Mobile devices with Internet capabilities and applications have dramatically increased the convenience of accessing information for community college students. This study uses technology acceptance theory as a theoretical framework to examine the determinants associated with community college students' behavioral intention to use of mobile learning and mobile library resources. The acceptance of mobile learning by students and educators is critical to the successful implementation of mobile learning systems therefore it is important to understand the factors that affect student intentions to use mobile learning. This research is based on relevant technology acceptance literature and the the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The purpose of this study is to test the determinants of the behavioral intention to use mobile learning by community college students and to discover if there exist either age or gender differences in the acceptance of mobile learning. The results indicate that performance expectancy, social influence, perceived playfulness of learning, and voluntariness of use were all significant determinants of behavioral intention to use mobile learning. Effort expectancy and self-management were not found to be significant predictor variables. This research provides useful information in understanding the drivers of acceptance for mobile learning in order to take proactive interventions for students that may be less inclined to adopt mobile learning. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Library and Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: April 29, 2011. / educational technology, technology innovation, technology acceptance, voluntariness of use, self management of learning, UTAUT, TAM, mobile learning, mobile, perceived playfulness / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary Burnett, Professor Directing Dissertation; Allan Jeong, University Representative; Mia Liza A. Lustria, Committee Member; Lisa Tripp, Committee Member.

The 535 deposit collections (small collections of blind and physically handicapped (BPH) equipment and materials, e.g. talking-book cassette players and cassettes lent to facilities, e.g. nursing homes) in the direct service area of the Florida Division of Blind Services Library F/T Blind and Physically Handicapped in Daytona Beach were surveyed via a mail questionnaire during November 1989-February 1990 to determine: what deposit collections were being utilized by type of facility, e.g. nursing home and to what extent; what reactions deposit collection site personnel had towards: the Florida Regional Library (FRL), the operation of the deposit collections, and staff use of BPH equipment and materials with BPH users; what site personnel knew about the full range of services available from the FRL; what site personnel knew about in-house distribution and utilization of BPH equipment and materials with programming, e.g., poetry groups; and what type assistance was provided to BPH users, e.g. reader's advisory services. / A data analysis based on 274 total usable respondents produced: 28 conclusions; 7 national recommendations; 8 Florida Regional Library Recommendations; 7 deposit collection recommendations; and 3 study recommendations which included that given the non-availability of policies, procedures, guidelines, standards and/or operational manuals for deposit collection organization and operation and given a continued disregard for this condition, it was recommended that the FRL consider the discontinuance of deposit collection services. The study included: 24 Figures and 4 Tables; and the study instrument questionnaire in the Appendices. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 2909. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

The purpose of this study is three-fold. First it determines if college freshmen who use a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program will have higher adjusted post-test means than students who take a traditional library tour or students with no formal library instruction. Second, it ascertains whether a computer-assisted instruction program is more cost effective than the traditional library tours. Finally, it reveals if students prefer being taught general library orientation and the use of basic reference tools using a computer-assisted instruction program instead of taking a traditional library tour. / To accomplish these objectives ENG 1020 Rhetorical Writing classes at Central Missouri State University participated in an experimental study. Eight classes, consisting of one hundred seventy-two students, were divided into three groups that consisted of a computer-assisted instruction group, a tour group and a control group. Each group was given a pre-test, subjected to the treatment of the CAI program or the tour and then administered a post-test, which determined the amount of difference in the learning that took place between the two tests. Each test also served another purpose. The pre-test collected student demographic information and the post-test gathered information the students' opinions and on the evaluation of the particular treatment. / The results indicated that (1) the CAI group showed the highest adjusted post-test means, (2) the CAI was cost effective in two of three models presented and (3) there was no strong overall acceptance in the CAI group's opinions/ratings over that of the tour group. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3539. / Major Professor: F. William Summers. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

Decision-making is one of the most important elements in the administration of any organization. University libraries are, of course, organizations. Inside these organizations the managers make a variety of decisions that will have a significant impact on the success of those libraries. Libraries' managers utilize different methods in processing their decisions. Many factors play roles in the success of libraries' managers. The manager's managerial decision style is one factor that contributes to the success of the manager and therefore to the success of their organization; and yet, there is a dearth of research about decision styles used in library administration and how they influence the decision-making process. The main purpose of this study was to explore the managerial decision styles of the managers (directors, associate directors, assistant directors, and the heads of departments) of Florida's state university libraries. A second purpose was to determine the relation between the variety of managers' decision styles and the following seven variables: gender, age, ethnicity, educational level, educational major, administrative experience, and current position. The results of this study will provide baseline information to improve our understanding of library managers and management. This study was grounded in the Decision Style Model developed by Alan Rowe and Richard O. Mason (1987). A survey questionnaire was employed in this study. The questionnaire included two parts: 1. "The Decision Style Inventory" (DSI) developed by Row and Mason (1987). This inventory was applied to measure the decision styles of the managers of Florida's state university main libraries. 2. The second part of the questionnaire consisted of questions designed to obtain descriptive data such as gender, age, ethnicity, educational level, educational major, current position, and administrative experience. According to the Decision Style Model, it was found that the predominant decision style for the majority of Florida's state university main libraries' managers was the behavioral decision style, followed by the conceptual decision style. The directive decision style was the style used least often by most of these managers. As for the decision style patterns, the findings inform us that the majority of Florida's state university main libraries' managers think using the right side of the brain rather than the left side. It was also found that there was no relationship was found between Florida's state university libraries' managers and their gender, age, or highest academic degree. On the other hand, the findings of this study indicated that years of administrative experience, ethnicity, position, and educational major of these managers were indeed related to the decision style or styles used by these managers. To date there has been no research conducted on profiling the decision styles of Florida's state university libraries' managers and the process of how they think in order to reach their decisions. Given this, the results of this study provided baseline information to improve our understanding of library managers and management in general and in particular, understanding of library managers and management in Florida's state university libraries. / A dissertation submitted to the School of Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003. / Date of Defense: November 21, 2003. / Library managers, University library, Decision style / Includes bibliographical references. / John Bertot, Professor Directing Dissertation; Peter Garretson, Outside Committee Member; Thomas Hart, Committee Member; Darrell Burke, Committee Member.

This study was driven by the growing importance of electronic information resources in university scholarly inquiry. The main focus of the research was to discover graduate students' information needs, the level of these needs, and the extent to which they were being met in relation to accessing and utilizing electronic information in an academic environment. The study's conceptual framework was grounded in Dervin's sense-making theory. It used Kari's modification of sense-making to clarify the research questions and guide the survey questionnaire to examine Saudi graduate students' information actions (needs, seeking, and use) in the context of academic electronic information resources in Saudi Arabian universities. The study examined graduate students in three Saudi universities: Umm Al-Qura University, King Saud University, and King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals. Because the researcher wanted to examine a large sample of Saudi university graduate students' information needs, a quantitative survey was most practical and cost-effective. The variables of the study were gender, age, academic degree, major, English language proficiency, Internet experience, and university. The sample of the study was 502 graduate students (10% of all Saudi Arabian graduate students) in the three universities. There were 480 usable responses which were coded and analyzed using SPSS software. The study used both descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings indicated that only half of graduate students used the library's electronic resources for their academic information needs. Chi-square test found a significant relationship between graduate students' use or lack of use of their library's electronic resources and the students' situational variables. Of those students who used the library's electronic resources, only about half needed these for written class assignments (61.1%), their thesis or dissertation (59.8%), and/or personal use (47.1%). Only 18.4% needed electronic information for oral class presentations and 8.6% for other purposes. For information strategies, the library's electronic resources were never ranked as the first strategy of the six that were available. Kendall's tau-b test indicated a significant relationship between graduate students' strategies and their English proficiency. Of those graduate students who used the library's electronic resources, most said they always accessed the Online Catalog (59.0%) and the Internet (60.2%), but only sometimes used electronic journals (52.9%), databases (50.4%), and other links on the library website (45.1%). The analysis of variance (ANOVA) test revealed significant differences between students' English language proficiency and the frequency of their use of these resources. Most students tended to agree that they were able to make sense of the information they got from the library's electronic resources. However, they could not tell if they achieved information success or information overall satisfaction. ANOVA showed significant differences between students' major and their judgment on the usefulness of the retrieved information. The main barrier to student information actions was insufficient instructions for using or searching the library's electronic resources followed by not enough librarians to help. Other barriers were insufficient availability of computers or computer labs and libraries did not improve graduate students information technology skills. Difficulty accessing the Internet and the library's electronic resources, clarity and ease of use of these resources, and relationship to their field were additional barriers to electronic information. Overall, the study showed that, for a variety of reasons, the considerable electronic information resources of Saudi university libraries are under-utilized because they are not meeting graduate student needs. The most striking finding for this study was that most of the graduate students were deterred from using electronic resources, apparently due to experienced or perceived barriers. Graduate students who accessed these resources often found them not useful for their needs, further discouraging use. Instead, many graduate students' information seeking situations were very diverse, yet the usefulness of library electronic information was questionable. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: June 10, 2004. / Electronic resources, information need, information seeking, Saudi Arabia, Academic libraries, graduate students / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Burnett, Professor Directing Dissertation; Peter Garretson, Outside Committee Member; Thomas Hart, Committee Member; Darrell Burke, Committee Member.

One of the most important roles of the online instructor is to insure successful teaching by keeping students' interactions and discussions focused on topic, adding knowledge and expertise, and maintaining group harmony. Therefore, the success of online learning depends on the instructors' ability to acquire new competencies, rather than mastering the technology. Despite the growth in online instructor competency related studies, there is a lack of research regarding the instructors' roles and competencies from the distance learning students' perspective. This study was an attempt to explore distance learning students' perceptions of the roles and competencies defined by experts in the field. A comprehensive list of roles, outputs, and competencies of online instructors were provided to the students in order to rate the importance of each role and competency. It was the purpose of this study to compare the findings of this study with the findings of pervious studies. The population of this study included all distance learning graduate students (n = 328) currently enrolled in the School of Information Studies at Florida State University. Forty-two percent (n = 140) of the original student population of 328, completed and submitted the online survey. Roles and competencies were ranked by their importance; ranking was also achieved by taking the average of competency means across roles and competencies. Results for the top ten competencies in overall importance, based on highest mean rating are: Content Knowledge, Facilitation (discussion) Skills, Organizational Skills, Planning Skills, English Proficiency, Presentation Skills, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Learning Styles and Theory, Teaching Strategies/models, Skills with Internet Tools for Instruction. The findings also determined that when compared to previous competency studies, there was a significant difference between students' perceptions and experts' perceptions regarding the most important online instructor competencies. Experts rated social competencies (interpersonal communication skills) number one in the list of top ten most important online instructor competencies; on the other hand, students rated intellectual competencies (content knowledge) number one in their list of top ten. However, both experts and students concurred regarding managerial competencies, because both rated at least four managerial skills in the list of top ten competencies. Distance learning students' responses indicated that instructors should give careful attention to the development and improvement of their intellectual, social, managerial, and technical roles and competencies. The importance of paying attention to the technical and managerial roles, in addition to intellectual and social competencies of the online instructor, were emphasized as critical factors for the success of discussion and interaction in the online environment. This dissertation has helped bridge the gap between the perceptions of distance education experts and distance learning students by providing a comprehensive list of important online instructors' roles and competencies. Due to the rate of change in technologies used to deliver instruction and related changes in higher education, it is recommended to do another study to identify more roles and competencies. This study should be expanded to include the perceptions of students in different disciplines and other countries. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: April 1, 2004. / Online instructor competencies, students' perspectives, distance learning / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas L. Hart, Professor Directing Dissertation; Peter P. Garretson, Outside Committee Member; John C. Bertot, Committee Member; Michelle M. Kazmer, Committee Member.

Over the past half-century, the expression of sexuality has become ubiquitous in most sectors of American society. From the free love movement associated with the 1960s to Harvey Milk's agitations for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights in the 1970s, "sex" is no longer an expletive in United States culture. Recent television shows like Modern Family and The L Word celebrate those whom Milk sought to represent, and earlier programming like Maude exemplified female self-actualization and self-discovery. However, as gender and queer studies have expanded in the past five decades, certain arenas have lagged in terms of attitudes toward sexual understanding. The world of competitive sports is known to be a hyper-sexualized and hyper-masculine realm, but sex and gender add a new dimension of complexity. Structures of sexuality work to maintain overarching social standards; scholar Jayne Caudwell finds that when an athlete challenges those paradigms, fans respond negatively. Whether the stories of such occurrences concern behaviors, such as promiscuity, or inborn traits like sexual preference or gender identity, ardent fans and casual readers alike tend to respond with shock, disdain or despair when their heroes fall from grace. This qualitative analysis utilizes the works of Kenneth Burke and Judith Butler in examining reactions to controversial stories regarding American professional golfer Tiger Woods and South African runner Caster Semenya. A variety of continuously-updated, Internet-facilitated sources such as blogs are used as the primary texts for research into the mindset of the American sports fan. This allows for a diverse slate of root materials for the analysis, as well as a more assuredly accurate portrayal of fans' voices in the interest of determining the causes and implications of sports fans' reactions to stories concerning athletes' sexuality. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: July 6, 2011. / Media studies, Journalism / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeanette L. Castillo, Professor Directing Thesis; Stephen D. McDowell, Committee Member; Donna Marie Nudd, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study was to propose a library networking model for the Caribbean region. In addition, the probability, desirability, and feasibility of developing and implementing the proposed model was assessed. / Three questionnaires were used for collecting the data. One called the preliminary questionnaire; the second one consisted of the Delphi questionnaire, which was sent in two rounds; and the third, was the cross-impact questionnaire. / The analysis of responses to the three questionnaires were the major sources of input on the design of this prototype model. The major findings were: Almost all libraries were involved in some kind of cooperative activity involving other institutions. Interlibrary loans, exchange of professional information, and reference services were three major activities which are carried out by libraries, both at the local level and based on informal arrangements. Eighteen institutions reported that they were engaged in computer activities with other libraries. Responses indicated that a wide array of materials exist and that a good portion is in English. Other languages represented were French, Spanish, Dutch, Papiamento, and German. There is a variety of materials found in library collections in the Caribbean region. / The classification schemes used are DDC--the most widely used--followed by LC. The AACR II is used by 82.5 percent of the institutions participating in the study. / All respondents, except one, agreed that there is a need for a networking structure in the Caribbean. Inadequate funding of library and information services was the major obstacle to the development and implementation of a library network. Absence of planning and lack of library legislation were two other impediments mentioned. The responses to the two rounds of Delphi questionnaires provided information with regard to the probability, desirability, and feasibility of the occurrence of the events presented to the participants. In general, experts agreed with all the components that were proposed in the questionnaires. The components for the proposed structure include objectives, functions, governance structure, composition of the network structure, types of members, funding and financing sources, type of structure, and operational requirements of the network. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 0722. / Major Professor: John N. DePew. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

<p> With the advancement of information technology, national library websites have become an essential vehicle for their users to access official information and library resources. They serve the general public from different countries, age groups, ethnicities, and educational levels. The purpose of this dissertation research is to examine the usability, user experience (UX), and information architecture (IA) of national library websites in different countries. Focal areas of investigation include: (1) the primary content elements on national library websites' homepages, (2) the extent to which various quantitative measures of heuristic evaluation and IA assessment overlap with those measures from task-based usability testing, (3) the extent of the impact of cultural and national origins on participants&rsquo; assessment of usability of national libraries&rsquo; websites. The research design of this dissertation study features (1) a content inventory of 28 national library websites, (2) a web IA assessment and a usability evaluation of five national library websites, and (3) usability tests for three national library websites involving 30 participants. The key findings of this dissertation research help to establish a list of common content elements on the homepages of national library websites worldwide and provide a concrete, practical, and feasible procedure to evaluate such websites. The results show statistically significant differences in task performance with the use of national library websites between different groups of users, such as those from different genders and educational backgrounds. Significant correlations were found between the overall participant satisfaction of a national library website and multiple variables such as the content, visual design, and information architecture, as well as between heuristic evaluation scores and participants&rsquo; ratings of some aspects of the websites. </p><p> Based on the specific results from various phases of the research, this dissertation presented detailed recommendations that could help to make national library websites more usable for all its users, including the first-time users across different genders, age groups, and educational backgrounds. Furthermore, in order to achieve a high level of satisfaction, it is recommended that national libraries focus on six factors affecting participants&rsquo; satisfaction: the quality of information, the trustworthiness of the content, the credibility of the content producers/providers, the website&rsquo;s overall structure, the design, and the aesthetics of the website. </p><p> Another significant contribution of this dissertation research is its use of various methods used to evaluate national library websites and its integration of the results of the different methods to obtain a broader and more comprehensive understanding of these findings. Future UX research on national library websites could expand the research by incorporating the methodology used in this research, testing a greater number of national library websites around the world, and involving users from all walks of life. </p><p>

Unlike textual document retrieval, searching of visual data is still far from satisfactory. There exist major gaps between the available solutions and practical needs in both accuracy and computational cost. This thesis aims at the development of robust and scalable solutions for visual search and retrieval. Specifically, we investigate two classes of approaches: graph-based semi-supervised learning and hashing techniques. The graph-based approaches are used to improve accuracy, while hashing approaches are used to improve efficiency and cope with large-scale applications. A common theme shared between these two subareas of our work is the focus on semi-supervised learning paradigm, in which a small set of labeled data is complemented with large unlabeled datasets. Graph-based approaches have emerged as methods of choice for general semi-supervised tasks when no parametric information is available about the data distribution. It treats both labeled and unlabeled samples as vertices in a graph and then instantiates pairwise edges between these vertices to capture affinity between the corresponding samples. A quadratic regularization framework has been widely used for label prediction over such graphs. However, most of the existing graph-based semi-supervised learning methods are sensitive to the graph construction process and the initial labels. We propose a new bivariate graph transduction formulation and an efficient solution via an alternating minimization procedure. Based on this bivariate framework, we also develop new methods to filter unreliable and noisy labels. Extensive experiments over diverse benchmark datasets demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed methods. However, graph-based approaches suffer from the critical bottleneck in scalability since graph construction requires a quadratic complexity and the inference procedure costs even more. The widely used graph construction method relies on nearest neighbor search, which is prohibitive for large-scale applications. In addition, most large-scale visual search problems involve handling high-dimensional visual descriptors, thereby causing another challenge in excessive storage requirement. To handle the scalability issue of both computation and storage, the second part of the thesis focuses on efficient techniques for conducting approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, which is key to many machine learning algorithms, including graph-based semi-supervised learning and clustering. Specifically, we propose Semi-Supervised Hashing (SSH) methods that leverage semantic similarity over a small set of labeled data while preventing overfitting. We derive a rigorous formulation in which a supervised term minimizes the empirical errors on the labeled data and an unsupervised term provides effective regularization by maximizing variance and independence of individual bits. Experiments on several large datasets demonstrate the clear performance gain over several state-of-the-art methods without significant increase of the computational cost. The main contributions of the thesis include the following. Bivariate graph transduction: a) a bivariate formulation for graph-based semi-supervised learning with an efficient solution by alternating optimization; b) theoretic analysis from the view of graph cut for the bivariate optimization procedure; c) novel applications of the proposed techniques, such as interactive image retrieval, automatic re-ranking for text based image search, and a brain computer interface (BCI) for image retrieval. Semi-supervised hashing: a) a rigorous semi-supervised paradigm for hash functions learning with a tradeoff between empirical fitness on pair-wise label consistence and an information-theoretic regularizer; b) several efficient solutions for deriving semi-supervised hash functions, including an orthogonal solution using eigen-decomposition, a revised strategy for learning non-orthogonal hash functions, a sequential learning algorithm to derive boosted hash functions, and an extension to unsupervised cases by using pseudo labels. Two parts of the thesis - bivariate graph transduction and semi-supervised hashing - are complimentary and can be combined to achieve significant performance improvement in both speed and accuracy. Hash methods can help build sparse graphs in a linear time fashion and greatly reduce the data size, but they lack sufficient accuracy. Graph-based methods provide unique capabilities to handle non-linear data structures with noisy labels but suffer from high computational complexity. The synergistic combination of the two offers great potential for advancing the state-of-the-art in large-scale visual search and many other applications.