In Saudi Arabia the need is recognised significantly to move towards the concept of an Information Society, particularly for the benefit of the healthcare community. There have been some individual efforts, in this direction but they do not address the problem and related root issues. The problem is that the body and soul are not joined as one to formulate a single entity. The health professional is the body and the soul is the health information professional (health librarians). Health professionals spend a great deal of time in information searching, while the health information professional's role is underestimated. This research is conducted to explore the state of health sciences libraries, and to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of the Information Services and Information, Communication Technology (ICT) in health sciences libraries in the capital city of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh. To accomplish this, a mixed method is used (qualitative and quantitative approaches) to collect related data. A framework is designed particularly for this research and a visionary organisational model is designed initially and developed throughout the research. This proposed model is to introduce a potentially possible successful paradigm for changing the health sciences libraries environment to encounter future challenges. In addition, for this research will contribute to the better understanding of how to provide fast, efficient and easy-to-use service to increase user satisfaction. Changing the paradigm of health sciences libraries in Riyadh will facilitate better access, sharing and use of information resources from distant geographical locations, and increase participation opportunities. In addition, the proposed model considers the human and social needs of communication, and the exchange of feelings and reactions. Importantly, successful change will help healthcare environments to move towards the establishment of a flourishing health information society by popularising the use of electronic resources and demonstrating the benefits and advantages of continuous learning and development programmes. It is clear that access to fast. accurate and reliable health information and resources, may be, the difference between life and death.

A challenging problem in the user profiling domain is to create profiles of users of retrieval systems. This problem even exacerbates in the multimedia domain. Due to the Semantic Gap, the difference between low-level data representation of videos and the higher concepts users associate with videos, it is not trivial to understand the content of multimedia documents and to find other documents that the users might be interested in. A promising approach to ease this problem is to set multimedia documents into their semantic contexts. The semantic context can lead to a better understanding of the personal interests. Knowing the context of a video is useful for recommending users videos that match their information need. By exploiting these contexts, videos can also be linked to other, contextually related videos. From a user profiling point of view, these links can be of high value to recommend semantically related videos, hence creating a semantic-based user profile. This thesis introduces a semantic user profiling approach for news video retrieval, which exploits a generic ontology to put news stories into its context. Major challenges which inhibit the creation of such semantic user profiles are the identification of user's long-term interests and the adaptation of retrieval results based on these personal interests. Most personalisation services rely on users explicitly specifying preferences, a common approach in the text retrieval domain. By giving explicit feedback, users are forced to update their need, which can be problematic when their information need is vague. Furthermore, users tend not to provide enough feedback on which to base an adaptive retrieval algorithm. Deviating from the method of explicitly asking the user to rate the relevance of retrieval results, the use of implicit feedback techniques helps by learning user interests unobtrusively. The main advantage is that users are relieved from providing feedback. A disadvantage is that information gathered using implicit techniques is less accurate than information based on explicit feedback. In this thesis, we focus on three main research questions. First of all, we study whether implicit relevance feedback, which is provided while interacting with a video retrieval system, can be employed to bridge the Semantic Gap. We therefore first identify implicit indicators of relevance by analysing representative video retrieval interfaces. Studying whether these indicators can be exploited as implicit feedback within short retrieval sessions, we recommend video documents based on implicit actions performed by a community of users. Secondly, implicit relevance feedback is studied as potential source to build user profiles and hence to identify users' long-term interests in specific topics. This includes studying the identification of different aspects of interests and storing these interests in dynamic user profiles. Finally, we study how this feedback can be exploited to adapt retrieval results or to recommend related videos that match the users' interests. We analyse our research questions by performing both simulation-based and user-centred evaluation studies. The results suggest that implicit relevance feedback can be employed in the video domain and that semantic-based user profiles have the potential to improve video exploration.

LibQUAL+TM is a web-administered library service quality assessment protocol that has been used around the world in hundreds of different types of libraries. Data have been collected from almost 500,000 library users. The protocol has been used in several language variations. The purpose of the present study is to characterize the stability of LibQUAL+TM score norms across both time and various user cohorts. Library staff may place more confidence in benchmarking conclusions if the stability of the score norms can be demonstrated.

Introduction. The ‘blogosphere’ is a space with digital information in which social networks form that offer countless application possibilities. In this technology-mediated context, it is feasible to study the performance and approaches of production, diffusion, relationship and use of information from different perspectives.. Method. Quantitative data were obtained through the regular examination of the blogs maintained by students and qualitative data were obtained from reports by the students and self-assessment questionnaires. Analysis. Simple counts of quantitative data were obtained, without further statistical analysis. The qualitative data were reviewed for insights into the motivations of students. Results. Given a free choice, most students adopted the Blogger platform for their blogs. Most blogs consisted of content reported from elsewhere and were not continued by the students following the end of the exercise. Conclusions. Students adopted an instrumental approach to the exercise, doing enough to complete the course requirements but not being sufficiently engaged to continue their blogs. Preliminary work based on basic competences is necessary in both collaboration processes and Web 2.0 technology to obtain satisfactory results in the use of Weblogs as teaching and learning tools.

<p> Using Callahan's (1962) vulnerability thesis as a theoretical framework, this qualitative case studies research examines the occupational socialization of secondary, public school librarians. The study examines three novice librarians' autobiographical narratives and explores how participants perceived the influence of professional, critical events. The study addresses the challenges and successes that novice school librarians encounter or bring about during their early years in the profession. The study also examines how critical events create professional identities of school librarians, and how narratives of vulnerability (re)produce culture myths about teaching and librarianship. </p><p> In order to have a better understanding of the occupational socialization of the school librarian participants, I collected data from multiple sources for each of the cases. The procedures included direct observations, interviews, and document analysis. The research began while participants were student teaching, and data was collected until their second year of practice. </p><p> The results of the analysis indicate that participants' student teaching placements provided polarized experiences to model their practices after: either unrealistic or unacceptable. All participants express that they were unprepared for their service in public schools, and they were unsupported by their administrators in their first school librarian positions. In addition, they convey great discomfort with the "myths" of their clerical work that their administrators or job titles demanded. The study suggests that in spite of their perceived inadequate socialization, school librarian participants exhibit strength in the midst of great occupational challenges and role uncertainty. </p>

Over many years much academic research has been carried out in the field of library and information science (US) into the information-seeking behaviour of individuals, and many models and theories of such behaviour have been put forward. Similarly, over an even longer period, there has been much research in the field of communication stud ies, particularly mass communications, and a large number of models of communication behaviour have been described. The research described in this thesis sets out to build on this work, learning from both fields, in order to develop a more comprehensive representation of information behaviour. Existing models were analysed to identify important elements of information behaviour and from these the new Information Seeking and Communication Model (ISCM) was formulated. This is the first time that a model of information behaviour has been constructed in this way from a range of different models from both LIS and communication studies. The ISCM is more comprehensive in scope than previous models. Those developed in library and information science are usually concerned with the information user and information seeking, while those from communication studies typically focus on the communicator and the effectiveness of the communication process. The ISCM takes into account both information users and information providers, their separate contexts, the activities of information seeking, information use and communication, and factors that affect them. The ISCM has been designed as a generic framework capable of application in different environments. Its validity has been tested in health care, where it has been shown to apply to the information behaviour of physicians as information users and to that of pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as information providers. Its practical value has been demonstrated in evidence-based medicine (EBM), where it offers in sights into the reasons why clinical practice does not necessarily follow EBM guidelines. It has also been found to be of use in identifying areas in which users (physicians) and providers (pharmaceutical companies and NICE) can improve their information behaviour in order to achieve their goals. This thesis contributes to knowledge by building on previous research and models to develop a more comprehensive model which provides practical insights into information behaviour and which has the potential for wide application.

No description available.

Information is a valuable commodity and its effective use is a vital part of everyday life. With the advancements of the internet and the increasing accessibility to it, the location of information is no longer the primary concern of information seekers. Digitisation techniques have made a wide variety of documents available on-line, and more and more publications are being published in electronic form simultaneously to their physical counterpart. The largest challenge currently facing information seekers is that of locating the correct information from the abundance available to them. Whenever a search query is made, the user is inundated with multiple options of documents to choose from. These documents are all deemed to have some relevance to the query produced by using an information retrieval algorithm. Thus far, automatic support has only been provided until the document retrieval level. The user is then left to search through the result set, mostly unaided, by the system he is using. In order to facilitate support for the users, a solid understanding of the information seeker's behaviours during this triage process is vital. Thus far, research into the behaviour of information seekers during the specific triage behaviour is limited. Even more limited however, is the evidence reporting the visual attention of the users. Since the triage process is highly visual, this important element needs to be thoroughly evidenced before accurately conceptualising the entire process. For this reason, this thesis aims to investigate the visual attention of information seekers during the document triage process. This will inform the modelling and conceptualisation of information seekers' behaviour during triage. In turn, this can be used to inform the design of supportive software. The thesis contains a review of related research and identifies the gaps that needs further investigation. From these, a series of user studies are then conducted on document triage. These in turn, facilitate the formulation and discussion of 2 document triage models and measurements to record the effectiveness of document triage. We study the visual attention of information seekers in four lab based studies, eliciting their exact gaze and focus details. We expand current research in the information seeking domain by reporting on findings from users' triage activities on small screen devices and when under time constraints. Furthermore, a high level diary study, gives us richer data on participants' triage activities over a larger period of time in their natural surroundings. All the studies are brought together to elicit requirements and measurements to understand system and user efficiency during each stage of the triage process.

I embarked on this research because I wanted to explore the basis of textual authority. Such an understanding is particularly important in a world where there is such an overload of information that it is a challenge for the public to identify which publications to choose when looking for specific information. I decided to look at the case of encyclopaedias because of the widespread belief that encyclopaedias are the ultimate authorities. I also made the choice based on the observation that, besides the research on Wikipedia, the scientific community seems to overlook encyclopaedias, despite of the role these latter play as key sources of information for the general public. Two theories are combined to serve as a framework for the thesis. On the one hand, there is the theory of cognitive authority as defined by Józef Maria Bocheński, Richard De George, and Patrick Wilson. On the other hand, there is the theory of quality as defined from the various frameworks recommended by librarians and information scientists on how to assess the quality of reference works. These two theoretical frameworks are used to deconstruct the concept of authority and to highlight aspects of authority which may be particularly worthy of investigation. In this thesis, studies were conducted on the following: (1) a literature review on the origin and evolution of encyclopaedia authority throughout the history of encyclopaedia, (2) a review of previous research pertaining to the quality and the authority of Wikipedia, (3) an analysis of the publishing and dissemination of science and technology encyclopaedias published in the 21st century throughout worldwide libraries, (4) a survey of perspective of encyclopaedia authors on the role of encyclopaedias in society and on the communication of scientific uncertainties and controversies, and (5) an analysis of book reviews towards a general assessment of encyclopaedia quality. The thesis illustrates how a concept such as authority which is typically taken for granted can actually be more complex and more problematic than it appears, thereby challenging widespread beliefs in society. In particular, the thesis pinpoints potential contradictions regarding the importance of the author and the publishers in ensuring encyclopaedia authority. On a theoretical level, the thesis revisits the concept of cognitive authority and initiates a discussion on the complex interaction between authority and quality. On a more pragmatic level, the thesis contributes towards the creation of guidelines for encyclopaedia development. As an exploratory study, the thesis also identifies a range of areas which should be of priority for future research.

<p> This thesis examines the life and career of Kate Foley, home teacher of the blind with the California State Library from 1914&ndash;1940. The purpose of this investigation is to determine how Foley, who was disabled, built a successful career with the state library despite facing significant discrimination and prejudice. Using a wide variety of primary source material, including letters, library publications, conference proceedings, newspaper articles, and census data, this biography evaluates Foley&rsquo;s pioneering role as well as the challenges she faced. Home teaching provided a new vocational opportunity for blind women, whose professional choices were extremely limited. Despite her unique career, the extensive contributions she made, and the fact that she was lauded upon her death as a pioneer and asset to the State of California, Foley&rsquo;s life has been largely ignored in the historical literature. This biography remedies the omission, drawing upon the history of library services, the history of disability, women&rsquo;s history, the history of Progressive Era California, and the history of state and federal welfare systems to provide context for her life and achievements. Chapters include discussions of the cause of Foley&rsquo;s blindness, her education at the California School for the Blind, her volunteer teaching work, her career with the California State Library, the early organized blind movement, and the development of social services for blind individuals.</p>