Digital Library Initiatives Research Articles

Developing multi‐method, iterative, and user‐centered evaluation strategies for digital libraries: Functionality, usability, and accessibility

AbstractUsability, functionality, and accessibility testing of digital library information services and products are essential for providing high quality services to users. This paper details a long‐term, evolving effort to develop meaningful evaluations for assessing digital libraries. The authors of this paper have been engaged in a multi‐year study to determine appropriate evaluation techniques, tools, and methodologies for the Florida Electronic Library (FEL) and other digital libraries. The evaluation protocols and approaches have been designed over time and iteratively through assessment efforts of the research team of other digital library initiatives and with multiple versions of the FEL. As such, this paper examines the process of developing, applying, and refining appropriate evaluation methodologies for the networked environment of libraries, as well as the implications of these methodologies.The approach taken in the research described herein relies on a combination of evaluation strategies applied iteratively to assess libraries from the perspective of patron needs. A number of specific methods, as shown in this paper, can be readily developed to provide such evaluations. The following goals guide the presentation in this paper of the development through time of the methods and instruments created, tested, refined, and operationalized in functionality, usability, and accessibility testing by the researchers. The goals of this paper are to: 1) demonstrate the potential roles of multiple, iterative evaluation strategies in the development and refinement of digital libraries; 2) detail the methodologies that focus on how the services meet the needs of users; and 3) encourage further discussion of the uses of these multiple evaluation approaches in assessing these libraries.

Advances in digital library initiatives: a developing country perspective

The paper focuses on the digital library initiatives in India with examples, the initiatives of the government of India and state governments towards digital library activities, and the policy of the Government of India towards digital library development. The current initiatives, such as the INDEST Consortia, are described in detail. The challenges facing digital libraries, the problems being encountered while developing digital libraries, the problems of the digital divide facing the country are mentioned.

Digital library research in the US: an overview with a knowledge management perspective

The provision of information resources and services is now readily available online via digital libraries furnished by a wide variety of information providers. Information is no longer just text and pictures, and is now available in a wide variety of multimedia formats. Digital libraries represent a new form of information technology in which content management, service delivery and social impact matter as much as technological advancement. In addition, for digital library researchers there is a need to transform information access to knowledge creation and management. Based on research in the USA in the Digital Libraries Initiative and the National Science Digital Library programmes, a review is provided of significant past and emerging digital library research activities, and research based on new knowledge management concepts and technologies is suggested.

Advances in digital library initiatives: a developing country perspective

The paper focuses on the digital library initiatives in India with examples, the initiatives of the government of India and state governments towards digital library activities, and the policy of the Government of India towards digital library development. The current initiatives, such as the INDEST Consortia, are described in detail. The challenges facing digital libraries, the problems being encountered while developing digital libraries, the problems of the digital divide facing the country are mentioned.

ENGLISH

Metadata is data about data, a term that got wide prominence to denote cataloguing and representation of digital information resources. This paper attempts to present a brief about old and new metadata formats such as Dublin Core, Text Encoding Initiative, Encoded Archival Description, Government (Global) Information Locator Service, Platform for Internet Content Selection, Resource Description Framework, Meta Content Framework, Summary Object Interchange Format, Digital Object Identifier, Serial Item and Contribution Identifier, Uniform Resource Characteristics, and Learning Object Metadata. As electronic information resources are rising and digital library initiatives are getting wide acceptance, knowledge of metadata formats will help our library professionals in adapting their skills in cataloguing, classification, subject heading, key wording, and indexing for better inventory and exhaustive usage of electronic information. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dbit.24.4.3629

Overview of the OMRAS project: Online music retrieval and searching

AbstractUntil recently, most research on music information retrieval concentrated on monophonic music. Online Music Retrieval and Searching (OMRAS) is a three‐year project funded under the auspices of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)/NSF (National Science Foundation) International Digital Library Initiative which began in 1999 and whose remit was to investigate the issues surrounding polyphonic music information retrieval. Here we outline the work OMRAS has achieved in pattern matching, document retrieval, and audio transcription, as well as some prototype work in how to implement these techniques into library systems.

Digital library development in Brazil

The Internet came to Brazil early, and was quickly recognized as an exciting new means of communication, highly appropriate for a technologically advanced and recently democratized society. This paper identifies and characterizes the principal Brazilian digital library initiatives in science and research; education; literature and the humanities and history and politics. Government financing was critical for the implementation of Brazilian digital libraries. Institutions with a strong background in advanced technology had an advantage when entering the digital library field. Cooperative projects have also had significant impact.

News from Online: Untangling the Web: The National Digital Libraries Initiative

This resource paper describes efforts at a national level in the U.S. to compile digital libraries, indexing, and cataloging materials available on the World Wide Web.

Personalized and Collaborative Digital Library Capabilities

SUMMARYChanges in the nature of scientific research have created new expectations for libraries supporting research. Several digital library initiatives offer customized digital library environments; however, these services typically do not provide users with personalized and shared collaborative environments. MyLibrary at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) provides scientists (as individuals or groups) with a personalized Web environment enhancing scientific collaboration independent of time and location. One of the unique characteristics of this capability is the ability to push recommendations to users and adapt the system further based on user interactions.

The Development of Digital Libraries in China and the USA

Describes the development of the Digital Library Initiatives, the project’s experimental centers, and several information resource sharing networks in America and compares them with the development of the China Digital Library Project (CDLP), the China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS), and related initiatives. Comparisons are made between the two countries’ approaches to organization and coordination of their respective digital library projects and the related developments in networking, information resources, and information technology. Also discusses the existing problems and coping strategies for digital library projects in China.

Around the World to: Technology Applications and Digital Library Initiatives at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library, Bangalore

Around the World to: Technology Applications and Digital Library Initiatives at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library, Bangalore

Reducing the information gap: Digital library development in Brazil

AbstractPrincipal Brazilian digital library initiatives were identified and characterized. Significant projects in the area of science and research include gateway sites for research (Prossiga), set up and maintained cooperatively, also a multinational access system for regional electronic journals (SciELO). Systems which offer access to texts of the Brazilian classics predominate in the field of literature and hmanities. Digital libraries have had a significant impact on Brazil. Government financing was critical for implanting these new services. Institutions which already have a strong background in advanced technology have significantly better chances of success in the digital library field. Cooperative projects have also had significant impact.

The NSF NSDL GREEN Digital Library: Green's Functions Research And Education Enhancement Network

ABSTRACTGreen's functions are powerful mathematical tools with strong pedagogical value providing not only solutions to difficult problems but also visualization for understanding phenomena. The majority of upper division engineering and materials science students receive very little exposure to Green's functions and the boundary element method. The Green's Functions Research and Education Enhancement Network (GREEN) Digital Library which the authors are developing will, therefore, play an important role in undergraduate and graduate education. The National Science Foundation has launched the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program to stimulate and sustain continual improvements in the quality of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. The NSDL Program is a major digital library initiative and the GREEN Digital Library is a collaboration of the Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kent State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This paper describes the primary components of the GREEN Digital Library, an organized collection of educational materials integrating research, education, and application of Green's functions to serve undergraduate and graduate communities:1. Problem Bank: A bank of available “real-world” problems, introduced by industrial participants.2. Code Bank: Working code for solved Green's functions routines.3. Archive: A list of citations to relevant literature, and published / unpublished works subject to copyright restrictions, with links elsewhere for additional information.4. Teaching Bank: A collection of lecture / course notes from existing university courses, as well as providing a forum for discussion of approaches to teaching this material.

Digital Libraries: Ongoing Development (From the Editor of the Special Issue)

Digital Libraries Initiative declared in the USA in the autumn of 1993 aroused interest to information systems of this class in many countries all over the world. Today, numerous research teams are involved in activities related to such systems. A significant number of digital libraries for diverse purposes are already in operation, and various research prototypes have been created. This subject has been discussed at international conferences dedicated specifically to digital libraries and conferences on fundamental directions of information system technologies, such as database technologies, Web technologies, textual search, data mining, and knowledge discovery. Programming and Computer Software already addressed the problems arising in relation to digital libraries. This issue of the journal further explores the subject.

Concept-based searching and browsing: a geoscience experiment

In the recent literature, we have seen the expansion of information retrieval techniques to include a variety of different collections of information. Collections can have certain characteristics that can lead to different results for the various classification techniques. In addition, the ways and reasons that users explore each collection can affect the success of the information retrieval technique. The focus of this research was to extend the application of our statistical and neural network techniques to the domain of geological science information retrieval. For this study, a test bed of 22,636 geoscience abstracts was obtained through the NSF/DARPA/NASA funded Alexandria Digital Library Initiative project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This collection was analyzed using algorithms previously developed by our research group: concept space algorithm for searching and a Kohonen self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm for browsing. Included in this paper are discussions of our techniques, user evaluations and lessons learned.

Concept-based searching and browsing: a geoscience experiment

In the recent literature, we have seen the expansion of information retrieval techniques to include a variety of different collections of information. Collections can have certain characteristics that can lead to different results for the various classification techniques. In addition, the ways and reasons that users explore each collection can affect the success of the information retrieval technique. The focus of this research was to extend the application of our statistical and neural network techniques to the domain of geological science information retrieval. For this study, a test bed of 22,636 geoscience abstracts was obtained through the NSF/DARPA/NASA funded Alexandria Digital Library Initiative project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This collection was analyzed using algorithms previously developed by our research group: concept space algorithm for searching and a Kohonen self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm for browsing. Included in this paper are discussions of our techniques, user evaluations and lessons learned.

Gateway to Electronic Media Services (GEMS)

With the dawning of the digital age, many libraries around the world have begun to revamp their collections so as to accommodate more e-resources as well as other digital materials. However, as library resources become more virtual, many issues will have to be taken into consideration. For instance, in order to build a digital library, library administrators will have to deal with intellectual property and copyright issues. In most cases, librarians will have to negotiate for licensing terms in order to be able to deliver information to patrons at the lowest possible cost. This study reports on the implementation of a digital library in Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The digital library aims to deliver information resources campus-wide and make these resources accessible via a single point, any time and anywhere. The NTU digital library initiative is examined, with emphasis on the services and facilities provided.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the TORPEDO Ultra Project

Summary The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) library provides its users in four geographic locations with digital library services including over five hundred electronic journals. The InfoWeb information system and gateway serves as a single point of access to these services. InfoWeb includes the TORPEDO Ultra digital library initiative, the library's Web-based SIRSI Unicorn catalog, a locally mounted We b of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded database, and Contents-toGo, a custom-developed current awareness and document delivery service. TORPEDO Ultra provides institutional researchers with a unified way to search all of the library's digital collections, whether these materials originate from a commercial publisher, such as Elsevier; an association publisher, such as the American Physical Society; or a government publisher, such as NRL. TORPEDO Ultra also provides an infrastructure that enables databases that have traditionally served as pointers to documents to now deliver that content directly. In a future release, TORPEDO Ultra will enable end user scientists to search and link to journals residing on publisher Websites at the same time that they are searching locally mounted electronic journals.

Digital libraries: Situating use in changing information infrastructure

How users meet infrastructure is a key practical, methodological challenge for digital library design. This article presents research conducted by the Social Science Team of the federally funded Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) project at the University of Illinois. Data were collected from potential and actual users of the DLI testbed—containing the full text of journal articles—through focus groups, interviews and observations, usability testing, user registration and transaction logging, and user surveys. Basic results on nature and extent of testbed use are presented, followed by a discussion of three analytical foci relating to digital library use as a process of assemblage: document disaggregation and reaggregation; information convergence; and the manner in which users confront new genres and technical barriers in information systems. The article also highlights several important methodological and conceptual issues that frame research on social aspects of digital library use.

Digital libraries: Situating use in changing information infrastructure

How users meet infrastructure is a key practical, methodological challenge for digital library design. This article presents research conducted by the Social Science Team of the federally funded Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) project at the University of Illinois. Data were collected from potential and actual users of the DLI testbed—containing the full text of journal articles—through focus groups, interviews and observations, usability testing, user registration and transaction logging, and user surveys. Basic results on nature and extent of testbed use are presented, followed by a discussion of three analytical foci relating to digital library use as a process of assemblage: document disaggregation and reaggregation; information convergence; and the manner in which users confront new genres and technical barriers in information systems. The article also highlights several important methodological and conceptual issues that frame research on social aspects of digital library use.