Modern Digital Library Research Articles

Emerging Technologies in Digital Libraries: Net Interactive Document (NID) Experiences and Prospects

Modern digital library systems face challenges related to data analytics, interoperability, access control, and institutional and user collaborations. This paper presents the work done to add value to the conventional digital library workflows in a next-generation library system. Inherent capabilities to foster collaboration, content co-creation and AI interventions are among the desired features guiding the development of modern library systems. The work also highlights aspects of data transformation and access models in a more connected information ecosystem

E-learning, e-searching and e-resource management in the libraries

With the advent of the World Wide Web, internet has become integral part of the library and it facilitated libraries as global platform for knowledge sharing. Powerful searching tools and techniques have emerged in this sector, such as internet search engines, information portals, multi format publishers and online content integrators etc. Google itself provides enough opportunities to become library a global player for the access of scholarly information, this article focuses on few general aspects e-learning with a modern digital library in the context of the changing role of librarians. E-searching offers new opportunities for library professionals, staff, users and researchers. Finally it emphasizes the impact of libraries by the way of providing easy library access, information retrieval and management of e-resources in digital environment. Keywords: Internet, Search engine, Google, E-Learning, E-resources, Searching techniques.

Learning Document Image Features With SqueezeNet Convolutional Neural Network

The classification of various document image classes is considered an important step towards building a modern digital library or office automation system. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifiers trained with backpropagation are considered to be the current state of the art model for this task. However, there are two major drawbacks for these classifiers: the huge computational power demand for training, and their very large number of weights. Previous successful attempts at learning document image features have been based on training very large CNNs. SqueezeNet is a CNN architecture that achieves accuracies comparable to other state of the art CNNs while containing up to 50 times less weights, but never before experimented on document image classification tasks. In this research we have taken a novel approach towards learning these document image features by training on a very small CNN network such as SqueezeNet. We show that an ImageNet pretrained SqueezeNet achieves an accuracy of approximately 75 percent over 10 classes on the Tobacco-3482 dataset, which is comparable to other state of the art CNN. We then visualize saliency maps of the gradient of our trained SqueezeNet's output to input, which shows that the network is able to learn meaningful features that are useful for document classification. Previous works in this field have made no emphasis on visualizing the learned document features. The importance of features such as the existence of handwritten text, document titles, text alignment and tabular structures in the extracted saliency maps, proves that the network does not overfit to redundant representations of the rather small Tobacco-3482 dataset, which contains only 3482 document images over 10 classes.

Role of libraries in technical education

Internet has become integral part of the library and it facelifted libraries as a global platform for knowledge sharing hub. Powerful searching tools and technique have emerge in library sector such as internet search engine, information portals, multi format publisher and online digital library portal for researchers and students, google itself provides enough opportunities to become library a global player for the access of scholarly information, this article focuses on few general aspects e-learning with a modern digital library, OPAC, Circulation etc. Keywords: Circulation, Resource sharing, Services, Catalogue, Circulation, Automation.

Problems and Changes in Digital Libraries in the Age of Big Data From the Perspective of User Services

Based on the investigation of the position of user service for constructing digital libraries in the big data era, this paper points out that not only data resources of modern digital library have the characteristics of big data, but also the existing library services need to use big data methods to achieve reform and innovation, including resource transferring, resource utilization, social identity, thinking innovation. We focus on the importance of user services and types of big data resources that digital libraries can utilize, which include big data within libraries such as user behavior data and digital literature resource, and other big data outside libraries such as scholarly big data. We also examine the problems and potential of digital libraries in the age of big data relative to data, technology, services, and users. Using existing big data resources and considering the characteristics of current users' needs from the perspective of users, more effective ideas and methods to improve existing services in digital library can be put forward. At the same time, it is the personalized need of users in the age of big data that constitute the driving factor for the development of digital library from resource-sharing service to user-oriented service.

Towards Building Reuse-Based Digital Libraries for National Universities in Patagonia

This article presents a case study exploring the use of software product lines and reference models as mechanisms of a reuse-based design process to build digital libraries. As a key component in a modern digital library, the reference architecture is responsible for helping define quality of the resulting repository. It is true that many efforts have been addressed towards providing interoperability; however, repositories are expected to provide high levels of reuse too, which goes beyond that of simple object sharing. This work presents the main steps we followed towards building a reusable digital library capable of accommodating such needs by (i) providing mechanisms to reuse resources, and (ii) enabling explicit sharing of commonalities in a distributed environment.

New public management and libraries: a success story or just an excuse for cost reduction

PurposeFrom the 1980s – in some parts of Europe from the 1990s – onward, the new public management (NPM) has been emerging in public organizations including libraries. Since then, there has been a need to develop strategies, to plan budgets and to implement cost and activity accounting as well as benchmarking to compare the library’s processes, costs and activities with those of other libraries. One basic idea of the NPM was to make a transition from focusing on how institutions function to product orientation, to improve the quality of library services, to develop output orientation and to act market and consumer oriented. There also was a need to change from bureaucratic and hierarchically acting organizations to a more modern flexible and lean form of management. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe aim of this paper is in the first part to describe the basic ideas of NPM, their realization in libraries and how libraries have to handle constantly reduced budgets and the risk of being closed down (especially in the “age of austerity”); the second part will show how the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) Library has managed to improve its services with the NPM approach.FindingsMany libraries are faced with serious financial cutbacks on the one hand and with emergent needs to (re)invest in neglected public infrastructure on the other hand. At the same time, they have to develop modern digital library services. Thus there is a need for efficiency, which is put in action via major budget cutbacks. Also many libraries have been closed down since the implementation of NPM ideas.Originality/valueIn this paper, the NPM tools used in the restructuring of the UEF are described and the outcome of this modern management is shown.

Digital Libraries: The Challenge of Integrating Instagram with a Taxonomy for Content Management

Interoperability and social implication are two current challenges in the digital library (DL) context. To resolve the problem of interoperability, our work aims to find a relationship between the main metadata schemas. In particular, we want to formalize knowledge through the creation of a metadata taxonomy built with the analysis and the integration of existing schemas associated with DLs. We developed a method to integrate and combine Instagram metadata and hashtags. The final result is a taxonomy, which provides innovative metadata with respect to the classification of resources, as images of Instagram and the user-generated content, that play a primary role in the context of modern DLs. The possibility of Instagram to localize the photos inserted by users allows us to interpret the most relevant and interesting informative content for a specific user type and in a specific location and to improve access, visibility and searching of library content.

Extraction of social networks in modern digital library environment

Abstract. The article examines the concept of social networking, implementation of the information communication technologies in the social network procedures, formation of online social networks. Observed implementation of these technologies in establishment of the modern libraries and presented possible perspectives of the social formation. Also was described the solution of some tasks using fuzzy sets theory and bibliometric methods for control of management by analyzing of relations between users and resources of libraries.Keywords: Digital library, social network, social library, WEB2, collaborative resources, fuzzy sets, bibliometrics, management, user content.JEL Classification: D85(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)IntroductionThe term digital library encompasses a wide range of working systems and research prototypes, collections of information and documents, and technologies (Ioannidis et al., 2005). In other hand latest years make modern society be more social accompanying with implementation of information communication technologies, Internet, network concept, portative equipment and etc. features. Psychology and philosophy of information retrieval changed in many aspects such as openness, copyright procedures, standards, information management systems and so on. Also the same situation happening with the sociological and physiological structure of the modern information consumers. Observing their behavior possible to view different methods of approaching, which they are very exacting to quality, time management and to networking in their information needs. But we have to say sometimes they are very lazy and impatient in this procedures.Regarding mentioned features information systems comparing with classic structure becoming very amorphous`, gathering latest implementations, but keeping some main core merits. Modern DLs is not just an information system, it consist sharing, interchange, relations, cooperation and related activities which reveals sociocentric, sociotechnical aspects of this environment.View of modern and information societyModern technologies and ideas have the important ability to create linkages among information resources, systems, groups, individuals and in order of this possibilities direct way to good communication which is very important in modern information society. In simple practice we can observe that most times many respondents are not aware what their or has newly acquired, recently used, what thinking users about information which they were provided, they have not enough social environment and certainly this is a lack of socialization (Schrier, 2011).Observing librarianship we can pay attention many librarians participate in relevant online conversations, activities for knowledge sharing, advertise and encourage the use of their collections, using social media tools such as blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. What does mean this changes? The rapid integration of the Web2 ideology conceptually changed meaning of information interchange, sharing and gathering. Modern librarians and information specialists, especially specialists from the former Soviet Union Republics now has the new tasks, goals and missions, which they need to involve to the new world of information society which very different from previous ones. From modern librarianship view the main potential aspects of structure of the new information society are 1. human factor: from one side intellectual source and from an other side is consumer (user, customer) 2 content: the end product of the intellectual source and the medium for to satisfying information needs of individuals or the group consumers (user, costumer) 3. ICT and modern ideology approaches: the third aspect is the set of elements leading the way of integration of the core aspects mentioned before. …

Utilization of Cloud Computing in Education and Research to the Attainment of Millennium Development Goals and Vision 2030 in Kenya

Kenya Educational and Research fraternity has highly qualified human resource capacity with globally gained experiences. However each research entity works in disparity due to the absence of a common digital platform while educational units don't even have the basic infrastructure. For sustainability of Education and research progression, collaboration amongst students, Teachers, Lecturers and International researchers on a common central repository of digital content is a requirement. The absence of a centralized digital content repository containing e-learning resources, research applications and tools with a collaborative on-line modern digital library accessible with a controlled right based accessibility has denied students in remote areas access to education, researchers from collaborating with their peers and industry from innovation benefits. This study proposes a framework of cloud computing (CC) owned and maintained by the government. The developed repository may need to be accessed by any terminal that can be easily solar powered and may use basic modems. Cloud provider preference guided by digital content development capacity is discussed. Students will benefit immensely on the e-learning component which will address the dwindling instructors-Student ratios while universities and research institutes through collaborative ventures will participate alongside their international colleagues with immediate innovation benefiting our local industries. Contribution to Kenya's vision 2030 by Millennium development goals (MDGs) attainment like universal primary education, environmental sustainability and combating diseases through research is discussed. Challenges of instructor shortage, classroom space and geographical disparity are addressed.

X-System:

In this paper, the authors describe X-System, a general digital library platform which is capable of handling large-scale digital contents with flexible, extensible management features. The development of X-System achieves several important goals of modern digital library systems, including fully functional system, neutral and portable architecture, stackable modules, data exchange, and universal access. Several open source digital library systems are selected as a comparison of platform features. The model and architecture of X-System are also discussed in this paper. Moreover, several extension case studies of X-System are demonstrated to show the extensibility of their system. In addition to act as a basic digital archive/library system, the X-System has been adopted as various different usages, including E-learning platform, knowledge management platform, library circulation system, and embedded metadata framework.

An Integrated Management System for Multimedia Digital Library

Contemporary libraries have changed quickly their social role and function due to the proliferation and diversification of multimedia digital documents, becoming complex networks able to support communication and collaboration among the various distributed users communities. Technologies have not grown in step with the needs generated by this new approach, except in specific areas and implications. Hence the need to design an integrated digital library architecture that covers by advanced techniques the whole spectrum of functionality, without which the same social and cultural function of a modern digital library is at risk. This paper briefly describes an architecture that aims to bridge this gap, bringing together the experience, expertise and software systems developed by university and companies researchers. A prototype of the system is under development.

The research enterprise

PurposeThis column seeks to examine the relationship between the modern digital library and academic research entities; and to explore briefly the services that can be provided by information professionals on behalf of investigative teams.Design/methodology/approach:A literature review was conducted in order to find out what the recent views were relating to this subject. The remainder of the content is based upon the author's experience.FindingsThis is an exploratory column proposing that modern academic libraries need to have embedded services that are a part of the research workflow of the university. This column focuses on the digital aspects of research, what the apparent needs are in that context, and suggests the central role that libraries can play in that context.Originality/valueAs the field of information science evolves and libraries recast their vision so that they can support the core mission of modern universities, research support services are central to that effort. The column shows that there are many ways in which the digitally oriented library can fill in the gaps for investigative teams.

From cuneiform to digital text encodings

PurposeThis column aims to examine the role of text encoding, specifically Unicode, in modern digital library applications. It also seeks to examine the technical aspects of Unicode and how they impact those applications.Design/methodology/approachThis column is simply exploratory, and examines issues regarding Unicode, text encoding in general, and what librarians should be aware of concerning technical aspects of the Unicode standard.FindingsThe paper finds that Unicode is the bedrock of all metadata in modern digital library applications. An awareness of how to identify and perform conversions on that data is critical to the support of these applications. Many aspects of functionality in forthcoming information resource tools will rely upon a familiarity with the technical aspects of Unicode.Originality/valueThis column explains the salient technical features of Unicode for those who may not be familiar with its inner workings. It also takes into account the impact text encoding has on the functionality of modern library applications.

Stochastic modeling western paintings for effective classification

As one of the most important cultural heritages, classical western paintings have always played a special role in human live and been applied for many different purposes. While image classification is the subject of a plethora of related publications, relatively little attention has been paid to automatic categorization of western classical paintings which could be a key technique of modern digital library, museums and art galleries. This paper studies automatic classification on large western painting image collection. We propose a novel framework to support automatic classification on large western painting image collections. With this framework, multiple visual features can be integrated effectively to improve the accuracy of identification process significantly. We also evaluate our method and its competitors based on a large image collection. A careful study on the empirical results indicates the approach enjoys great superiority over the state-of-the-art approaches in different aspects.

CAMbase – A XML-based bibliographical database on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

The term "Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)" covers a variety of approaches to medical theory and practice, which are not commonly accepted by representatives of conventional medicine. In the past two decades, these approaches have been studied in various areas of medicine. Although there appears to be a growing number of scientific publications on CAM, the complete spectrum of complementary therapies still requires more information about published evidence. A majority of these research publications are still not listed in electronic bibliographical databases such as MEDLINE. However, with a growing demand by patients for such therapies, physicians increasingly need an overview of scientific publications on CAM. Bearing this in mind, CAMbase, a bibliographical database on CAM was launched in order to close this gap. It can be accessed online free of charge or additional costs.The user can peruse more than 80,000 records from over 30 journals and periodicals on CAM, which are stored in CAMbase. A special search engine performing syntactical and semantical analysis of textual phrases allows the user quickly to find relevant bibliographical information on CAM. Between August 2003 and July 2006, 43,299 search queries, an average of 38 search queries per day, were registered focussing on CAM topics such as acupuncture, cancer or general safety aspects. Analysis of the requests led to the conclusion that CAMbase is not only used by scientists and researchers but also by physicians and patients who want to find out more about CAM.Closely related to this effort is our aim to establish a modern library center on Complementary Medicine which offers the complete spectrum of a modern digital library including a document delivery-service for physicians, therapists, scientists and researchers.