Scout is a new operating system architecture that is designed specifically to accommodate the needs of communication-centric systems. An important class of such systems is formed by information appliances, which, broadly speaking, are devices whose primary task is to facilitate communication. Appliances are typically relatively small, special-purpose, and often mobile devices such as remote controls, personal information managers, network-attached disks, cameras, displays, or dedicated file-servers. Scout has a modular structure that is complemented by a new abstraction called the path. The modular structure enables the efficient building of systems that are tailored precisely to the requirements of a particular appliance. Paths address issues related to the performance and quality with which a communication service is rendered. A path can be visualized as a vertical slice through a layered system or viewed abstractly as a bidirectional flow of data. As such, a path typically traverses multiple modules in a Scout system. This means that paths provide additional context to the modules that process data that is being communicated through the system. This context often makes it possible to implement data processing more efficiently or to improve the quality with which resource management, such as CPU scheduling or memory allocation, is realized. This dissertation develops the path abstraction from first principles and then introduces the various aspects of the Scout architecture. Aside from the path abstraction, Scout uses a novel approach for network packet classification. With the Scout architecture defined, two studies are presented that provide an in-depth look at how to use Scout and its path abstraction. The first study employs the path abstraction to reduce processing latency in the networking subsystem. Evaluating these path optimizations also provides important insights on the performance behavior of networking subsystems on modern RISC machines. The second study employs the path abstraction to improve resource management for an information appliance that involves a networked TV displaying MPEG encoded video.

This is a presentation delivered at the Developing a Digital Libraries Education Program Workshop on June 7th held in conjunction with the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2005, June 7-11 at Denver, CO. It is based on Coleman's paper titled Beyond Interdisciplinarity, published in D-Lib Magazine, 2002. The D-Lib paper discussed how interdisciplinarity was used as the primary strategy to develop a Knowledge Organization track at the School of Information Resources & Library Science at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Besides highlighting some aspects of the paper, the presentation also draws on two other papers published in D-Lib Magazine "Interactivities" and "Interoperability" to show how the three concepts (interdisciplinarity, interactivity, and interoperability) are being used to teach SIRLS students, involve library practitioners in LIS education, and run a digital repository while providing SIRLS MLS students with an immersive digital library theoretical learning + research & development skills + practical experience. Other ideas presented include: book culture, digital culture, and the concept triangle (concept formation from psychology & linguistics). The DL Education workshop was funded by IMLS and organized by Indiana University & University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of their IMLS DL project. URL: http://www.jcdl2005.org/workshops.html#0

This study ascertains the attitudes of library school alumni regarding the value of including various competencies in an M.L.S. program in order to facilitate curriculum planning. A total of 736 alumni rated a list of fifty-five competencies. Twenty-five percent of alumni had been out of library school less than three years; 60 percent had been out less than ten years. The largest category of respondents is represented by public librarians (39 percent), followed by academic librarians (20 percent), school librarians (19 percent), special librarians (10 percent), and those in nonlibrary settings (12 percent). There was a significant relationship between the type of library course taken during library school and the type of library in which the respondent found employment. Childrenâ s and young adult literature was the most poplar â type of literatureâ course taken. The five competencies ranked most frequently as essential include: knowledge of sources, collection management skills, conducting a reference interview, communicating effectively in writing, and the ability to apply critical thinking skills to library problems. Rating of competencies was also analyzed by beginning librarians. Competencies valued also differed as a function of setting. Findings were compared to those of an earlier study conducted by the authors in 1987.

This article provides an overview of academic blogs in general and introduces, ASC Online, an advising and mentoring blog for graduate students in LIS at the University of Arizona. Other types of academic blogs are highlighted along with brief information about blog directories, search engines, and rankings.

Professional developments and initiatives both at international and national level have necessitated library and information professionals in general and library and information educators in particular to prepare themselves and meet the challenges of changing information scenario. Emergence, growth and popularity of knowledge society, digital libraries, library networks and consortia, content development in electronic environment, web based learning, knowledge commission and knowledge centers of which some of the new initiatives have been undertaken by Government of India have compelled to revamp and reorient library and information science education offered by schools of library and information studies in India. The paper discusses the present scenario of library and information science education in India, recent trends and developments in the library and information profession and more specifically the role of library and information science educators to address these issues and meet the challenges in the new millennium.

The study was conducted to find out how librarians perceive their readiness for the workplace after graduation and successfully passing the licensure examination for librarians. The results indicate that there are schools that consistently produce graduates who pass the licensure examination. The successful examinees perceive that the curriculum adequately prepared them for the examination and the workplace. However, they also perceive a gap between theory and practice. To narrow this gap they rec-ommend that libraries must conduct an orientation program for newly hired librarians, provide for grants to enable librarians to attend seminars, workshops, and visit other libraries. They also recommend changes in the curriculum to enable students to acquire competence in using information and communi-cations technologies, dealing with people, marketing and promotion, and business skills. All of the re-spondents found librarianship satisfying. They do not see themselves as leaving the profession in the near future.

Close to 3,000 courses, both required and elective, listed in each curriculum of the 45 ALA-accredited LIS masterâ s programs in the USA are analyzed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Based on the changes observed in the core, electives and particularly courses that appear being created recently, this study finds that more and more elective courses are offered in LIS education while the number of core requirements is reduced to as few as two courses. In either case, a wider range of subject topics seem being covered nowadays than in the pre-Internet era. On the other hand, approximately 10 percent of all the LIS courses sound new in that they are designed to deal with emerging subjects and latest de-velopments in the field besides reflecting the growing interdisciplinary nature of LIS. This research also shows that catalysts for LIS curricular transformations do not come from technology alone, but also originate from the cultural and societal dimensions. In other words, a holistic approach should be taken for enhancing LIS curricular contents to prepare information professionals for leadership in the time to come.

This is a juried paper (12 pages) presented at Session 5.2 titled "The Digital Environment: Online Libraries, Users and Systems" on Thursday, January 13, at the ALISE 2005 Conference, Boston, Massachusetts (Session Moderator: Charley Seavey). The main purpose of this study was to examine participating readers' text markings when they interacted with electronic documents during an active reading process. The readings took place in a private setting, where the readers read e-document for self-use, and in a document sharing setting where each document was shared among a group of students. Based on the results from descriptive and statistical tests, a user-marking taxonomy was derived, which led to the development of a framework for marking ontology. The proposed ontology can then be utilized by web searching agents to enhance the information retrieval capabilities of users working with digital library resources in a semantic web environment.

This is a presentation (21 slides) for a panel on for a panel on Philosophy and information science: The basics Philosophy and information science: The basics at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Austin, Texas, November 6, 2006. The main reason that people seek information is in order to acquire knowledge. For example, people want to acquire true beliefs about the world, acquire justified beliefs, avoid false beliefs, and gain understanding and wisdom. Epistemology is the study of what knowledge is and of how people acquire knowledge. Thus, work in epistemology can help us to clarify the goals that we have when we seek information. In this talk, I discuss how such work can guide us as we make important decisions about the use and control of information (e.g., decisions about intellectual property laws, collection management policies, techniques for evaluating information on the Internet).

This presentation has 16 slides and is part of Session 7.1 - WebJunction: Your Gateway to Continuing Education - at the 2005 ALISE Conference. It summarizes the survey that was conducted among LIS students who either used WebJunction (WJ) or had interest in WJ resources. It underlines the potential of WJ for building the student liaison program, and suggests some rollout strategies for developing WJ into educational programs. "Web Junction is an online community where library staff meet to share ideas, solve problems, take online courses - and have fun."