Bibliographic Information Systems Research Articles

Introduction to User Studies in Bibliographic Data and Systems

This introduction to the special issue of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly emphasizes the importance of user studies for understanding users’ information needs and behavior, which form the foundation for developing bibliographic information systems and establishing standards guiding the creation of bibliographic data and records. It provides an overview of the special issue by introducing ten articles selected for this special issue, organized in three thematic areas: Reviewing the Landscape of User Studies, User Studies and Conceptual Models, and Applying User Studies to Bibliographic Data and Systems. Additionally, it offers some references for further study in research methods, aiding readers who are interested in conducting their own user studies.

RNPLS&T’s bibliographic database “Library Information Systems and Innovations in Digital Environment”: Document analysis

The contents and subject scope of the peer-reviewed bibliographic database Library Information Systems and Innovations in Digital Environment, LIS), based in IRBIS64 software are characterized in brief. The proportion of source document types and bibliographic records is identified. Science and scientific and practical journals prove to be the major source for the bibliographic array, while the share of other source types is relatively small. The major sources of information, or the core journals within the LIS database subject scope are revealed. Based on the LIS databases contents, the parallel is drawn with Bradford scattering law which states that if journals in a field are sorted by number of articles into three groups, each with about one-third of all articles, then the number of publications in specialized journals will make the one-third, the other one third will be published in the related journals and the other will be distributed between in a vast number of science periodicals unpredictable for the said subject scope. The author establishes that the qualitative and typical composition of the LIS database bibliographic array is in full accord withBradford’s law.

Краеведските библиографско-информационни системи като семантичен ресурс

This article discusses the Local history bibliographic information systems in Bulgaria in the perspective of their transformation through semantic technologies into a new generation of information resources to facilitate and enrich the research activity.

Взаимосвязь глобальной и региональной систем безопасности (на примере ООН, ОДКБ и ШОС)

This article studies the interconnection of global and regional security systems using the example of the interaction of the United Nations (UN) with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). According to the author, their activity is underestimated. These organizations appeared in the wake of the emergence of a pool of regional associations of countries that have become involved in security and peacekeeping activities.Both associations have a similar composition of members, were established after the collapse of the USSR, are observers in the UN, are engaged in security as one of their key activities, and have similar functions. The CSTO and the SCO prevented new conflicts from breaking out in the post-Soviet space by acting as stabilizing forces within the borders of their regions and the participating states.This study’s relevance is underscored first, by the special role that regional organizations play in building and operating a global security system; second, by the lack of existing research focused on the interaction of the UN with the CSTO and the SCO; and third, by the need to improve the collective mechanisms for responding to new security threats which become intertwined with existing challenges.The theory of military-political alliances provides the analytical basis of this research. The article uses quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysis of United Nations documents. The interconnection between the UN, SCO and CSTO is analyzed by counting the number of times the keywords “CSTO” and “SCO” appear in UN documents and defining the context of their use over a period of 15 (from 2002 to 2017) and 16 years (from 2001 to 2017) respectively. An extensive database of UN documents was available from the United Nations Bibliographic Information System (UNBISNET). Based on this analysis, an assessment is made of the contribution and interest of the Russian Federation as a leading player in international relations in the process of strengthening the interconnection of global and regional security systems.

Factores Relevantes De Competitividad En Pymes

Competitiveness in all areas has increased with the opening of trade worldwide. This resulted to greater pressure on entities that have lags compared to others that are more prepared and which are better located internationally. In this context, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) show lower levels of competitiveness than the large industry. This occurs most especially when they are located in developing countries, given the holistic nature of competitiveness. This paper focuses on identifying the relevant factors of competitiveness of SMEs. During the bibliographic research, networks, finances, innovation, and information systems were identified as recurrent preponderant factors in the four levels of systemic competitiveness: micro, meso, macro, and meta. This article shows the result of the first stage of the research, and is structured with concurrent triangulation design to perform cross validation of quantitative and qualitative aspects. The study was performed using a non-probabilistic sampling and with systemic representation through personalized interviews of different people from different groups involved in the system of which the SME’s of the State of Puebla, Mexico, are partly related to the automotive and auto parts sector. The four factors were confirmed in this research stage and, at the same time, five other relevant factors were also recognized: knowledge, culture, specialization, diversification, and institutionalization. The identification of the predominant factors of competitiveness offers the possibility of developing them holistically by the various related actors that provide the enabling environment for the strengthening of SMEs.

Visualizations of bibliographic information: A user experience study

Bibliographic information was presented using five different prototype systems, including four different visualizations of FRBR-based bibliographic information and one more traditional bibliographic information system. This study reports user performance and perceptions using the same tasks across the different visualizations. Users include undergraduate students of a large university in the USA. The study’s methodology is based on a continuation of a study testing the same prototype interfaces in Slovenia, with a number of modifications. The findings show visualization displays performing better on a number of measures than the traditional library catalog interface. A comparison of results highlights some of the differences in findings between the two groups of users. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications for the design of future bibliographic information interfaces.

Complexity of Work Families and Entity-Based Visualization Displays

Conceptual modeling of bibliographic data, including the FR models and the consolidated IFLA LRM, has provided an opportunity to shift focus to entities and relationships and to support hierarchical work-based exploration of bibliographic information. This paper reports on a study examining the complexity of a work's bibliographic family data and user interactions with data visualizations, compared to traditional displays. Findings suggest that the FRBR-based visual bibliographic information system supports work families of different complexities more equally than a traditional system. Differences between the two systems also show that the FRBR-based system was more effective especially for related-works and author-related tasks.

Presenting bibliographic families using information visualization: Evaluation of FRBR‐based prototype and hierarchical visualizations

Since their beginnings, bibliographic information systems have been displaying results in the form of long, textual lists. With the development of new data models and computer technologies, the need for new approaches to present and interact with bibliographic data has slowly been maturing. To investigate how this could be accomplished, a prototype system, FrbrVis1, was designed to present work families within a bibliographic information system using information visualization. This paper reports on two user studies, a controlled and an observational experiment, that have been carried out to assess the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)‐based against an existing system as well as to test four different hierarchical visual layouts. The results clearly show that FrbrVis offers better performance and user experience compared to the baseline system. The differences between the four hierarchical visualizations (Indented tree, Radial tree, Circlepack, and Sunburst) were, on the other hand, not as pronounced, but the Indented tree and Sunburst design proved to be the most successful, both in performance as well as user perception. The paper therefore not only evaluates the application of a visual presentation of bibliographic work families, but also provides valuable results regarding the performance and user acceptance of individual hierarchical visualization techniques.

Presenting bibliographic families

Purpose– Despite the importance of bibliographic information systems for discovering and exploring library resources, some of the core functionality that should be provided to support users in their information seeking process is still missing. Investigating these issues, the purpose of this paper is to design a solution that would fulfil the missing objectives.Design/methodology/approach– Building on the concepts of a work family, functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) and information visualization, the paper proposes a model and user interface design that could support a more efficient and user-friendly presentation and navigation in bibliographic information systems.Findings– The proposed design brings together all versions of a work, related works, and other works by and about the author and shows how the model was implemented into a FrbrVis prototype system using hierarchical visualization layout.Research limitations/implications– Although issues related to discovery and exploration apply to various material types, the research first focused on works of fiction and was also limited by the selected sample of records.Practical implications– The model for presenting and interacting with FRBR-based data can serve as a good starting point for future developments and implementations.Originality/value– With FRBR concepts being gradually integrated into cataloguing rules, formats, and various bibliographic services, one of the important questions that has not really been investigated and studied is how the new type of data would be presented to users in a way that would exploit the true potential of the changes.

Using a digital library instead of a traditional database

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reveal main advantages of digital libraries in comparison with technology of common database for data-oriented fields of modern science. As an example, the subject domain “nanomaterials and nanotechnologies” with new features due to evolution of concepts and objects is presented. Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of the information system ABCD as a basis for science-oriented digital library was fulfilled. Also, a survey of peculiarities of data in fast developing fields of science was prepared. Findings – The results of this paper showed that functional capacities of ABCD satisfy requirements for complex collections and archives of scientific documents. Based on the ABCD tools and this concept, the digital library for storage and systematization of data and documents on nanomaterials and nanotechnologies for the power engineering was constructed. The library combines opportunities of bibliographic, full text and factual information systems. Originality/value – This paper gives the foundation for creation of a library that combines services of bibliographic, full text and factual (numerical) information systems. Some analyses of ABCD tools were made before elsewhere, but they did not point on data peculiarities of complexly organized domains: semi-structured data, multitude formats (text, image and tables), interconnection of content with external sources located on other servers or in the Web.

Interstellar reddening information system

AbstractWe describe an electronic bibliographic information system, based on a card catalog, containing some 2500 references (publications of 1930–2009) on interstellar extinction. We have classified the articles according to their content. We present here a list of articles devoted to two categories: maps of total extinction and variation of interstellar extinction with the distance to the object. The catalog is tested using published data on open clusters, and conclusions on the applicability of different maps of interstellar extinctions for various distances are made. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Development of a personal bibliographic information system

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to propose the bibliographic information system “Personal eLibrary bgMath”. This is a system for the organisation, storage and usage of digitalised literature. It supports the user in organising his/her publications and his/her library of electronic issues. The system is very convenient, especially for scientific literature.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology to design a database storing information about publications and other literature is presented. The entity‐relationship model of the database is described. The relational tables, obtained after the transformation of the created ER model into a relational model, are given. The paper contains the description of the forms implementing two basic tasks of the presented program, i.e. input and search for publications. The database is implemented by means of the database management system Microsoft Access 2007.Findings – The system Personal eLibrary bgMath allows easy manipulation of materials (papers, dissertatio...

Putting “Human Crowds” in the Loop of Bibliography Evaluation: A Collaborative Working Environment for CSCW Publications

The current impact of financial crisis on societal and scientific frameworks has raised the need to harvest and evaluate vast volumes of data in a socially-mediated interaction context to reduce knowledge gaps and accelerate innovation at a global scale. Existing mechanisms are inefficient for a single human to classify and transform data into knowledge patterns from a large number of publications. This time-consuming and computationally difficult activity requires a substantial cognitive effort grounded on scientific metrics and theoretical foundations to produce quality metadata through different knowledge representations. This paper reports on a work in progress community self-organizing bibliographic information system for semantic analytics focused on what scientific research data mean, and how they can be best interpreted through a division of intellectual labor among social, computer, and citizen scientists. Such a crowd labor ecosystem should be not restricted to traditional bibliometric approaches, attempting to uncover patterns and trends in publication data sets whilst intellectual connections can be examined to demonstrate how a scientific field is conceptually, intellectually, and socially structured.

Do we need to change? Do we want to change?: The future of bibliographic information systems

For the first time in their long history libraries are facing competition. There are many different information providers and users find information elsewhere. The clear advantages of the library catalogue, such as authority control, consistency and the wealth of information are obviously not utilised to their potential. A step further is therefore urgently needed. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) provides a new paradigm which could not only enable more intuitive presentation of bibliographic information, but also open this information using Semantic Web tools and services and therefore promote exchange and reuse across domains. Several current research activities are presented. They all pave the way to better bibliographic information systems, which should be developed without further delay. Poprve ve sve dlouhe historii celi knihovny konkurenci. Existuje mnoho dalsich poskytovatelů informaci a uživatele si vyhledavaji informace kdekoliv. I přes to, že knihovni katalogy maji výhodu v tom, že jsou kontrolovane, konzistentni a bohate na informace, zda se, že nevyuživaji sveho plneho potencialu. Proto je nutne se v teto oblasti posunout dale. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) představuje nove paradigma, ktere by nejen mohlo nabidnout mnohem intuitivnějsi poskytovani bibliografických informaci, ale tež využivat nastrojů a služeb semantickeho webu. V clanku jsou představeny některe soucasne výzkumne aktivity, ktere oteviraji cestu k lepsim bibliografickým informacnim systemům, ktere by měly být předmětem dalsiho zkoumani. Maja Žumer University of Ljubljana Slovenia

Accessing Literature on the Bahá’í Faith: Emerging Search Technologies

Access to literature relating to the religion and its emerging global community has expanded phenomenally with the advent of new communications technologies. Scholarly literature is appearing in academic presses, in Baha'i-sponsored or affiliated presses, in the media, and on the Internet.1 Significant references to the Faith appear in the literature of religious studies and the social sciences generally, as well as in current affairs literature. However, there is also is an increasing volume of scholarship published on the World Wide Web (WWW) only,2 and systematic posting of essays on the Web is now widely regarded as publication. Consider, for instance, Moojan Momen's commentary Change of Culture, published on H-Bahai on 15 February 2003. s Although merely posted to a scholarly discussion group, such articles are a contribution to knowledge and are more than passing discussion.There are also innovative uses of technology by which collaborative or collective authorship takes precedence over individual authorship. These sites are known as wikis, which have come to be called crowd-sourced sites because they use the efforts, and aggregate the intelligence, of large groups of people. The Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) at http: //en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page has an expanding number of articles, and the Bahaikipedia, which commenced in March 2007 (http:// bahaikipedia.org/Main_Page), is similarly expanding in content and number of participants. Collins suggests the terms fluid, collaborative, or social-networked to distinguish this type of knowledge from the more traditional and carefully crafted expert knowledge.The rapid emergence of electronic information services is revolutionizing access to information on the Faith. Electronic sources range from websites that are freely accessible, to journal databases and full-text books available only by subscription, to discussion groups that allow researchers to communicate back and forth. By combining these sources the researcher may learn not only of such traditional sources of scholarly information as books and academic papers, but also of such other sources as news services and newspaper articles. Judicial and other official records such as those of the United Nations Organization are also becoming available, as are booklists supplied by booksellers. Search at the online bookstore Amazon.com, for example, yielded 264 Baha'i hits in March 1999, 304 the following October, 1,681 in April 2007, and 3,528 in January 2012. The REDEX CD-ROM from Newsbank titled Index to UN Documents searched in March 1999 yielded 209 references to Baha'i, while more recently, in July 2010, the United Nations Bibliographic Information System (unbisnet.org) contained 253 titles matching Baha'i. A search in the EBSCO database, in the World Magazine Bank file, yielded 107 references. It is clear from these sample searches that content available online is multiplying at an exponential rate.Computer technology makes it possible to search a database such as FirstSearch and learn that author D. C. Lewis referred to the Baha'is of Tartarstan in an article that appeared in the journal Central Asian Survey in 1 997,4 or to find in America: History and Life a reference to an article in the Armenian Review quoting newly discovered English-Language materials of Dr. Reuben Darbinian of Boston, which (p]resents the concluding extract from the daily journals of Dr. Reuben Darbinian, the editorin-chief of the Harenik publications of Boston; the entries from November 1931 through April 1932 cover daily life and thoughts on and foreign relations.5This search capacity is quite extraordinary, even if already taken for granted by a younger generation of scholars. In an earlier period, publication referred to the physical printing of hard-copy books, newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, theses, official reports, and academic journals. …

BioTop: An upper domain ontology for the life sciences

In the life sciences, there is an ample need for semantic interoperability of data. Thus shared vocabularies are needed for consistently expressing metadata in terms of semantic annotations as well as for querying bibliographic information systems. In the past years, lots of highly specialized, yet also fragmented terminologies have evolved. However, they lack principled forms of conceptual interlinkage. In order to provide an ontological basis for a seamless integration of such isolated parts of biological knowledge, we here introduce BioTop, an upper domain ontology for molecular biology. We describe its structure and contents, as well as its current interfaces to a selected set of OBO ontologies, which contain more detailed terminological knowledge about specific areas of molecular biology, e.g., cell types, molecular functions, biological processes and chemical compounds.

Past Anomalies as a Diagnostic Tool for Evaluating Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbance Events

In the search for the best ecological and economic indicators of ecosystem change, a unifying solution for joining data from disparate fields appears as a general rule: Organize data into space/time/topic hierarchies that permit convergence of data resulting from shared and appropriate scaling. The scale of the data selects for compatible methodologies, leading to data integration and the discovery of new relationships. Information technology approaches include bibliographic keyword searches, data-mining, data-modeling and geographic information system design. The approach was used within the “HEED” (Health Ecological and Economic Dimensions) study, which reconstructed historic marine disturbance events within the Northwestern Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The object of the study was to retrospectively derive co-occurring Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbances (MMEDs). Disturbances include indices of morbidity, mortality and disease events affecting humans, marine invertebrates, flora, and wildlife populations. Correlations between space/time occurrence, event coincidence, climate and oceanographic forcing are used to better define multiple marine ecological disturbance types. Systematic derivation of these types is part of diagnostic approach that can assist or guide marine ecological risk assessment.

Collaboration and Cognitive Structures in Social Science Research Fields. Towards Socio-Cognitive Analysis in Information Systems

Bibliographic information systems have to address the needs of users by providing “value-added-components.” For instance, users would benefit from knowing the social and cognitive structures of research fields. Research suggests that a relationship exists between actors' position in scientific networks and the innovativeness of themes they examine. The present study confirms and expands these results through a technique that relates the cognitive and social structures of a research field (socio-cognitive analysis). The results from two social science fields suggest that well-integrated actors are engaged in the consolidation of the mainstream, whereas new ideas are most likely to be introduced and pursued by social climbers, i.e., actors who are starting to form a social network of collaboration.

The Role of Groupware in Requirements Specification

This article describes how 2 forms of groupware - electronic Mail and Group Support Systems (GSS) were employed to support user requirements specification in a university department. The system being specified was a bibliographic information system, while the users were both qualified systems analysts and academic staff in the department. The background literatures to both requirements specification and GSS are introduced and linked. Groupware tools were used to support the group interaction and consensus formation. The article discusses the key stages in this process and discusses the appropriateness of the techniques used. The results are significant in that they identify techniques appropriate to supporting user groups in the clarification of system requirements before the involvement of development personnel.

The bits between the lambdas

For the programmer, storage media are usually assumed to have a minimum atomic unit of transfer of one byte. However, sometimes it is useful to have an even finer storage granularity of one bit, for instance in order to compress data.This paper describes an API in the lazy functional language Haskell for treating storage media as arbitrary-length streams of bits without byte-alignment constraints. So far as possible, storage media are treated uniformly. In particular, bit-stream memory and binary files share the same API -- a new and useful abstraction over memory management and file management. This uniformity of access leads to a novel technique for lazy random-access to files in a purely functional manner. We also describe a technique for automatically deriving compressed binary representations of user-defined data structures, whose operations provide both in-heap data compression and convenient high-level binary I/O.Of many possible applications, we illustrate the processing of Huffman-encoded image data, and a bibliographic information system which uses lazy B-trees for efficient storage management.