The thesis focuses on freely available digital libraries in the field of science, research and education in the countries of former Yugoslavia. The work is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part introduces the basic terminology and the issue of freely available digital libraries. The main part of the thesis is based on the findings of freely available digital libraries in the countries of former Yugoslavia. Their structured overview is an annex to this thesis and a commentary on them is given in the practical part. The core of the thesis constitutes the results of analyzes of three digital libraries from the selected region. It aims to analyse, describe,compare and assess selected systems. The practical part presents the descriptions and analysys of the selected systems. Next chapter includes the comparison of their qualitative and quantitative parameters. The conclusion of the work brings final assessment of the knowledge.

The thesis focuses on the digital library Kramerius, that provides electronic access to mainly Bohemian documents from 19th and 20th century. Its aim is not to describe all parts of this system and its hinterland - the thesis focuses rather on the user point of view. The core of the thesis is formed by user survey, which is conducted among the students of historical disciplines at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, namely the students enrolled in the study programme Historical sciences. In the first part, there is a characteristic of digital library Kramerius with the focus on the aspects, that are closely related with its usability (user interface, accessibility of documents, conversion of the original documents to machine- readable form). The user survey, which is described in the second part, is devided into two parts.

The purpose of the thesis is to search out, analyse and evaluate an open access and commercial electronic information resources in educational theories available on WWW. First and sekond part determinates topic of education, describes his development, problems, nomenclature, experimental method and information support. The objective of the thesis is to analyse and evaluate selected bibliographic and full-text databases, digital libraries, portals, subject gateways and catalogs. Online services are especially emphasized. Analyses are elaboration in the Czech education theory context. Final summary evaluates results of analysis.

The topic of this master's degree diploma thesis is the Google Books service, formerly Google Book Search and Google Print. The wider general context is described briefly in the first two chapters. Google company and its portfolio of services are introduced, as well as the latest progress in sharing of information, for example trends as digital libraries and open access. Third chapter presents results of the analysis of the Google Books as the complex system. Mentioned are: a history of the service, Library Project, Partner Program, metadata harvesting, scanning methods, available searching options, all information and functionalities in the individual records, users' participation. Chapter four is focused on copyright law and disputes related to the Google Books. Fifth chapter deals with the usage of the Google Books in the Czech Republic, in the terms of all local activities. Great attention belongs to digitization in cooperation of Google company with National Library of the Czech Republic. Two questionnaires were done for this thesis, between college students and large Czech publishers. Good knowledge of the service existence was found; the most attractive attribute is the presence of full texts. Publishers appreciate a possibility of selling e-books. Detailed results of both surveys are the content of...

(in English): The aim of presented master thesis is to suggest the optimization of articles processing in the Digital Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The present state of journal articles processing is described and the weaknesses are evaluated. The journal articles processing optimization is suggested in two steps. The first step is to choose only one integrated library system for journal articles processing. The second step is using the system of shared cataloging and the proper use of three external resources. The main contribution of this thesis is the deep evaluation of the external journal articles records resources and the process of shared cataloging. Fifteen journals were proposed to the process of shared cataloging and record downloading but only five of them are suitable for this process.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to describe and basically analyze representative databases and digital libraries that focus on pharmaceutical disciplines. The introductory chapter is concerned with related terminology, while the following chapters refer to significant subjects and principles in the field of pharmaceutical industry, and also to important classification systems and retrieval languages that can be found in some of the described resources. The fifth chapter focuses on pharmaceutical information resources which are offered by some of the world's leading database service companies. The sixth chapter contains a description and a basic analysis of 10 representative electronic resources for pharmaceutical disciplines. The empirical section of this diploma thesis consists of three major parts. One of them is a subject coverage analysis of bibliographic databases MEDLINE and EMBASE from the viewpoint of pharmaceutical information. Secondly, it contains a presentation of an indicative survey that is related to using electronic information resources by a commercial and a nonprofit subject. The last chapter deals with information brokering that is presented on example of the Medistyl company. Keywords Pharmaceutical industry, pharmacy, pharmacovigilance, factographic databases, bibliographic...

Die Digitalisierung von kulturellen Gütern und der darausfolgende Online-Zugang zu ihnen hat dazu geführt, dass Gedächtnisinstitutionen wie Museen, Bibliotheken und Archive, neue Instrumente für Nutzer bereitstellen können mit denen das kulturelle Erbe erlebbar gemacht werden kann. Diese Dissertation beschreibt Interaktionen in kulturellen Informationssystemen und verbindet diese mit Zugangsmöglichkeiten zu digitalen Materialien. Basierend auf Fallstudien und dem Ansatz, Theorien aus empirischen Daten zu gewinnen (Grounded Theory), wurde ein theoretischer Rahmen entwickelt, mit dem man Interaktionen beschreiben und analysieren kann. Dieser Bewertungsrahmen für Interaktionen bietet einen ganzheitlichen Ansatz um Interaktionen und deren Zusammenspiel mit dem Informationszugang zu bestimmen. Dieser Zusammenhang hilft Gedächtnisinstitutionen zu verstehen, wie Entscheidungen im Design ihrer Informationsarchitektur den Umgang von Nutzern mit den präsentierten digitalen Artefakten beeinflussen. Der theoretische Rahmen wurde anschließend herangezogen um 72 kulturelle Informationssysteme in einer Inhaltsanalyse eingehender zu studieren. Die Systeme wurden nach ihren Charakteristika in verschiedenen Gruppen - Museen, Bibliotheken, Archive, Aggregatoren, Kollektionen und Gemeinschaften - eingeordnet, zwischen welchen Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten aufgedeckt wurden, die es erlauben Zugang und Interaktionen in jedem einzelnen System besser zu verstehen. Weiterhin wurde der theoretische Rahmen für eine tiefergehende Bewertung eines Systems aus jeder Gruppe genutzt um Empfehlungen für ein effektives Systemdesign zu erarbeiten. Dabei wurde besonderes Augenmerk auf den Einfluss von Interaktionen auf die verschiedenen Zugangsformen gelegt, mit dem Ziel, zweckgerichtete Interaktionen in Systemen anzubieten. Die Dissertation leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag um nachhaltige Interaktionen in Informationssystemen des kulturellen Bereiches zu verstehen, zu bewerten und zu implementieren. / Through digitization of cultural heritage and online access to it, memory institutions such as museums, libraries and archives can provide new instruments for engaging users with cultural heritage. The thesis describes interactions in cultural heritage information systems and links them to access points of the digital material. Based on use cases and a grounded theory approach for data analysis, a framework for interactions was developed. This framework offers a holistic approach to understand interactions and their interplay with information access. The interrelatedness allows stakeholders in cultural heritage institutions to understand that each decision in the information design influences how users access and interact with digital material. The framework was then used in a content analysis of 72 cultural heritage systems that were clustered according to their characteristics. The outcomes reveal shortcomings and pinned down peculiarities between the groups Museums, Libraries, Archives, Aggregators, Collections and Communities. In a next step, the framework was applied as a tool for evaluation to help shape effective system design that guides the implementation of purposeful interactions. For that, one system per cultural heritage group was chosen as a use case for the evaluation. The results are recommendations for a more effective system design that acknowledges the impact of interactions on the access modes. This dissertation promotes a new perspective on interactions and derives strategies for effective system design.

Public programming initiatives are considered an integral part of archival operations across the world because they support a greater use of archival records. In South Africa, public archival institutions are mandated in terms of section 5(1)(c) of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act (Act No. 43 of 1996) (NARSSA Act), to reach out to the less privileged sectors of society, by making known information concerning records by means such as publications, exhibitions and lending of records. This also includes taking archives to young people, especially school learners. As a result, public archives repositories in South Africa have designed programmes to take archives to school learners for the purpose of creating future users and expanding the use of archival sources. Despite efforts to take archives to the people in South Africa, it would seem that public programming methods that repositories use at schools are not effective in creating awareness and promoting public archives to attract school learners. This qualitative study utilised semi-structured interviews and observation as data collection tools to investigate schools as conduits for taking public archives to learners in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The study targeted learners and teachers in schools which participated in the archival public programming in Gauteng province, as well as staff members of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARSSA) and Gauteng Provincial Archives responsible for public programming. The key findings suggest that the public archives repositories in Gauteng do not use technology, particularly social media, to market their services to school learners. The main method of taking archives to learners is through invitations and participation in the annual archives week, which do not yield any positive results, as learners do not visit the archives afterwards. It is recommended that NARSSA and Gauteng Provincial Archives consider using school learners who participated in archives week and are interested in archives to be ambassadors to further recommend the use of archives to potential users and their peers. Furthermore, collaboration between archivists and teachers from neighbouring schools should be considered by including school projects that involve the use of “archives’’. The study concludes that failure to adopt social media platforms to market archives would result in school learners not using archives. A further study covering all provinces in South Africa is recommended. / Information Science / M. inf. (Archival Science)

Libraries have traditionally facilitated each of the following elements of research: production of new knowledge, its preservation and its organization to make it accessible for use over the generations. In modern times, the library is constantly required to meet the challenges of information explosion. Assimilating resources and restructuring practices to process the large data volumes both in the print and digital form held across the globe, therefore, becomes very important. A recourse by the libraries to application of successive forms of what can be called as Digital Library Technologies (DLT) has been the imperative. The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is one recent development that is expected to assist the libraries to partner in setting up virtual learning environment and integrating research on a near universal scale. Future extension of this concept is envisaged to be that of Grid Computing. The technologies driving the â Gridâ would let people share computing power, databases, and other on-line tools securely across institutional and geographic boundaries without sacrificing the local autonomy. Ushering an era of the ubiquitous library helping the e-research is thus on the card. This paper reviews the emerging technological changes and charts the future role for the libraries with special reference to India.

Bibliography: leaves 207-224 / Abstracts and keywords following the Appendices / This thesis evaluates Ethiopian higher learning institutes’ digital libraries (DLs) for their usability and usefulness. The outcome contributes knowledge by helping to propel development efforts; satisfy DL stakeholders; provide information and fill information gaps; serve as cross-reference for academicians and researchers in the discipline; make decisions and solve managerial issues in DLs of the developing world; and provide scientific interests and merits for the advancement of information systems. When undertaking usability and usefulness evaluation research in DLs, there is no agreed-upon established conceptual framework that guides researchers in the developing world. Therefore, the overall objective of this research is to propose a framework for DL evaluation that fits into the context of developing countries. As the study is concerned with users’ internal attributes, the interpretive research paradigm is applied. A qualitative research approach is employed and a case study research design is followed. Multiple data-collection techniques, namely semi-structured interviews (17 respondents), open-ended questionnaires (17 respondents) and observations (4 observations) are employed. The study encompasses four public university DLs in Ethiopia. The participants have a positive perception of all attributes of usability. Most of the attributes of usefulness are also perceived positively, except coverage. The major challenges encountered by participants are network accessibility, interruption and speed, and access restrictions imposed on some DL content. DL benefits include easy access to the DL content, enhanced teaching and research, lower cost and easy sharing of contents. The expectations of users are ensuring resource availability and sustainability, overcoming the absence of user feedback and federated search problems, and improving network infrastructure and speed. The interaction triptych framework (ITF), which is used in the current study, is a well-known framework that is commonly implemented by researchers. However, since it does not incorporate the contextual situation of developing countries, ITF has some limitations. Therefore, based on the output of this empirical research and considering the usability and usefulness themes of ITF and its relationships with other socio-technical and contextual themes, a contextual DL evaluation framework is proposed. The proposed framework emphasises the social, institutional and contextual aspects of DLs. The proposed framework has six DL components, namely: DL user; content and collection; system and technology; services and support; user interface; and context. The proposed framework is called a digital library components interaction evaluation framework. / Lo mqondo uhlaziya imitapo yolwazi yedijithali (i-DLs) yezikhungo zokufunda ephezulu zase-Ethiopia ngokusebenziseka kwazo nokuba wusizo. Umphumela unikela ngolwazi ngokusiza ukuhambisa imizamo yentuthuko; ukwanelisa ababambiqhaza be-DL; ukuhlinzeka ngolwazi nokugcwalisa izikhala zolwazi; ukusebenza okubhekiswe kukho kwezifundiswa nabaphenyi emkhakheni; yenza izinqumo futhi ixazulule izingqinamba zokuphatha kuma-DL wezwe elisathuthuka; futhi unikeze izintshisekelo zesayensi kanye nokufaneleka ekuthuthukisweni kwezinhlelo zolwazi. Lapho wenza ucwaningo lokusebenziseka neliwusizo okuhlaziya kuma-DL, akukho luhlaka lomqondo okuvunyelwene ngalo oluhola abacwaningi ezweni elisathuthuka. Ngakho-ke, inhloso ephelele yalolu cwaningo ukuphakamisa uhlaka lokuhlaziya kwe-DL oluhambisana nomongo wamazwe asathuthuka. Njengoba ucwaningo luphathelene nezimpawu zangaphakathi zabasebenzisi, inqubo yocwaningo ehumushekayo iyasetshenziswa. Indlela yokucwaninga esezingeni elifanele iyasetshenziswa bese kulandelwa ukwakheka kocwaningo lwesifundo. Kusetshenziswa amasu amaningi wokuqoqa imininingwane, njengezingxoxo ezihlelwe kahle (abaphenduli abayi-17), imibuzo evulekile (abaphenduli abayi-17) kanye nokubhekwayo (okubhekwayo oku-4). Lolu cwaningo luhlanganisa ama-DL amane wemfundo ephakeme yomphakathi wase-Ethiopia. Abahlanganyeli banombono omuhle wazo zonke izici zokusebenziseka. Iningi lezimpawu eziwusizo zibonwa kahle futhi, ngaphandle kokumbozwa. Izinselela ezinkulu ababambiqhaza abahlangabezana ngazo ukufinyeleleka kwenethiwekhi, ukuphazamiseka nejubane, nemikhawulo yokufinyelela ebekiwe kokunye okuqukethwe kwe-DL. Izinzuzo ze-DL zifaka ukufinyelela okulula kokuqukethwe kwe-DL, ukufundiswa okuthuthukisiwe nocwaningo, izindleko eziphansi nokwabelana okulula kokuqukethwe. Okulindelwe abasebenzisi ukuqinisekisa ukutholakala kwezinsiza nokusimama, ukunqoba ukungabi bikho kwempendulo yomsebenzisi nezinkinga zokusesha ezihlanganisiwe, nokwenza ngcono ingqalasizinda yenethiwekhi nejubane. Uhlaka lokusebenzisana lwe-triptych (ITF), olusetshenziswa ocwaningweni lwamanje, uhlaka olwaziwa kakhulu olusetshenziswa ngokuvamile ngabaphenyi. Kodwa-ke, njengoba lungafaki isimo somongo samazwe asathuthuka, i-ITF inemikhawulo ethile. Ngakho-ke, ngokuya ngokukhishwa kwalolu cwaningo olunamandla kanye nokubheka ukusebenziseka nosizo lwezindikimba ze-ITF kanye nobudlelwano bayo nezinye izingqikithi zomphakathi nezobuchwepheshe nezingqikithi zomongo, kuhlongozwa uhlaka lokuhlaziya lomongo lwe-DL. Uhlaka oluhlongozwayo lugcizelela izici zenhlalo, zesikhungo nezingqikithi zomongo zama-DL. Uhlaka oluhlongozwayo lunezingxenye eziyisithupha ze-DL, okuyilezi: Umsebenzisi we-DL; okuqukethwe neqoqo; uhlelo nobuchwepheshe; izinsizakalo nokwesekwa; isikhombimsebenzisi somsebenzisi nomongo. Uhlaka oluhlongozwayo lubizwa ngohlaka lokuhlaziya kokusebenzisana kokuqukethwe komtapo wolwazi wedijithali. / Hierdie proefskrif evalueer Ethiopië se hoër leerinstellings se digitale biblioteke (DBe) ten opsigte van hulle bruikbaarheid en nuttigheid. Die uitkoms dra by tot kennis wat kan help om die ontwikkelingspogings aan te dryf; om belanghebbers van digitale biblioteke tevrede te hou; om inligting te verskaf en inligtingsgapings te vul; deur te dien as kruisverwysing vir akademici en navorsers in die vakgebied; om besluite te neem en bestuursaangeleenthede in digitale biblioteke van die ontwikkelende wêreld op te los; en om wetenskaplike belange en meriete vir die bevordering van inligtingstelsels te voorsien. Wanneer bruikbaarheids- en nuttigheidsevalueringsnavorsing in digitale biblioteke onderneem word, is daar geen ooreengekome, gevestigde raamwerk wat leiding aan navorsers in die ontwikkelende wêreld kan gee nie. Die algehele doelwit van hierdie navorsing was derhalwe om ’n raamwerk vir die evaluaering van digitale biblioteke voor te stel wat in die konteks van ontwikkelende lande pas. Omdat die studie gemoeid is met gebruikers se interne eienskappe, is die vertolkende paradigma gebruik. ’n Kwalitatiewe navorsingsbenadering is gebruik en ’n gevallestudie-navorsingsontwerp is gevolg. Veelvuldige data-insamelingstegnieke, naamlik semigestruktureerde onderhoude (17 respondente), oop vraelyste (17 respondente) en waarnemings (vier waarnemigs), is ingespan. Die studie sluit vier openbare universiteite se digitale biblioteke in Ethiopië in. Die deelnemers het ’n positiewe persepsie van al die eienskappe van bruikbaarheid. Die meeste van die eienskappe van nuttigheid word ook as positief waargeneem, met die uitsluiting van voorsiening. Die grootste uitdagings wat die deelnemers ervaar het, was netwerktoeganklikheid, -onderbrekings en -spoed en die toegangbeperkings wat sommige digitale biblioteke oplê. Voordele van digitale biblioteke sluit die volgende in: toegang tot digitalebiblioteekinhoud; beter onderrig en navorsing; laer koste; en die maklike deel van inhoud met ander. Die verwagtings van gebruikers verseker hulpbronbeskikbaarheid en -volhoubaarheid, en om die afwesigheid van gebruikersterugvoer en gefedereerde soekprobleme en die verbetering van netwerkinfrastruktuur en -spoed te oorkom. Die interaksietriptiekraamwerk (ITF) wat in hierdie studie gebruik is, is ’n bekende raamwerk wat algemeen deur navorsers geïmplementeer word. Omdat dit egter nie die kontekstuele situasie van ontwikkelende lande inkorporeer nie, het ITF sekere beperkings. Gebaseer op die uitset van hierdie empiriese navorsing en met die inagneming van die bruikbaarheids- en nuttigheidstemas van ITF en sy verhouding met ander sosio-tegniese en kontekstuele temas, word ’n kontekstuele digitalebiblioteekraamwerk derhalwe voorgestel. Die voorgestelde raamwerk beklemtoon die sosiale, institusionele en kontekstuele aspekte van digitale biblioteke. Die voorgestelde raamwerk het ses digitalebiblioteekkomponente, naamlik: digitalebiblioteekgebruiker; inhoud en insameling; stelsel en tegnologie; dienste en ondersteuning; gebruikerkoppelvlak; en konteks. Die voorgestelde raamwerk word ’n interaksie-evalueringsraamwerk vir digitalebiblioteekkomponente genoem. / School of Computing / D. Phil. (Information Systems)