Over the past two decades Greek university libraries have had to respond to a changing academic and information landscape which impacts significantly on the type of services offered as well as on the way in which these services are offered. The development of Electronic Information Services (EIS) is a major priority in the Higher Education sector. In the same time, the evolution of learning and teaching practice and the changing demands of the academic community affect the libraries’ role and mission. This research explores the relationship between the education system, in terms of the teaching and learning process that are used particularly in the Greek context and EIS provided by libraries. There is a focus here on whether EIS satisfy users’ needs in the current Higher Education context. A qualitative methodology has been followed in order to provide an in-depth user-centred investigation in two of the libraries at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The empirical investigation draws data from three different groups of participants: students, academics and librarians. It is a user-centered study which presents a picture of the use and understanding of EIS in the context of the library. Conclusions show that the education system strongly influences the library’s operation by determining its role and services. The research is focused on defining the extent to which EIS meet their objectives from the perspective of all the participants groups. It also emphasizes the importance of the communication between the different parts of the university community and the role of the education system regarding the use of the EIS. IT skills and computer access have been identified as two important parameters in defining the effective use of EIS. The findings of this research, based on the two research sites under investigation, will provide an insight and an understanding of the needs of users and the characteristics of the context. Additionally, it can support librarians and academics in their decision about library operations and how those fit with the wider educational setting.

Governments around the world are increasingly investing in the publication of data and information on the internet in a bid to promote transparency and public engagement. However, studies have found that there is a poor audience and citizens’ engagement with online contents in general, and with governments’ digital data and information in particular. Studies have also shown that it is important that governments who seek to engage the citizens in State’s decisionmaking process should first engage them with their informative online contents. But the challenge is that e-public engagement research has been predominantly techno-centric. Therefore, with an exploratory research design and a sequential-mixed methods approach, this study investigated the factors influencing citizens’ engagement with governments’ online contents based on the views of Nigerians. From the qualitative phase of the study, a citizen-content engagement (C-CE) model was developed. This model was then tested in the quantitative phase, and findings indicate that citizens’ engagement with governments’ online contents (CE) is directly influenced by the quality and ability of the contents in meeting the citizens’ information need (INPCQ), and by the citizens’ affinity for governments’ platforms (IVP). IVP is influenced by trust in the government (TGA), the ability to actively participate in information creation on governments platforms (CC), and the ability to interact and deliberate with other citizens and government’s officials on those platforms (IDelib). Governments’ platform-type and citizens’ level of political awareness also played a moderating role on IVP. Governments’ use of social media was found to be more important than the use of websites in the influence of TGA, CC, and IDelib on IVP. Poor level of political awareness was more important than the optimal level of political awareness in the influence of IVP on CE, which indicates that the more aware citizens are about the government, the less the affinity they have for their platforms. This research is important as the outcome may help governments that are interested in e-participation to shape their contents better in ways that would encourage citizencontent engagement and citizen participation.

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Wong Wai-Yiu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-120). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction and Outline of the Dissertation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Collaborative Infomediaries --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Measuring Factors that Influence the Success of Infomediary --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Contributions --- p.5 / Chapter 1.4 --- Thesis Organization --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Related Work on Collaborative Infomediary --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- RECOMMENDER SYSTEM - Infomediary --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Utility-based recommenders --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Knowledge-based recommenders --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Content-based recommenders --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Collaborative recommenders --- p.12 / Chapter 2.1.5 --- Hybrid recommenders --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2 --- Types of Collaborative Filtering --- p.15 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Memory-based methods --- p.15 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Model-based methods --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3 --- Similarity Measures --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4 --- Prediction algorithm --- p.19 / Chapter 2.5 --- User Profile --- p.20 / Chapter 2.6 --- Relevance Feedback --- p.21 / Chapter 2.7 --- Comparison basis for user similarity --- p.22 / Chapter 3 --- Research Methodology --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1 --- Collaborative Infomediary System Design --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- System Functionalities --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Overview of System Design --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2 --- User Profile --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Sources of news articles --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Regions of news --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Categories of Industries --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Listed Companies --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.5 --- User-specified Keywords --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.6 --- User Profile Scoring (Scoreprofile) --- p.30 / Chapter 3.3 --- User Feedback --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Scoring formulation for feedback (Score feedback) --- p.31 / Chapter 3.4 --- User Similarity --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Source --- p.34 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Regions of news --- p.35 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Category of Industries --- p.35 / Chapter 3.4.4 --- Listed companies in Hong Kong stock market and Userspecified Keywords --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.5 --- Overall Similarity --- p.36 / Chapter 3.5 --- News Article Scoring --- p.37 / Chapter 3.6 --- User Interface of Collaborative Infomediary --- p.38 / Chapter 3.6.1 --- User Registration and Preference Setting --- p.38 / Chapter 3.6.2 --- Current Day News Retrieval --- p.42 / Chapter 3.6.3 --- Past News Retrieval --- p.46 / Chapter 3.6.4 --- Search News --- p.47 / Chapter 4 --- Evaluation Methodology & Experimental Results --- p.50 / Chapter 4.1 --- Experimental Design & Setup --- p.51 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Performance Measures --- p.53 / Chapter 4.2 --- Experiment Results & Discussions --- p.54 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Similarity Threshold against average number of collaborators --- p.54 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Performance Measures among setups --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Performance Measures against Similarity Threshold --- p.59 / Chapter 5 --- Related work on the Measuring Factors that Influence the Success of Infomediary --- p.64 / Chapter 5.1 --- Different approaches to IS success measurement --- p.64 / Chapter 5.2 --- User Information Satisfaction/End-User Computing Satisfaction --- p.66 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Definition of user satisfaction --- p.66 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Factors/dimensions affecting IS user satisfaction --- p.67 / Chapter 5.3 --- Evaluation of Web-site --- p.69 / Chapter 5.4 --- Web Customer Satisfaction --- p.70 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Customer satisfaction --- p.71 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Factors/Dimensions affecting customer information satisfaction --- p.72 / Chapter 6 --- Research Methodology --- p.78 / Chapter 6.1 --- Methodological Approach --- p.78 / Chapter 6.2 --- Construct Definition and Item Pool Generation --- p.79 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Customer Values on Infomediary --- p.79 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Means Objectives and Fundamental Objectives --- p.80 / Chapter 6.3 --- Relationships between Customer Values --- p.85 / Chapter 6.4 --- Survey Instrument --- p.86 / Chapter 6.4.1 --- Task File --- p.87 / Chapter 6.4.2 --- Questionnaire: Demographic Variables and Measures . --- p.87 / Chapter 6.4.3 --- Sample Description and Survey Administration --- p.88 / Chapter 7 --- Data Analysis and Results --- p.90 / Chapter 7.1 --- DATA ANALYSIS APPROACH --- p.90 / Chapter 7.1.1 --- Purification --- p.90 / Chapter 7.1.2 --- Identification of Factor Structure --- p.92 / Chapter 7.1.3 --- Construct validity --- p.97 / Chapter 7.2 --- RESEARCH FINDINGS --- p.98 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- Descriptive statistics --- p.98 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- Purification- Means Objectives --- p.99 / Chapter 7.2.3 --- Factor Structure Identification- Means Objectives --- p.99 / Chapter 7.2.4 --- Construct validity- Means Objectives --- p.104 / Chapter 7.2.5 --- Purification- Fundamental Objectives --- p.104 / Chapter 7.2.6 --- Factor Structure Identification- Fundamental Objectives --- p.105 / Chapter 7.2.7 --- Construct validity- Fundamental Objectives --- p.107 / Chapter 7.2.8 --- A Model for Measuring factors that Influence Infomediary Success --- p.108 / Chapter 8 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.109 / Chapter 8.1 --- "Implications, Limitations and Future Work - Collaborative Infomediary" --- p.109 / Chapter 8.2 --- "Implications, Limitations and Future Work - Infomediary Success Factors" --- p.110 / Chapter 8.3 --- Conclusions --- p.112 / Bibliography --- p.113 / Chapter A --- Means Objectives Fundamental Objectives --- p.121 / Chapter A.1 --- List of Means Objectives & Fundamental Objectives --- p.121 / Chapter B --- Statistical Results for Collaborative Infomediary Experiment --- p.129 / Chapter C --- Statistical Results for Measuring Factors that influence success of Infomediary --- p.136 / Chapter D --- Survey Task File Questionnaire --- p.152 / Chapter E --- Tutorial Guide for experiment on Collaborative Infomediary --- p.170

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Marshall University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains Includes bibliographical references

Thesis--Rutgers. / Photocopy (positive) made by University Microfilms. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis presents a study of risk management within records management that focuses on small to medium enterprises(SMEs)in the UK. Cases tudies of three SMEs based in the north of England, ranging from micro-businesses to large scale, were undertaken in a two year period. The aims of the study were to investigate risk in the context of electronic information and records management within SMEs, and to develop a working conceptual model or theory for risk management of electronic information and records. This thesis aims to characterise the approaches to risk and electronic information and records management taken by SMEs throughc case studies, narrative analysis and corpus linguistics. Attitudes and drivers for risk management of electronic information and records management in SMEs were investigated and analysed. The history and historiography of risk management and records management were investigated as part of the preliminary research for the project. The objectives included critically evaluating the vocabulary of risk and risk management, and identifying the use of a common vocabulary of risk in records management within the SME context. This was carried out by a transdisciplinary use of the techniques of computer corpus linguistics (CCL). The creation of a corpus from material collected from interview and questionnaire format contributes to a greater linguistic and semiotic comprehension of the ideas and thoughts behind risk management of records management by different levels of employees in an SME. he corpus was used to identify a vocabulary of terms used by the SMEEs in describing their own risk management in terms of records management, and their experience of risk events in their records management. The outcome of the research will inform the practice of managing risks associated with electronic information and records management in SMEs by distribution of results to relevant small businesses working groups.

In 1998 a village in Northumberland was at the centre of a suspected TB infection. This thesis describes a research project that aimed to characterise and evaluate the dissemination of information to the community during the crisis. The context within which the incident occurred is discussed, and the main areas of research within which this project is located are reviewed. The following objectives were set for the project — 1. To determine existing evidence of effective information dissemination 2. To determine the criteria for dissemination in the specific context of the crisis 3. To identify and develop research methods that reflect the cross-disciplinary nature of the topic. The project employed a broadly qualitative methodology and was firmly grounded in information science. A qualitative systematic review of research literature identified the existing evidence of effective information dissemination. The technique was adapted from systematic reviews conducted in health research. Twenty relevant studies were identified and their results synthesised and analysed using a meta-ethnographic approach. From this analysis the elements of effective dissemination were extracted, and when combined produced a model of effective information dissemination. Interviews conducted with key informants ascertained the criteria specific to the TB incident. The information providers for the information dissemination process set three explicit criteria during the TB incident. These criteria were underpinned by a set of assumptions about the audience for the information. A questionnaire survey of respondents in the community was conducted to incorporate their perspective in the evaluation. Analysis of the survey and interview data shows that, whilst the criteria set for the dissemination process were mostly achieved, the assumptions underpinning the dissemination process were not wholly correct. The research data was compared to the model of effective information dissemination. Additional elements were identified and a model of effective information dissemination in a crisis was produced. Further research is required to test the validity of this model. It is proposed, however, that extracting the elements from the unique situation enables translation of the research findings to other crisis situations.

Information seeking in context is a developing area of research, which explores the subject in settings ranging from high schools to legal practices to health organisations. Relatively little research, however, has been devoted to information behaviour in disadvantaged communities from a non-library perspective, particularly within a UK context. This study contributes to this field of research by exploring the information worlds — the everyday lives and information behaviour — of people living on a disadvantaged estate in Northeast England. The project was firmly rooted within the qualitative paradigm and employed a combination of ethnographic data collection methods to explore information behaviour including episodic narrative and extended participant observation. Interviews were carried out with 21 estate residents and with 13 key workers. The study discovered that everyday life on the estate was difficult and complex, a fact mirrored in the participants' information needs and in their information seeking behaviour. Cognitive information needs stemmed from everyday life issues such as debts, employment and health problems and were often met only with affective support from informal networks of family, friends and trusted on-estate regeneration workers. Trust was a major factor in information seeking owing to the insular nature of the estate and the participants' need for confidentiality and privacy. Participants often used the term information to indicate what was happening on the estate in terms of gossip and local news, but they also found the term a worrying one, associating it with intrusive questioning and with formal institutions. Formal, off-estate information providers were used for health reasons or in crisis situations, and the public library was not considered as an information source. In order to overcome the many barriers to information seeking, information providers need to focus on working in ongoing partnership with other agencies and on developing trusting relationships with people within their communities.

As the emphasis on accountability in the Electronic Government (EG) environment has increased, the interest in providing the requisite knowledge and skills for the employees and potential employees (i.e. students) to manage electronic records has been heightened. A number of initiatives aimed at providing educational and training opportunities for administrators, archivists, IT personnel and records managers to manage electronic records have been developed. The primary aims of this study are: (a) to analyse the education and training programmes in electronic records management (ERM) for record keepers and develop a model, (b) to examine the needs of record keepers in relation to such knowledge and skills as are required to manage electronic records in the specific context of the EG in Malaysia, and (c) to provide a suitable vocational and professional education and training model for record keepers in Malaysia to acquire and maintain knowledge and skills required for the effective management of electronic records. To achieve the above aims, the research adopted a case study approach that combined both quantitative and qualitative data to answer the various research questions. Quantitative data was gathered from a high level web survey of the national archives and related professional organisations world-wide to identify and examine education and training programmes for record keepers and current international best practice. A questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews were used to investigate and identify the roles and responsibilities of different record keepers in the Malaysian Federal Ministries, explore the context in which the record keepers managed electronic records, and examine their needs for education and training in ERM. Different software packages such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and NUD.IST (Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorising) were used to analyse the data. This study developed a generic model relating to vocational and professional education and training in ERM. It was based on a review of the various concepts on education and training, as well as concepts underpinning the four pragmatic examples of education and training programmes in ERM developed in Europe and UK. This generic model was used to explore the emergent issues in Malaysia that were related to the need for knowledge and skills in ERM. The model was discussed and tested with the Malaysian record keepers through five focus group discussions. It was found that the generic model matched the situation in Malaysia, even though there were variations in the details due to the varying needs of the Malaysian record keepers within the EG environment and the Malaysian government bureaucracy. The underlying concepts which underpinned the generic model for vocational and professional education and training in ERM developed in this study have been validated within the Malaysian public sector setting. Therefore this generic model must be understood within the specific context of the environment in which the fieldwork was carried out. In order to assess the extent of its universal application, similar projects employing the same methods but conducted in contrasting environments or in other countries have been found to have great value.