The purpose of this study was (1) to present a biographical sketch of the novelist Janice Holt Giles in terms of the influences upon her writing, (2) to evaluate the Kentucky historical novels written by Mrs. Giles in light of the requirements for historical fiction, and (3) to present a survey of the reviews of those books. The life data on the author were obtained largely through two personal interviews with her and through her two autobiographical works: 40 Acres and No Mule and A Little Better Than Plumb. The Adair County Record Books on file at the Court House in Columbia, Kentucky, were consulted to determine the time the Giles ancestors made their first settlement in south-central Kentucky. For references to other biographical information, Biography Index, Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Education Index, and Library Literature were searched. A scant amount of data on the author were found in Current Biography 1958, Wilson Library Bulletin, and Contemporary Authors 1962. Certain criteria for evaluating historical fiction were specified in order to appraise the Kentucky frontier books by Mrs. Giles. The requirements of sound historical fiction: truth, graphic power, consistent character portrayal, sustained dramatic and human interest, are those cited by Helen E. Haines in her work Living with Books. Each requirement was discussed in evaluating all the books covered in this paper. Included in the discussion were details from the life influences of the author as they were thought to bear upon the novels. In conclusion, each book met those requirements of sound historical fiction. Hannah Fowler and The Land Beyond the Mountains were the most highly praised in the survey of reviews.

This thesis is built on the assumption that organizations are in important respect social networks whereby knowledge is socially constructed and shared. Social network analysis (SNA) was employed to investigate the strength of inter-unit ties among twenty two units within a financial organization. The association of these ties with the sharing of different types of knowledge was measured by a specifically created and developed web survey that was provided to twenty two units in the organization. Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure (MRQAP) was used to examine two main questions and hypothesis. First and foremost, was to determine if there were associations between the strength of business and social ties and the sharing of different types of knowledge, i.e. public (noncodified vs. codified) and private (noncodified vs. codified). Second, to establish which of the two dimensions of strength -- closeness of a relationship, or the frequency of interaction served as a stronger predictor for sharing of the four different kinds of knowledge the thesis delineated. Results showed that the strength of the business relationships rather than the strength of the social relationships contributed most significantly to the sharing of public and private knowledge in this organization. Specifically, the frequency of business interactions predicted the sharing of public noncodified knowledge, while the closeness of the business relationship predicted the sharing of private noncodified knowledge and the sharing of public codified knowledge. Curiously, neither business nor social ties predicted the sharing of private codified knowledge. The results also indicated that closeness of ties is a stronger predictor for sharing of more kinds of knowledge than frequency of interaction. By using new variable configuration and dichotomies for tie strength and knowledge types, the thesis generated new insights concerning the effects of tie strength on knowledge sharing.

This research is an effort to understand chat reference services through librarians' perceptions of successful and less successful chat reference service. Ten Academic libraries in Ohio and Pennsylvania which offered chat reference services were identified and 40 librarians were interviewed in order to address the research questions of this study. The main methodology used was the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) that is based on collecting and analyzing the most memorable experiences of human behavior in order to evaluate and identify ways to increase effectiveness of service. On-site, personal interviews were conducted with librarians who provide chat reference services. The subjects were initially asked to define chat reference service and compare it with traditional reference services. Following CIT procedures, they were then asked to recall and describe successful and less successful chat reference interactions and to make suggestions for better chat reference services. The interviews were transcribed and entered into a database for coding and content analysis of the collected data using qualitative data analysis software (MAXqda). Coded data were transformed into categories to determine and describe librarians' perceptions of chat reference services. The six major themes that emerged from this study were: 1-Characteristics of chat reference, 2-Attitudes of librarians and users, 3-Efficiency of reference interview and question negotiation, 4-Service improvement and management issues, 5-Training and review, and 6-Publicity and user awareness. These themes were discussed throughout the study. Findings from the recorded critical incidents indicate the importance of ``attitudes" of librarians and users, the role of question ``negotiation" and ``type", and the availability of ``resources" in successful chat reference service. The defining characteristics of chat reference, that it is online, remotely available and delivered through software raised issues of ``technology", ``chat software", ``service location" and ``service hours" which were also significant in defining service success. Furthermore, investigation of reference service quality criteria, evaluation measures and methods were explored by comparing literature on traditional and chat reference services and study findings. This study provides practical evaluation criteria for providing successful chat reference services in three categories based on: librarians' performance, chat software, and marketing issues. Further research for developing comprehensive digital reference evaluation criteria is recommended.

This study examines the career development factors and strategies used by public library directors whose library systems service a population of 100,000 or more. The intent is to research the directors own use of these factors and strategies, their perceived importance to the directors career development and finally strategies recommended by the directors for use by middle level public library managers. This study addresses all three areas and produces a comparison of factor/strategy use vs. importance vs. suggested use. An integral part of this research includes tables showing the significance of relationships among the selected strategies as well as among the external factors of age, gender, geographic mobility and luck/serendipity. Independently recommended strategies are also provided by the directors for potential adoption by the middle-level manager. As such, the findings of this study may be used as a possible reference point to assist public library middle level managers in their own successful career development.

Meta Search Engines are finding tools developed for enhancing the search performance by submitting user queries to multiple search engines and combining the search results in a unified ranked list. They utilized data fusion technique, which requires three major steps: databases selection, the results combination, and the results merging. This study tries to build a framework that can be used for merging the search results retrieved from any set of search engines. This framework based on answering three major questions: 1.How meta-search developers could define the optimal rank order for the selected engines. 2. How meta-search developers could choose the best search engines combination. 3. What is the optimal heuristic merging function that could be used for aggregating the rank order of the retrieved documents form incomparable search engines. The main data collection process depends on running 40 general queries on three major search engines (Google, AltaVista, and Alltheweb). Real users have involved in the relevance judgment process for a five point relevancy scale. The performance of the three search engines, their different combinations and different merging algorithm have been compared to rank the database, choose the best combination and define the optimal merging function. The major findings of this study are (1) Ranking the databases in merging process should depends on their overall performance not their popularity or size; (2)Larger databases tend to perform better than smaller databases; (3)The combination of the search engines should depend on ranking the database and choosing the appropriate combination function; (4)Search Engines tend to retrieve more overlap relevant document than overlap irrelevant documents; and (5) The merging function which take the overlapped documents into accounts tend to perform better than the interleave and the rank similarity function. In addition to these findings the study has developed a set of requirements for the merging process to be successful. This procedure include the databases selection, the combination, and merging upon heuristic solutions.

Despite centuries of organizing information in libraries and other information institutions, little is known about how a document is analyzed to determine its subject matter. This case study is a qualitative exploration to better understand the processes involved in the conceptual analysis of documents. Conceptual analysis, an essential step in the subject analysis process, is the attempt by a cataloger or indexer to determine the subject matter, or the aboutness, of a document. The purpose of this research is to examine how interested yet untrained participants perform the tasks of conceptual analysis when no process is suggested. The study uses observation, think-aloud procedures, and in-depth, semi-structured interviews to understand the participants subject determination processes. Transcripts of the analysis sessions and interviews were examined for underlying patterns of analysis. The aims of this research are to understand how individuals approach the process of determining aboutness, what bibliographic, content, or visual cues they use to find key aboutness data, and what patterns emerge during the subject determination process. This research begins an attempt to develop a model of conceptual analysis to be used in teaching, research, and praxis.

Information Seeking

Information retrieval systems

A proposal including a study of its problems and prospects

CFTRI s research publications