Showing papers in "D-lib Magazine in 1999"

What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter

Abstract: Originally published in D-Lib Magazine, January, 1999. Available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html Reprinted with permission. A serviceable working conception of “social info...

Free at Last: The Future of Peer-Reviewed Journals

Abstract: I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind as to what the optimal and inevitable outcome of all this will be: The Give-Away literature will be free at last online, in one global, interlinked virtual library (see ), and its QC/C expenses will be paid for up-front, out of the S/L/P savings. The only question is: When? This piece is written in the hope of wiping the potential smirk off Posterity's face by persuading the academic cavalry, now that they have been led to the waters of self-archiving, that they should just go ahead and drink!

Evaluation and Usage and Acceptance of Electronic Journals: Results of an Electronic Survey of Max Planck Society Researchers including Usage Statistics from Elsevier, Springer, and Academic Press

Abstract: Within the Max Planck Society, the German basic research organization similar to an academy of the sciences, a survey of researchers' use and acceptance of electronic journals was carried out from April 15-May 15, 1999. The results of this survey show a significantly high acceptance of electronic journals and an unwillingness to return to print versions only. The frequency of use of electronic journals from four scholarly publishers was evaluated. The researchers also rated the advantages and disadvantages of electronic journals related to various aspects, such as currency, ease of access, timeliness, uptodate information, additional searching modi, etc. The questionnaire also allowed capture of additional information, such as which additional journals were desired in electronic form, which services could be done without in case of budget restrictions, what information might be felt necessary for additional assistance in using electronic journals, etc. Data from publisher-provided usage and transaction statistics shed more light on the distribution of use among the inter- and cross-disciplinary fields of research within the 84 Max Planck Institutes and additional Working Groups and Research Centers. Subject-oriented comparisons between the researchers' use in the biomedical section, the chemical-physical-technical section, and the humanities section of the Max Planck Society are drawn. A review of the recommendations resulting from the survey, as well as a suggestion for expansion of the information provision structures through establishment of a new Center for Information Management within the Max Planck Society, close the paper.

Reference linking in a hybrid library environment: part 1: frameworks for linking

Abstract: The creation of services linking related information entities is an area that is attracting an ever increasing interest in the ongoing development of the World Wide Web in general, and of research-related information systems in particular. Currently, both practice and theory point at linking services as being a major domain for innovation enabled by digital communication of content. Publishers, subscription agents, researchers and libraries are all looking into ways to create added value by linking related information entities, as such presenting the information within a broader context estimated to be relevant to the users of the information. This is the first of two articles in D-Lib Magazine on this topic. This first part describes the current state-of-the-art and contrasts various approaches to the problem. It identifies static and dynamic linking solutions as well as open and closed linking frameworks. It also includes an extensive bibliography. The second part, SFX, a Generic Linking Solution describes a system that we have developed for linking in a hybrid working environment.

Encoded Archival Description: An Introduction and Overview

Abstract: Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is an emerging standard used internationally in an increasing number of archives and manuscripts libraries to encode data describing corporate records and personal papers. The individual descriptions are variously called finding aids, guides, handlists, or catalogues. While archival description shares many objectives with bibliographic description, it differs from it in several essential ways. From its inception, EAD was based on Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and, with the release of EAD version 1.0 in 1998, it is also compliant with EXtensible Markup Language (XML). EAD was and continues to be developed by the archival community. While development was initiated in the United States, international interest and contribution are increasing. EAD is currently administered and maintained jointly by the Society of American Archivists and the United States Library of Congress. Developers are currently exploring ways to internationalize the administration and maintenance of EAD to reflect and represent the expanding base of users. ESARBICA Journal Vol.20 2001: 71-80

Education for Digital Libraries

Abstract: This article looks at the state of education in digital libraries. It reports findings from an international survey of library and information science (LIS) and computer science faculty, and websites, regarding digital libraries courses and curriculum at their institutions. Results of the study show that, currently, few schools offer courses specifically in digital libraries. While many schools have not developed Digital Library (DL) courses, they are aware of the need to develop curriculum in this growing area of research and practice. In this paper, selected examples of current DL course offerings are also provided to illustrate the variety of current DL courses. The web-based Diglib Education Collaboratory being developed at Rutgers University is discussed as an example of collaborative efforts amongst faculty at disparate locations. From our experience teaching a digital libraries course, students currently enrolled in DL courses often have mixed, and only vague, notions of both the nature of DLs and the content of courses devoted to their study.

Interoperability for Digital Objects and Repositories: The Cornell/CNRI Experiments

Abstract: Catalyst residues of a transition metal compound and an organometalliccompound contained in a polymer slurry are deactivated by contact with anhydrous carbon dioxide. Preferably the contacting is carried out in a transfer line connecting the reaction zone with a zone of sufficiently lower pressure that flashing of diluent occurs in the transfer line to assure mixing of the carbon dioxide and the catalyst residues.

Reference Linking in a Hybrid Library Environment

Abstract: This is the third part of our papers about reference linking in a hybrid library environment. The first part described the state-of-the-art of reference linking and contrasted various approaches to the problem. It identified static and dynamic linking solutions, open and closed linking frameworks as well as just-in-case and just-in-time linking. The second part introduced SFX, a dynamic, just-in-time linking solution we built for our own purposes. However, we suggested that the underlying concepts were sufficiently generic to be applied in a wide range of digital libraries. In this third part we show how this has been demonstrated conclusively in the "SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL" experiment. In this experiment, local as well as remote distributed information resources of the digital library collections of the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Ghent Library have been used as starting points for SFX-links into other parts of the collections. The SFX-framework has further been generalized in order to achieve a technology that can easily be transferred from one digital library environment to another and that minimizes the overhead in making the distributed information services that make up those libraries interoperable with SFX. This third part starts with a presentation of the SFX problem statement in light of the recent discussions on reference linking. Next, it introduces the notion of global and local relevance of extended services as well as an architectural categorization of open linking frameworks, also referred to as frameworks that are supportive of selective resolution. Then, an in-depth description of the generalized SFX solution is given. Rephrasing the SFX problem statement The problem statement It is relevant to rephrase the SFX problem statement in the context of the meetings and the subsequent reports and publications on reference linking organized by the Digital Library Federation (DLF), the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services (NFAIS), and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) (Caplan 1999a; Caplan 1999b; Caplan & Arms 1999; Needleman 1999). The generic statement of the reference linking problem, as defined by the working group on reference linking was (Caplan 1999a; Caplan & Arms 1999): Given the information in a standard citation, how does one get to the thing to which it refers? However, the working group concentrated on a specific variation on this: Given the information in a citation to a journal article, how does a user get from the citation to an appropriate copy of the article? The SFX research also addresses these problems, but only as an instance of a more general problem that can be formulated as: Given bibliographic metadata, how does one present relevant extended services for it? Bibliographic metadata as a starting point Clearly, the SFX research is not only concerned about information in a standard citation. Its starting point is bibliographic metadata in general. As such, information entities originating from typical scholarly resources such as records from abstracting & indexing databases, OPAC systems and preprint archives can be used as a starting point in the SFX problem statement. This is also the case for citations to both journal articles and books found in journal articles or books. But even fractional bibliographic metadata such as an author name taken from an e-mail message is a valid starting point in the SFX problem statement. Extended services as a goal A similar generalization holds for the target of the problem statement since the SFX research is not only concerned about linking to the full-text that corresponds to a citation in a journal article. It aims at the presentation of a variety of extended services for whichever metadata is used as a starting point. Extended services are services that present an information entity in a digital library -defined as the link-source -in the context of the entire information environment (Van de Sompel & Hochstenbach 1999a). For instance, for a given link-source record from an abstracting & indexing database, extended services can -amongst others -be the presentation of: the full-text of the paper that is abstracted in the link-source; a record abstracting the same publication taken from another abstracting &

The State of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative April 1999

Abstract: Unlike previous workshops, the focus of DC-6 was not to resolve questions in plenary meetings, but rather to identify unresolved issues and assign them to formal working groups for resolution. The result of this process was an ambitious work plan for 1999. This report summarizes that work plan, highlights the progress that has been made on it and identifies a few significant projects that exemplify this progress

Reference linking in a hybrid library environment: part 3: generalizing the SFX solution in the 'SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL' experiment

Abstract: This is the third part of our papers about reference linking in a hybrid library environment. The first part described the state-of-the-art of reference linking and contrasted various approaches to the problem. It identified static and dynamic linking solutions, open and closed linking frameworks as well as just-in-case and just-in-time linking. The second part introduced SFX, a dynamic, just-in-time linking solution we built for our own purposes. However, we suggested that the underlying concepts were sufficiently generic to be applied in a wide range of digital libraries. In this third part we show how this has been demonstrated conclusively in the \"SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL\" experiment. In this experiment, local as well as remote distributed information resources of the digital library collections of the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Ghent Library have been used as starting points for SFX-links into other parts of the collections. The SFX-framework has further been generalized in order to achieve a technology that can easily be transferred from one digital library environment to another and that minimizes the overhead in making the distributed information services that make up those libraries interoperable with SFX. This third part starts with a presentation of the SFX problem statement in light of the recent discussions on reference linking. Next, it introduces the notion of global and local relevance of extended services as well as an architectural categorization of open linking frameworks, also referred to as frameworks that are supportive of selective resolution. Then, an in-depth description of the generalized SFX solution is given. Rephrasing the SFX problem statement The problem statement It is relevant to rephrase the SFX problem statement in the context of the meetings and the subsequent reports and publications on reference linking organized by the Digital Library Federation (DLF), the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services (NFAIS), and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) (Caplan 1999a; Caplan 1999b; Caplan & Arms 1999; Needleman 1999). The generic statement of the reference linking problem, as defined by the working group on reference linking was (Caplan 1999a; Caplan & Arms 1999): Given the information in a standard citation, how does one get to the thing to which it refers? However, the working group concentrated on a specific variation on this: Given the information in a citation to a journal article, how does a user get from the citation to an appropriate copy of the article? The SFX research also addresses these problems, but only as an instance of a more general problem that can be formulated as: Given bibliographic metadata, how does one present relevant extended services for it? Bibliographic metadata as a starting point Clearly, the SFX research is not only concerned about information in a standard citation. Its starting point is bibliographic metadata in general. As such, information entities originating from typical scholarly resources such as records from abstracting & indexing databases, OPAC systems and preprint archives can be used as a starting point in the SFX problem statement. This is also the case for citations to both journal articles and books found in journal articles or books. But even fractional bibliographic metadata such as an author name taken from an e-mail message is a valid starting point in the SFX problem statement. Extended services as a goal A similar generalization holds for the target of the problem statement since the SFX research is not only concerned about linking to the full-text that corresponds to a citation in a journal article. It aims at the presentation of a variety of extended services for whichever metadata is used as a starting point. Extended services are services that present an information entity in a digital library -defined as the link-source -in the context of the entire information environment (Van de Sompel & Hochstenbach 1999a). For instance, for a given link-source record from an abstracting & indexing database, extended services can -amongst others -be the presentation of: the full-text of the paper that is abstracted in the link-source; a record abstracting the same publication taken from another abstracting &

Semantics-sensitive Retrieval for Digital Picture Libraries

Abstract: We present SIMPLIcity (Semantics-sensitive Integrated Matching for Picture LIbraries), an image database retrieval system, which uses high-level semantics classification and integrated region matching based upon image segmentation. The SIMPLIcity system represents an image by a set of regions, roughly corresponding to objects, which are characterized by color, texture, shape, and location. Based on segmented regions, the system classifies images into categories which are intended to distinguish semantically meaningful differences. These high-level categories, such as textured-nontextured, indoor-outdoor, objectionable-benign, graph-photograph, enhance retrieval by narrowing down the searching range in a database and permitting semantically adaptive searching methods.

Smart Objects, Dumb Archives: A User-Centric, Layered Digital Library Framework

Abstract: Currently, there exist a large number of superb digital libraries, all of which are, unfortunately, vertically integrated and all presenting a monolithic interface to their users. Ideally, a user would want to locate resources from a variety of digital libraries dealing only with one interface. A number of approaches exist to this interoperability issue exist including: defining a universal protocol for all libraries to adhere to; or developing mechanisms to translate between protocols. The approach we illustrate in this paper is to push down the level of universal protocols to one for digital object communication and for communication for simple archives. This approach creates the opportunity for digital library service providers to create digital libraries tailored to the needs of user communities drawing from available archives and individual publishers who adhere to this standard. We have created a reference implementation based on the hyper text transfer protocol (http) with the protocols being derived from the Dienst protocol. We have created a special class of digital objects called buckets and a number of archives based on a NASA collection and NSF funded projects. Starting from NCSTRL we have developed a set of digital library services called NCSTRL+ and have created digital libraries for researchers, educators and students that can each draw on all the archives and individually created buckets.

MPEG-7: behind the scenes

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of the objectives and components of the MPEG-7, "Multimedia Content Description Interface" standard, an overview of the current state of its development and an idea of its expected impact on digital libraries of the future.

A Report on the PEAK Experiment: Usage and Economic Behavior

Abstract: Electronic access to scholarly journals has become an important and commonly accepted tool for researchers. The user community has become more familiar with the medium over time and has started to actively bid for alternative forms of access. Technological improvements in the communication networks, paired with the decreasing costs of hardware, create greater incentives for innovation. Consequently, although publishers and libraries face a number of challenges, they also have promising new opportunities.1 Publishers are creating many new electronic-only journals on the Internet, while also developing and deploying electronic access to literature traditionally distributed on paper. They are modifying traditional pricing schemes and content bundles, and creating new schemes to take advantage of the characteristics of digital duplication and distribution.

The ISI® Web of Science® - Links and Electronic Journals: How links work today in the Web of Science, and the challenges posed by electronic journals.

Abstract: A shoe construction in which an elastic gore is stitched to and runs from one side of the vamp to the other side across the throat of the shoe. The elastic gore is sandwiched between the tongue and the shoe lining, thereby hiding the gore from view, and preventing it from contacting the foot of the wearer. The gore, when contracted, shirrs the mid-section of the tongue.

Semantic Research for Digital Libraries.

Abstract: In this era of the Internet and distributed, multimedia computing, new and emerging classes of information systems applications have swept into the lives of office workers and people in general. From digital libraries, multimedia systems, geographic information systems, and collaborative computing to electronic commerce, virtual reality, and electronic video arts and games, these applications have created tremendous opportunities for information and computer science researchers and practitioners.