Selective Dissemination Of Information Research Articles

Library automation: strategies for library human resource management

This article examines the automation processes University libraries and the new managerial issues coming on in this technological era. A survey was used ascertain the library automation practices in University libraries and to determine important managerial functions for working with library staff. All the university libraries including faculty libraries were deemed as the study population. The results showed that library catalogue had been computerized in most of the University libraries (89.25%). Acquisition, circulation, serials controls, theses and dissertations processing, selective dissemination of information and interlibrary loans were identified as the processes that need improvements with new technology. The study further indicated that shared motivating vision, open communication, participative management, appropriate staffing and training were important strategies for working with library staff motivating them to provide efficient and effective service in the new technological environment. Keywords: Library automation, library management, change management, human resource management, university libraries doi: 10.4038/jula.v11i0.325 Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka (Vol. 11) 2007 p.98-110

Keeping Score (Keeping Up and Keeping Track)

The Web has exponentially increased the information sources available to both patrons and librarians. Although “current awareness” is rarely explicitly enumerated as a requirement in advertisements for librarian jobs, it is implicitly expected that music librarians will “keep up” with the information universe surrounding academia, technology, and the arts. Traditional journal alert services, such as selective dissemination of information (SDI), and e‐mail listservs are complemented by contemporary sources for current awareness. These new tools include blogs, RSS feeds and readers, and social tagging sites. This article describes the basics of how these tools function and includes an annotated bibliography of websites and blogs employed by the author to maintain current awareness.

Disseminação seletiva da informação na área da saúde: o caso do web site Amedeo

As atividades de produção/divulgação de informações foram otimizadas pela facilidade de comunicação oferecida pela internet, e a produção científica cresce cada vez mais. Com foco nas facilidades de acesso à informação científica oferecidas pela tecnologia, o objetivo é evidenciar os benefícios da aplicação da Disseminação Seletiva da Informação (SDI) na formação de profissionais da saúde, a partir da análise do web site Amedeo. Faz-se um estudo comparativo, de modo a verificar como os artigos disseminados pelo Amedeo podem ser acessados no próprio e numa biblioteca universitária - no caso, analisou-se o acesso através do site do Sistema de Bibliotecas da Unicamp e, ainda, recorre-se à literatura para identificar relações entre a Ciência da Informação e a área de Ciências da Saúde, principalmente quanto à prática da Medicina Baseada em Evidências. Apresentam-se sugestões aos profissionais da informação e professores interessados em identificar possibilidades de uso dos recursos do Amedeo e demais serviços de SDI, em bibliotecas universitárias, de modo a colaborar com o processo educacional dos profissionais da área da saúde.

Efficient and scalable filtering of graph-based metadata

RDF Site Summaries constitute an application of RDF on the Web that has considerably grown in popularity. However, the way RSS systems operate today limits their scalability. Current RSS feed arregators follow a pull-based architecture model, which is not going to scale with the increasing number of RSS feeds becoming available on the Web. In this paper, we introduce G-ToPSS, a scalable publish/subscribe system for selective information dissemination. G-ToPSS only sends newly updated information to the interested user and follows a push-based architecture model. G-ToPSS is particularly well suited for applications that deal with large-volume content distribution from diverse sources. G-ToPSS allows use of an ontology as a way to provide additional information about the data disseminated. We have implemented and experimentally evaluated G-ToPSS and we provide results demonstrating its scalability compared to alternative approaches. In addition, we describe an application of G-ToPSS and RSS to a Web-based content management system that provides an expressive, efficient, and convenient update notification dissemination system.

Efficient and Scalable Filtering of Graph-Based Metadata

RDF Site Summaries constitute an application of RDF on the Web that has considerably grown in popularity. However, the way RSS systems operate today limits their scalability. Current RSS feed arregators follow a pull-based architecture model, which is not going to scale with the increasing number of RSS feeds becoming available on the Web. In this paper we introduce G-ToPSS, a scalable publish/subscribe system for selective information dissemination. G-ToPSS only sends newly updated information to the interested user and follows a push-based architecture model. G-ToPSS is particularly well suited for applications that deal with large-volume content distribution from diverse sources. G-ToPSS allows use of an ontology as a way to provide additional information about the data disseminated. We have implemented and experimentally evaluated G-ToPSS and we provide results demostrating its scalability compared to alternative approaches. In addition, we describe an application of G-ToPSS and RSS to a Web-based content management system that provides an expressive, efficient, and convenient update notification dissemination system.

On combining organisational modelling and graphical languages for the development of multiagent systems

This article illustrates the application of the Gaia methodology to the development of a system for Selective Dissemination of Information on the Web, as well as the integration of Gaia with AUML. This allows a concrete design closer to implementatio

Heuristic‐based user interface evaluation at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore

This paper presents the results of a heuristic‐based user interface evaluation of the gateway to electronic media services (GEMS) system at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. GEMS provides access to multimedia resources, bibliographic information, electronic document management, selective dissemination of information (SDI), booking of facilities, and several other services. Results of an evaluation of GEMS, based on Nielsen’s ten‐user interface heuristics involving 88 students, are described. Details of a separate task‐based study, involving 52 other participants, of the University’s OPAC interface are also given as a means to compare GEMS with the OPAC in terms of usability, task performance and other factors.

From searching text to querying XML streams

XML data is queried with a limited form of regular expressions, in a language called XPath. New XML stream processing applications, such as content-based routing or selective dissemination of information, require thousands or millions of XPath expressions to be evaluated simultaneously on the incoming XML stream at a high, sustained rate. In its simplest approximation, the XPath evaluation problem is analogous to the text search problem, in which one or several regular expressions need to be matched to a given text. At a finer level, it is related to the tree pattern matching problem. However, unlike the traditional setting, the number of regular expressions here is much larger, while the “text” is much shorter, since it corresponds to the depth of the XML stream. In this paper we examine techniques that have been proposed for XML stream processing and describe a few open problems.

Difusión selectiva de la información (DSI) en una biblioteca de Ciencias de la Salud: gestión y desarrollo dentro de la Intranet

A very important service in the specialized libraries, such as a medical library, has always been the Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) Service. Electronic revolution in the library means a special opportunity for the SDI service, and for the librarian role development. New internal nets, Intranets, present a modern and effective tool for the librarians, documentalists work, and for the users too: the binomial dissemination/reception of information elements. This article analyses the different factors that one must bear in mind before an Intranet is introduced and developed in a specialized library. It analyses the specific case of SDI in our Medical Information Service.

Selective information dissemination in P2P networks

We study the problem of selective dissemination of information in P2P networks. We present our work on data models and laiguages for textual information dissemination and discuss a relemnt P2P architecture that motivates our efforts. We also survey our results on the computational complexity of three related algorithmic problems (query satisfiability, entailment and filtering) and present efficient algorithms for the most crucial of these problems (filtering). Finally, we discuss the features of P2P-DIET, a super-peer system we have implemented at the Technical Lniversity of Crete, that realizes our vision and is able to support both ad-hoc querying and selective information dissemination scenarios in a P2P framework.

Structuring Broadcast Audio for Information Access

One rapidly expanding application area for state-of-the-art speech recognition technology is the automatic processing of broadcast audiovisual data for information access. Since much of the linguistic information is found in the audio channel, speech recognition is a key enabling technology which, when combined with information retrieval techniques, can be used for searching large audiovisual document collections. Audio indexing must take into account the specificities of audio data such as needing to deal with the continuous data stream and an imperfect word transcription. Other important considerations are dealing with language specificities and facilitating language portability. At Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mecanique et les Sciences de l'Ingenieur (LIMSI), broadcast news transcription systems have been developed for seven languages: English, French, German, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic. The transcription systems have been integrated into prototype demonstrators for several application areas such as audio data mining, structuring audiovisual archives, selective dissemination of information, and topic tracking for media monitoring. As examples, this paper addresses the spoken document retrieval and topic tracking tasks.

Library Management Systems in Legal Libraries

Legal libraries, by their very nature, have highly specialised requirements when it comes to library automation. A traditional library management system, which will simply catalogue books and provide the means to issue them to borrowers for a defined period, will not provide the flexibility required by a modern legal information centre. Serials management, direct links to web resources and the selective dissemination of information are of far more importance to a legal library than whether a loan is overdue. Access to information is crucial – the library catalogue needs to be available to researchers wherever they are, whether sitting at their desks or accessing the data via the internet.

Informing the knowledge workers

Being part of a “learning community” requires that knowledge workers keep themselves informed of developments in their area of expertise. However, as we all know, an information saturation problem exists, not least because of the Internet. Modes of informing are specific to each person’s concerns, as are the topics they want to be informed about. Libraries and information centers have sought to accommodate this need in the past by promoting Current Awareness Services (CAS) and Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI), either through print or electronic means. With the migration of these systems to the Internet, intranet, or corporate portal, it has become the vogue to customize or personalize these access points in accordance with user interests. On the horizon is the promise of intelligent software agents as an additional aid for filtering and retrieving information. This article will argue that librarians need to continue embracing the model principle of CAS, as a tool of relevance, and as a function for remaining visible to their client communities.

NewsAgent, a personalised alerting service

NewsAgent (http://newsagent.sbu.ac.uk/) is an Internet based Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) service for library and information workers, alerting them of news and resources relevant to their professional interests.

Current Awareness Reports at Albany International Research Co.

Current awareness services and selective dissemination of information are used at Albany International Research Co. (AIRESCO) to support the research, product development, and other information needs of our scientific and technical community. The nature of our industry, our business objectives, and the variety of information needs pose challenges when compiling timely alerts to newly published information. This paper examines a number of issues affecting the Current Awareness Reports program administered by our one-person science library.

Info Alert Facility for Research (IAFR): an Indian attempt

Awareness of the latest publications is vital for science and technology research and, in inter‐ and intra‐disciplinary research coupled with the so‐called information explosion, coping with current information is a tedious process. Library and information professionals are resorting to refining old techniques to effectively serve their clients in this critical exercise. This paper demonstrates how the time‐tested techniques of selective dissemination of information is suitably modified and delivery is made electronically to generate current information lists for faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Probabilistic learning for selective dissemination of information

New methods and new systems are needed to filter or to selectively distribute the increasing volume of electronic information being produced nowadays. An effective information filtering system is one that provides the exact information that fulfills user's interests with the minimum effort by the user to describe it. Such a system will have to be adaptive to the user changing interest. In this paper we describe and evaluate a learning model for information filtering which is an adaptation of the generalized probabilistic model of Information Retrieval. The model is based on the concept of `uncertainty sampling', a technique that allows for relevance feedback both on relevant and nonrelevant documents. The proposed learning model is the core of a prototype information filtering system called ProFile.

Massive query resolution for rapid selective dissemination of information

The tasks of choosing documents from a new collection and categorizing the choices, both on the basis of a body of standing queries, are known variously as selection and routing, selective dissemination of information (SDI), and information filtering. The combined operation of selecting and labeling documents naturally separates into two processes: feature scanning and query resolution. The first process examines a document for features and their locations; the second takes the findings from the first process, looks for satisfaction of combinations specified in the queries, and marks the document accordingly. When the body of queries is large, query resolution can become a significant factor in total processing speed. This paper outlines an efficient approach to performing query resolution on massive Boolean queries, suitable for implementation on a desktop computer. Algorithms are sketched in pseudo-code and experimental results are reported.

An n-gram hash and skip algorithm for finding large numbers of keywords in continuous text streams

A method of full-text scanning for matches in a large dictionary of keywords is described, suitable for Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI). The method is applicable to large dictionaries (say 104 to 105 entries), and to arbitrary byte streams for both patterns and data samples. The approach involves a sequence of tests, beginning with Boyer–Moore–Horspool skipping on digrams, followed by a succession of hash tests, and completed by trie searching, the combination of which is quite fast. Background information is provided, the algorithm and its implementation are described in detail, and experimental results are presented. In particular, tests suggest that the proposed method outperforms the algorithms of Aho–Corasick and Commentz–Walter when implementing large dictionaries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An n-gram hash and skip algorithm for finding large numbers of keywords in continuous text streams

A method of full-text scanning for matches in a large dictionary of keywords is described, suitable for Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI). The method is applicable to large dictionaries (say 104 to 105 entries), and to arbitrary byte streams for both patterns and data samples. The approach involves a sequence of tests, beginning with Boyer–Moore–Horspool skipping on digrams, followed by a succession of hash tests, and completed by trie searching, the combination of which is quite fast. Background information is provided, the algorithm and its implementation are described in detail, and experimental results are presented. In particular, tests suggest that the proposed method outperforms the algorithms of Aho–Corasick and Commentz–Walter when implementing large dictionaries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.