This article presents findings from approximately 150 users who created instructional projects using educational digital library resources. One hundred of these users were teachers participating in professional development workshops on the topic of digital libraries. Our iterative approach to tool and workshop development and implementation was based on a framework that characterizes several input, output, and process variables affecting dissemination of such technologies in educational contexts. Data sources involved a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, including electronic surveys, interviews, participant observations, and server log file and artifact analyses. These multiple and complementary levels of analyses reveal that despite teachers reporting great value in learning resources and educational digital libraries, significant and lasting impact on teaching practice remains difficult to obtain.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / This research investigated the application of techniques successfully used in previous information retrieval research, to the more challenging area of medical informatics. It was performed on a biomedical document collection testbed, CANCERLIT, provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) , which contains information on all types of cancer therapy. The quality or usefulness of terms suggested by three different thesauri, one based on MeSH terms, one based solely on terms from the document collection, and one based on the Unified Medical Language System UMLS Metathesaurus, was explored with the ultimate goal of improving CANCERLIT information search and retrieval. Researchers affiliated with the University of Arizona Cancer Center evaluated lists of related terms suggested by different thesauri for 12 different directed searches in the CANCERLIT testbed. The preliminary results indicated that among the thesauri, there were no statistically significant differences in either term recall or precision. Surprisingly, there was almost no overlap of relevant terms suggested by the different thesauri for a given search. This suggests that recall could be significantly improved by using a combined thesaurus approach.

Digital Library for Earth Science Education, DLESE / Review of digital educational resources, such as course modules, simulations, and data analysis tools, can differ from review of scholarly articles, in the heterogeneity and complexity of the resources themselves. The Partnership Review Model, as demonstrated in two cases, appears to promote cooperative interactions between distributed resource reviewers, enabling reviewers to effectively divide up the task of reviewing complex resources with little explicit coordination. The shared structural outline of the resource made visible in the review environment enables participants to monitor other reviewersâ actions and to thus target their efforts accordingly. This reviewing approach may be effective in educational digital libraries that depend on community volunteers for most of their reviewing.

Η ψηφιοποίηση περιεχομένου είναι πλέον μια καλά καθορισμένη διαδικασία σε παγκόσμια κλίμακα και αποσκοπεί στη διατήρηση και προβολή της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς των λαών. Παρόλα αυτά, η διαχείριση του ψηφιοποιημένου περιεχομένου και των μεταδεδομένων που το συνοδεύουν δεν έχει ωριμάσει σε τέτοιο βαθμό ώστε να ισχύει ένα κοινά αποδεκτό πρότυπο. Το γεγονός αυτό, σε συνδυασμό με το ότι ο όγκος των δεδομένων αυξάνεται συνεχώς καθιστά επιτακτική την ανάγκη δημιουργίας συστημάτων οργάνωσης και διαχείρισης τους. Οι Ψηφιακές Βιβλιοθήκες είναι συστήματα λογισμικού, που αποθηκεύουν και οργανώνουν την πληροφορία ώστε να παρέχουν προηγμένες υπηρεσίες αναζήτησης και πλοήγησης στους χρήστες τους. Αποτελούν δε, ένα ιδιαίτερα αναπτυσσόμενο πεδίο έρευνας και ανάπτυξης που συνδυάζει επιστημονικά πεδία από διάφορους τομείς. Στην παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία μελετάμε συστήματα Ψηφιακών Βιβλιοθηκών ανοικτού κώδικα καθώς και τα πρότυπα που έχουν προταθεί για την διαλειτουργικότητα του περιεχομένου τους. Επιπλέον, σημειώνουμε τις αδυναμίες των σύγχρονων συστημάτων Ψηφιακών Βιβλιοθηκών όσον αφορά στην κάλυψη των αναγκών ενός Πολιτιστικού Οργανισμού και επιλέγοντας τα πλέον ενεργά και χρησιμοποιούμενα από τη διεθνή κοινότητα πρότυπα δημιουργούμε ένα σύστημα που διασυνδέει Ψηφιακές Βιβλιοθήκες με συστήματα Διαχείρισης Περιεχομένου. Τέλος, η διασύνδεση επιτυγχάνεται με χρήση της γλώσσας XML και εφαρμόζεται σε δύο αντιπροσωπευτικά συστήματα από την κάθε κατηγορία. / Digitization of content is a well known process worldwide that aims in preserving and promoting national cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the management of digital content and of accompanying metadata has not matured to a globally respected standard. This fact combined with the rapid growth of digital content increases the need for the existence of systems that organize and manage this data. Digital libraries are software systems that store and organize data in order to provide advanced search and browsing services to their users. They compose a rapid growing domain of research that combines multiple scientific fields. In the present dissertation we study open source Digital Library Systems and the standards proposed for the interoperability of their content. In addition, we notice their inabilities to cover certain needs of a cultural heritage organization and choose the most popular standards in use today in order to interconnect Digital Library with Content Management Systems.

For the past two years the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Labs have been collaborating on the development of an open source system called DSpace™ that functions as a repository for the digital research and educational material produced by members of a research university or organization. Running such an institutionally-based, multidisciplinary repository is increasingly seen as a natural role for the libraries and archives of research and teaching organizations. As their constituents produce increasing amounts of original material in digital formats—much of which is never published by traditional means—the repository becomes vital to protect the significant assets of the institution and its faculty. The first part of this article describes the DSpace system including its functionality and design, and its approach to various problems in digital library and archives design. The second part discusses the implementation of DSpace at MIT, plans for federating the system, and issues of sustainability.

Digital libraries are an integration of complex computer and information systems that could benefit from a formal approach to design. There are various design aspects to consider in a digital library; a crucial aspect is security. Security often is a requirement in digital libraries that should be considered during the design process and not as an add-on feature. 5S provides a DL modeling framework, to define all the aspects of a digital library. It covers the different formats and types of digital objects stored, how they are grouped and organized, what sequence of operations occur in the digital library, how the objects will be represented, and who is part of the digital library community. However, the 5S descriptive language (5SL) previously did not cover the essential security requirements in a digital library. The goal of this research is to extend the 5S framework to describe the security requirements in digital library. An XML schema was developed to describe the necessary security requirements in a digital library, and some of the essential features of the digital library design. This work explains the key security requirements needed in a digital library from the 5S perspective and how the framework can be extended to include these requirements. The extended 5SL was applied to a case study on the Egyptian University Libraries Consortium. / Master of Science

Digital libraries have become valuable learning resources for information users. However, language barriers have greatly limited information access for many digital libraries, as users do not understand those languages. This study explored technical and operational challenges digital libraries faced in sustaining multilinguality. Using the multiple-case method, the study investigated two digital libraries that have sustained multilinguality for over a decade: the World Digital Library and the Digital Library of the Caribbean. On-site interviews were conducted at both digital libraries and the related documents were analyzed. The findings of the study showed that the two multilingual digital libraries faced many technical and operational challenges and employed various approaches to find solutions. A model of challenges and approaches in sustaining multilinguality was presented. As the first such case study, this research enriches the existing literature, and has theoretical, practical, and methodological implications for the research of multilingual digital libraries. The findings of the study provide useful guidelines and insights for the digital library community in sustaining multilingual services.

Based off Nicholson's 2000 University of North Texas dissertation, "CREATING A CRITERION-BASED INFORMATION AGENT THROUGH DATA MINING FOR AUTOMATED IDENTIFICATION OF SCHOLARLY RESEARCH ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB" located at http://scottnicholson.com/scholastic/finaldiss.doc / This research creates an intelligent agent for automated collection development in a digital library setting. It uses a predictive model based on facets of each Web page to select scholarly works. The criteria came from the academic library selection literature, and a Delphi study was used to refine the list to 41 criteria. A Perl program was designed to analyze a Web page for each criterion and applied to a large collection of scholarly and non-scholarly Web pages. Bibliomining, or data mining for libraries, was then used to create different classification models. Four techniques were used: logistic regression, non-parametric discriminant analysis, classification trees, and neural networks. Accuracy and return were used to judge the effectiveness of each model on test datasets. In addition, a set of problematic pages that were difficult to classify because of their similarity to scholarly research was gathered and classified using the models. The resulting models could be used in the selection process to automatically create a digital library of Web-based scholarly research works. In addition, the technique can be extended to create a digital library of any type of structured electronic information.

Learning object repositories, a form of digital libraries, are robust systems that provide educators new ways to search for educational resources, collaborate with peers, and provide instruction to students in unique and varied ways. This study examines a learning object repository created by a large suburban school district to increase teaching information and encourage collaboration among teachers. Despite investing nearly $2 million to develop the software and seed the repository with materials, data suggest that teacher use falls below set goals. This document explores five years of site traffic, user engagement, social interaction, asset growth, as well as the authoring of instructional materials as a means to evaluate the repository. The results of the study may inform the policy decisions of educational organizations when considering digital learning environments.

A recent survey of studies related to digital libraries concluded that students use and like electronic resources. However, the results of access studies show that actual use of online content is relatively low, with only 10-20% of students making regular use of the content. This is because navigation to the online content in these collections is not convenient, requires multiple steps in order to reach relevant content, and is not integrated into a students natural workflow. In our research, we have designed, deployed, and evaluated a method for making content available to students that targets the content to their current need and is designed as an alternative yet cooperative method of access to a well-structured set of course content. Since notes are both integral to lecture classes and generally ubiquitous, it is a natural target for connecting the student with available content. Pen technologies and mobile devices make it possible for us to capture student notes and enhance them with embedded access links to relevant content. In our initial interface, NoteNexus, instead of delivering content as the result of a student search query or browsing activity, we embedded links to the content into the students notes. NoteNexus did not produce a change in the student use of online content. C-Nexus was designed and developed from the results of the NoteNexus study. C-Nexus was successful in increasing the student use of online content.