by J. Francis Reintjes. / Bibliography: p. 76-77. / "March, 1982."

Knowledge management (KM) has become a vital part of the successful development of private and governmental organizations. KM is processed tools and behaviors that participate in the formulation and performance of the beneficiaries of the organization, acquisition, storage and distribution of knowledge. This is to reflect on the business processes and to gain access to best practices with a view to long-term competition and adaptation. In this context, the personal understanding of KM is a key factor in successful employments of KM activities. In this thesis, the level of understanding of knowledge management and the extent of its usage in the university library by librarians was investigated. A comparison study was established between libraries in developed and developing countries. Interviews and observations were performed and the results were analyzed. The results indicate the concept of KM is hardly known, however it is employed to different extent between these counties, the developed countries were by far more successful in utilizing current technology to advance their service and personal expertise with few challenges. Lack of communication, knowledge sharing, and the shortage in the budget was essential in limiting the usage of KM in developing counties. The knowledge derived from this thesis advances an understanding of the importance of KM in library performance, thus presenting the basis for improving libraries in developing countries and advancing libraries in developed countries.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of community college Learning Resources Centers' participation in automated library networking (ALN), to identify the factors which influenced or inhibited participation, to identify the benefits gained and the problems encountered due to participation, to identify the sources of funding for participation, to identify the involvement of LRCs in network related organizations and activities, to illuminate the influence of college staff in the decision making process for participation, and to assess the relationships, if any, which existed among the selected ALN activities and the institutional variables. A survey and interview approach was chosen to conduct the study which consisted of two phases. During the first phase, a survey questionnaire was developed, validated and mailed to 253 LRC directors of American public community colleges located in the southeastern United States. A total of 193 (76.3 percent) usables responses were received. Statistical procedures employed for this study were chi-square, MannWhitney U Test, and Kruskall-Wallis One Way ANOVA to test the appropriate samples at .05 level of significance. The second phase involved a site visit to three LRCs selected out of the 193 responses to further examine any significant trends or practices common or unique to networking which were not adequately addressed in the first phase. The results of the interviews from the site visits were recorded descriptively. The principal findings of the study indicated that community college . The majority of the LRCs had not yet automated the other functions. There were a few integrated or turnkey automated systems available in the LRCs. ln general, LRCs used regional and national networks for all functional activities. But, all four networks - local, state, regional and national - were used for interlibrary loan, resource sharing and union catalog database. Among the most important benefits gained by participation in ALN were sharing bibliographic databases, immediate access to network files, faster and improved services to users, and sharing of resources among network members. Participating LRCs mostly used their regular operating budget and received little or no external fundings. Incentive to participate primarily came from professional colleagues and involvement in network related organizations. Those LRCs which had no ALN reported that lack of financial support and limited institutional commitment were the main reasons for non-participation. The extent of automation and ALN could be predicted from the size of the institutions. Size of the institution played a major role in the participation in ALN. In most cases, there were significant relationships between institutional variables - location, enrollment, collection size, volume of circulation, number of LRC staff, size of annual budget and the extent of automation and ALN. / Ed. D.

The thesis deals with selected theoretical fundamentals of information literacy, which are followed by an analysis of the situation of teaching information literacy at the 2nd Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague. The objective of this thesis is to describe the whole process of participation of the Department of Science Information at the 2nd Faculty of Medicine in the process of information education. First the thesis gives information on a theoretical level about basic terminology and information literacy from a medical point of view. The thesis also shows the results of questionnaire surveys held by the IVIG Committee focused on the activities of university libraries in the field of information education. No less important is also a chapter devoted to a librarian in the role of a lecturer. a chapter devoted to information education at other universities in the Czech Republic ensues. The practical part contains a presentation of teaching at the 2nd Faculty of Medicine where the library participates. Individual subjects are described in detail in the mentioned part. Some recommendations for improving the actual teaching are formulated in the conclusion.

The BDI agent architecture includes a plan library containing pre-de ned plans. The plan library is included in the agent architecture to reduce the need for expensive means-end reasoning, however can hinder the agent's e ectiveness when operating in a changing environment. Existing research on integrating di erent planning methods into the BDI agent to overcome this limitation include HTNs, state-space planning and Graphplan. Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have not yet been used for this purpose. This dissertation investigates the feasibility of using GAs as a plan modi cation mechanism for BDI agents. It covers the design of a plan structure that can be encoded into a binary string, which can be operated on by the genetic operators. The e ectiveness of the agent in a changing environment is compared to an agent without the GA plan modification mechanism. The dissertation shows that GAs are a feasible plan modification mechanism for BDI agents. / Information Science

The purpose of this study was to investigate the awareness and preparedness of the Inkandla and Mbazwana school clusters concerning the sharing of information resources. This investigation needs to be viewed bearing in mind the contexts of developing countries. These countries are poor but experience varying degrees of poverty, and there is always a shortage of funds to support quality assuring programmes, for example libraries. Access to amenities like laboratories and libraries is generally viewed as a luxury, more so by people who went through their education deprived of these facilities but who managed nevertheless to obtain high qualifications. The argument tends to be "some of us made it without libraries, therefore they are not important". Unfortunately many policymakers think like this. There have always been sectors pushing for the development of school libraries, coupled with resource based learning as this approach is regarded as likely to produce independent, lifelong learners. A resource based curriculum requires an abundance of resources, however the issue of lack of funding referred to above, may prevent any individual school from having all the resources required to support a resource based curriculum. Creative ways of ensuring the availability of resources to all schools have been conceived and clustering schools in order to encourage them to share resources and expertise is one of them. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education has used the clustering of schools for resource sharing. The evolution of the clustering project however, took different forms and subsequent events showed that the form taken either allowed for further growth and development, or subjected the project to failure and decay. The Inkandla and Mbazwana scenarios, presented two different models and different evolutionary histories that present interesting topics for research, and both scenarios had different stories to tell. Issues of acceptance, that is awareness and preparedness, accessibility, and community dynamics play a major role in ensuring the success or failure of a project; and this is very evident in Mbazwana and Inkandla. This study attempted to measure the levels of awareness and preparedness concerning the sharing of information resources. Preparatory ground work among communities was necessary to ensure the people were willing to embrace the concept of resource sharing and its values. Three methods were selected as appropriate to the study that is reviewing the relevant literature and data collection by questionnaire and interview schedule. Two nodal points were studied, one at Inkandla and another at Mbazwana. Stratified sampling with ten respondents from each cluster was used to make the sample representative. Since the study needed to establish the levels of awareness and preparedness by these cluster members as well as nodal schools of the clustering concept, it emerged from the study that there are two types of awareness, that is, awareness of the vision, and awareness of the centres or nodal points and their resources. Responses concerning awareness of the vision yielded a variety of results because the levels of awareness differed from individual to individual, and it is the levels of awareness that eventually determine levels of preparedness to embrace the concepts, ultimately affecting the use and non-use of the centres. The study revealed that even though the concept has numerous challenges, the population studied was not generally averse to the concept, however, a lot of preparatory work needs to be done prior to setting up such projects. Once set up careful monitoring and a timely response to problems is important for the sustainability of these centres. / Thesis (MIS)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, [2006].

Diplomarbeit--Université de Fribourg, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

The BDI agent architecture includes a plan library containing pre-defined plans. The plan library is included in the agent architecture to reduce the need for expensive means-end reasoning, however can hinder the agent’s effectiveness when operating in a changing environment. Existing research on integrating different planning methods into the BDI agent to overcome this limitation include HTNs, state-space planning and Graphplan. Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have not yet been used for this purpose. This dissertation investigates the feasibility of using GAs as a plan modification mechanism for BDI agents. It covers the design of a plan structure that can be encoded into a binary string, which can be operated on by the genetic operators. The effectiveness of the agent in a changing environment is compared to an agent without the GA plan modification mechanism. The dissertation shows that GAs are a feasible plan modification mechanism for BDI agents. / Information Science

This study investigated the effectiveness of Library Information Literacy 1, on the academic performance of San Joaquin Delta College (Stockton, CA) students in their subsequent online courses. Four research questions compared successful completion of online courses by students who completed Library Information Literacy 1 and those who did not across gender, ethnicity, and number of online courses taken by students. Successful completion of Library Information Literacy 1 at San Joaquin Delta College does not appear to improve students' abilities to succeed in subsequent online courses. Success rates are almost the same for the experimental group and the randomly selected control group when comparing percentages. When controlling for gender, females who are successful in Library Information Literacy 1 do slightly better in subsequent online courses than females who do not take Library Information Literacy 1. However, males who are successful in completing Library Information Literacy 1 do worse in subsequent online courses than male students who did not take the course. When controlling for ethnicity, Caucasian students did just as well in online courses, regardless of whether they had passed Library Information Literacy 1. In addition, Black, Hispanic and Asian students had lower rates of success in online courses than Caucasians, with Black students having the lowest level of successful completion. For the two other ethnic groups, Hispanics and Asians, there are no real differences in successful completion of online courses when comparing students in the control group and experimental group. Curriculum revisions are offered as a way to improve online student learning outcomes for completers of Library Information Literacy 1. Community college administrators of instructional or student services might also use this information to encourage counselors in advising students who plan to take a large number of online courses to enroll in Library Information Literacy 1.

The thesis focuses on the profession of librarian and information professional in health care in the context of lifelong learning. The target group are professionals of information institutions in the network of public health information services in the Czech Republic. Content analysis of Czech and foreign materials and sociological quantitative research carried out by questionnaires in the Czech Republic's health information institutions are methods for analysing the needs of the librarian and information specialist in the health care sector in the Czech Republic. The output is a proposal of the concept of a lifelong professional education program called Competencies of the medical librarian for the performance of library and information activities. The lifelong education of medical librarians in connection with the concept of lifelong education of librarians in the Czech Republic is a process that will enable to gain necessary qualifications (professional knowledge and skills, general skills and soft skills) to perform this responsible and demanding profession.