Presentation given as a roundtable at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in New York, NY. Session sponsored by the American Association for History and Computing. / A panel of trained archivists will discuss the use the spectrum of Web 2.0 tools and innovation as how it creates mechanisms to promote the access and use of archival and rare materials. They will discuss their own innovations in their own repositories, and some of the successful projects and tools being used today, as well as discussing the potential for creative collaboration between historians and archivists in academe using Web 2.0 tools and resources.

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Interference competition is widely considered to structure ant communities. Competition’s effect, however, may be contingent upon disturbance or the abiotic environment. The interaction of temperature and competition is implicit in a wide body of ant community research; however, very few studies have experimentally manipulated these variables. To investigate the role of competition and temperature on ant communities, I (i) employed null models to investigate how species partition their spatial, temporal, and thermal environments in disturbed and undisturbed forests, (ii) used pairwise behavioral experiments to construct a Markov chain model to predict relative abundance patterns and correlated behavioral indices to species co-occurrence patterns, and (iii) conducted a shade, physiological thermal tolerance, and fully factorial shade and removal experiment to investigate the interaction of competition and temperature on ant community structure. The results of these studies are summarized below. First, I took advantage of a natural experiment, the 2002 Biscuit Fire, to investigate how species partition their temporal, thermal, and spatial environments in disturbed and undisturbed forests with null models. I found that most sites displayed a high degree of temporal niche overlap and species aggregation along the thermal axis. Half of the sites, however, had regular spacing of the temperature at which species obtain maximum activity. Species co-occurrence patterns in space modulated with diurnal temperature variations. Unburned sites had more spatial segregation of species than burned sites. Overall, it appears as though species activity is regulated, at least in part, by the thermal niche axis, and ant communities may repeatedly assemble and disassemble throughout the day. Second, I used data from pairwise behavioral experiment to generate transition probabilities for a Markov chain model. Assuming the landscape represents a large number of patches, the model predicted the relative abundance of an assemblage. I compared Markov chain predictions of relative abundance to relative abundance measurements on the local and regional scale. I used the same pairwise behavioral data to predict species co-occurrence values in three sites. Neither model accurately predicted community patterns. The only significant result was the Markov chain prediction of bait occurrence on the local scale; however, the relationship was opposite of the prediction. Finally, I conducted a shade experiment to investigate how communities respond to an altered thermal environment and associated their response to results from physiological thermal tolerance experiments. I then conducted a fully-factorial shade and Formica moki removal experiment to investigate if thermal responses were mediated by competitive effects. The addition of shade tables greatly reduced temperatures in the field, and Temnothorax nevadensis abundance was consistently lower in shade treatments. Decreased abundance at shade stations did not appear to be an indirect effect of F. moki activity. Physiological thermal tolerance was strongly associated with changes in abundance in shade treatments: the lower a species thermal tolerance, the greater its positive change in abundance after shade additions. The only species with a strong foraging response to F. moki removal was T. nevadensis, a species who was often cooccurred with F. moki on baits. I did not find evidence for the interaction of competition and temperature, and it appears as though physiological differences strongly influence the foraging activity of Siskiyou ant communities.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the null subject phenomenon in the acquisition of English by Taiwan EFL learners to see whether the participants are influenced by their L1 knowledge or UG and whether they can reset their L1 value of null subject parameter. Two experimental tasks in questionnaire, grammaticality judgment task (GJ) and paragraph translation task (PT), and one oral task, storytelling task (ST), were adopted in this study. As for the participants, in the questionnaire part the GJ and PT tasks were given to 132 EFL learners, which were divided into the lower proficiency group (n=56) and the higher proficiency group (n=76), and 15 native speakers of English as a control group. Besides, we reanalyze the data of the ST task in Lin & Wu (2005), which consisted of 20 high English proficiency participants and 20 low English proficiency participants. Overall, the main findings are summarized as follows: 1. Chinese topic constructions seem to influence profoundly on the L2A of English by EFL learners. This may imply that L2 learners acquire the L2 through L1-based knowledge. 2. The asymmetry of null subjects and null objects was found in our data across the three tasks, which suggests EFL learners treated both features differently and have difficulty in unlearning null objects. We support Kong¡¦s (2005) claim that Chinese learners are influenced by L1 topic structure but they adjust this rule to: every sentence must have an overt topic in the sentence-initial position. 3. The different judgments between matrix and embedded clauses with null subjects and null expletives may infer EFL learners do not intrinsically reset the parameter of null subjects. 4. According to our results in ST task, there seems to be several patterns which make null subjects and null objects easier to occur, such as structures with coordinate relationship or clear reference relationship. These sentence patterns prove that the EFL learners are still easier to be influenced by the discourse-oriented feature in Chinese. According to the result, we may infer that the position of Partial Access to UG probably the best answer to our research questions since it is assumed that through Partial Access to UG, L2 learners will not be able to acquire the L2 values of parameters when these differ from the L1; that is, UG is accessible but only via the setting of the L1.

As one important experiment in the social or user-generated classification of online cultural heritage resources collections, art museums are leading the effort to elicit keyword descriptions of artwork images from online museum visitors. The motivations for having online viewers - presumably largely non-art-specialists - describe art images are (a) to generate keywords for image and object records in museum information retrieval systems in a cost-effective way and (b) to engage online visitors with the artworks and with each other by inviting visitors to express themselves and share their descriptions of artworks. This paper explores the question of how effective non-specialist art keyworders can be in capturing ("tagging") potentially useful concepts and terms for use in art information retrieval systems. To do this, the paper compares evidence from art museum visitor studies which describe how non-specialist art viewers react to and describe artworks and use museum-supplied information in their initial encounters with artworks. A theoretical model of artwork interpretation derived from art museum visitor research provides a framework with which to examine both the activity and the products of artwork tagging for image and information retrieval.

Poster paper / The latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have made the concept "Libraries without walls" into a practical reality. This has posed several challenges to the information work force and the information users. At the same time, we have noticed the issues related to the information overload and information quality. At this juncture, efforts are strengthening to develop means to persuade and equip the users and information specialists to achieve maximum efficiency in information services. It was observed that one of the important reasons for the under utilization of electronic information is the lack of requisite level of working knowledge and consumption skills among customers and information intermediaries (Sridhar, 1997). To improve the situation, the conventional user education programmes need be redefined and reengineered, to be it more technology oriented. It should be designed in such a way to provide confidence to the user in locating desired information (Francis, 2005).

Daphnée Rentfrow assisted in writing and editing the report. This 176 page report is also available from purchase for $30 from CLIR or the DLF. It is freely available in html or pdf formats from their web sites. It is archived with the permission of the CLIR and DLF who hold copyright. / This report will be useful to anyone interested in the current state of online American literature resources. Its purpose is twofold: to offer a sampling of the types of digital resources currently available or under development in support of American literature; and to identify the prevailing concerns of specialists in the field as expressed during interviews conducted between July 2004 and May 2005. Part two of the report consolidates the results of these interviews with an exploration of resources currently available. Part three examines six categories of digital work in progress: (1) quality-controlled subject gateways, (2) author studies, (3) public domain e-book collections and alternative publishing models, (4) proprietary reference resources and full-text primary source collections, (5) collections by design, and (6) teaching applications. This survey is informed by a selective review of the recent literature. Daphnée Rentfrow assisted in writing and editing the report. This 176 page report is also available from purchase for $30 from CLIR or the DLF. It is freely available in html or pdf formats from their web sites. This publication was deposited with permission of the publisher who holds copyright (Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources Washington, DC.).

European Association for Health Information & Libraries Workshop 2007, Kraków, Poland, 12-15 September 2007 / Since 2006, the Campus Library of Biomedical Sciences of K.U.Leuven University is reconsidering its role in education and research. Giving access to scientific information is still our libraryâ s most important mission. However, teaching our students and academic staff the skills for efficient retrieval and use of scientific information is increasingly becoming an important task too. In the past, instruction was limited to guided tours and short library instruction sessions, organized on an individual and unsystematic basis. This changed in 2006, when we were asked by the Faculty of Medicine to reconsider part of the medical curriculum in the light of integrating information literacy in it. The following considerations were made: 1. information literacy should be integrated in a systematic way in the curriculum 2. minimal skills of information literacy should be determined for each level 3. instruction in information literacy should be a continuous line starting in the first and ending in the last year (vertical line) 4. information literacy should be acquired in an active way in as many courses as possible (horizontal line) 5. instruction in information literacy is a shared responsibility of library and academic staff As a result, the biomedical library was given the responsibility of information literacy in the beginning of the curriculum of medical students, while academic staff took the responsibility of the rest. At the same time, the library was investing a lot in providing our academic staff with tools, formats and learning objects for integrating information literacy in their lessons. We also started planning systematic trainings for keeping our academic staff up to date with major changes in scientific information. The new curriculum of the Faculty of Medicine was put into practice in October 2006. It was soon followed by similar projects in all other biomedical faculties of our university.

The most time consuming aspects of managing a library Web service are the creation and maintenance of site documents and assets. Although the organizational structure and contents of a Web site varies from library to library, participants in all library Web projects need to be familiar with the concepts and terminology associated with creating documents and resources for the Web. This document is not an in-depth HTML guide, but is instead a general introduction to Web content creation. Newer technologies are briefly described and references to other resources are provided. This is also an interactive document and provides the reader access to associated resources.

"Copyright in all articles appearing in the Journal of the Medical Library Association is owned by their authors. Readers may copy articles without permission of the copyright owners, as long as the author and the Medical Library Association are acknowledged in the copy and the copy is used for educational, not-for-profit purposes." / Objectives: The purpose of this study is to assess whether recent graduates of the Ohio State University's Occupational Therapy division are applying information-seeking skills they learned as undergraduates, and to seek their advice on ways to improve information-literacy instruction for current and future occupational therapy students. Method: A survey was sent to a sample of graduates from 1995â 2000. The results were entered into an SPSS database, and descriptive and inferential results were calculated to determine the information-seeking patterns of these recent graduates. Results: A majority of the occupational therapy graduates who responded to the survey prefer to use information resources that are readily available to them, such as advice from their colleagues or supervisors (79%) and the Internet (69%), rather than the evidence available in the journal literature. Twenty-six percent (26%) of the graduates have searched MEDLINE or CINAHL at least once since they graduated. Formal library instruction sessions were considered useful by 42% of the graduates, and 22% of the graduates found informal contacts with librarians to be useful. Conclusions: Librarians and occupational therapy faculty must intensify their efforts to convey the importance of applying research information to patient care and inform students of ways to access this information after they graduate. In addition to teaching searching skills for MEDLINE and CINAHL, they must provide instruction on how to assess the quality of information they find on the Internet. Other findings suggest that occupational therapy practitioners need access to information systems in the clinical setting that synthesize the research in a way that is readily applicable to patient-care issues.