐anonymous Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) based Peer‐to‐Peer overlay networks, while maintaining the desired scalability and…
Abstract
Purpose
To provide mutual anonymity over traditionally un‐anonymous Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) based Peer‐to‐Peer overlay networks, while maintaining the desired scalability and guaranteed lookup properties of the DHTs.
Design/methodology/approach
Agyaat uses a novel hybrid‐overlay design, a fully decentralized topology without any trusted proxies. It anonymizes both the querying and responding peers through the use of unstructured topologies, called clouds, which are added onto the structured overlays. In addition, it regulates the cloud topologies to ensure the guaranteed location of data and scalability of routing. A unique characteristic of the design is the ability of users to tradeoff between desired anonymity and performance. The paper presents a thorough performance and anonymity analysis of the system, and also analyzes few anonymity compromising attacks and countermeasures.
Findings
The results indicate that Agyaat is able to provide mutual anonymity while maintaining the scalability of lookups, affecting the costs only by a constant factor.
Research limitations/implications
While Agyaat is able to meet its mutual anonymity and performance goals, there exist other security vulnerabilities like possible Denial‐of‐Service (DoS) attacks, both due to its design and the underlying DHT overlay. This is fertile ground for future work.
Originality/value
Agyaat uses a novel topology architecture and associated protocols that are conducive to providing mutually anonymous services.
Details
Keywords
Hollie M. Osborne and Andrew Cox
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether features of next-generation Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) interfaces are useful and intuitive to users who have different…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether features of next-generation Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) interfaces are useful and intuitive to users who have different levels of searching ability. In addition, it investigates whether there is a difference between librarians’ and students’ preferences for specific features.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on 18 semi-structured interviews conducted in July 2012 with three groups of library users from The University of Sheffield: librarians; Master of Arts Librarianship students; and a group of other post-graduate students.
Findings
Overall, this study suggests that while the next-generation catalogue interfaces and features are useful, they are not as “intuitive” as some previous studies have claimed. Interviewees appeared to prefer the searching and browsing options over the Web 2.0 features. Both librarians and students have similar opinions regarding the usefulness of next-generation OPAC features, but preferences are complex.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on one institution, and the disciplinary background of the post-graduate students was limited.
Practical implications
Promoting next generation OPACs and explaining their features to users is essential.
Originality/value
The paper adds to the understanding of users’ preferences in relation to next-generation OPACs, locating the findings of the current findings firmly in the context of previous literature.
Details