The present study investigates the information gathering behaviour of the academic researchers at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. It endeavours to explore researchers' awareness and attitudes towards information sources and services. Research methods for this study were designed from the user-centred perspective with triangulation approach. Hence, data was collected by the use of semistructured interviews as the main instrument with journal study and observation as supplementary tools. The information was collected from the members of the research community in their capacity as users of information. The study investigates the information needs and information gathering habits of the research community and attempts to identify the problems experienced by researchers in accessing and using information. It also seeks to explore the national policy for planning and provision of information. Finally the study examines the performance of the various information services in the context of user needs and the status of the institution library information service provision. The research concludes that present information environment at Sultan Qaboos University is inadequate to meet the information needs of the research community. It was found that the major causes for the situation was the lack of clear information policies, inadequate funding, ineffective partnership between top management and academic researchers, lack of effective in house training and finally absence of a reliable information technology infrastructure.

While antipredator strategies have been a focus of behavioral research for decades, scientists generally study the responses of prey toward overt, explicit threat. However, risk can also be significant when a threat is covert, such as when an ambush predator may be nearby or a secondary threat remains after a predator's departure. Little is known about the mechanism that prey use to assess risk in a predator's absence. Tests were conducted to determine the manner in which coyotes respond to these ambiguous threats. Specifically, I tested whether coyotes respond to prior anthropogenic activity that has occurred near their only food source, whether they investigate human activity at both profitable (feeding) and unprofitable (non-feeding) locations, and what sort of information coyotes are capable of gaining through their investigation. I explored these questions in three experiments spanning 4 years at the USDA/APHIS/WS National Wildlife Research Center's Logan field station. Test subjects were eight pairs of captive coyotes. Results showed that coyotes delayed or avoided feeding in response to prior anthropogenic activity, and that often a delay was due to investigation of human scent trails. Investigation of non-feeding areas occurred but was relatively brief. When coyotes were prevented from investigating locations of prior anthropogenic activity, foraging ceased altogether. In addition, coyotes were able to differentiate among the activity of different humans based on their association with negative, neutral, or positive threat levels, even in the presence of confounding visual and olfactory cues. They remembered these associations even after one month. This study is the first that provides evidence suggesting that canids gather and interpret complex information for cognitive inference about threat level associated with access to food.

Mini Rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MRUAVs) flown at low altitude as a part of a human-robot team are potential sources of tactical information for local search missions. Traditionally, their effectiveness in this role has been limited by an inability to intelligently perceive unknown environments or integrate with human team members. Human-robot collaboration provides the theory for building cooperative relationships in this context. This theory, however, only addresses those human-robot teams that are either robot-centered or human-centered in their decision making processes or relationships. This work establishes a new branch of human-robot collaborative theory, Operator Blending, which creates codependent and cooperative relationships between a single robot and human team member for tactical missions. Joint Intension Theory is the basis of this approach, which allows both the human and robot to contribute what each does well in accomplishing the mission objectives. Information processing methods for shared visual information and object tracking take advantage of the human role in the perception process. In addition, coupling of translational commands and the search process establish navigation as the shared basis of communication between the MRUAV and human, for system integration purposes. Observation models relevant to both human and robotic collaborators are tracked through a boundary based approach deemed AIM-SHIFT. A system is developed to classify the semantic and functional relevance of an observation model to local search called the Code of Observational Genetics (COG). These COGs are used to qualitatively map the environment through Qualitative Unsupervised Intelligent Collaborative Keypoint (QUICK) mapping, created to support these methods. / Ph. D.

This thesis proposes creating an interactive learning environment for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to facilitate access to, and learning of, important design knowledge. By encapsulating HCI knowledge into reusable claims stored in a knowledge repository, or claims library, this learning environment aims at allowing students to effectively explore design features to limit their reliance on intuition to mold their interfaces, help them address proper design concerns, and evaluate alternatives for their designs. This learning approach is based on active learning where students create their own knowledge by gathering information. However, building adequate development records from which students can gather HCI knowledge is critical to support this approach. This thesis explores using effective reusable design components to act as design records to create an interactive learning environment for students learning HCI design. An initial prototype for the learning environment introduces claims as an encapsulation mechanism for design features from which students can gather HCI knowledge. Pilot testing outlines the accessibility, applicability and reusability problems associated with this approach. To solve theses issues, a taxonomic organization of an improved form of claims (reference claims), is introduced to share core design knowledge among students. A taxonomy is designed as a way to expose students to important design concerns as well as a method to categorize claims. Reference claims are introduced as improved claims inspired by reference tasks to expose students to design alternatives for design concerns. A detailed taxonomy and a set of reference claims for the domain of notification systems demonstrate how existing theories of design can be translated into reference claims to create an interactive learning environment. An experiment illustrates the applicability and reusability of reference claims for various designs within a particular domain. Finally, an evaluation assesses the benefits of this learning environment based on reference claims in terms of improving student designs and increasing the amount of HCI knowledge they reuse. Results show that by exposing students to valuable concerns and alternatives for the design of interactive systems, an interactive learning environment based on reference claims can improve students' understanding of the design scope and lead to an increased use of existing HCI knowledge in their designs. / Master of Science

This dissertation presents the social virtual interface (SVI) model, which was born out of a need to develop a viable model of the complex interactions, information flow and information seeking behaviors among undercover officers. The SVI model was created from a combination of various philosophies and models in the literature of information seeking, communication and philosophy. The questions this research paper answers are as follows: 1. Can we make use of models and concepts familiar to or drawn from Information Science to construct a model of undercover police work that effectively represents the large number of entities and relationships? and 2. Will undercover police officers recognize this model as realistic? This study used a descriptive qualitative research method to examine the research questions. An online survey and hard copy survey were distributed to police officers who had worked in an undercover capacity. In addition groups of officers were interviewed about their opinion of the SVI model. The data gathered was analyzed and the model was validated by the results of the survey and interviews.

This diploma thesis results from the need for Competitive Intelligence as a system for gathering, analyzing and communicating information about competitors to obtain a competitive advantage. The work attempts to analyze current knowledge gathering processes as well as an application of that information for strategic decision making inside the XXX corporation. After definition of basic terms several different methods and approaches to Competitive Intelligence are described. These methods are reviewed and those that suit XXX requirements best are picked up afterwards. In this thesis there are also identified some of the crucial information sources, to begin with public and commercial databases and catalogues, business publications, online sources, personal knowledge, but also data-mining and other sophisticated methods. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of Competitive Intelligence system itself, empathising an effective functionality that solves identified issues, and is based on our theoretical resources and on actual competence of the company.

Covid-19 är en global pandemi som har haft en stark påverkan på världen och dess befolkning på många olika sätt. Arbetslivet, företagsamhet och således även revisionsbranschen har inte undkommit att drabbas. En normal vardag bestående av fysiska möten och interaktioner förändrades snabbt till att nästintill vara helt digitaliserad. De införda restriktionerna ledde till att berörda revisorer i följande studies empiri varit tvungna att arbeta hemifrån i syfte att minska smittspridningen av Covid-19. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur revision och revisorns arbetsprocess i form av granskningsarbete samt informationsinsamling har påverkats av de omständigheter som pandemin medfört. Metoden som använts gällande insamling av empiri, vilket skall ligga till grund till besvarandet av studiens frågeställning och syfte, är kvalitativ. Intervjuer med fyra olika revisorer har genomförts. Erfarenheten som dem medverkande respondenter har inom revisionsbranschen varierar men samtliga har arbetat som revisorer innan, under samt efter pandemin. Medverkande respondenter var anställda på bland annat Moore AB samt Grant Thornton. Utöver genomförda intervjuer har även en litteraturundersökning genomförts där tidigare forskning undersökts i form av vetenskapliga artiklar samt teorier. Vidare har även en dokumentstudie genomförts gällande de fyra största revisionsbyråerna i världen, vilket är KPMG, E&Y, PWC samt Deloitte. Information kopplat till studiens syfte har inhämtats genom offentliga uttalanden och rapporter från respektive revisionsbyrås hemsida. Analys av insamlad empiri ledde till ett resultat som påvisade både negativa samt positiva aspekter för både medverkande respondenter men även för revisionsbyråerna i dokumentstudien. De negativa konsekvenserna som nämns till följd av distansarbetet är brister i kommunikation och informationsinsamling, vilket påverkar revisionsprocessen negativt i sin helhet. Anledningen till detta är utebliven kommunikation med kund och mellan medarbetare, vilket har resulterat i utebliven och ibland felaktig informationsinsamling. Även komplikationer gällande legala och skattemässiga aspekter tas upp som en konsekvens, samt problem i att upprätthålla en trygg cybersäkerhet. Positiva aspekter som tas upp under analysen av empirin är ökad flexibilitet och mer effektiva arbetsprocesser efter att revisionsarbetet digitaliserats. Dessutom har distansarbetet lett till minskade resor och således minskade resekostnader. Detta är dock ingenting som skedde direkt, utan något som revisorer fått anpassa sig till samt utveckla under pandemins gång. / Covid-19 is a global pandemic that has had a strong impact on the world and its population in many different ways. Working life, enterprise and the audit profession has not been unaffected. Everyday life consisting of physical meetings and interactions instantly changed to being almost completely digitized. Following restrictions led to the auditors being concerned in the empirical study being forced to work from home in order to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The purpose of the study is to investigate how auditing and the auditor's work process in the form of review process and information gathering have been affected by circumstances brought about by the pandemic. The method used regarding the collection of empirical evidence, which must be the basis for preserving the study's question and purpose, is qualitative where interviews with four different auditors have been carried out. Participating respondents have varying lengths of experience, but have all worked as accountants within, during and after the pandemic. Furthermore, the respondents are employed at, among others, Moore AB and Grant Thorn. In addition to the interview, a literature survey was also conducted where previous research was examined in the form of scientific articles and theories. Moreover, a document study has also been carried out regarding the four largest audit organizations in the world, which are KPMG, E&Y, PWC and Deloitte. Information linked to the purpose of the study has been obtained through public statements and reports from the respective audit firm's website. Analysis of collected empirical evidence led to a result that demonstrated both negative and positive aspects for participating respondents as well as for the audit organizations in the document study. The negative consequences mentioned as a result of remote work are deficiencies in communication and information gathering, which negatively affects the audit process as a whole. The reason for this is a lack of communication both with the customer and between employees, which resulted in missed and sometimes incorrect information gathering. Complications regarding legal aid and tax aspects are also addressed as a consequence, as well as problems in maintaining secure cyber security. Positive aspects that are taken up during the analysis of the empirical evidence are increased flexibility and streamlined work processes after the companies have been digitized. Other positive aspects were reduced travel time and reduced travel costs. However, these happenings did not occur immediately, the companies had to adapt to them and developed them during the course of the movement.

新聞記者的日常工作可視為一資訊蒐集行為，在資訊蒐集的過程中需要運用許多資源，其中，人脈扮演重要角色，然而目前從社會網絡角度出發，關照記者如何運用網絡中所蘊含的資源以協助記者日常新聞資訊蒐集活動的研究卻不多，因此，本研究企圖了解新聞記者在資訊蒐集場域中的人脈網絡樣貌，存在哪些資源類型及如何採取交換策略。 在研究方法與研究對象的選擇上，本研究從個案著手，以一位報社地方記者作為研究對象，藉由參與觀察法及深度訪談蒐集田野資料三十天。 本研究將蒐集而來的資料以量化及質化方法續作分析，繪製兩種網絡圖像，展現新聞中顯見的消息來源以及在蒐集過程中運用的人脈，結果發現許多在過程中取得資源的對象其實隱沒於新聞稿中。 本研究進一步發現，人脈可以提供不同類型的資源，包括一般資訊、珍稀資訊、知識經驗、中介資源、引薦資源以及權力資源，皆有助於記者的新聞資訊蒐集活動，除此之外，強連帶與弱連帶各有其資源優勢，強連帶較常提供珍稀資訊與引薦資源，而弱連帶則最常提供一般性的資訊以及中介性資源。 總括而言，新聞記者的新聞資訊蒐集活動倚靠人脈，但只有少數的人脈會被展現在新聞報導之中，許多人脈的運作隱藏於幕後，且不同連帶關係的人脈對象在過程中提供不同類型的資源與幫助，新聞記者必須辨識並活用之。而為了和不同連帶關係的人脈取得資源，記者會採取不同的社會交換策略。和強連帶的資源交換策略包括給予資訊資源、版面資源、知識資源、中介性資源、服務性資源以及信任性資源，特別的是，平常便會交換情感性資源以維持雙方關係；而面對弱連帶對象，當一般報酬無法滿足對方時，可藉由人脈中當作橋樑影響弱連帶以達成資訊蒐集目的。 / Information gathering is one of the major tasks in journalistic work. Among the resources that journalists employ to gather news, social ties is an important factor that contributes to journalistic work. However, it is rarely known how social network was used as journalistic resources in daily news-gathering activities. This thesis aims to explore the above issues by employing a field study. This field study is based on a case of newspaper reporter who is assigned to local beat in Central Taiwan. The researcher made participatory observation and intensive interviews in a period of 30 days. Data was collected and kept in field journals. The data gathered were analyzed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Two social graphs were plotted to show how the news sources distributed in both news reported and daily journals. This paper further found that journalist benefits of social ties are quite diverse; social ties not only facilitates gathering of routine information, but also exclusive news, knowledge, experience, referral resources, power and trust. Strong and weak ties also provide different types of resources. In conclusion, journalists contact many social ties in their daily information gathering tasks. Only very few appear on news reporting, while many were hidden behind the scene. These social ties provide reliable aid in news gathering activities. And a journalist has to identify, activate the connections, and make exchanges to get help according to the types of ties and resources needed.

Over the last decade, the rapid growth and adoption of the World Wide Web has further exacerbated user needs for e±cient mechanisms for information and knowledge location, selection, and retrieval. How to gather useful and meaningful information from the Web becomes challenging to users. The capture of user information needs is key to delivering users' desired information, and user pro¯les can help to capture information needs. However, e®ectively acquiring user pro¯les is di±cult. It is argued that if user background knowledge can be speci¯ed by ontolo- gies, more accurate user pro¯les can be acquired and thus information needs can be captured e®ectively. Web users implicitly possess concept models that are obtained from their experience and education, and use the concept models in information gathering. Prior to this work, much research has attempted to use ontologies to specify user background knowledge and user concept models. However, these works have a drawback in that they cannot move beyond the subsumption of super - and sub-class structure to emphasising the speci¯c se- mantic relations in a single computational model. This has also been a challenge for years in the knowledge engineering community. Thus, using ontologies to represent user concept models and to acquire user pro¯les remains an unsolved problem in personalised Web information gathering and knowledge engineering. In this thesis, an ontology learning and mining model is proposed to acquire user pro¯les for personalised Web information gathering. The proposed compu- tational model emphasises the speci¯c is-a and part-of semantic relations in one computational model. The world knowledge and users' Local Instance Reposito- ries are used to attempt to discover and specify user background knowledge. From a world knowledge base, personalised ontologies are constructed by adopting au- tomatic or semi-automatic techniques to extract user interest concepts, focusing on user information needs. A multidimensional ontology mining method, Speci- ¯city and Exhaustivity, is also introduced in this thesis for analysing the user background knowledge discovered and speci¯ed in user personalised ontologies. The ontology learning and mining model is evaluated by comparing with human- based and state-of-the-art computational models in experiments, using a large, standard data set. The experimental results are promising for evaluation. The proposed ontology learning and mining model in this thesis helps to develop a better understanding of user pro¯le acquisition, thus providing better design of personalised Web information gathering systems. The contributions are increasingly signi¯cant, given both the rapid explosion of Web information in recent years and today's accessibility to the Internet and the full text world.

There is a growing expectation that school librarians function within their job descriptions beyond the role of reading promoter and resource manager. With college and career readiness standards, technology use and digital learning standards and information literacy standards now in place for student learning expectations, it is vital that students have opportunities to acquire, develop and practice such skills for future success in the global market economy. For students to receive such opportunities, there should be designed instruction delivered to students that allows for them to learn and practice information gathering techniques to access, use and apply information effectively, efficiently and ethically while developing technology skills within context of their content learning and real-world connections authentically. This study examined how school librarians conveyed information gathering techniques to students through a qualitative, constant comparative approach. Five middle school librarians in an urban school district participated in an observation and interview. Findings suggest that school librarians do claim an instructional role regarding information gathering and technology usage, although it manifests in diverse ways. Implications for future studies and practice suggest that the position become more defined such that the expectation to function in these roles is widely accepted by all stakeholders, and for the effectiveness of the instruction on the development of these skills. As school librarians embrace and adopt new and emerging technologies within their instructional delivery, examining the effectiveness of that instruction would be of interest.