Towards the end of the twentieth century there was a furore of activity and interest regarding the potential of information communication technologies (ICTs) to contribute towards a process of development. The growing interest in ICT for development (ICT4D) resulted in a World Summit held over two stages in 2003 and 2005 and a plethora of initiatives and interventions. However to date, the mechanisms and ways in which ICTs may best be applied to development, and in particular poverty reduction, remain unclear. The study described herein contributes to this debate. The study is concerned with the analysis of a single ICT based intervention in rural Java in the Republic of Indonesia; the e-Pabelan telecentre project. The objective of e-Pabelan was to overcome information asymmetries and improve the market participation of poor rural farmers. The objective of this study is to analyse the impacts of this intervention and its underlying conceptual basis. In order to facilitate the research a conceptual framework is presented that draws on Richard Heeks’ (1999b) concept of the information chain and Stuart Plattner’s (1985) concept of equilibrating markets. After Heeks, the conceptual framework emphasises that the assimilation and application of information towards a desired development outcome is a staged process. In order to better contextualise and understand such a process the research presents an analysis of actors, goods and transactions in relation to the market relations of poor farmers after Plattner. The research consists of an extended case study. Two key survey instruments are also employed. One is a survey of 216 poor households and the other is a survey of 70 poor farmers. These survey instruments are employed within a broader research context that utilises participant observation, informal interviews and occasional participatory rural appraisal (PRA) instruments. The research emphasises the importance of contextualisation in seeking to better understand the application of ICT based intervention towards poverty reduction. The research highlights issues of access within ICT4D and challenges approaches that see ICT4D as universally applicable and relevant. Instead, the research demonstrates that the institutional context that ICT4D initiatives are placed into and implemented through can have significant bearings on the perceived utility of the intervention by the intended beneficiaries. The research shows that a failure to engage with local contexts during the establishing of access to ICTs can result in such initiatives being disempowering rather than empowering. The research also questions conceptualisations of poverty within ICT4D that emphasise the widening of opportunities over and above the increasing of security. With regard to markets the research demonstrates that the received view not uncommon within ICT4D literature of the farmer as a passive victim of impersonal markets is flawed. The research shows that the way in which poor farmer in Java manage risk through their selection of differing crops and the manner in which these farmers play the market is central to understanding how ICT4D interventions are assessed in terms of utility and relevance. The research concludes that there is a need for greater engagement between the emerging field of ICT4D and the broader field of development studies. There is also a need to better contextualise and target ICT4D interventions in relation to the specific needs and conditions of the intended beneficiaries. Such an approach requires acknowledging that the adoption and application of information will be subject to a process of continual assessment; rather than seeing assessment as a separate stage within the information chain. In this regard a framework for the analysis of market based ICT4D interventions seeking to impact upon poverty is developed via the research from the original conceptual framework outlined above.

Esta investigación analiza cuáles son los factores sociales y tecnológicos que han brindado la posibilidad del nacimiento de los medios libres como se conocen ahora, y que también permiten que la difusión de la información se haga de manera mucho más rápida y eficaz. Estos factores sociales y tecnológicos también han influido en la generación de nuevos espacios para la difusión de la información y nuevas formas de acción política que repercuten en los movimientos provocando cambios en sus formas de organización. En el marco de estas nuevas condiciones sociales, el objetivo principal de esta investigación es analizar las redes sociales para la difusión de la información y el intercambio de conocimiento, a través de un estudio de caso sobre la relación que estableció Radio Zapote, una radio libre ubicada en la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, con Radio Universidad, estación de la Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca tomada por la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca en 2006, para poder así describir cuáles son las funciones de los medios libres que les permiten ser nuevas herramientas para los movimientos sociales.

The first part of the work is focused on the history and last trend on library automation and integrated library systems, with specific attention on the italian context. The second part evaluates some possible use of open source software in library and open source diffusion in Italy.The third part analyze Koha, an open source ILS, and its possible application at the University of Ca' Foscari Library System.

This disseratition copes with a actual and controversly discussed topic. It is a compilation and knowledgable discussion of central analyses concerning the journals crisis with special regard to electronic publishing as well as initiatives of the open access, selfarchiving and preprint server community. It serves as a source of contributions of different actors in the market for electronic scholarly information, being commercial or uncommercial publishers, scholarly societies, libraries, etc.

El presente trabajo explora algunas de las propuestas visionarias de Paul Otlet en relación con el acceso universal a los documentos, así como su impacto y repercusión en los actuales sistemas de información digital a través del uso de Nuevas Tecnología de Información y Comunicación.

This research reported in this thesis explores job search networking amongst 16-24 year olds living in Scotland, and the role of social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) during this process. Networking is treated as an information behaviour; reflecting this, the study is underpinned by a prominent model from the domain of information science. A sequential, mixed methods approach was applied to gather data. This included the use of interviews, focus groups, and a survey questionnaire. The interviews incorporated ego-centric network methods to develop a relational perspective of job search networking. The findings show that young people accrue different types of information from network contacts which can be useful for all job search tasks. Indeed, frequent networking offline and on social media is associated with positive job search outcomes. This is especially true of engaging with family members and acquaintances, and frequent use of Facebook for job search purposes. However, demographic and other contextual factors have a substantial impact on the nature of networking behaviours, and the extent to which they can influence outcomes. Additionally, young jobseekers face a range of barriers to networking, do not always utilise their networks thoroughly, and are more likely to use social media platforms as supplementary tools for job search. A key contribution of this work is that it provides a detailed insight into the process of networking that has been neglected in previous studies. Its focus on social media also reveals a new dimension to the concept which has received little attention in the job search literature. Given its focus on young jobseekers living in Scotland, the findings have also been used to create a detailed list of recommendations for practitioners.

This thesis presents an empirical investigation of the problems of including pictorial digital art in the context of Digital Libraries (DLs). The rational for this work is that digital art material is a significant source of learning and research, provided that it is systematically collected and maintained in structured electronic repositories. The thesis addresses a fundamental question: How to provide description and retrieval services, which are based on the needs of digital art user communities? This raises three research issues. One is the need to combine DL collections into meaningful and functional content. The second is the importance of a user-oriented approach to designing and developing Digital Libraries. The third is the requirement for continuing access to digital art as a record of modern culture. These questions are explored through a needs assessment targeted to Arts & Humanities scholars, digital artists and representatives of the DL community. A data collection methodology is developed, based on the principles of Social Informatics and a case study of evaluation efforts in extant projects. The results from this process demonstrate that the scholarly value of digital art can be established by aggregating material from various repositories into a unified dataset. The results also identify specific documentation and retrieval issues deriving from inclusion of digital art in a DL environment that necessitate further investigation. To this end, a review of sixteen digital art online resources is conducted which reveals ad-hoc collection strategies and metadata deficiencies. The work presents a prototype Digital Library for enhancing the educational outcome of digital art. The application is used as an implementation platform for material aggregation and augmented documentation through the Media Art Notation System (MANS). The summative evaluation findings confirm that the suggested solutions are highly rated by the targeted audiences. The thesis makes a contribution to academic knowledge in situating the representation of digital art within modern society. By critically examining the unique requirements of this material using the resources of social theory, the thesis represents a contemporary and pragmatic perspective on digital media art. In a well-structured Digital Library, the scholarly potential of digital art is much greater than the currently employed ad-hoc context. This work offers a sustained reflection and a roadmap for selecting and consistently applying a strategy that aims to continually improve the quality of digital art provision.

Maintaining accessibility to and understanding of digital information over time is a complex challenge that often requires contributions and interventions from a variety of individuals and organizations. The processes of preservation planning and evaluation are fundamentally implicit and share similar complexity. Both demand comprehensive knowledge and understanding of every aspect of to-be-preserved content and the contexts within which preservation is undertaken. Consequently, means are required for the identification, documentation and association of those properties of data, representation and management mechanisms that in combination lend value, facilitate interaction and influence the preservation process. These properties may be almost limitless in terms of diversity, but are integral to the establishment of classes of risk exposure, and the planning and deployment of appropriate preservation strategies. We explore several research objectives within the course of this thesis. Our main objective is the conception of an ontology for risk management of digital collections. Incorporated within this are our aims to survey the contexts within which preservation has been undertaken successfully, the development of an appropriate methodology for risk management, the evaluation of existing preservation evaluation approaches and metrics, the structuring of best practice knowledge and lastly the demonstration of a range of tools that utilise our findings. We describe a mixed methodology that uses interview and survey, extensive content analysis, practical case study and iterative software and ontology development. We build on a robust foundation, the development of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment. We summarise the extent of the challenge facing the digital preservation community (and by extension users and creators of digital materials from many disciplines and operational contexts) and present the case for a comprehensive and extensible knowledge base of best practice. These challenges are manifested in the scale of data growth, the increasing complexity and the increasing onus on communities with no formal training to offer assurances of data management and sustainability. These collectively imply a challenge that demands an intuitive and adaptable means of evaluating digital preservation efforts. The need for individuals and organisations to validate the legitimacy of their own efforts is particularly prioritised. We introduce our approach, based on risk management. Risk is an expression of the likelihood of a negative outcome, and an expression of the impact of such an occurrence. We describe how risk management may be considered synonymous with preservation activity, a persistent effort to negate the dangers posed to information availability, usability and sustainability. Risk can be characterised according to associated goals, activities, responsibilities and policies in terms of both their manifestation and mitigation. They have the capacity to be deconstructed into their atomic units and responsibility for their resolution delegated appropriately. We continue to describe how the manifestation of risks typically spans an entire organisational environment, and as the focus of our analysis risk safeguards against omissions that may occur when pursuing functional, departmental or role-based assessment. We discuss the importance of relating risk-factors, through the risks themselves or associated system elements. To do so will yield the preservation best-practice knowledge base that is conspicuously lacking within the international digital preservation community. We present as research outcomes an encapsulation of preservation practice (and explicitly defined best practice) as a series of case studies, in turn distilled into atomic, related information elements. We conduct our analyses in the formal evaluation of memory institutions in the UK, US and continental Europe. Furthermore we showcase a series of applications that use the fruits of this research as their intellectual foundation. Finally we document our results in a range of technical reports and conference and journal articles. We present evidence of preservation approaches and infrastructures from a series of case studies conducted in a range of international preservation environments. We then aggregate this into a linked data structure entitled PORRO, an ontology relating preservation repository, object and risk characteristics, intended to support preservation decision making and evaluation. The methodology leading to this ontology is outlined, and lessons are exposed by revisiting legacy studies and exposing the resource and associated applications to evaluation by the digital preservation community.

The time-averaged Navier-Stokes' partial differential equations have been used in the mathematical modelling of fluid flow for steady, incompressible non-cavitating, high Reynolds number turbulence through an orifice plate. The model developed for orifice plates was based on a particular closed form turbulent model: the k-ε two equation model developed at Imperial College, London and embodied in the TEACH-T finite difference computer code. A basic model for axisymmetric flow through an orifice meter was developed by appropriate modification of the TEACH-T program to incorporate orifice plate geometry, upstream/downstream distances, Reynolds number, inlet velocity profile and the calculation of output quantities of interest such as discharge and pressure loss coefficients. The model vas tested for convergence and general adequacy on an orifice of diameter ratio β= .7 in a 4 inch pipe line and at a Reynolds number of 105. Quantitative tests were then conducted on thin orifice plates in the range .3 β .7. Results were compared with those from BSI 1042 for discharge coefficients (flange, D-D/2 and corner tappings) and published results for pressure loss coefficients. The results show that the discharge coefficients predictions are within 3% of experiment with very close agreement in the mid-range (β = .45). The pressure loss coefficients predictions are within 15" of experiment. Sensitivity tests were then conducted to see how these coefficients varied with such quantities as inlet velocity I profile, turbulence levels and orifice plate thickness. These results indicated that the orifice is relatively insensitive to velocity profiles (1/12 power law and uniform) and. turbulence levels. Also below a certain orifice plate thickness ratio the discharge coefficient is almost constant. It is concluded that such modelling can be a most valuable aid in understanding the behaviour of the orifice meter and similar devices. In particular this would aid in the design of novel flow meters based on the differential pressure principle. Extensive mathematical and computational details including the derivation of the k-t model equations from first principles are relegated to appendices. A source listing of the developed model is also provided in appendix G.

In this study an in depth investigation of successful competitive strategies for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is undertaken. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the strategic orientation of UK Manufacturing SMEs. In the process, it will test Porter’s (1980, 1985) theoretical framework of generic strategies and thus evaluate firms’ preferred strategic synthesis. It will, therefore, test the efficacy of the value chain and develop any specific pattern that relates to a combination strategy. The investigation of the above objectives is undertaken utilising a mixed research methodology with the purpose of examining the applicability of existing competitive strategy frameworks (phase 1) and testing a new theoretical framework that incorporates additional dimensions of strategy (phase 2). During phase 1, Porter’s framework is employed to investigate SMEs’ strategic orientation as a means to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. A semi-structured questionnaire is employed and the analysis is carried out by means of factor and cluster analysis to identify strategic variables currently employed by SMEs. During phase 2, the theoretical framework is operationalised to bridge the gap within the literature and existing empirical research. Its purpose is to identify forms of successful competitive strategies of UK MSMEs as they are formulated and implemented in firms’ value chain activities. The data was collected through a number of semi-structured interviews and the analysis was based on data categorisation. The findings indicate that Porter’s (1980) single generic strategies are not the best option for UK MSMEs for gaining competitive advantage and that the