Bibliographic Resources Research Articles

Supporting multilingual bibliographic resource discovery with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records

This paper describes an experiment exploring the hypothesis that innovative application of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) principles can complement traditional bibliographic resource discovery systems inorder to improve the user experience. A specialized service was implemented that, when given a plain list of results from a regular online catalogue, was able to process, enrich and present that list in a more relevant way for the user. This service preprocesses the records of a traditional online catalogue in order to build a semantic structure following the FRBR model. The service also explores web search features that have been revolutionizing the way users conceptualize resource discovery, such as relevance ranking and metasearching. This work was developed in the context of the TELPlus project. We processed nearly one hundred thousand bibliographic and authority records, in multiple languages, and originating from twelve European national libraries. This paper describes the architecture of the service and the main challenges faced, especially concerning the extraction and linking of the relevant FRBR entities from the bibliographic metadata produced by the libraries. The service was evaluated by end users, who filled out a questionnaire after using a traditional online catalogue and the new service, both with the same bibliographic collection. The analysis of the results supports the hypothesis that FRBR can be implemented for resource discovery in a non-intrusive way, reusing the data of any existing traditional bibliographic system.

Semantic Web and reasoning for cultural heritage and digital libraries

Cultural heritage and digital libraries are two closely related disciplines that traditionally benefit by the application of innovative information technologies. Currently, Semantic Web research has also grown satisfyingly mature to enable achieving tangible results and added-value in both these knowledgeintensive domains, in spite of the critical challenges of knowledge acquisition and reasoning about complex data. The purpose of this special issue is to put together a selection of high-quality research and development efforts in these areas that can offer an insight about the current state-of-the-art to the interested reader. Two papers in the issue deal with the idea of repurposing the FRBR standard towards semantic annotation and management of bibliographic records, revealing its importance and applicability for library curators in the Semantic Web context. “Supporting Multilingual Bibliographic Resource Discovery with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” presents an FRBR-based service that enhances existing on-line library catalogs in a more semantically rich and relevant way to the user. Moreover, “FRBRML: A FRBR-based Framework for Semantic Interoperability” proposes a framework upon which legacy bibliographic data can be transformed into meaningful semantic descriptions based on the FRBR model. Semantic interoperability is a top-priority issue for cultural heritage applications, due to the need to aggregate legacy and/or disperse data within knowledgeaware services. In “Instance-based Semantic Interoperability in the Cultural Heritage” the authors thoroughly review and evaluate ontology matching methods in cultural heritage scenarios and present their lessons-learned from their experience with the STITCH project. In addition, “A Systemic Approach for Effective Semantic Access to Cultural Content” discusses a system for mapping proprietary metadata schemas to domain models within the framework of Europeana, and discusses reasoning-based techniques and optimizations for their discovery. The Semantic Web can enable novel dimensions in cultural information management and utilization. This is exemplified in the paper “How to Deal with Massively Heterogeneous Cultural Heritage Data – Lessons Learned in CultureSampo”. Here, the authors give insights to transforming and publishing existing cross-domain cultural heritage data of multiple forms as linked data, and to maintaining interoperability at a semantic level, while providing novel user interfaces for their exploitation. We are grateful to the various authors that trusted their work with this special issue. Thanks are due to professors Pascal Hitzler and Krzysztof Janowicz, Semantic Web Journal Editors-in-Chief, for their helpful remarks and support in preparing this special issue, and to the reviewers that readily shared their expertise to help make this issue successful. To what extend this may have been achieved, the reader will be the absolute judge. Semantic Web 3 (2012) 1 DOI 10.3233/SW-2012-0050 IOS Press

Some Parochial Libraries in the East Midlands

A number of parochial libraries survive from the counties of the East Midlands: Derbyshire (two), Leicestershire (five), Lincolnshire (six), Nottinghamshire (two), and Rutland (one). Among them are some of the most important in the country, such as the chained library at Grantham and the libraries housed in major churches at Boston and Newark. Three libraries are deposited at the University of Nottingham and are examined in detail. Oakham was founded by Lady Anne Harington in 1616 (a few volumes post-date this) and came to Nottingham in 1980; it consists mostly of theology, mostly in large folio volumes and including much early printing, with four incunabula. Elston is probably only a fragment of the library left by the Revd John Smith in 1732; only twenty-eight titles remain, the majority of them sixteenth–seventeenth-century continental theology. Coleorton is a recent deposit and has not yet been fully studied; it dates from a bequest of 1736 by the Revd William Hunt but had a number of later additions. Its seven hundred volumes range more widely than those of the other two libraries, though the majority are in English with a preponderance of theology but a good number of historical and political works. The location of such libraries in academic libraries offers opportunities for their better conservation and their availability for study, and can also lead to their being recorded in bibliographic resources, so contributing to scholarship both nationally and internationally.

Toward a Multilingual Composition Scholarship: From English Only to a Translingual Norm

Against the limitations English monolingualism imposes on composition scholarship, as evident in journal submission requirements, frequency of references to non-English medium writing, bibliographical resources, and our own past work, we argue for adopting a translingual approach to languages, disciplines, localities, and research traditions in our scholarship, and propose ways individuals, journals, conferences, and graduate programs might advance composition scholarship toward a translingual norm.

“The Sixth Sense”: Towards a History of Muscular Sensation

This paper outlines the history of knowledge about the muscular sense and provides a bibliographic resource for further research. A range of different topics, questions and approaches have interrelated throughout this history, and the discussion clarifies this rather than presenting detailed research in any one area. Part I relates the origin of belief in a muscular sense to empiricist accounts of the contribution of the senses to knowledge from Locke, via the iddologues and other authors, to the second half of the nineteenth century. Analysis paid much attention to touch, first in the context of the theory of vision and then in its own right, which led to naming a distinct muscular sense. From 1800 to the present, there was much debate, the main lines of which this paper introduces, about the nature and function of what turned out to be a complex sense. A number of influential psycho-physiologists, notably Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer, thought this sense the most primitive and primary of all, the origin of knowledge of world, causation and self as an active subject. Part II relates accounts of the muscular sense to the development of nervous physiology and of psychology. In the decades before 1900, the developing separation of philosophy, psychology and physiology as specialised disciplines divided up questions which earlier writers had discussed under the umbrella heading of muscular sensation. The term'kinaesthesia' came in 1880 and 'proprio-ception' in 1906. There was, all the same, a lasting interest in the argument that touch and muscular sensation are intrinsic to the existence of embodied being in the way the other senses are not. In the wider culture--the arts, sport, the psychophysiology of labour and so on--there were many ways in which people expressed appreciation of the importance of what the anatomist Charles Bell had called 'the sixth sense'.

The Hume Literature, 2010

This bibliography covers the Hume literature for 2010, and follows upon the annual update begun by Rolland Hall for the years 1977 through 1985 and continued by William Edward Morris for 1986 through 2003. This installment, like previous ones, excludes items published in Hume Studies, which are indexed annually in each November issue. Readers of Hume Studies may contact me at jfieser@utm.edu with additions or corrections to any previous year, which can be noted in future installments. I am grateful to all who have provided input on an earlier draft of this bibliography that was posted on the Internet. Aside from the yearly bibliographies published in Hume Studies, readers may find the following bibliographical resources useful:

Historical evidences on flora composition changes in a high vegetation belt, Sierra Nevada, Spain (1837-2009)

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the historical bibliographic resources about the flora catalogue in the Sierra Nevada upper zone and the current estimations. Are there any differences between the historical records and the current ones?. We have selected the main historical documents identifying the relevant ones and all the information has been analysed to maximum detail. A comparison of the taxonomical spectrum of our catalogue with the one done on the same territory by Boissier (172 years ago) reveals that the number has increased by 65 taxa. Also, diverse taxa mentioned even at lower altitudes as rare or scanty, nowadays are frequent in the highest part of Sierra Nevada: Dryopteris filix-mas, Sempervivum minutum, Dianthus subacaulis, Asperula aristata subsp. scabra, Festuca iberica, Pimpinella procumbens, Senecio nevadensis. As conclusion we believe that the environmental conditions on the upper vegetation belt of Sierra Nevada have changed since the description done in the 19th century by Boissier. It has possibly provoked an intrusion of scanty, very rare or previously non-existent taxa from lower altitudes which are adapting to the new, more favourable conditions on the summits.

Decision support system for nitrogen fertilization using fuzzy theory

During the last three decades there has been great concern about the impact of agriculture on the environment and its resources. Conventional agriculture is based on whole field and mostly empirical approaches to defining and applying agrochemical inputs, which poses certain limitations regarding the management of existing variability in agricultural land. In this paper, the design and application of a fuzzy decision support system, concerning site specific nitrogen fertilization, is described. The system uses an easy but efficient way of solving the nitrogen equation under agricultural conditions and is based on knowledge elicitation and fuzzy logic methodologies. More specifically, the system is composed of two parts; a knowledge base and an analytical modular part which simulates nitrogen balance. The analytical part is built in a four level structure which consists of eleven fuzzy systems. The evaluation of the system presupposes the availability of 14 state variables that can be easily collected and refer to characteristics of the soil, weather and farming practices. The incorporated knowledge and the formulation of fuzzy rules were based on interviews with experts and on annotating scientific and technical bibliographic resources. A sensitivity analysis of the developed system was carried out in order to evaluate its robustness against errors or uncertainty in the state variables and further to assess and highlight the important variables. The application of the system using a set of point data, drawn from cotton fields in central Greece and stored in a Geographical Information System, is described in brief and the results show considerable variability in the recommended amount of nitrogen fertilizer among the reference sites.

Friending the Past: The Sense of History and Social Computing

Reflecting on the relation between the media ages of orality, writing, and digital networking, Liu asks the question: what happens today to the “sense of history” that was the glory of the high age of print? In particular, what does the age of social computing—social networking, blogs, Twitter, etc.—have in common with prior ages in which the experience of sociality was deeply vested in a shared sense of history? Liu focuses on a comparison of nineteenth-century historicism and contemporary Web 2.0, and concludes by touching on the RoSE Research-oriented Social Environment that the Transliteracies Project he directs has been building to model past bibliographical resources as a social network.

<p class="HeadingRunIn"><strong>The <em>Trichoptera Literature Database</em>: a collaborative bibliographic resource for world caddisfly research</strong></p>

In addition to a list of valid names and synonyms, as provided by the Trichoptera World Checklist, access to the primary literature itself is essential for research in Trichoptera taxonomy and systematics. To improve access to bibliographic information, we established the Trichoptera Literature Database, http://www.trichopteralit.umn.edu, a bibliographic database of over 8,500 citations of literature on Trichoptera. In addition to compiling bibliographical information, we provided access to over 450 high quality Portable Document Format files (PDFs) of historically important, rare, or out-of-print older works as well as more current literature. To provide universal web access to this bibliographical resource, we constructed a dynamic, custom-designed, web application (PHP, Symfony framework) created to import Extensible Markup Language (XML) from the EndNote data file. The database allows the user to search by author and year of publication, displays citations in a standard bibliographic format, and provides download links to available PDF literature. Existing bibliographies of Trichoptera literature and online access to Zoological Record databases were used to accumulate citations. Protocols for scanning literature, issues regarding copyright, and procedures for uploading citations and PDFs to the database are established. We hope to create a collaborative framework of contributors by seeking regional, subject, or language organizers from the community of Trichoptera workers to assist in completing and maintaining this resource with the goal of lowering barriers to efficient access to taxonomic information.

Challenges of accessibility of information resources by the post-graduate library users of a Nigerian University

The study examined the challenges of accessibility of information resources by the post-graduate library users of the University of Nigeria Nsukka. The descriptive survey research design was adopted using the questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 200 respondents drawn from a population of 1113 post-graduate library users of the Nnamdi Azikiwe library, using the proportionate stratified sampling technique. The findings revealed that library resources were not easily accessible to the students as a result of inadequacies emanating from out-datedness of resources; ineffective bibliographic organization and ineffective library services. It was recommended among others that electronic /online information resources should be made available in the library to help researchers have access to current materials. Also the library collection should be well organized to ensure that the catalogue and other bibliographic access resources reflect the true content of the library.

Russia's Digital Cultural Heritage in the Legal Deposit System

Since 1994, the National Library of Russia has accepted electronic media according to the federal law On the Obligatory Copy of Documents, which established the system of legal deposit in Russia. The Scientific-Technical Center “Informregistr” is responsible for collecting legal deposits of electronic media and provides regular analysis of the National Library's collection of electronic editions. The results of these analyses are given in this article. Bibliographic records of deposited electronic media are available online in the electronic catalog Russian Electronic Editions. Catalog data are used to evaluate the characteristics of electronic editions and publishers. Acquisitions librarians use this catalog as a national bibliographic resource for adding electronic editions to their collections.

Implementing FRBR in Libraries: Key Issues and Future Directions

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published their groundbreaking report on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) in 1998. In the years since, how has the library community adopted FRBR and what can librarians and users expect in the future? Zhang and Salaba explore the benefits of FRBR implementation, describing how it helps develop better systems for users, improve cataloging efforts, and better manage resources in a digital environment. Readers new to the FRBR concept will soon catch up with a thorough description of the entity-relationship conceptual model. The use of graphics to illustrate the relationships between and among the three entity groups (intellectual or artistic endeavors; authors, artists, or agents responsible for creation of content; and subjects of works) helps to clarify the model. FRBR, and its role in current cataloging practice, is also outlined in relation to International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), Resource Description and Access (RDA), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), and emerging standards for the semantic web. Should the reader feel lost in this library alphabet soup, a handy list of acronyms is provided in the back of the book. The second half of the book looks at applications of FRBR in real-world settings. Art objects, classic texts, and works of fiction are a few examples of the types of materials that could be affected by FRBR. These special genres or formats are discussed individually with descriptions of how they may be affected by FRBR-related changes. In addition, many examples of existing FRBR implementation projects are highlighted, some in traditional library settings and some in specialized locales such as consortia, digital libraries, and institutional repositories. Screenshots are helpful in showing the differences in these FRBR-ized catalogs. A lengthy list of FRBR implementations is provided in the text, as well as in the appendix, for further research. However, these projects have not been implemented without difficulty, and the authors describe some of the challenges an institution faces when trying to FRBR-ize legacy data or normalize records from one system to another. So when will FRBR be implemented on a larger scale? There is no clear answer to this question as it clearly depends on cataloging standards. There is still plenty of room for additional research (particularly usability research). However, the many implementation examples cited by the authors show that FRBR has come a long way in the last decade and likely has a long future ahead. This book is certainly a must-read for catalogers and metadata specialists, and should be useful for any librarian interested in system design, usability studies, and the future of librarianship.

Searching for medical information online: a survey of Canadian nephrologists

Physicians often search for information to improve patient care. We evaluated how nephrologists use online information sources for this purpose. In this cross-sectional study (2008 to 2010), a random sample of Canadian nephrologists completed a survey of their online search practices. We queried respondents on their searching preferences, practices and use of 9 online information sources. Respondents (n=115; 75% response rate) comprised both academic (59%) and community-based (41%) nephrologists. Respondents were an average of 48 years old and were in practice for an average of 15 years. Nephrologists used a variety of online sources to retrieve information on patient treatment including UpToDate (92%), PubMed (89%), Google (76%) and Ovid MEDLINE (55%). Community-based nephrologists were more likely to consult UpToDate first (91%), while academic nephrologists were divided between UpToDate (58%) and PubMed (41%). When searching bibliographic resources such as PubMed, 80% of nephrologists scan a maximum of 40 citations (the equivalent of 2 search pages in PubMed). Searching practices did not differ by age, sex or years in practice. Nephrologists routinely use a variety of online resources to search for information for patient care. These include bibliographic databases, general search engines and specialized medical resources.

O design estratégico no diálogo entre cultura de projeto e cultura de empresa

The main goal of this article is to stimulate a cultural dialogue between design and companies. Strategic design, a result of this dialogue, is today one of the most relevant reflections for the evolution of design in relation to the development of companies. The analysis uses etymological and bibliographic resources as well as case studies in order to assess the potential of design for the development of corporate competitive strategies. Such potentials have to be structured in the organizations and be affirmed through the daily actions of designers. Key words: strategic design, project culture, company culture, competition.

A comprehensive review of published bibliographical database resources for complementary medicine

A comprehensive review of published bibliographical database resources for complementary medicine

FRBR implementation and user research

The IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) conceptual model, published in 1998, focuses on the representation of the bibliographic universe, using an entity-relationship model [1]. It has direct and great impact to the whole area of knowledge organization, especially the description, access, and sharing of bibliographic resources. As a conceptual model, FRBR is subject to various interpretations and implementations. This panel will focus on practical aspects of FRBR and related user studies: FRBR model validation, FRBR user research, FRBR/FAO model implementation and benefits, and RDA vocabulary developments based on FRBR.

Improving the search experience: federated search and the library gateway

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to review the evolving nature of the library web site with a focus on improving the usability of the access points to licensed and unlicensed research databases.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes the milestones in the development of a library gateway and the incorporation of federated search into a prominent place in the gateway.FindingsTechnological developments present new opportunities to extend the functionality of library systems. Achieving simplicity among the complex array of bibliographic and full text resources is critical.Originality/valueThe efforts made by the library in the development of a gateway and incorporating metasearching and other tools into it have resulted in greater control over the way resources are presented to the user community.

Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source

The new Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source database from EBSCO fills a niche by producing a bibliographic and full-text resource that covers all the dental specialties. It is international in coverage and includes not only the full text of journals but also of numerous books.

Gradient and Counter-Gradient Modeling in Premixed Flames: Theoretical Study and Application to the LES of a Lean Premixed Turbulent Swirl-Burner

This paper concerns the modeling of unresolved turbulent fluxes in premixed flames. Classically closed with a gradient assumption, this term may also contain a counter-gradient part, as detailed in other works. In a first section, the bibliographical resources giving details about the closure of the unresolved turbulent fluxes are investigated and confronted thanks to time-averaged direct numerical simulation databases. Large-eddy simulation is then performed to underline the possibility to integrate the counter-gradient transport in an industrial-like computation where the mesh may not be thin enough to capture all the turbulent transport at a resolved scale. Results given by the considered closures are compared with experimental points and analyzed.