National cultural heritage institutions are charged with representative preservation of their countries’ cultural materials and the ways their staff undertake preservation activities impact to whom and how these materials are representative. Music is hailed as an integral part of a nation’s cultural heritage, but while aspects of its preservation are individually understood, their combined treatment in cultural institutions — music curation — and its ability to alter concepts of national identity are not. Consequently, we must ask how does music curation influence notions of national identity? By answering this question, this thesis seeks to contribute to our understanding of the ways that national cultural heritage institutions shape and promote a sense of national community. Since its beginning in 1800, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has adopted several roles: a congressional resource; a copyright repository; a research centre; a hub for and leader in the library community; and cultural heritage institution. These combine to make the Library of Congress the de facto national library of the United States. However, these roles are not inherently congruent and in some instances undermine each other. Additionally, music has not always been easily integrated into its mission and its collections. Functioning as a national library, the Library of Congress potentially performs significant roles in the preservation and presentation of music, activities that make it an appropriate case study for investigating how music curation affects notions of national identity. Therefore, this work is structured in the following way: first, it offers an historical overview of the Library of Congress’ three music related departments — the Music Division, the American Folklife Center and the Recorded Sound component of the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division — to illuminate political, cultural and aesthetic forces that shaped their developments and their approaches to music curation. Second, it presents Howard Becker’s art world as the analytical framework by which this thesis critically engages narrative and identity theories. Third, employing the Library of Congress as a case study, it then investigates eight music curation narratives and juxtaposes them against its image as a cultural heritage institution. Narratives, gathered during semi-structured interviews and presented as interpretive stories, provide a focused insight into the tensions between staff and institution as well as institution and projected notions of national identity. In the context of music curation, this thesis’ conclusions illustrate a gap between the Library of Congress’ iconic image and its actual image, one that is perpetuated by its focus on research.

Le but de mon travail de thèse est de concevoir de nouveaux codeurs d'images inspirées de la rétine. En effet, alors que la question du codage est importante pour l'économie d'énergie et de bande passante, nous sommes convaincus que peu est encore à gagner si aucun changement n'est fait dans la philosophie qui sous-tend la conception de la nouvelle image codeurs / décodeurs. Donc, mon travail vise à jeter les bases de la conception de l'image originale et les systèmes de compression vidéo qui sont basées sur des modèles de systèmes visuels biologiques. Ici, nous allons nous concentrer sur la rétine comme il est l'organe responsable de l'acquisition du stimulus visuel et le premier dispositif de codage dans le système visuel humain. Le sujet traité est très difficile et motivant pour deux raisons principales. La première est que les techniques de compression vidéo sont aujourd'hui indispensables pour la plupart des équipements standards tels que HDTV et DVD, et que le récent progrès technique nous permet d'imaginer des schémas de codage plus sophistiqués. Le second est que les récentes découvertes en neurosciences sur le système visuel humain pourrait être une source d'inspiration pour proposer de nouvelles idées, surtout si nous sommes en mesure de mieux comprendre le code neural de la rétine. Ainsi, nous nous attendons à une approche interdisciplinaire qui peut aider à atteindre nos objectifs. Cette approche permettrait de combiner les techniques de traitement du signal et les connaissances acquises par les neurophysiologistes. Nous espérons que ce travail va conduire à de nouveaux algorithmes de codage qui vont au-delà des normes.

The problem of determining whether a document is about a loosely defined topic is at the core of text Information Retrieval (IR). An automatic IR system should be able to determine if a document is likely to convey information on a topic. In most cases, it has to do it solely based on measure- ments of the use of terms in the document (lexical measurements). In this work a novel scheme for measuring and representing lexical information from text documents is proposed. This scheme is inspired by the concept of ideal measurement as is described by Quantum Theory (QT). We apply it to Information Retrieval through formal analogies between text processing and physical measurements. The main contribution of this work is the development of a complete mathematical scheme to describe lexical measurements. These measurements encompass current ways of repre- senting text, but also completely new representation schemes for it. For example, this quantum-like representation includes logical features such as non-Boolean behaviour that has been suggested to be a fundamental issue when extracting information from natural language text. This scheme also provides a formal unification of logical, probabilistic and geometric approaches to the IR problem. From the concepts and structures in this scheme of lexical measurement, and using the principle of uncertain conditional, an “Aboutness Witness” is defined as a transformation that can detect docu- ments that are relevant to a query. Mathematical properties of the Aboutness Witness are described in detail and related to other concepts from Information Retrieval. A practical application of this concept is also developed for ad hoc retrieval tasks, and is evaluated with standard collections. Even though the introduction of the model instantiated here does not lead to substantial perfor- mance improvements, it is shown how it can be extended and improved, as well as how it can generate a whole range of radically new models and methodologies. This work opens a number of research possibilities both theoretical and experimental, like new representations for documents in Hilbert spaces or other forms, methodologies for term weighting to be used either within the proposed framework or independently, ways to extend existing methodologies, and a new range of operator-based methods for several tasks in IR.

Searching for information is a recurring problem that almost everyone has faced at some point. Being in a library looking for a book, searching through newspapers and magazines for an old article or searching through emails for an old conversation with a colleague are some examples of the searching activity. These are some of the many situations where someone; the “user”; has some vague idea of the information he is looking for; an “information need”; and is searching through a large number of documents, emails or articles; “information items”; to find the most “relevant” item for his purpose. In this thesis we study the problem of retrieving images from large image archives. We consider two different approaches for image retrieval. The first approach is content based image retrieval where the user is searching images using a query image. The second approach is semantic retrieval where the users expresses his query using keywords. We proposed a unified framework to treat both approaches using generative probabilistic models in order to rank and classify images with respect to user queries. The methodology presented in this Thesis is evaluated on a real image collection and compared against state of the art methods.

This is the thesis (critical appraisal) component of a PhD by Published Works. The overall submission was a portfolio of ten published papers supported by a critical appraisal focusing on two key areas: an exploration of the roles that Health Information Professionals (HIPs) can play within evidence based practice (EBP) and an exploration of the effectiveness and impact of the traditional supportive role played by HIPs within EBP. The published papers are listed and referenced within this document but not contained within it. The majority are available elsewhere within the University of Salford Institutional Repository. Drawing on a model developed from the library literature, the thesis highlights a wide range of supportive and active roles that HIPs can potentially play within EBP. This model is informed and illuminated by the studies within the portfolio that demonstrate how the author has fulfilled a wide range of these roles in practice, and identified a new role within systematic reviews in health and social care. This demonstrates that HIPs can transfer their skills outside their traditional library and information practice domain, thus extending their role and offering a range of professional opportunities. Using a varied range of research methodologies, the thesis also explores the effectiveness and impact of the contribution made by HIPs when using traditional skills to support EBP. Two models are used to illustrate the outcomes to which HIPs contribute. These include improving search skills and providing evidence which can, over the longer term, contribute to policy making and patient care. At present the weight of the evidence presented to support these links is weak. Methodological issues and future research that needs to be addressed to improve the strength of the evidence base are therefore highlighted and discussed.

The knowledge available to be exploited by text classification and information retrieval systems has significantly changed, both in nature and quantity, in the last years. Nowadays, there are several sources of information that can potentially improve the classification process, and systems should be able to adapt to incorporate multiple sources of available data in different formats. This fact is specially important in environments where the required information changes rapidly, and its utility may be contingent on timely implementation. For these reasons, the importance of adaptability and flexibility in information systems is rapidly growing. Current systems are usually developed for specific scenarios. As a result, significant engineering effort is needed to adapt them when new knowledge appears or there are changes in the information needs. This research investigates the usage of knowledge within text classification from two different perspectives. On one hand, the application of descriptive approaches for the seamless modelling of text classification, focusing on knowledge integration and complex data representation. The main goal is to achieve a scalable and efficient approach for rapid prototyping for Text Classification that can incorporate different sources and types of knowledge, and to minimise the gap between the mathematical definition and the modelling of a solution. On the other hand, the improvement of different steps of the classification process where knowledge exploitation has traditionally not been applied. In particular, this thesis introduces two classification sub-tasks, namely Semi-Automatic Text Classification (SATC) and Document Performance Prediction (DPP), and several methods to address them. SATC focuses on selecting the documents that are more likely to be wrongly assigned by the system to be manually classified, while automatically labelling the rest. Document performance prediction estimates the classification quality that will be achieved for a document, given a classifier. In addition, we also propose a family of evaluation metrics to measure degrees of misclassification, and an adaptive variation of k-NN.

Printing has been one of Scotland's most significant industries since it was introduced over 500 years ago but remained for much of the period, a local industry. The Scottish publishing and printing industries in the nineteenth century left many documentary traces, but most research has concentrated on large urban centres such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, with regional centres of print production all but ignored. In the nineteenth century, these local print economies served the business, administrative, political and leisure needs of an increasingly urbanised Scotland. My research is focused on the operation of the support structures and networks which developed among operative printers in Scotland's regional print centres from around 1830 to the end of the nineteenth century. As a case study I have selected the Royal Burgh of Dumfries, the most important market town in south-west Scotland, which was also a stop on the route between central Scotland and the industrial centres of Lancashire, and further south to London. A local printing industry developed during the eighteenth century, and by 1830 Dumfries was the home of a range of businesses in the printing and allied trades. The examination of the local print economy investigates the businesses and organisations engaged in print production and distribution in the local area, the technologies which were in use, and the material record of the town. The individual 'print trade lives' are considered in some detail, looking at the range and variety of career patterns in the industry. The options for a larger study of print networks based on trade records are also considered. Sources for the study include local and regional trade society records, business records, trade journals and other publications, and contemporary (mainly local) newspapers. It also draws on technological manuals and other secondary material in Edinburgh Napier University's Edward Clark Collection.

Music collections available to listeners have grown at a dramatic pace, now spanning tens of millions of tracks. Interacting with a music retrieval system can thus be overwhelming, with users offered ‘too-much-choice’. The level of engagement required for such retrieval interactions can be inappropriate, such as in mobile or multitasking contexts. Music recommender systems are widely employed to address this issue, however tend toward the opposite extreme of disempowering users and suffer from issues of subjectivity and confounds, such as the equalisation of tracks. This challenge and the styles of retrieval interaction involved are characterised in terms of user engagement in music retrieval, and the relationships between existing conceptualisations of user engagement is explored. Using listening histories and work from music psychology, a set of engagement-stratified profiles of listening behaviour are developed. A dataset comprising the playlists of thousands of users is used to contribute a user-centric approach to feature selection. The challenge of designing music retrieval for different levels of user engagement is first explored with a proof of concept, low engagement music retrieval system enabling users to casually retrieve music by tapping its rhythm as a query. The design methodology is then generalised with an engagement-dependent system, allowing users to denote their level of engagement and thus the specificity of their music queries. The engagement-dependent retrieval interaction is then explored as a component in a commercial music system. This thesis contributes the engagement-stratified profiles and metrics of listening behaviour, a corresponding design methodology for interaction, and presents a set of research and commercial applications for music retrieval.

Since the 1980s, two paradigms have dominated the representation of formatted electronic documents: flowable and fixed. Flowable formats, such as HTML, EPUB, or those used by word processors, allow documents to scale to any arbitrary page size, but typographical compromises must be made since the layout is computed in real time, and is re-computed each time the document is displayed. Conversely, fixed formats such as SVG or PDF are afforded the potential for arbitrarily complex typography, but are constrained to the fixed layout that is set at the time of creation. With the recent surge in popularity of low-powered portable reading devices -- from tablets to e-readers to mobile phones -- there is an expectation that documents should scale to any size, maintain their high-quality typography, and not provide unnecessary strain on an already overloaded battery. This thesis defines a novel paradigm for electronic document representation -- the Malleable Document -- whereby documents are partially typeset at the time of creation, leaving enough flexibility that their content can be flowed to arbitrary page sizes with minimal computation. One tradeoff encountered is that of increased file size, and this is addressed with a bespoke, computationally-light compression scheme. A sample implementation is presented that transforms documents from a source format into Malleable Document format, alongside a lightweight display engine that enables the documents to be viewed and resized on a wide range of devices, mobile and otherwise. Reviews of the technical aspects and a user study to evaluate the quality of the system's rendering and layout show that the Malleable Document paradigm is a promising alternative to both fixed and flowable formats, and builds upon the best of both approaches.

Cette thèse de recherche vient en complément des études suivies à l'école ESCP-EAP, à Paris, dans le cadre d'un mastère spécialisé en stratégie et management des systèmes d'information. Celui-ci fait suite à une formation d'ingénieur expert en systèmes et réseaux informatiques à l'Ecole Supérieure de Génie Informatique, à Paris. Ce document est divisé en trois parties à travers lesquelles il est présenté une analyse de l'intégration des logiciels libres au sein des ministères français et de leurs administrations. La première partie donne un aperçu du concept ainsi que du monde du libre et des logiciels qui le forment. Le but de cette partie est d'acquérir une meilleure compréhension du domaine " Open source ". On y trouve ainsi la présentation d'un rapide historique, d'une définition du terme et des caractéristiques des logiciels libres, des principaux enjeux qui résultent de cette technologie et de son cadre juridique, tous aspects qui constituent l'environnement dans lequel s'inscrit l'orientation des ministères vers le " libre ". La deuxième partie réunit le résultat d'une phase d'enquêtes menées auprès de différents ministères français, de leurs administrations et des responsables des directions des systèmes d'information respectifs. Il y est exposé les principales migrations vers les logiciels libres au sein de ces ministères avant de caractériser plus précisément le choix de cette reconversion, ses intérêts et ses éventuelles difficultés. La dernière partie de ce document s'attache à examiner les suites de changement. Inévitablement, des réactions antagonistes se manifestent mais qui, n'empêchent pas une réelle réflexion sur l'avenir des logiciels libres au sein des ministères. En tout état de cause, ceux-ci apparaissent comme un tremplin pour les logiciels libres dans les différents secteurs.