M. Tech. Business Information Systems / The major objective of this study was to conceptualize a framework needed to guide effective usage of digital library. This study was motivated by the fact that, much as several studies have been conducted to inform digital library usage ; the determinants of the effective usage are still not clearly articulated. The study utilized the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to guide the flow and collection of data. By using a close ended questionnaire data was collected from three campuses of Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) namely ; Pretoria, Soshanguve and Garankwa. The Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) v21 was used to conduct univariate and bivariate analyses.

Conditor is a software tool which works with textual documents containing historical information. The purpose of this work two-fold: firstly to show the validity of the developed engine to correctly identify and label the entities of the universe of discourse with a labelled-combined XTM-DITA model. Secondly to explain the improvements achieved in the information retrieval process thanks to the use of a object-oriented database (JPOX) as well as its integration into the Lucene-type database search process to not only accomplish more accurate searches, but to also help the future development of a recommender system [21]. We finish with a brief demo in a 3D-graph of the results of the aforementioned search.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, this project is the first phase of the National Civil Engineering Education Resources Library (NCERL). The aim is to provide high-quality educational resources in the field of civil engineering and meet the needs of a diverse audience by developing Interactive Learning Objects that are easy to use, measured, and meet learning objectives.

This report is a later version of the JCDL 2006 poster / This report summarizes the results of an ACRL Samuel Lazerow Fellowship funded research project to investigate the extent to which publishers and vendors are making use of technological protection measures ("TPM" also known as DRM) to control access to and use of licensed full-text scholarly materials or data sets. The study also began to explore the impact of access and use restrictions on learning, scholarship and library management.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. (2001) Usability evaluation. In W. Karwowski (ed.) Encyclopedia of Human Factors and Ergonomics, London: Taylor and Francis. Introduction: Usability is a measure of interface quality that refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which users can perform tasks with a tool. Evaluating usability is now considered an essential part of the system development process and a variety of methods and have been developed to support the human factors professional in this work.

This research project explains the birth and evolution of an information repository called XTMdb whose basic principles are intended to integrate complementary tagging languages such as: SKOS; MODS, Dublin Core and/or GILS with the paradigm of topic maps. Once the information processing was completed, the repository was tested by means of an efficient information retrieval process which allows the information resources description to be extended in real time. This allowed to obtain greater expressivity, independence in relation to the tagging language, as well as improved searches since the search can be centred on the topic concept. Certain other aspects remain outstanding such as: the topic maps paradigm can provide added value visual information, the development of a support system decision is easy and soft-computing techniques can solve a considerable amount of problems in relation to the information retrieval process.

This is a revised version of David Goodman, "Open Access: What Comes Next." Learned Publishing 18(1):13-23 (2005) The present revision adjusts the figures, their corresponding legends, and discussion to match the Note added in proof in the published article. The published article itself has the Note added in proof only, since it was not practical to adjust the figures. The changes here are sufficiently great that the author considers this version independent, and has consequently given it an altered title. / This is a revised version of David Goodman, "Open Access: What Comes Next." Learned Publishing 18(1):13-23 (2005) The present revision adjusts the figures, their corresponding legends, and discussion to match the Note added in proof in the published article. The published article itself has the Note added in proof only, since it was not practical to adjust the figures. The changes here are sufficiently great that the author considers this version independent, and has consequently given it an altered title. This article examines the effects that present decisions about Open Access (OA) will have over the next ten years. It will be shown that the consequences are affected both by deliberate choices of policy by librarians and publishers, as well as by the adoption of various alternatives by scientific authors. The eventual result could be excellent, or quite otherwise.

Information finding is changing in a world of digital information and associated search systems, with particular focus on methods of locating information that are distinct from, but complementary to, established practices of bibliographic description. A full understanding of these developments is essential in re-thinking bibliographic control in the new millennium, because they fundamentally change the roles and importance of bibliographic metadata in information discovery processes. There are three major approaches to finding information: through bibliographic surrogates, that represent an intellectual description of aspects and attributes of a work; through computational, content-based techniques that compare queries to parts of the actual works themselves; and through social processes that consider works in relationship to the user and his or her characteristics and history, to other works, and also to the behavior of other communities of users.

This is a preprint version of Dillon, A. (2000) Group Dynamics Meet Cognition: applying socio-technical concepts in the design of information systems. In Coakes, E., Willis, D. and Lloyd-Jones, R. (eds.) The New SocioTech: Graffiti on the Long Wall, Springer Verlag Series on CSCW, London: Springer, 119-125. Chapter overview: Socio-Technical Systems Theory (STST) has been widely mentioned and applied in the domain of information systems implementation (see e.g. Eason [1], Mumford [2]). Dillon and Morris [3] argue that the term STST is now generally applied to many user-centered orientations to design and implementation. Unlike the pragmatism of usability engineering which aims to support the design of technologies that are compatible with users' abilities and needs[4], STST posits underlying drives and motivations to use tools that supersede concerns with effectiveness and efficiency alone. In the present chapter, STST is re-examined for relevance to contemporary software design practices. Specifically, the unconscious drives to gain control and enhancement through one's work are seemingly at odds with a strictly cognitive approach to interaction that dominates studies of human-computer interaction. STST is here critically assessed in the light of what is now known about user acceptance of new information technologies. Emerging ISO-backed usability standards are in turn critically evaluated in the light of STST's richer analysis to identify weaknesses in the current usability engineering approach to design and implementation. Reconciling the psychodynamic and the cognitive in a manner that enables pragmatic application of STST in design is gained through the formulation of operationalised measures of the forces shaping acceptance.

National Informatics Centre had established a subject repository in May 2005. It is meant for Medical and Allied Sciences and named as OpenMED@NIC <http://openmed.nic.in>. It has MeSH® based subject categorization and this makes it one of its own kind. Taking OpenMED@NIC as a case â this paper discusses key issues in establishing and maintaining an open access repository. Librarians and information science professionals can play active role in providing access and exposure to quality research and academic content generated in their institutions. Mature and standard open sources softwares are now available for setting up repositories. Libraries can install one of these on existing institutional or library servers to setup repositories. However to ensure better access and faster response time dedicated hardware and reliable connectivity would be required. Librarians and information science professional can play important role in exposing intellectual content produced by their organizations. They can take of various roles like â generating awareness among staff, researchers and students about benefits of self arching in institutional or subject repositories; training them in uploading their articles and other documents in such repositories; acting as meta-data editors and repositories managers. Establishing a repository, administrating and inviting authors to deposit their articles and other works in it is golden opportunity available to librarians and information science professionals. This opportunity should be grabbed with open hands.