E-books have seen a significant proliferation over recent years. In the UK, about a third of the population today owns an e-reader with about half either owning an e-reader or tablet. Nevertheless, only about 4% of readers have moved to reading e-books only. These numbers suggest that, while e-books have caught on among a large number of users, they seem to complement rather than replace books. In light of the significance of books to past and contemporary cultures and societies it is little surprising that the emergence of e-reading technologies has sparked a plethora of writing on the topic, particularly in journalism and the humanities. With a common focus on the relative merits of books and e-books, and ultimately, their respective futures (some writers go as far as either mourning or celebrating the death of the book), the debate largely suffers from a technological determinist stance, neglecting the role of social practice as a driving force in technology adoption and use. Regardless, the sheer volume of the discourse suggests that something important is at stake in the move from analogue to digital reading technologies and that books continue to be valued as physical artefacts in the digital age, if not with more fervour than ever. What is surprising then is the lack of empirical research aiming to understand how books and e-books are used and valued in everyday life. Existing work in the area is almost exclusively concerned with practices of reading, with a particular emphasis on reading in academic and professional environments, thereby not only disregarding the social and material nature of reading, but also the rich life of the book beyond its role as a reading technology. The aim of this thesis then is to provide an understanding of the practices and values surrounding books and e-books in everyday life. Based on this understanding, it further aims to explore alternatives to the current e-reading ecosystem through designs that are sensitive to some of the broader values people associate with books and e-books. To do so, it takes a situated approach to studying books and e-books as they are used over the course of their lifecycle inside and outside the home. Through a combination of a series of in-depth interviews, guided ‘home tours’, and participant diaries ‘context-rich’ data on people’s uses of, and orientations towards, books and e-books are gathered. Subsequently, design responses are iteratively developed before being returned to readers for analysis. The contribution of this thesis is fourfold: (1) an account of the socially and materially situated practices associated with books and e-books inside and outside the home, (2) an explication of the distinct, yet complementary, values reflected in and driving book and e-books use, (3) an explication of the ways in which developing a sense of self and connecting with others are actualized through the use of books and e-books, and (3) the development and in situ analysis of a design exemplar in support of these goals.

Today, the web is constantly growing, expanding global information space and more and more data is being processed and sourced online. The amount of electronically accessible and available online information is overwhelming. Increasingly, recommendation systems, which engage in some form of automated personalisation, are hugely prevalent on the web and have been extensively studied in the research literature. Several issues still remain unsolved including high sparsity situation and cold starts (how to recommend content to users who have had little or no prior interaction with the system). Recent work has demonstrated a potential solution in the form of cross-domain user modeling. This thesis will explore the design, implementation and testing of a cross-domain approach using social media data to model rich and effective user preferences and provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the approach based on direct real-world user feedback, deconstructing a cross-system news recommendation service where user models are generated via social media data. This will be accomplished by identifying the availability of a source domain from which to draw resources for recommendations and the availability of user profiles that capture a wide range of user interests from different domains. This thesis also demonstrates the viability of generating user models from social media data and evidences that the automated cross-domain approach can be superior to explicit filtering using self-declared preferences and can be further augmented when placing the user with the ability to maintain control over such models. The reasons for these results are qualitatively examined in order to understand why such effects occur, indicating that different models are capturing widely different areas within a user's preference space.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-09-19Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:56:57Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 rizzi_irf_me_mar.pdf: 515685 bytes, checksum: b0debb4c7f7056b0c04cd78af0e6ee40 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Trata-se de um estudo acerca dos sistemas de classificação bibliográfica, especificamente a Classificação Decimal de Dewey (CDD), um dos instrumentos de organização da informação mais utilizados em bibliotecas generalistas do Brasil e do mundo. Estudos recentes têm demonstrado que tais instrumentos não são neutros em relação a valores e aspectos culturais. Tais instrumentos são investigados à luz de uma segunda temática, a paz, e compreende os recentes avanços na concepção do conceito de paz e seus desdobramentos nos campos teórico e prático: a área de Estudos para Paz e o movimento de Cultura de Paz. Tem como objetivo investigar o tratamento dado à temática da paz na CDD. Especificamente, buscou-se verificar e analisar os conceitos de paz, o movimento denominado Cultura de Paz e o campo teórico Estudos para Paz nas 21ª e 22ª edições da Classificação Decimal de Dewey. Estas proposições pretendem responder aos seguintes questionamentos: está a CDD apta para lidar adequadamente com a organização de documentos cujos conteúdos se referem, primeiro, ao conceito de paz, em sua acepção geral; segundo, ao campo de Estudos para Paz; e, terceiro, ao movimento Cultura de Paz? Discute-se, ainda, a relação de influência mútua entre as sociedades e as classificações bibliográficas. Tratar-se de pesquisa teórica e exploratória, devido aos objetivos e à aproximação das temáticas propostos. Os procedimentos metodológicos e técnicos de pesquisa empregados foram o levantamento bibliográfico e a análise documental. A análise dos dados confirmou a hipótese inicial de que a Classificação Decimal de Dewey não está apta a lidar com os temas relativos ao conceito de paz, ao movimento social denominado Cultura de Paz e ao campo de Estudos para Paz. Por fim, considera-se que a Classificação Decimal de Dewey tem contribuído, ainda que de maneira bastante sutil, para a perpetuação de uma Cultura da Guerra. / It is treated of a study concerning the systems of bibliographical classification, specifically the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), one of the instruments of Knowledge Organization more used in generalists libraries in Brazil and in the world. Recent studies have been demonstrating that such instruments are not neutral in relation to values and cultural aspects. Such instruments are investigated to the light of a second theme, the peace, and it comprises the recent progress in the peace concept and their unfoldings in the theoretical and practical fields: the area of Peace Research and the Culture of Peace movement. It has as objective to verify and to analyze the treatment given to the theme of the peace in DDC. Specifically, it was looked for to verify and to analyze the peace concepts, the movement denominated Culture of Peace and the theoretical field Studies for Paz in the 21st and 22nd editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification. These propositions intend to answer to the following questions: is it DDC capable to work appropriately with the organization of documents whose contents refer, first, to the peace concept, in its general meaning; second, to the Peace Research field; and, third, to Culture of Peace Movement? It is discussed, still, the relationship of mutual influence between the societies and the bibliographical classifications. It's about theoretical and exploratory research, due to the objectives and to the approach of the themes proposed. The methodological and technical procedures of research used were the bibliographical review and the documental analysis. The analysis of the data confirmed the initial hypothesis that the Dewey Decimal Classification is not capable to work with themes relatives to the peace concept, to social movement denominated Culture of Peace and to the Peace Research field. Finally, it is considered that the Dewey Decimal Classification... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

abstract: Ample evidence exists to support the conclusion that enterprise search is failing its users. This failure is costing corporate America billions of dollars every year. Most enterprise search engines are built using web search engines as their foundations. These search engines are optimized for web use and are inadequate when used inside the firewall. Without the ability to use popularity-based measures for ranking documents returned to the searcher, these search engines must rely on full-text search technologies. The Information Science literature explains why full-text search, by itself, fails to adequately discriminate relevant from irrelevant documents. This failure in discrimination results in far too many documents being returned to the searcher, which causes enterprise searchers to abandon their searches in favor of re-creating the documents or information they seek. This dissertation describes and evaluates a potential solution to the problem of failed enterprise search derived from the Information Science literature: subject-aided search. In subject-aided search, full-text search is augmented with a search of subject metadata coded into each document based upon a hierarchically structured subject index. Using the Design Science methodology, this dissertation develops and evaluates three IT artifacts in the search for a solution to the wicked problem of enterprise search failure. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Business Administration 2012

Submitted by Jussara Moore (jussaramoore@id.uff.br) on 2017-02-14T13:50:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Fabiana Melo Amaral Gonçalves Pinto - Versão Final.pdf: 8754819 bytes, checksum: 1f73489a65bf2873fdf9a3ee424b8b52 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Jussara Moore (jussaramoore@id.uff.br) on 2017-02-14T16:29:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Fabiana Melo Amaral Gonçalves Pinto - Versão Final.pdf: 8754819 bytes, checksum: 1f73489a65bf2873fdf9a3ee424b8b52 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-14T16:29:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Fabiana Melo Amaral Gonçalves Pinto - Versão Final.pdf: 8754819 bytes, checksum: 1f73489a65bf2873fdf9a3ee424b8b52 (MD5) / No contexto da Sociedade da Informação, a pesquisa busca entender as relações de aproximação e distanciamentos existentes entre a formação do bibliotecário e o mundo do trabalho. Provoca uma reflexão sobre a existência de regimes de informação que regem os sistemas econômicos, políticos, sociais e de informação vigentes no país e no mundo, cujo impacto reflete diretamente nos modos de realização, tanto científico e acadêmico, como no mundo do trabalho. Apóia-se no conceito de regime de informação de Maria Nélida Gonzalez de Gomez e no conceito de centros de cálculo e periferia de Bruno Latour, onde encontra relação existente entre o objeto informação no âmbito da formação do bibliotecário e sua atuação no mundo do trabalho. Propõe entender as aproximações e distanciamentos temáticos do conteúdo curricular contemporâneo (centros de cálculo) e o mundo do trabalho (periferia). Discute a formação do bibliotecário sob a ótica da abordagem multirreferencial de Jacques Ardoino, propondo uma reflexão sobre a importância da reflexão acerca das ações de informação, considerando o legado que as Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TICs) trazem para o campo informacional em termos de qualidade, credibilidade e validade da informação. Limita-se aos cursos de Biblioteconomia localizados no Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo, respectivamente: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) e Fundação Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo (FESPSP). / In the context of the Information Society, the research seeks to understand the approach of existing relations and distances between the formation of the librarian and the world of work. Causes a reflection on the existence of information regimes governing the economic, political, social and existing information in the country and the world, the impact of which is directly reflected in embodiments, both scientific and academic, as the world of work. It rests on the concept of information system of Maria Nelida Gonzalez Gomez and the concept of data centers and outskirts of Bruno Latour, which is the relationship between the object information in the training of librarians and their performance in the workplace. Proposes understand the thematic similarities and differences of the contemporary curriculum content (data centers) and the world of work (periphery). Discusses the formation of the librarian from the perspective of multi-referential approach of Jacques Ardoino, proposing a reflection on the importance of reflection on the information actions, considering the legacy that Information and Communication Technologies (TICs) bring to the informational field in terms of quality, credibility and validity of the information. Limited to librarianship courses located in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, respectively: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and Foundation School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo (FESPSP).

New information and communications technologies, such as mobile phones and social media, have presented the humanitarian community with a dilemma: how should humanitarian organisations integrate information from crisis-affected communities into their decision-making processes whilst guarding against inaccurate information from untrustworthy sources? Advocates of crisis mapping claim that, under certain circumstances, crowdsourcing can increase the accuracy of crisis information. However, whilst previous research has studied the geography of crisis information, the motivations of people who create crisis map mashups, and the motivations of people who crowdsource crisis information, the geography of, and the uncertainty associated with, crowdsourced crisis information has been ignored. As such, the current research is motivated by the desire to explore the geographic uncertainty associated with, and to contribute a better understanding of, crowdsourced crisis information. The current research contributes to the fields of GISc (Geographic Information Science) and crisis informatics; crisis mapping; and geovisualisation specifically and information visualisation more generally. These contributions can be summarised as an approach to, and an understanding of, the geographic uncertainty associated with crowdsourced crisis information; three geovisualisation software prototypes that can be used to identify meaningful patterns in crisis information; and the design, analysis, and evaluation model, which situates the activities associated with designing a software artefact-and using it to undertake analysis-within an evaluative framework. The approach to the geographic uncertainty associated with crowdsourced crisis information synthesised techniques from GISc, geovisualisation, and natural language processing. By following this approach, it was found that location descriptions from the Haiti crisis map did not 'fit' an existing conceptual model, and, consequently, that there is a need for new or enhanced georeferencing methods that attempt to estimate the uncertainty associated with free-text location descriptions from sources of crowdsourced crisis information.

The main purpose of this project is to investigate the state of the art of the Algerian National Archives (ANA) so as to design an automated system that responds to the needs of this institution. The concept of archives is defined. The effects of computerisation on archives are investigated. Some automated archives systems, around the world, are examined. The various obstacles impeding the development of a technology capable of processing Arabic script are reviewed. Some solutions are also discussed. The case of Algeria in the context of the Arab world is taken as en example. A number of problems hampering the transfer of technology are identified. The study is concentrated on the state of the art of the ANA. It is carried out using a variety of data collection techniques; including questionnaires, interviews, observation and the author's own experience of the ANA. Severel problem areas are identified; including: the lack of resource sharing between the various institutions and the access speed to documents, to name just a few. The objectives of the system to be designed and implemented ere identified. A prototype user-friendly system, using the Query language, dBASE III PLUS and Clipper, is developed to simulate some of the various tasks carried out within records management institutions. An explanation of how can the system be operated is provided. An evaluation of the prototype system is carried out. A number of recommendations to improve the system are presented. Amongst these, is the necessity to provide a much faster system. The prototype system is thus redeveloped using, this time, Turbo Pascal. Apart from speed, no alterations or additions are introduced to the one developed using dBASE. Because the project has not been taken to the last stages of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), a number of recommendations are made regarding the steps that the ANA should observe to ensure a smooth system implementation and maintenance.

Magister Bibliothecologiae - MBibl / Information and communication technology (ICT) is foreign to a number of public libraries and those libraries that have a technology infrastructure in place, suffer from an under-utilization of the technology, owing to a shortage of skills that are critical to boost the library into the global information society. It is important that staff in public libraries have the necessary skills and positive attitude to use the technology offered to them. The main objective of this study was to determine the use of ICT's in Nyanga, Brown's Farm and Crossroads public libraries and make recommendations towards effective use of ICT in the above-mentioned public libraries. / South Africa

Mobile technologies are seen as an emerging technology that affects individuals and organizations. These technologies are becoming more affordable and accessible over time with advanced designs and computing capabilities. These technologies affect how people use and access the internet, how people create and access content or services, and how people choose to communicate. In addition these technologies have infiltrated the educational sector, and effected how educational institutions such as a university deliver services to academics, students and staff. As these technologies are effecting educational institutions academic libraries that support such educational institutions have had to embrace these technologies by adapting and adding additional services to accommodate users. Examples of such new and emerging services can be seen through the establishment of mobile library websites, mobile library applications available for users from various types of mobile devices such as cell phones, mobile tablets, and e-readers. Libraries are adapting traditional services such as catalogues, resources and other services to be accessible and usable from such devices. This study is focused on a South African academic library, taking a closer look at mobile library service delivery, to investigate whether library services delivered from mobile devices can enhance service delivery. The study is focused on an established mobile library website, and looks at the post implementation of the mobile library website from the perspective of Natural and Agricultural Sciences students at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. / Mini-dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Information Science / Unrestricted

This study investigates the conceptions of information literacy held by student nurses on a BSc Nursing Studies course and asks whether the information skills sessions taught are successful from the students’ viewpoint. Additionally, it compares attitudes to, and use of information literacy within the artificial environment of the university and the ‘real world’ of the nurse as perceived by participants on their clinical and community placements. The inquiry introduces the concept of information literacy and charts its development before discussing it in relation to the changing context of nurse education and evidence-based practice. The research adopts the interpretive paradigm with phenomenography as its methodology. It uses focus groups and twenty-one individual interviews to obtain rich data from a purposive sample of students across the three years of the course. Such data were analysed to produce categories of description representing the collective experience of information literacy across the sample. The thesis questions whether learning to nurse effectively is best achieved through training along traditional lines, education, or a combination of both. For the latter it is imperative to find an appropriate balance between academic and clinical skills. The findings reveal a tension between the academic and clinical aspects of learning to be a nurse which some students struggle to resolve. The study concludes that while information literacy is perceived as part of a nurse’s professional role in supporting evidence-based practice, participant observations suggest that its use is context dependent and variable. The thesis recognizes that the adoption of evidence-based practice may depend on the presence or absence of particular personal and organisational barriers. Suggestions for further research include the relationship between academic and clinical learning, the importance and influence of informal learning, and the nature of the transition from student nurse to autonomous practitioner.