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Librarians’ perceptions about adoption and uses of the Koha integrated library software in Punjab, Pakistan

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose This study aims to find out the reasons of adopting Koha integrated library software, discovers the problems faced by librarians during its implementation, and gets the perceptions of librarians about the performances of Koha in Punjab, a province of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach Survey method was used to collect the data through questionnaire from the purposefully selected sample (N = 66) of university librarians of Punjab, a province of Pakistan. Findings The librarians adopted Koha due to the availability of Web online public access catalog (OPAC), provision of MARC21 standards for cataloging and its free availability. During implementation, the librarians were faced with the problems of lack of technical skills, lack of knowledge about the Linux operating system, shortage of skilled manpower, slow internet speeds and approval from their organization. They highly rated the performance of the cataloguing, circulation, patron and OPAC modules of Koha. Originality/value This research provides a brief picture of librarians’ perceptions about Koha adoption and satisfaction levels. The findings highlighted the issues and problems faced during the implementation of Koha. This study will be helpful for librarians in the selection, implementation and usage of the Koha software in their libraries.
  • 27 de Junho de 2019, 02:44

Accelerate proposal generation in R-CNN methods for fast pedestrian extraction

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a novel region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN) approach that is more efficient while at least as accurate as existing R-CNN methods. In this way, the proposed method, namely R2-CNN, provides a more powerful tool for pedestrian extraction for person re-identification, which involve a huge number of images and pedestrian needs to be extracted efficiently to meet the real-time requirement. Design/methodology/approach The proposed R2-CNN is tested on two types of data sets. The first one the USC Pedestrian Detection data set, which consists of three sub-sets USC-A, UCS-B and USC-C, with respect to their characteristics. This data set is used to test the performance of R2-CNN in the pedestrian extraction task. The speed and performance of the investigated algorithms were collected. The second data set is the PASCAL VOC 2007 data set, which is a common benchmark data set for object detection. This data set was used to analyze characteristics of R2-CNN in the case of general object detection task. Findings This study proposes a novel R-CNN method that is both more efficient and more accurate than existing methods. The method, when used as an object detector, would facilitate the data preprocessing stage of person re-identification. Originality/value The study proposes a novel approach for object detection, which shows advantages in both efficiency and accuracy for pedestrian detection task. It contributes to both data preprocessing for person re-identification and the research on deep learning.
  • 27 de Junho de 2019, 02:40

Design effectiveness of academic library web sites

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose Academic library websites need evaluation to determine whether users can derive useful experiences while visiting them to perform tasks. This is more so because visiting an academic library website is by voluntary action rather than compulsion as is the case with university, polytechnic and college sites where students must conduct academic transactions that cannot be reasonably avoided. The result of such an evaluation provides signposts for improvement so that academic library websites can continue to be useful to their users. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the structural effectiveness of academic library websites in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach The case study, research strategy and survey research approach were adopted for the study. Through a Web search, 14 universities, one polytechnic and one college of education were identified while three academic library websites were selected for the study. The evaluation of the websites was un-moderated and conducted remotely by user participants who were recruited across the three tertiary institutions under study. A five-point scale questionnaire served as the research instrument while data were presented in tables and analyzed using the median score. The Kruskall–Wallis test by ranks was used to test the null hypothesis at a five per cent level of significance. Findings Out of the 20 items presented for assessment, Group 1 and 2 disagreed to 11 (55 per cent) while agreeing on the remaining 9 (45 per cent) on Lib 1 and Lib 2 websites. Group 3 agreed to 11 (55 per cent) while disagreeing on 9 (45 per cent) on the Lib 3 website. The null hypothesis proposed for the study was rejected as the p-value of 0.04 was significant at p < 0.05. This indicated that most of the critical issues pertaining to design effectiveness were perceived to be ineffective. Originality/value The findings from this study call for a review of the design of academic library websites in Nigeria so that users can identify which websites are easier to use.
  • 27 de Junho de 2019, 02:39

Finding “just right” books for children: analyzing sentiments in online book reviews

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose This study is part of a larger research project which aims to investigate whether sentiments in online reviews on children’s books would represent significant factors which are useful for selecting the right books for children. This paper aims to examine whether positive, negative or neutral attitude would be directly associated with the overall ratings of books. Design/methodology/approach The study investigates subjectivity and polarity of online reviews on children’s books such as neutral, positive or negative sentiment. For the investigation of a statistical association between the sentiment values and the rating scores, this study performs correlation analysis. For a clear explanation of the factors affecting the relationships between the sentiment value and the rating score, this study uses the concept-level sentiment analysis of online reviews. Findings The findings of this study demonstrate that there is a weak or low correlation between the sentiment value and the rating score of a book and they are hardly related for most books. The results of this study also uncover key contributing factors that affected the correlations between two variables and made the relationship weak. Research limitations/implications This study increases awareness of the implications of online reviews as user-generated contents for complementing the existing controlled vocabulary. Practical implications This study contributes to improving library catalogs by using latent topics extracted from online reviews which provide additional access points for assisting in the selection of books. Originality/value Although several studies have conducted on online reviews in the domain of business, no research appears to exist on the sentiment analysis of online reviews about children’s books. This study attempts to address the potential and challenges associated with using online reviews to help find the right books for children.
  • 27 de Junho de 2019, 02:36

Design, develop and evaluate an open government data platform: a user-centred approach

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of designing, developing and evaluating a prototype of an open government data (OGD) platform that provided user-centred experiences. Design/methodology/approach Based on the OGD lifecycle, an OGD prototype was created, which involved the system functionality, user interface, standard specification and security mechanism. The main functionalities of the system included data acquisition, data processing and data management. A usability test was conducted following the prototype implementation. Findings The usability test indicated that an OGD platform was desired to help the public to find, access, reuse and share government data effectively and efficiently. Functions, such as visualization, local download and digital watermark should be provided and integrated into the platform. Originality/value This paper provided a complete case study on the design of an OGD platform and a reference for information system developers to design such system in the future.
  • 27 de Junho de 2019, 02:34

Interpreting and semantically describing Chinese traditional brocade: Xilankapu

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce an interpreting schema and semantic description framework for a collection of images of Xilankapu, a traditional Chinese form of embroidered fabric and brocade artwork. Design/methodology/approach First, the authors interpret the artwork of Xilankapu through Gillian Rose’s “four site” theory by presenting how the brocades were made, how the patterns of Xilankapu are classified and the geometrical abstraction of visual images. To further describe the images of this type of brocade, this paper presents semantic descriptions that include objective–non-objective relations and a multi-layered semantic framework. Furthermore, the authors developed corresponding methods for scanning, storage and indexing images for retrieval. Findings As exploratory research on describing, preserving and indexing images of Xilankapu in the context of the preservation of cultural heritage, the authors collected 1,000+ images of traditional Xilankapu, classifying and storing some of the images in a database. They developed an index schema that combines concept- and content-based approaches according to the proposed semantic description framework. They found that the framework can describe, store and preserve semantic and non-semantic information of the same image. They relate the findings of this paper to future research directions for the digital preservation of traditional cultural heritages. Research limitations/implications The framework has been designed especially for brocade, and it needs to be extended to other types of cultural image. Originality/value The semantic description framework can describe connotative semantic information on Xilankapu. It can also assist the later information retrieval work in organizing implicit information about culturally related visual materials.
  • 26 de Junho de 2019, 07:39

Effect of synchronous web-based teaching combined with visually creative teaching under the background of information science

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The paper aims to study the effects of the combination of synchronous Web-based teaching with visually creative teaching on art students’ creativity. The twenty-first century is the society of information technology and knowledge-based economy. To cope with the information society, teaching methods would be changed. Traditional chalk and talk can no longer adapt to the changing society. In addition to passing down the tradition, new ideas should also be introduced. In the informational age, the internet becomes an essential living element and synchronous Web-based teaching breaks through the obstacle of space, provides instant and multiple communication channels and creates alternative creativity learning environment. Design/methodology/approach With experimental design, totally, 208 students in Fujian University of Technology, as the research objects, were led to a 15-week (3 hours per week for total 45 hours) experimental teaching. The study uses analysis of variance for discussing the effect of synchronous Web-based teaching on art students’ creativity and further understanding the effect of the combination of synchronous Web-based teaching with visually creative teaching on art students’ creativity. Findings The research results show significant effects of synchronous Web-based teaching on creativity, visually creative teaching on creativity and the combination of synchronous Web-based teaching with visually creative teaching on the promotion of creativity. Research limitations/implications First, the sample size taken in this study was not large enough to fully reflect the results of the study. The survey sample didn’t cover all the major cities in China, which had a small coverage and couldn’t reflect the research situation of the whole country. Second, the evaluation criteria for artistic students’ creativity were too broad. More specific evaluation rules should be set and the creativity standards should be graded to better guide the implementation of art courses and the cultivation of students’ creativity. Practical implications The synchronous Web-based learning environment provides favorable individual thinking space to effectively reduce disturbance among classmates. Synchronous Web-based teaching shares sound, pictures and even films with each other to enrich the learning media. What is more, teachers would be more convenient and fast to deal with materials or handouts or rapidly updating materials and avoiding the loss of handouts. Originality/value This paper studied the effects of the combination of synchronous Web-based teaching with visually creative teaching on art students’ creativity, which was a meaningful and innovative topic. And this study can provide more enlightenment and reference for future education.
  • 20 de Junho de 2019, 12:36

Web 2.0 use in academic libraries of top ranked Asian universities

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose This paper aims to explore recent trends of how Web 2.0 applications were used in 75 academic libraries in Asia through their library websites. Design/methodology/approach The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2016 was considered for this study and out of 200 top universities ranked, 75 universities were selected for data collection. Using a multi-method approach, this study evaluated key design elements, library service platforms and website content of each academic library website, examining their site features, Web 2.0 types and applications. The criteria for selecting the websites were first the website was in English and second had Web 2.0 applications integrated into the main website. For the ranking of websites, a library web service index was developed, benchmarking from these groups – resource discovery tools, Web 2.0 applications, e-resources, mobile applications, library guides, digital reference services and digital inclusion – as indicators. Findings The authors found that over two-thirds of Asian university libraries have deployed one or more Web 2.0 applications, though their popularity and implementation vary greatly. Most widely used Web 2.0 applications are Facebook (61.3 per cent), RSS (53.3 per cent), Twitter (46.7 per cent) and YouTube (37.3 per cent). Instant messaging (5.3 per cent) and podcasting (4 per cent) were least applied. With an average of 44 per cent, the diffusion rate of Web information is moderately high among the majority of the Asian university libraries. Originality/value Many studies explored Web 2.0 applications from developed countries. However, this study attempts evaluating the use of Web 2.0 applications through content, sites and features of academic libraries in Asia, from developing countries perspective.
  • 12 de Junho de 2019, 02:15

Towards a semantics representation framework for narrative images

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore a semantics representation framework for narrative images, conforming to the image-interpretation process. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the essential features of semantics evolution in the process of narrative images interpretation. It proposes a novel semantics representation framework, ESImage (evolution semantics of image) for narrative images. ESImage adopts a hierarchical architecture to progressively organize the semantic information in images, enabling the evolutionary interpretation under the support of a graph-based semantics data model. Also, the study shows the feasibility of this framework by addressing the issues of typical semantics representation with the scenario of the Dunhuang fresco. Findings The process of image interpretation mainly concerns three issues: bottom-up description, the multi-faceted semantics representation and the top-down semantics complementation. ESImage can provide a comprehensive solution for narrative image semantics representation by addressing the major issues based on the semantics evolution mechanisms of the graph-based semantics data model. Research limitations/implications ESImage needs to be combined with machine learning to meet the requirements of automatic annotation and semantics interpretation of large-scale image resources. Originality/value This paper sorts out the characteristics of the gradual interpretation of narrative images and has discussed the major issues in its semantics representation. Also, it proposes the semantic framework ESImage which deploys a flexible and sound mechanism to represent the semantic information of narrative images.
  • 12 de Junho de 2019, 02:14

Image needs on social Q&A sites: a comparison of Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose This study aims to examine why users search for images, how users describe their image needs and what the images are used for by analysing questions obtained from two Chinese social Q&A sites, Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao. Design/methodology/approach A total of 1,402 image questions were collected from Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao. Both quantitative analysis and qualitative content analysis were performed to identify user image needs and the potential differences on the two social Q&A sites. Findings Question-asker’s intention varies in different platforms. Zhihu users asked questions mainly aiming at a promotion of subsequent discussion, whereas users of Baidu Zhidao often did so to seek information. Syntactic attributes were not frequently used in both two sites. Zhihu users were more likely to express subjective evaluations on images (concept, emotion, theme and style) in their questions than users of Baidu Zhidao. In contrast, questions from Baidu Zhidao showed a tendency to more frequently include descriptive metadata (rights, format, size, quality and authenticity) and semantic attributes (generic activity, specific people, fashion and text) of the images than questions from Zhihu. Learning was an important use on social Q&A sites, especially on Baidu Zhidao. In addition, the images were primarily used to trigger emotion or served a persuasive purpose in Zhihu. Practical implications This study contributes to a better understanding of user image search behaviour, and the findings could be used to develop better image services on social Q&A sites. Meanwhile, the image attributes extracted from the questions are conducive to the improvement of image retrieval systems. Originality/value This study explored the features of image needs on social Q&A sites, especially considering image use specified in the question. The difference of image needs between two Chinese social Q&A sites (Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao) was identified.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 11:14

Investigation and analysis of research support services in academic libraries

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 281-301, April 2019.
Purpose This paper aims at understanding the current situation of research support services offered by academic libraries in world-leading universities and providing useful implications and insights for other academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach Of the top 100 universities listed in the QS World University Rankings in 2017, 76 libraries were selected as samples and a website investigation was conducted to explore the research support services. The statistical method and visualization software was used to generalize the key services, and the text analysis and case analysis were applied to reveal the corresponding implementation. Findings Research support service has become one of the significant services of academic libraries in the context of e-research and data-intensive research. The research support services can be generally divided into seven aspects, as follows: research data management (62, 81.58 per cent), open access (64, 84.21 per cent), scholarly publishing (59, 77.63 per cent), research impact measurement (32, 42.11 per cent), research guides (47, 61.84 per cent), research consultation (59, 77.63 per cent) and research tools recommendation (38, 50.00 per cent). Originality/value This paper makes a comprehensive investigation of research support services in academic libraries of top-ranking universities worldwide. The findings will help academic libraries improve research support services; thus, advancing the work of researchers and promoting scientific discovery.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:55

How much of library digital content is checked out but never used?

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 255-262, April 2019.
Purpose This paper aims to identify patterns, trends and potential implications related to post-checkout non-usage (material that is checked out by a user, but subsequently never opened and/or downloaded) of library digital content. Design/methodology/approach A large urban Canadian public library’s data (2013-2017) from Rakuten OverDrive was analyzed. Pending items (items that are checked out, but neither opened nor downloaded) were compared with total checkouts to determine post-checkout non-usage rates. Findings Checkouts and overall rates of post-checkout non-usage of e-books and e-audiobooks have risen significantly and consistently. Juvenile and non-fiction e-books demonstrate higher post-checkout non-usage rates than adult and fiction e-books, respectively. The library spends up to US$10,700 per year on metered access e-books that are never opened by users. This number has grown significantly over the years. Originality/value E-materials in libraries have been growing rapidly, but their current lending models are still largely a direct application of concepts in traditional library services that have developed based on physical materials, such as checkouts, due dates, renewals, holds and wait times. However, e-materials do not have the limitation of physical materials that prevents other users from accessing a checked-out item, which makes many of the traditional concepts no longer applicable. New concepts and lending models should be developed that allow users to access any library e-materials at any time, and are financially functional and sustainable for both libraries and e-content providers.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:55

An efficient semantic recommender method forArabic text

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 263-280, April 2019.
Purpose This paper aims to propose a new efficient semantic recommender method for Arabic content. Design/methodology/approach Three semantic similarities were proposed to be integrated with the recommender system to improve its ability to recommend based on the semantic aspect. The proposed similarities are CHI-based semantic similarity, singular value decomposition (SVD)-based semantic similarity and Arabic WordNet-based semantic similarity. These similarities were compared with the existing similarities used by recommender systems from the literature. Findings Experiments show that the proposed semantic method using CHI-based similarity and using SVD-based similarity are more efficient than the existing methods on Arabic text in term of accuracy and execution time. Originality/value Although many previous works proposed recommender system methods for English text, very few works concentrated on Arabic Text. The field of Arabic Recommender Systems is largely understudied in the literature. Aside from this, there is a vital need to consider the semantic relationships behind user preferences to improve the accuracy of the recommendations. The contributions of this work are the following. First, as many recommender methods were proposed for English text and have never been tested on Arabic text, this work compares the performance of these widely used methods on Arabic text. Second, it proposes a novel semantic recommender method for Arabic text. As this method uses semantic similarity, three novel base semantic similarities were proposed and evaluated. Third, this work would direct the attention to more studies in this understudied topic in the literature.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:55

A Chinese ancient book digital humanities research platform to support digital humanities research

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 314-336, April 2019.
Purpose With the rapid development of digital humanities, some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists. However, most of them have still not provided a friendly digital reading environment and practicable social network analysis tool to support humanists on interpreting texts and exploring characters’ social network relationships. Moreover, the advancement of digitization technologies for the retrieval and use of Chinese ancient books is arising an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. For these reasons, this paper aims to present a Chinese ancient books digital humanities research platform (CABDHRP) to support historical China studies. In addition to providing digital archives, digital reading, basic search and advanced search functions for Chinese ancient books, this platform still provides two novel functions that can more effectively support digital humanities research, including an automatic text annotation system (ATAS) for interpreting texts and a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) for exploring characters’ social network relationships. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted DSpace, an open-source institutional repository system, to serve as a digital archives system for archiving scanned images, metadata, and full texts to develop the CABDHRP for supporting digital humanities (DH) research. Moreover, the ATAS developed in the CABDHRP used the Node.js framework to implement the system’s front- and back-end services, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by different databases, such as China Biographical Database (CBDB) and TGAZ, used to retrieve the useful linked data (LD) sources for interpreting ancient texts. Also, Neo4j which is an open-source graph database management system was used to implement the CSNRMT of the CABDHRP. Finally, JavaScript and jQuery were applied to develop a monitoring program embedded in the CABDHRP to record the use processes from humanists based on xAPI (experience API). To understand the research participants’ perception when interpreting the historical texts and characters’ social network relationships with the support of ATAS and CSNRMT, semi-structured interviews with 21 research participants were conducted. Findings An ATAS embedded in the reading interface of CABDHRP can collect resources from different databases through LD for automatically annotating ancient texts to support digital humanities research. It allows the humanists to refer to resources from diverse databases when interpreting ancient texts, as well as provides a friendly text annotation reader for humanists to interpret ancient text through reading. Additionally, the CSNRMT provided by the CABDHRP can semi-automatically identify characters’ names based on Chinese word segmentation technology and humanists’ support to confirm and analyze characters’ social network relationships from Chinese ancient books based on visualizing characters’ social networks as a knowledge graph. The CABDHRP not only can stimulate humanists to explore new viewpoints in a humanistic research, but also can promote the public to emerge the learning interest and awareness of Chinese ancient books. Originality/value This study proposed a novel CABDHRP that provides the advanced features, including the automatic word segmentation of Chinese text, automatic Chinese text annotation, semi-automatic character social network analysis and user behavior analysis, that are different from other existed digital humanities platforms. Currently, there is no this kind of digital humanities platform developed for humanists to support digital humanities research.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:54

Disambiguating USPTO inventor names with semantic fingerprinting and DBSCAN clustering

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 225-239, April 2019.
Purpose The aim of this study is to present a novel approach based on semantic fingerprinting and a clustering algorithm called density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN), which can be used to convert investor records into 128-bit semantic fingerprints. Inventor disambiguation is a method used to discover a unique set of underlying inventors and map a set of patents to their corresponding inventors. Resolving the ambiguities between inventors is necessary to improve the quality of the patent database and to ensure accurate entity-level analysis. Most existing methods are based on machine learning and, while they often show good performance, this comes at the cost of time, computational power and storage space. Design/methodology/approach Using DBSCAN, the meta and textual data in inventor records are converted into 128-bit semantic fingerprints. However, rather than using a string comparison or cosine similarity to calculate the distance between pair-wise fingerprint records, a binary number comparison function was used in DBSCAN. DBSCAN then clusters the inventor records based on this distance to disambiguate inventor names. Findings Experiments conducted on the PatentsView campaign database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office show that this method disambiguates inventor names with recall greater than 99 per cent in less time and with substantially smaller storage requirement. Research limitations/implications A better semantic fingerprint algorithm and a better distance function may improve precision. Setting of different clustering parameters for each block or other clustering algorithms will be considered to improve the accuracy of the disambiguation results even further. Originality/value Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method does not rely on feature selection and complex feature comparison computation. Most importantly, running time and storage requirements are drastically reduced.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:54

Exploring the use of electronic resources by humanities scholars during the research process

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 240-254, April 2019.
Purpose This study aims to examine the types of documents that humanities scholars use in their publications, how humanities scholars use electronic resources during their research, and their opinions are regarding their library’s acquisition policy for electronic and printed resources. Design/methodology/approach A total of 13 university faculty members from the fields of Chinese literature, history and philosophy participated in this study. The documents cited in their publications were analyzed and in-depth interviews were conducted. Findings The results showed that books were the dominant document type cited by the participants. They frequently used electronic resources during the stages of idea generation; document search and collection; and interpretation and writing. If they used an ancient book in an electronic format, they cross-checked it with its printed version to verify the accuracy of the text. Although the participants anticipated that the university library would favour e-journals instead of printed journals, they expected the university library to continue purchasing printed books. Originality/value Many university libraries encounter difficulties in choosing between materials in electronic and printed formats, particularly in the humanities field. The study findings provide a clear understanding of how humanities scholars use electronic resources in the digital age.
  • 3 de Junho de 2019, 10:54

Study of Asian RDR based on re3data

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 302-313, April 2019.
Purpose RDR has become an essential academic infrastructure in an atmosphere that facilitates the openness of research output granted by public research funds. This study aims to understand operational status of 152 Asian data repositories on re3data and cluster repositories into four groups according to their operational status. In addition, identify the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries and try to understand what topic correlations exist between data archived in Asian countries. Design/methodology/approach This study extracts metadata from re3data and analyzes it in various ways to grasp the current status of research data repositories in Asian countries. The author clusters the repositories into four groups using hierarchical cluster analysis according to the level of operation. In addition, for identifying the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries, extracted the keywords of the subject field assigned to the each repository, and Pathfinder Network (PFNET) analysis is performed. Findings About 70 per cent of the Asian-country repositories are those where licenses or policies are declared but not granted permanent identifiers and international-level certification. As a result of the subject domain analysis, eight clusters are formed centering on life sciences and natural sciences. Originality/value The research output in developing countries, especially non-English-speaking countries, tends not to be smoothly circulated in the international community due to the immaturity of the open-access culture, as well as linguistic and technical problems. This study has value, in that it investigates the status of Asian countries’ research data management and global distribution infrastructure in global open-science trends.
  • 23 de Maio de 2019, 03:38

The associativity evaluation between open data and country characteristics

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 337-364, April 2019.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to review the levels of open government data (OGD) among various countries that are not consistent with the development levels of those countries. This study evaluates the associativity between OGD Index (OGD) and the characteristics of those countries as well as to compare the degree of OGD among countries. Accordingly, an advanced discussion to explore how a country’s characteristics affect how that country’s government opens data was presented. Design/methodology/approach The stakeholder relationships of OGD is analysed with the characteristics of a country. The usage data are compared with the data availability according to nine indicators. These data collected from the statistics and OGDI websites are grouped for comparative statistical analyses based on basic descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance and a regression model with variance inflation faction. Findings The results 1) revealed the reasons some countries have high-ranking indexes and 2) verified the high index values of countries in terms of their degrees of development. This study, thus, attempted to derive a balanced appraisal of national development and OGD. Research limitations/implications The study sample is limited only to countries 1) which open the statistical data; and 2) are of uneven population density and development degree. The OGDI is limited to expert evaluation. The score might be vary to experts and users with diverse countries at different evaluation period. The limitations can be attributed to the differences between OGDI and real open levels. These differences might influence the reliability and validity. Practical implications Government departments with OGD policies provide raw data in various formats and with application interfaces for user access. This study, thus, attempts to derive a balanced appraisal of national development and OGD. The factors that evaluate which types of countries open the level of data are explored. Originality/value This study establishes stakeholder relationships of OGD and extends to analyse the characteristics of a country and OGD that affect the government data open level. The relationships are evaluated through the OGDI with design score scheme. The measurement results indicated that a country possesses high relation to open data with high DI and nature resource.
  • 16 de Maio de 2019, 10:46

KEFST: a knowledge extraction framework using finite-state transducers

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 365-384, April 2019.
Purpose The purpose of this research study is to extract and identify named entities from Hadith literature. Named entity recognition (NER) refers to the identification of the named entities in a computer readable text having an annotation of categorization tags for information extraction. NER is an active research area in information management and information retrieval systems. NER serves as a baseline for machines to understand the context of a given content and helps in knowledge extraction. Although NER is considered as a solved task in major languages such as English, in languages such as Urdu, NER is still a challenging task. Moreover, NER depends on the language and domain of study; thus, it is gaining the attention of researchers in different domains. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a knowledge extraction framework using finite-state transducers (FSTs) – KEFST – to extract the named entities. KEFST consists of five steps: content extraction, tokenization, part of speech tagging, multi-word detection and NER. An extensive empirical analysis using the data corpus of Urdu translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari, a widely known hadith book, reveals that the proposed method effectively recognizes the entities to obtain better results. Findings The significant performance in terms of f-measure, precision and recall validates that the proposed model outperforms the existing methods for NER in the relevant literature. Originality/value This research is novel in this regard that no previous work is proposed in the Urdu language to extract named entities using FSTs and no previous work is proposed for Urdu hadith data NER.
  • 14 de Maio de 2019, 08:42

Use and reuse of visual resources in student papers and presentations

The Electronic Library, Ahead of Print.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how undergraduate and graduate students use visual resources in their papers and presentations and what role images play in their academic work. It also focused on analyzing the types of image use/reuse in academic work. Design/methodology/approach This study was designed using an exploratory, qualitative approach. In all, 15 participants were recruited. Multiple sources of data were collected, including visual evidence, questionnaires and interviews. It adopted consensual qualitative research for data analysis. Findings This study finds a prevalent reuse of images in student presentations but limited use and reuse in papers. Images in presentations were primarily reused as objects for engaging and esthetic purposes. Reuse of images as a source of information was not common and in some cases problematic when students were missing context. The type of use/reuse of images in the papers was more varied with examples of creative use and transformative reuse. Practical implications This paper contributes to a better understanding of how students use and reuse images for academic papers and presentations. Results have important implications for teaching visual literacy and re-purposing images in higher education. Originality/value This paper analyses educational use/reuse of images along the data/object spectrum and distinguishes between different types of image use and reuse.
  • 13 de Maio de 2019, 01:52

An epistemological assessment of learning nutritional information with augmented reality

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 2, Page 210-224, April 2019.
Purpose This study aims to investigate whether epistemological assessment is a suitable approach to evaluate students’ learning of dietary knowledge via the use of an augmented reality (AR) information system. Students’ perceived dietary knowledge was compared before and after learning with the AR system. Two major questions were addressed: Did students improve their understanding of dietary knowledge after the use of AR information system? Did students gain more appropriate understanding of dietary knowledge after the use of AR information system? Design/methodology/approach A mixed-methods approach was used in the study. The mobile AR system was used among 65 volunteered non-nutrition-major college students recruited in campus. For promoting epistemological development of personal dietary knowledge, students practiced with life experiences to access daily dietary information. Pre- and post-tests of students’ understanding of dietary knowledge were compared. Interviews with 20 students were used for gathering in-depth research data to analyse students’ epistemological understanding of dietary knowledge. Findings The epistemological assessment indicated an improvement in learning after the use of the AR system. Students gradually gained awareness of dietary knowledge and changed their perceptions of their dietary behaviours. Epistemological approaches to the analysis of students’ conceptual change in dietary knowledge revealed a significant increase in the mean nutritional concepts (p < 0.01) and a decrease in their mean misconceptions (p < 0.001) after learning via the mobile nutrition monitoring system. Learning assessment of 65 students also indicated a significant increase from the post-test after learning with the system (p < 0.0001). Research limitations/implications This study might have its limitations, as it only assessed learning using a pretest-posttest design for a specific learning context over a short period of learning time. The use of interviews based on the epistemological approach might have its limitations in the interpretations of the phenomenon. Future implementations can also be extended to different populations to promote self-monitoring dietary behaviours. Originality/value The findings of this study will contribute to the application of AR in learning about dietary knowledge. The research involving in-depth observation of students’ learning relevant to personal nutritional information needs via mobile AR might provide potential contributions to dietitian professionals and health education.
  • 17 de Abril de 2019, 08:43

Retrieval effectiveness of image search engines

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 1, Page 173-184, February 2019.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the retrieval effectiveness of three image search engines (ISE) – Google Images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch in terms of their image retrieval capability. It is an effort to carry out a Cranfield experiment to know how efficient the commercial giants in the image search are and how efficient an image specific search engine is. Design/methodology/approach The keyword search feature of three ISEs – Google images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch – was exploited to make search with keyword captions of photos as query terms. Selected top ten images were used to act as a testbed for the study, as images were searched in accordance with features of the test bed. Features to be looked for included size (1200 × 800), format of images (JPEG/JPG) and the rank of the original image retrieved by ISEs under study. To gauge the overall retrieval effectiveness in terms of set standards, only first 50 result hits were checked. Retrieval efficiency of select ISEs were examined with respect to their precision and relative recall. Findings Yahoo Image Search outscores Google Images and Picsearch both in terms of precision and relative recall. Regarding other criteria – image size, image format and image rank in search results, Google Images is ahead of others. Research limitations/implications The study only takes into consideration basic image search feature, i.e. text-based search. Practical implications The study implies that image search engines should focus on relevant descriptions. The study evaluated text-based image retrieval facilities and thereby offers a choice to users to select best among the available ISEs for their use. Originality/value The study provides an insight into the effectiveness of the three ISEs. The study is one of the few studies to gauge retrieval effectiveness of ISEs. Study also produced key findings that are important for all ISE users and researchers and the Web image search industry. Findings of the study will also prove useful for search engine companies to improve their services.
  • 9 de Abril de 2019, 09:13

Use of multi-lexicons to analyse semantic features for summarization of touring reviews

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 1, Page 185-206, February 2019.
Purpose This paper aims to improve a sentiment analysis (SA) system to help users (i.e. customers or hotel managers) understand hotel evaluations. There are three main purposes in this paper: designing an unsupervised method for extracting online Chinese features and opinion pairs, distinguishing different intensities of polarity in opinion words and examining the changes in polarity in the time series. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, a review analysis system is proposed to automatically capture feature opinions experienced by other tourists presented in the review documents. In the system, a feature-level SA is designed to determine the polarity of these features. Moreover, an unsupervised method using a part-of-speech pattern clarification query and multi-lexicons SA to summarize all Chinese reviews is adopted. Findings The authors expect this method to help travellers search for what they want and make decisions more efficiently. The experimental results show the F-measure of the proposed method to be 0.628. It thus outperforms the methods used in previous studies. Originality/value The study is useful for travellers who want to quickly retrieve and summarize helpful information from the pool of messy hotel reviews. Meanwhile, the system will assist hotel managers to comprehensively understand service qualities with which guests are satisfied or dissatisfied.
  • 2 de Abril de 2019, 05:25

Cataloguing practices at university libraries

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 1, Page 155-172, February 2019.
Purpose This study aims to analyse current practices and cooperation between the Turkish university libraries related to cataloguing processes and present cataloguing librarians’ evaluations about clarity and comprehensiveness of the given information in library catalogues. Design/methodology/approach In line with the literature review, a Web-based questionnaire was developed concerning the cataloguing practices implemented at university libraries in Turkey. The questionnaire was submitted to 316 cataloguing librarians. In all, 104 cataloguing librarians from 61 different libraries responded to the survey. The collected data were analysed through descriptive statistics. The responses given to some open-ended questions were assessed with respective expressions presented verbatim in the study and some of them visualised via VOSViewer software. Findings The findings reflect that analysed university libraries implement different cataloguing processes. It is seen that some libraries use the necessary systems and services related to cataloguing and classification while others use individual solutions without using such systems and services. Findings reveal that there is cooperation between the analysed libraries about sharing catalogue records. In this regard, it is understood that cataloguing librarians mostly prefer transferring catalogue records from the catalogues of university libraries they trusted. Findings also indicate that analysed librarians think that the descriptive information provided via Online Public Access Catalogues are in moderate level in terms of clarity and comprehensibility. Originality/value The study contributes to the existing literature of a limited number of relevant studies by establishing the baseline pertaining to cataloguing processes undertaken at university libraries in Turkey.
  • 26 de Março de 2019, 03:29

Assessing mobile application components in providing library services

The Electronic Library, Volume 37, Issue 1, Page 49-66, February 2019.
Purpose This study aims to investigate the essential components needed to develop a practical mobile application for providing library services to its users. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted in a descriptive-survey format. The statistical population constituted the libraries worldwide using mobile applications to provide library services to the users of academic and public libraries. The data were collected through the content-analysis method, World Wide Web and checklists. Findings It was found that services such as search, ask a librarian, database, renew, circulation and library hours were frequently used at academic libraries, while the services of search, search through barcode scanners and database were mostly common at public libraries. According to the users of academic and public libraries, circulation and renew, search, ask a librarian and library hours were considered as the most essential services to be included in library mobile applications. Practical implications Most libraries usually use mobile apps subjectively. Thus, it is important to identify the most important components of their usage and present them in a suitable pattern. The findings of this study identified the most important components in the design and development of mobile apps and proposed the right model for their integration into libraries. Originality/value The practical mobile application proposed here for library services is applicable to all types of libraries and provides an appropriate pattern for mobile application designers.
  • 13 de Março de 2019, 09:42
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