Library and Information Science (LIS) education must equip its graduates with the level of competence commensurate with the demands of entry-level positions available in the field. This is more so in the area of information technology (IT) that is widely acknowledged to be rapidly evolving thereby offering unique job specifications and or positions in LIS. This exploratory research investigates the extent of alignment between the level of competence proposed in learning objectives by LIS educators, and the level of competence required from LIS graduates by practitioners in the field. The study focuses specifically on cognitive competence, and in the domain of database management (DBM) within LIS education in US and Canada. The Taxonomy Table (TT) designed by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) was used as a conceptual framework, to analyze learning objectives obtained from DBM educators and practitioners to determine the levels of competence proposed by educator and practitioners in DBM. The levels of competence derived from educators and practitioners were then compared to determine the extent of alignment between the levels of competence offered by LIS educators, and the levels of competence expectations of LIS practitioners from graduates in DBM. / Une fonnation en bibliothéconomie et les sciences de l’infonnation (BSI) doit équiper ses finissants de compétences qui répondent aux besoins du marché du travail. C’est d’autant plus vrai dans le domaine des technologies de l’infonnation et des communications où il est reconnue y avoir une évolution rapide créant des caractéristiques de tâches et/ou des emplois uniques en BSI. Cette recherche exploratoire examine le degré de concordance entre le niveau de compétences proposé par les objectifs d’apprentissages émis par les éducateurs en BSI et celui demandé aux finissants en BSI par les professionnels du domaines. L’étude est concentrée spécifiquement sur les compétences cognitives dans le domaine de la gestion de bases de données (GBD) dans les contexte d’une éducation en BSI aux États-Unis et au Canada. Le tableau taxonomique conçut par Anderson et Krathwohl (2001) sert de cadre conceptuel pennettant d’analyser les objectifs d’apprentissage obtenus chez les éducateurs et les professionnels. Cette analyse détennine le niveau de compétence offert par les éducateurs et celui demandé par les professionnels. Ces niveaux sont ensuite comparés afin de quantifier le degré de concordance entre les niveaux de compétence offerts par les éducateurs en BSI et les attentes que les finissants en BSI devront combler afin de satisfaire les professionnels en BSI en se qui attrait à la GBD.

The problems of implementing a relational database are considered. In part 1, a new class of data structures for processing range queries is described. A member of this class is derived from a data structure which supports random and sequential accessing. We also describe two new data structures with this property that seem to have better performance than the Btree. In part 2, a new design for the physical database is proposed. This design is based on the separation of a relation into two parts: a static "master file" and a dynamic "differential file" which stores updates. Our design includes a new system for recovering from system failures and allows greater concurrency than is possible with existing systems.

Browsing marked-up documents by traversing hyperlinks has become probably the most important means by which documents are accessed, both via the World Wide Web (WWW) and organisational Intranets. However, there is a pressing demand for document management and retrieval systems to deal appropriately with the massive number of documents available. There are two classes of solution: general search engines, whether for the WWW or an Intranet, which make little use of specific domain knowledge or hand-crafted specialised systems which are costly to build and maintain. The aim of this thesis was to develop a document management and retrieval system suitable for small communities as well as individuals in specialised domains on the Web. The aim was to allow users to easily create and maintain their own organisation of documents while ensuring continual improvement in the retrieval performance of the system as it evolves. The system developed is based on the free annotation of documents by users and is browsed using the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). A number of annotation support tools were developed to aid the annotation process so that a suitable system evolved. Experiments were conducted in using the system to assist in finding staff and student home pages at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales. Results indicated that the annotation tools provided a good level of assistance so that documents were easily organised and a lattice-based browsing structure that evolves in an ad hoc fashion provided good efficiency in retrieval performance. An interesting result suggested that although an established external taxonomy can be useful in proposing annotation terms, users appear to be very selective in their use of terms proposed. Results also supported the hypothesis that the concept lattice of FCA helped take users beyond a narrow search to find other useful documents. In general, lattice-based browsing was considered as a more helpful method than Boolean queries or hierarchical browsing for searching a specialised domain. We conclude that the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis, supported by annotation techniques is a useful way of supporting the flexible open management of documents required by individuals, small communities and in specialised domains. It seems likely that this approach can be readily integrated with other developments such as further improvements in search engines and the use of semantically marked-up documents, and provide a unique advantage in supporting autonomous management of documents by individuals and groups - in a way that is closely aligned with the autonomy of the WWW.

The thesis examines issues of consistency maintenance in advanced database systems; primarily, multidatabase systems. A multidatabase system consists of a number of pre-existing local database systems. A local database system is unaware of its participation in the multidatabase system and, likewise, the multidatabase system has no knowledge of local transaction executions. Enforcing global constraints in such an environment is clearly a challenging task. A methodology for constraint enforcement is presented which utilises existing technology for the replication of data in an attempt to enforce global consistency. While it is shown to have limited applicability, it is nonetheless an interesting study and serves to qualify the limits of such a solution. An alternative method for global consistency maintenance, which relies on the existence of triggers at each of the participant local databases, is then discussed. This method is shown to be particularly suitable when the issue of local database autonomy is of concern. It is, however, only suited to systems where each of the local databases provides a capability for triggering external actions based on the occurrence of particular database events. As a result of this methodology, the requirement for identification of enforcement actions which access sites where the instigating transaction originated becomes apparent. Such enforcement actions can cause deadlock in certain circumstances when they are executed at the same site which initially triggered the global constraint. This issue is dealt with in a novel way by proposing a methodology for statically checking relations at each participant site with a view to determining their susceptibility to this form of deadlock. The method, a graphical representation of the constraint enforcement process in a distributed system, is also shown to have other desirable properties. Arising from the requirements of other work within the thesis, an algorithm for detecting all cycles in a given directed graph is presented. It is shown that, while the well-known adaptation of the Depth First Search algorithm to cycle detection in directed graphs can detect the existence of cycles, it cannot in all circumstances identify all cycles. An algorithm which performs this task is presented together with an analysis of its complexity and correctness. In a more general sense, the issue of deferred constraint enforcement is discussed. Several scenarios where deferred enforcement of constraints is required are presented, together with a method for detecting the presence of cyclic dependencies within a given database schema.

Browsing marked-up documents by traversing hyperlinks has become probably the most important means by which documents are accessed, both via the World Wide Web (WWW) and organisational Intranets. However, there is a pressing demand for document management and retrieval systems to deal appropriately with the massive number of documents available. There are two classes of solution: general search engines, whether for the WWW or an Intranet, which make little use of specific domain knowledge or hand-crafted specialised systems which are costly to build and maintain. The aim of this thesis was to develop a document management and retrieval system suitable for small communities as well as individuals in specialised domains on the Web. The aim was to allow users to easily create and maintain their own organisation of documents while ensuring continual improvement in the retrieval performance of the system as it evolves. The system developed is based on the free annotation of documents by users and is browsed using the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). A number of annotation support tools were developed to aid the annotation process so that a suitable system evolved. Experiments were conducted in using the system to assist in finding staff and student home pages at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales. Results indicated that the annotation tools provided a good level of assistance so that documents were easily organised and a lattice-based browsing structure that evolves in an ad hoc fashion provided good efficiency in retrieval performance. An interesting result suggested that although an established external taxonomy can be useful in proposing annotation terms, users appear to be very selective in their use of terms proposed. Results also supported the hypothesis that the concept lattice of FCA helped take users beyond a narrow search to find other useful documents. In general, lattice-based browsing was considered as a more helpful method than Boolean queries or hierarchical browsing for searching a specialised domain. We conclude that the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis, supported by annotation techniques is a useful way of supporting the flexible open management of documents required by individuals, small communities and in specialised domains. It seems likely that this approach can be readily integrated with other developments such as further improvements in search engines and the use of semantically marked-up documents, and provide a unique advantage in supporting autonomous management of documents by individuals and groups - in a way that is closely aligned with the autonomy of the WWW.

Browsing marked-up documents by traversing hyperlinks has become probably the most important means by which documents are accessed, both via the World Wide Web (WWW) and organisational Intranets. However, there is a pressing demand for document management and retrieval systems to deal appropriately with the massive number of documents available. There are two classes of solution: general search engines, whether for the WWW or an Intranet, which make little use of specific domain knowledge or hand-crafted specialised systems which are costly to build and maintain. The aim of this thesis was to develop a document management and retrieval system suitable for small communities as well as individuals in specialised domains on the Web. The aim was to allow users to easily create and maintain their own organisation of documents while ensuring continual improvement in the retrieval performance of the system as it evolves. The system developed is based on the free annotation of documents by users and is browsed using the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). A number of annotation support tools were developed to aid the annotation process so that a suitable system evolved. Experiments were conducted in using the system to assist in finding staff and student home pages at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales. Results indicated that the annotation tools provided a good level of assistance so that documents were easily organised and a lattice-based browsing structure that evolves in an ad hoc fashion provided good efficiency in retrieval performance. An interesting result suggested that although an established external taxonomy can be useful in proposing annotation terms, users appear to be very selective in their use of terms proposed. Results also supported the hypothesis that the concept lattice of FCA helped take users beyond a narrow search to find other useful documents. In general, lattice-based browsing was considered as a more helpful method than Boolean queries or hierarchical browsing for searching a specialised domain. We conclude that the concept lattice of Formal Concept Analysis, supported by annotation techniques is a useful way of supporting the flexible open management of documents required by individuals, small communities and in specialised domains. It seems likely that this approach can be readily integrated with other developments such as further improvements in search engines and the use of semantically marked-up documents, and provide a unique advantage in supporting autonomous management of documents by individuals and groups - in a way that is closely aligned with the autonomy of the WWW.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--Dept. of Computer Science, University of Adelaide, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Computer Science, 1999. / Bibliography: p. 281-289. Also available electronically.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 2003. / Also available online.