State digital libraries are manifestations of the diffusion of technology that has provided both access to and delivery of digital content. Whether the content is being accessed and used equitably in K-12 schools has not been assessed. Determining patterns of the diffusion of use across socioeconomic groups in K-12 schools may help measure the success of existing efforts to provide equitable access and use of digital content, and help guide policies and implementation to more effectively address remaining disparities. This study examined use of the Connecticut Digital Library (ICONN) in K-12 schools in Connecticut by determining annual patterns of use per school/district over a four-year period, using transaction log search statistics. The data were analyzed in the paradigm that Rogers (2003) describes as the first and second dimensions of the consequences of an innovation - the overall growth and the equality of the diffusion to individuals within an intended audience --- in this case, students in K-12 schools. Data were compared by school district and the established socioeconomic District Reference Groups (DRGs) defined by the Connecticut State Board of Education. At the time of this study, ICONN used aggregate data (total searches) for K-12 schools, but did not have relevant data on diffusion within the public schools in Connecticut related to district or DRGs.

The designed building is a proposed Learner's Resource Centre situated in Berea Park. The development will be funded by the European Union and managed by a section 21 company of tertiary institutions and government departments. It creates a community facility that is needed in the Pretoria inner city, addressing lack of study space and urban parks in the CBD. The main building includes a digital library, offices, auditorium, conferencing facilities and a restaurant. This building forms the focus of the investigation, while the rest of the campus development forms part of an Urban Design scheme proposed for the Pretoria inner city. The functions included on the campus are overnight facilities, workshops, classrooms and a multi purpose hall. The thesis is introduced by an investigation into the theory of the meaning in architecture. This includes research in the fields of semiotics and visual culture and the conclusion of that theory into a designed building. / Dissertation (MArch (Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Architecture / unrestricted

Orientador: Ricardo da Silva Torres / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T15:54:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Kozievitch_NadiaPuchalski_D.pdf: 7513500 bytes, checksum: c6d45f0141cb99375cfcabb03d93ca73 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Atualmente, com os avanços tecnológicos, há disponível uma quantidade grande e heterogênea de dados multimídia. Estes dados podem ser provenientes de fontes diversificadas, desempenhando um papel fundamental em sistemas de informação, tais como repositórios de Bibliotecas Digitais. Com o objetivo de reutilizar, integrar, agregar e unificar diferentes recursos sob o mesmo conceito, objetos complexos surgiram para facilitar a abstração de agregações, utilizando componentes de diferentes domínios, e unificando-os sob o mesmo conceito. Em especial, os objetos complexos de imagens são um exemplo representativo de fonte de dados que geralmente é integrada com componentes heterogêneos, tais como metadados, links e softwares de manipulação de imagem. A busca de imagens é um serviço importante, amplamente explorado em sistemas de Biblioteca Digital. A recuperação de imagens por conteúdo aborda a busca automática de imagens, considerando propriedades visuais (como textura e cor). Este trabalho trata de três aspectos relacionados a objetos complexos: (i) a formalização de conceitos; (ii) a comparação de tecnologias relacionadas; e (iii) a especificação e a implementação de um protótipo, que encapsula e publica objetos complexos de imagens manipulados em sistemas de busca de imagens por conteúdo. A infraestrutura proposta baseia-se em uma estrutura de componentização específica - Digital Content Component (DCC) - para encapsular o processo de busca de imagens por conteúdo e o objeto complexo de imagem. Posteriormente, os dados são publicados como itens de um repositório de dados, usando o protocolo Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). A solução proposta prevê (i) um acesso homogêneo ao processo de busca de imagens por similaridade, e fontes de dados (imagens, metadados e descritores); (ii) a distribuição e coleta de metadados de objetos complexos de imagens, juntamente com as medidas de similaridade e vetores de características; e (iii) a centralização do processamento, encapsulamento, publicação e coleta do objeto complexo de imagem. Finalmente, é ilustrado o reuso dos componentes da infraestrutura proposta no domínio de biodiversidade, na integração de bibliotecas digitais de impressões digitais, na busca multimodal e em estórias de vídeo / Abstract: The large amount of heterogeneous data from different resources available today play a key role in information systems, such as Digital Library repositories. In order to reuse, integrate, aggregate, and unify different resources under the same concept, complex objects (COs) have emerged to facilitate aggregation abstraction, embracing components from different domains, and unifying them under the same concept. In special, image COs are a representative example of data source which is generally integrated with different components, such as metadata, links, and image manipulation software. Image search is an important service, widely explored in Digital Library systems. The so-called Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) addresses the automatic search of images, trying to retrieve collection images by taking into account their visual properties (such as texture and color). This work is concerned with tackling three aspects related to complex objects: (i) formal definitions; (ii) comparison of related technologies; and (iii) the specification and implementation of a framework, which encapsulates and publishes complex image objects resulting from the CBIR process. Our infrastructure relies on a specific component technology - Digital Content Component (DCC) - to encapsulate the CBIR process and wrap image COs. Later, the data is exposed as items in a data repository, using Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The proposed solution provides (i) an homogeneous access to CBIR process and heterogenous data sources (image collection, metadata, descriptors); (ii) the harvesting of complex image objects (ICOs), along with the similarity distances and feature vectors; and (iii) the centralization of ICO processing, packaging, publishing, and harvesting. Finally, we illustrate the reuse of our infrastructure components in biodiversity domain, in a fingerprint digital library integration, with multimodal search, and video stories / Doutorado / Ciência da Computação / Doutor em Ciência da Computação

Based on previous researchers’ criticism of Euro-American bias inherent to universal analogue and digital knowledge organisation systems, this combined qualitative and quantitative postcolonial critical discourse analysis investigates the constructed meanings behind the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) controlled vocabulary hosted by the Word Digital Library’s (WDL) metadata scheme. This is done with a sample of metadata pertaining to their African cultural heritage collection. The study aims to see if the restricted controlled vocabulary exclude and marginalise situated African knowledge thereby conflicting with their ideological imperative of promoting international understanding. The use of postcolonial theory and discourse analysis theory as both the analytical theoretical framework and methodological approach, reveal that Westerncentric terms from colonial discourse dominate but do not constitute the entirety of the discourses represented by the subject headings. Relying on the assumption that the cataloguers select subject headings based on the rule of literary warrant, the reason for this preference imply an unbalanced collection rather than a biased knowledge organisation system. Therefore, the study suggests the creation of positive rhetorical spaces (Olson, 2002) by adding preferred terms that stem from marginalised situated knowledge systems that too are represented by the existing resources. This will allow for several discourses to co-exist achieving thereby a better fit with the culturally inclusionary aims of the WDL not dependent on the limits of their collection. Also acknowledged is metadata’s pragmatic rationale in support of standardisation for enhanced search and discoverability, but questioned is the sustainability of this principle if the goal is to promote equitable understanding and representation to a wide and international user group. Ultimately, recognising the bias within knowledge organisation systems will serve inclusivity more, rather than traditional claims of universality which conceal exclusion.

Der Vortrag beschreibt Ziele,Projektorganisation, Architektur und Inhalte der durch das BMBF gefoerderten verteilten elektronischen Bibliothek MeDoc(Multimediale elektronische Documente). Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Beschreibung der Architektur des Gesamtsystems, insbesondere aus Sicht eines Nutzers von MeDoc. Weiterhin werden Geschaefts- und Lizenzmodelle diskutiert.

Im Internet hat die Wissensgesellschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts ihr Medium der Zukunft gefunden. Aus der historischen Perspektive der Aufklärung ist die Menschheit dem Ziel näher denn je, möglichst vielen Menschen ungehinderten Zugang zu Information und Wissen zu verschaffen.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to describe the HathiTrust Digital Library and analyze its content with respect to documents written in Czech language. The first and part of the second chapter is written on the basis of the studied sources and summarizes information about the partnership and the HathiTrust Digital Library. It also describes its objectives, various sub- projects and services (such as the HathiTrust Research Center, a US federal documents project and a metadata management system), membership options and benefits, and briefly summarizes some of the technical parameters of this digital library. The second chapter is partly based on practical experience with use of the HathiTrust Digital Library user interface. In addition to analyzing the user interface (including its mobile version), this section also includes description of metadata, its formats, standards, and movements. The last part of the second chapter is devoted to copyright issues, the possibilities of accessing full texts, and also to the lawsuit Authors Guild v. HathiTrust. The third chapter describes the analysis of the content of the HathiTrust Digital Library, with an emphasis on documents written in Czech. The results of this analysis are described and interpreted. The Czech written documents were analyzed on the basis...

The dissertation focuses on digitization in libraries of Charles University. In connection with accessible sources, online questionnaire survey and half-structured interviews done with representatives of eight faculty libraries, the digitization activity under Charles University is presented. Transformations of the library collections into digital forms are in motion in many libraries, therefore the amount of digital material is growing and it is not co-ordinated. The great amount of digital objects is followed by a matter of depositing data and making them accessible, which is currently very topical at Charles University. The aim of the dissertation is to analyse digital libraries and repositories produced and runned at this university. First part of the thesis explains - besides set aims and metodology - terminological basis of the dissertation, especially connection between digital library and digital repository. The digital activities are analysed also from the point of staffing of performed functions, hardware and software equipment at digitalization departments of libraries, technical specification of digitized documents, metadata and also method of depositing data and making them accessible. Digitization projects in chosen faculty libraries are introduced as well. Third part of the thesis is...

This diploma thesis deals with digital libraries of Czech regional libraries. Based on the available sources of the literature and the questionnaire survey, digital libraries, which are built by regional libraries, are introduced. At the beginning of the thesis is a terminological overview, together with digitization and digitization workflow itself. Then follows a description of the personal layout in digital libraries as well as various activities and standards of digital libraries. The thesis is supplemented by a description of the individual Czech digital libraries, which are built by regional libraries. The thesis also contains the results of a questionnaire survey among regional libraries and outlines the problem areas of regional digital libraries.

This diploma thesis is devoted to digital libraries of Czech regional libraries. Based on the available sources of literature and the questionnaire survey, the individual digital libraries that are built and administered by regional libraries are presented. In the first chapters of the thesis there is a terminological overview, the process of digitization itself and the digitization workflow. This is followed by a description of the distribution of personal representation of individual positions in digital libraries as well as the standards of digital libraries. An important part of the thesis is devoted to the results of the questionnaire survey among individual regional libraries and the presentation of the results of this survey. At the end of the thesis, the problem areas of regional digital libraries are outlined. Keywords digital library, regional library, workflow, digitization, staffing, standards