4 results
4 - Information access
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- By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
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- Book:
- Digital Libraries and Information Access
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2012, pp 47-68
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Summary
Introduction
As discussed in Chapter 1, information access includes all the typical information retrieval processes and activities ranging from content and data selection, and processing and indexing, to search and retrieval, and use of information and data by a designated user community in order to meet their information requirements. Research in information access (information retrieval, to be precise) began in the 1950s and the emphasis in the early days was on building automated systems for indexing so as to facilitate retrieval of documents, rather than on the needs of users. Progress in information retrieval may be summarized as follows (Agosti, 2008; Chowdhury, 2010; Ruthven and Kelly, 2011):
• Stage 1 (from 1950s to mid-1970s): The focus was on document and text retrieval using small test collections, and the application areas included catalogue, bibliographic and full-text documents. The focus was more on designing retrieval systems than on users’ needs and usability. A large number of remote online databases appeared, providing search and retrieval of abstracts and some full-text documents of scholarly information resources such as journal and conference papers.
• Stage 2 (mid-1970s to mid-1980s): The focus was still on systems rather than on users, but retrieval systems became more sophisticated and more advanced systems were built both for managing unstructured text in databases and for structured library management operations. Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) and more online databases appeared, facilitating remote access to information, but the systems were centralized and the focus was still on text.
• Stage 3 (mid-1980s to mid-1990s): During this period ‘the attention of information management system researchers started to move from the collection of documents towards the user and the retrieval model, with the focus on the invention of models better able to support user–system interaction’ (Agosti, 2008, 4). Alternative models, especially natural language processing and knowledge-based retrieval models, as well as hypertext and network-based models, began to appear. There was also a major shift in research from systems to users and interactions, giving rise to various information seeking and retrieval models. This was also the early phase of digital library research, where the focus was on developing robust information retrieval models and systems that were capable of processing and retrieving large quantities of digital information of different kinds – text as well as multimedia.
15 - Digital libraries and information access: research trends
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- By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
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- Book:
- Digital Libraries and Information Access
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2012, pp 217-228
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Summary
Introduction
Research and development in digital libraries (DLs) have progressed significantly over the past 20 or so years. A search on the Scopus database reveals a dramatic rise in the number of publications (articles, papers, reviews), from 436 publications between 1990 and 1999 to 7469 publications between 2000 and 2010 (Nguyen and Chowdhury, 2011). A number of reviews have been written to trace the developments and major areas of DL research. For example, Chowdhury and Chowdhury (1999) reviewed and classified DL research in the 1990s in the following major areas: collection development; development methodology and design issues; user interfaces; information organization; classification and indexing; resource discovery; metadata; access and file management; user studies; information retrieval; legal issues; social issues; evaluation of digital information; evaluation of DLs; standards; preservation; and implications for library managers.
More recently, Pomerantz et al. (2006) studied a sample of 1064 DL publications covering the period 1995–2006 and suggested that DL research and work can be broadly grouped into 19 modules (core topics) around 69 related topics. Another review of DL research, conducted by Liew (2008), was based on 557 publications covering the period 1997–2007. These publications collectively centred around five themes (core topics) and 62 related subtopics. These two studies provided fundamental frameworks of DL core and subtopics, with Pomerantz et al. (2006) covering core computer science and library and information science topics and Liew (2008) covering the organizational and people issues of DL research.
The most recent DL knowledge map proposed by Nguyen and Chowdhury (2011) includes 21 core topics and 1015 subtopics. In addition to the classic research topics in information and library science such as collection management, information organization, information retrieval, user studies, human–computer interactions and digital preservation, they noted several new research topics such as ontology and semantic retrieval, virtual technologies, mobile technology, the semantic web and social networking.
As discussed in the literature (see for example, Nguyen and Chowdhury, 2011;
Pomerantz et al., 2006; Liew, 2008) and in different chapters in this book, research and development activities in DLs are significantly influenced by several factors such as ICT developments, changes in the socio-political scenario, and new business models appearing within the information industry vis-à-vis new regulations (including copyright and access management regulations).
10 - Digital libraries and open access
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- By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
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- Book:
- Digital Libraries and Information Access
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2012, pp 143-154
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Summary
Introduction
Open access, defined simply as access to digital content free at the point of use, is a movement that began nearly two decades ago. It had its origins on the one hand in the exponential rise in the costs of scholarly information sources, especially journals, and on the other hand in the ease of publication and communication facilities that became available with the advent and proliferation of the internet and various new e-publishing models and standards. However, there is a bigger and altruistic reason behind the open access initiative. It has been driven by the need to provide better access to and sharing of information for research and scholarly activities. Open access facilitates research and scholarly activities in a number of ways, for example, by opening research and scholarly knowledge to all so that more researchers can access that knowledge build on it, thereby meeting another goal of less duplication of research efforts (JISC, 2011a). Open access benefits different stakeholders. Through open access:
• researchers can reach a greater audience and thus their research can be more widely read and cited
• institutions gain an enhanced reputation, and thus a better competitive edge, as their research becomes more visible
• funding agencies see a greater return on their investment because the research funded by them can reach more people
• publishers find that the impact of their journals increases as a result of greater access.
Thus, although the open access movement was initiated to find an alternative to the problems facing academic and scholarly communities due to the soaring price of journals, it does more social good by promoting better and easier access to knowledge for everyone, not necessarily the small group of people who are associated with relatively rich institutions. However,
it a kind of second-class, cut-price publishing route. It is simply a means to make research results freely available online to the whole research community.
(JISC, 2011b)This chapter discusses the issues of open access and institutional repositories in the context of open access digital libraries. It briefly introduces the concept of Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and institutional repositories.
1 - Digital libraries and information access: introduction
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- By Gobinda G. Chowdhury, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Schubert Foo, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Edited by G. G. Chowdhury, Foo Schubert
-
- Book:
- Digital Libraries and Information Access
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 08 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 30 September 2012, pp 1-12
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Systematic research and development activities in digital libraries began just over 20 years ago, and during this short period of time the field of digital libraries has progressed significantly. Over the past two decades a large number of digital libraries have appeared in different countries that cover different subjects, and disciplines from health to science, engineering to arts and culture, and others. Likewise, digital libraries have been designed, developed and used by a wide range of user communities that include school children, academics, scholars, scientists and the general public. Different types of content have been created and stored in these digital library repositories, ranging from basic digital objects like photographs, music and film to more researchoriented scholarly, scientific and research data.
Alongside this, a significant amount of resources and efforts have been invested in research into digital libraries that have given rise to over 8000 journal and conference papers and a large number of books, theses, research reports and other kinds of scholarly publications. Experts from a number of disciplines, like library and information science, computer science, engineering, psychology, business management, law, economics and others, have joined hands to address and resolve a variety of research issues and challenges associated with digital libraries.
The field of digital libraries has evolved significantly over the past two decades, both in terms of the nature and characteristics of research and in terms of the objectives and functionalities of digital libraries. While the first phase of digital library research in the early 1990s put the focus on building technologies for management of large volumes of digital information for remote access, this focus subsequently shifted to users, usability and impact studies, open access and so on. Subsequently, with the rapid progress in web and social networking technologies, the focus of digital library research has been extended to new and upcoming challenges such as semantic access, social information retrieval and social network analysis (see for details, Theng et al., 2009; Borgman, 2007; Goh and Foo, 2007). Furthermore, digital library research that once focused primarily on content – books, journals, music, video etc. – is now being extended to managing research data as well as research output, i.e.