The current medley of interoperability protocols is potentially problematic. Each protocol is designed by a different group, each provides a single service, and has its own syntax and vocabulary. Popular protocols such as RSS are designed with simple and easy to understand documentation, which is a key factor for the high adoption levels. But the majority of protocols are complex, making them relatively difficult for programmers to understand and implement. This research proposes a possible new direction for high-level interoperability protocols design. The High-level Interoperability Protocol - Common Framework (HIP-CF) is designed and evaluated as a proof of concept that if interoperability is made simpler, then it can increase adoption levels, making it easier for programmers to understand and implement protocols, therefore leading to more interoperable systems. HIP-CF is not suggested as the alternative to current production protocols. Rather it is suggested that the design approach taken by HIP-CF can be applied to other protocols, and also that a suite of simpler protocols is a better solution than various simple individual protocols. Evaluation results show that current protocols can be substantially improved on. These improvements could and maybe should be the result of a deeper analysis of the goals of today’s protocols and also a collaboration amongst the different groups that design high-level interoperability protocols. This research presents a new approach and suggests future experimental research options for the field of high-level interoperability protocol design.

The Bleek and Lloyd Collection contains notebooks that document the tradition, language and culture of the Bushman people who lived in South Africa in the late 19th century. Transcriptions of these notebooks would allow for the provision of services such as text-based search and text-to-speech. However, these notebooks are currently only available in the form of digital scans and the manual creation of transcriptions is a costly and time-consuming process. Thus, automatic methods could serve as an alternative approach to creating transcriptions of the text in the notebooks. In order to evaluate the use of automatic methods, a corpus of Bushman texts and their associated transcriptions was created. The creation of this corpus involved: the development of a custom method for encoding the Bushman script, which contains complex diacritics; the creation of a tool for creating and transcribing the texts in the notebooks; and the running of a series of workshops in which the tool was used to create the corpus. The corpus was used to evaluate the use of various techniques for automatically transcribing the texts in the corpus in order to determine which approaches were best suited to the complex Bushman script. These techniques included the use of Support Vector Machines, Artificial Neural Networks and Hidden Markov Models as machine learning algorithms, which were coupled with different descriptive features. The effect of the texts used for training the machine learning algorithms was also investigated as well as the use of a statistical language model. It was found that, for Bushman word recognition, the use of a Support Vector Machine with Histograms of Oriented Gradient features resulted in the best performance and, for Bushman text line recognition, Marti & Bunke features resulted in the best performance when used with Hidden Markov Models. The automatic transcription of the Bushman texts proved to be difficult and the performance of the different recognition systems was largely affected by the complexities of the Bushman script. It was also found that, besides having an influence on determining which techniques may be the most appropriate for automatic handwriting recognition, the texts used in a automatic handwriting recognition system also play a large role in determining whether or not automatic recognition should be attempted at all.

Information management systems (digital libraries/repositories, learning management systems, content management systems) provide key technologies for the storage, preservation and dissemination of knowledge in its various forms, such as research documents, theses and dissertations, cultural heritage documents and audio files. These systems can make use of cloud computing to achieve high levels of scalability, while making services accessible to all at reasonable infrastructure costs and on-demand. This research aims to develop techniques for building scalable digital information management systems based on efficient and on-demand use of generic grid-based technologies such as cloud computing. In particular, this study explores the use of existing cloud computing resources offered by some popular cloud computing vendors such as Amazon Web Services. This involves making use of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store large and increasing volumes of data, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide the required computational power and Amazon SimpleDB for querying and data indexing on Amazon S3. A proof-of-concept application comprising typical digital library services was developed and deployed in the cloud environment and evaluated for scalability when the demand for more data and services increases. The results from the evaluation show that it is possible to adopt cloud computing for digital libraries in addressing issues of massive data handling and dealing with large numbers of concurrent requests. Existing digital library systems could be migrated and deployed into the cloud.

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No description available.

Systems to annotate online content are becoming increasingly common on the World Wide Web. While much research and development has been done for interfaces that allow users to make and view annotations, few annotation systems provide functionality that extends beyond this and allows users to also manage and process collections of existing annotations. Siyavula Education is a social enterprise that publishes high school Maths and Science textbooks online. The company uses annotations to collate collaborator and volunteer feedback (corrections, opinions, suggestions) about its books at various phases in the book-writing life cycle. Currently the company captures annotations on PDF versions of their books. The web-based software they use allows for some filtering and sorting of existing annotations, but the system is limited and not ideal for their rather specialised requirements. In an attempt to move away from a proprietary, PDF-based system Siyavula implemented annotator (http://okfnlabs.org/annotator/), software which allowed for the annotation of HTML pages. However, this software was not coupled with a back-end interface that would allow users to interact with a database of saved annotations. To enable this kind of interaction, a prototype interface was designed and is presented here. The purpose of the interface was to give users new and improved functionality for querying and manipulating a collection of web-based annotations about Siyavula’s online content. Usability tests demonstrated that the interface was successful at giving users this new and necessary functionality (including filtering, sorting and searching) to process annotations. Once integrated with front-end software (such as Annotator) and issue tracking software (such as GitHub) the interface could form part of a powerful new tool for the making and management of annotations on the Web.

Indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) have made positive contributions in agriculture / health care / medicine / food preparation and preservation / land use / education and a host of other activities in rural communities as well as in urban ones (Warren, 1991:26). Yet hardly a day goes by when an elderly man or woman does not die with all the wealth of knowledge, which is then buried beyond recovery. Therefore, there is a need for institutions, which are in the business of information like libraries and/or information centers to manage (collect, document, organize, store, disseminate) the indigenous knowledge for potential contribution in present and future endeavours. Ngulube (2002: 96) rightly points out that the loss of IK will &ldquo / impoverish society&rdquo / .<br /> <br /> The main aim of the study was to explore the issue if indigenous knowledge within the library and information sector, specifically within the Swaziland National Library Service / investigate if IK is managed / determine how it can best be managed in order to contribute positively to the community / and identify ways to best manage it. This study adopted the qualitative research methodology using the triangulation method, which allows the use of different data collection techniques.<br /> <br /> The study found that Swaziland National Library Service (SNLS) manages IK, but at a very low level. Lack of funds is one major issue that has been voiced as the biggest hindrance to Indigenous Knowledge Management and that Library and information professionals are not adequately trained to manage IK. The study also discovered that Library and information services in Swaziland are still very much book-based and very much westernized, such that only a select elite is catered for by the current services. Intellectual property rights are not dealt with, with respect to IK.<br /> <br /> From the findings, this study recommends that Library and information professionals include indigenous knowledge in the existing collection development policies or must design collection development policies that include IK.

This research examines the issues relating to evaluation of information systems investments made to facilitate engineering asset management. It follows an interpretive epistemology and suggests that information systems are social systems. An attempt to evaluate them, therefore, has strong contextual and social underpinnings. This research aims to develop understanding of the information systems based asset management, and provides conceptual frameworks for their evaluation in the social context of the organisation. / This research is motivated by the lack of appropiate theoretical frameworks for IS evaluation that could be applied to asset management paradigm. IS utilised for asset management are essentially social systems. Any attempt to evaluate IS should, therefore, be aimed at understanding the context within which they are deployed, as well as the processes that influence and are influenced by their use. In contrast to the traditional deterministic approaches to technology investment for asset management, this research adopts a multi-perspective context based approach. This research thus highlights the operational and conceptual issues posed to IS for engineering asset management evaluation. / The three case studies carried out in this research provide an analysis of the factors that contribute to the inability of asset managing organisations to implement, or make effective use of IS based asset management evaluation mechanisms. From these analyses this research highlights the factors that contribute to failure of asset managing organisations to effectively measure the contribution of IS in providing value for asset lifecycle management. The learnings gained from empirical research are further provide understandings of evaluation roles and responsibilities, integration of evaluation in organisational culture as a core strategic process, and continuous improvement of asset lifecycle strategies. This research then develops a conceptual framework for information systems based asset management evaluation that enables action able generative learning. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2007.

This research focuses on the impact of Information Technology (IT) and the corresponding outcomes during an intense period of change and restructuring of the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), the premier public hospital in Singapore. / The primary aim of the Singapore Government in restructuring hospitals was to control costs because of limited resources. Singapore is a small city-state and devoid of any natural resources like gas, oil or minerals and her only resource is a population of four million people. The Singapore Government allocates 3% of GDP for health-care and increasing costs coupled with an ageing population and the growing demand from the public for better health-care services have made it difficult to increase health-care funds indefinitely. Hence, to control rising costs, the question was whether Information Technology could help, apart from other areas of management, viz. pruning staff, reducing costs, etc. At the time of restructuring SGH, management looked at how IT could play an integral role in cutting costs, streamlining processes and improving overall efficiency and effectiveness. Ultimately, the aim was to achieve the Holy Grail of having a fully integrated campus-wide electronic medical record (EMR). However, prior to developing an EMR, there was a multitude of other areas that IT could be harnessed for greater efficiency and the challenge was to use IT to tie the business side and the medical side of running a large public hospital. IT staff had to develop user-friendly software adapted to the needs of end-users as the aim was to provide the best patient care outcomes. The business side consisted of tasks of varying complexities, viz. updated billings for hospital charges, regular updates of the large inventory of medical consumables and hospital supplies with data available at any point in time to avoid keeping excessive stocks beyond expiry and ordering sufficient stocks to meet seasonal demands, and monthly updates of bed occupancy, OT utilisation, ward and clinic resources, etc. / On the medical side, IT was used to integrate various laboratories, wards and satellite pharmacies to cut down on time-consuming voluminous paperwork as well as to assist staff to code, tag and deliver correct food trolleys to various impatient wards, conduct regular medical audits and quality control of hospital operations to improve efficiency and identify outliers in respect of ineffective OT utilisation. IT was also used to establish resources for one-stop medical centres so patients would not have to go from pillar to post to receive treatment as well as develop a fully integrated EMR with the patients full medical records, i.e. previous drugs taken, dosage prescribed, history of drug allergies, etc. The data could be collated, mined and stored to find new treatment modalities for better patient outcomes. / This thesis is confined to information technology (IT) and excludes medical technology, as IT was instrumental in bringing about many of the progressive developments at SGH from the time of restructuring till to-date, IT transcended through clinical and non-clinical departments throughout the hospital to facilitate improvements in hospital operations whereas medical technology was restricted to medical specialists who had a specific interest to acquire and use medical techniques, knowledge or equipment associated with the technology. / Public hospitals have an imperative need to utilise the enormous capacity of IT to enhance and improve operational performance by sorting and sifting information effectively and efficiently, viz. medical records, financial statistics, etc. The significance of the research findings would be instructive to comparable complex public hospitals who are challenged to tap into the important potential of IT to maintain, sustain or boost their organisational capabilities and hence impuove their competitiveness to remain viable in the health-care industry. A total of 100 questionnaires were sent out to various categories of staff and 10 face-to-face interviews were conducted to obtain first-hand accounts of complex and routine issues that direct users of IT had to grapple with, during the period of hospital restructuring. The important findings are set out in detail in the data analysis as well as in the conclusion to explicitly illustrate the contributions of this research thesis. / The findings illuminate the ways in which IT impacted upon the daily work of a large and complex public hospital. Detailed analysis of the process of change, in which IT is a constantly evolving form of innovation, throws light on the slow way in which hospital staff gradually became attuned to the potential of the tools of technology to enhance their work performance and productivity. This research material is especially useful to hospital adminstrators who have the responsibility to craft workable policies and practical guidelines for incorporating IT into organisational operations. The research, therefore, contributes to policy making in regard to the administrative operations of a large public sector hospital. This thesis is submitted as a new and original contribution in the context of a large public sector hospital in a developed country. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2005.

Thesis (M App Sc) -- University of South Australia, 1991