A Snapshot of Digital Library Development

Author(s):  
Schubert Foo ◽  
Yin-Leng Theng

This chapter highlights selective key issues and assesses the current situation of digital library development in the Asia Pacific under the broad categories of design architecture and systems, implementation issues and challenges, use and impact, and users and usability. Emphasis on cross-cultural and cross-lingual research would especially be beneficial to address the diversity and richness of the heritage, cultures and languages of this region. Nonetheless, a fundamental digital divide problem poses the greatest challenge as almost 70% of the population of the countries of Asia Pacific has little or no connectivity to the digital world. Concerted international collaborative efforts are much needed, not only to push ahead with the various aspects of the digital library research agenda and realize the global digital library vision of the future, but to derive novel solutions to eliminate or close the gap of digital divide across various parts of the world.

Author(s):  
Hsinchun Chen ◽  
Yilu Zhou

Over the past decade the development of digital library activities within Asia Pacific has been steadily increasing. Through a meta-analysis of the publications and content within ICADL and other major regional digital library conferences over the past few years, we see an increase in the level of activity in Asian digital library research. This reflects high continuous interest among digital library researchers and practitioners internationally. Digital library research in the Asia Pacific is uniquely positioned to help develop digital libraries of significant cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge and advance cross-cultural and cross-lingual digital library research.


Author(s):  
Soh Whee Kheng Grace

Library digitization on a global basis is essential in the twenty-first century. The digital library development initiatives in most countries depend substantially on their national libraries. This chapter focuses on an overview of how national libraries of 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region are involved in digital library initiatives. Most libraries participate in the collaborative efforts to build digital libraries with support from their government. Some focus on digitization and preservation activities, while others concentrate on digitization standards. Requirements for digital library implementation from a global perspective are essential. With the understanding of the current situation in Asia Pacific, we can understand the readiness of national libraries aiming for globalization in this part of the world, and action can be taken to achieve the aim. The globalization of digital libraries is what the world should be heading towards as we enter the next century.


Author(s):  
Christopher Yang ◽  
Kar W. Li

Structural and semantic interoperability have been the focus of digital library research in the early 1990s. Many research works have been done on searching and retrieving objects across variations in protocols, formats, and disciplines. As the World Wide Web has become more popular in the last ten years, information is available in multiple languages in global digital libraries. Users are searching across the language boundary to identify the relevant information that may not be available in their own language. Cross-lingual semantic interoperability has become one of the focuses in digital library research in the late 1990s. In particular, research in cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) has been very active in recent conferences on information retrieval, digital libraries, knowledge management, and information systems. The major problem in CLIR is how to build the bridge between the representations of user queries and documents if they are of different languages.


Author(s):  
Michelle Yaqian Ye ◽  
Kristy De Salas ◽  
Nadia Ollington ◽  
Judy McKay

This paper explores the nature and exercise of power in an interpretive case study of a troubled information systems (IS) implementation in a university in the Asia Pacific region using Turner’s Three-Process Theory of Power based on Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorisation Theory. The findings demonstrate the value of Turner’s theoretical lens as well as its insufficiency for explaining all power related activities. This research has led to the development of an extended Three-Process Theory of Power by adding the alternative components that emerged from the data in the case study in relation to the nature and exercises of power. Based on the findings, we further recommend specific guidelines for IS theoreticians and practitioners including advice to project managers on a range of key issues. Thus, this paper contributes theorising the sources of power and tactical applications of power in given situations, particularly in IS implementation projects.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianjin Zha ◽  
Jinchao Zhang ◽  
Yalan Yan ◽  
Wentao Wang

Purpose – Flow experience is conceptualized as an optimal experience about an activity, characterized by a match between perceived challenges and perceived skills. The purpose of this paper is to explore mobile libraries by comparing users’ perceptions of web digital libraries and mobile libraries in terms of flow experience so as to obtain insights regarding the healthy development of mobile libraries. Design/methodology/approach – Data collected from university digital library users were used for analysis. One figure was used to present the exact nature of users’ perceptions of flow experience in terms of data distribution. The paired samples t-test was used to present the exact mean difference between flow experience in using web digital libraries and mobile libraries. Findings – Fewer users can experience flow and more users cannot experience flow in using mobile libraries than in using web digital libraries. The mean of flow experience in using mobile libraries is significantly smaller than that in using web digital libraries. Practical implications – Digital libraries have faced severe competition in the modern information society. In China university libraries as a whole are undergoing the transition from web digital libraries to mobile libraries. It is critical to examine user experience in the initial or early stage of mobile library development. The authors believe the findings of this study regarding flow experience provide useful insights for facilitating the healthy development of mobile libraries. Originality/value – This study explores and compares users’ perceptions of web digital libraries and mobile libraries in terms of flow experience, which the authors think provides a new view for university digital library research and practice alike.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Yeates

A brief introduction to acronyms is given and motivation for extracting them in a digital library environment is discussed. A technique for extracting acronyms is given with an analysis of the results. The technique is found to have a low number of false negatives and a high number of false positives. Introduction Digital library research seeks to build tools to enable access of content, while making as few as possible assumptions about the content, since assumptions limit the range of applicability of the tools. Generally, the broader the assumptions the more widely applicable the tools. For example, keyword based indexing [5] is based on communications theory and applies to all natural human textual languages (allowances for differences in character sets and similar localisation issues not withstanding) . The algorithm described in this paper makes much stronger assumptions about the content. It assumes textual content that contains acronyms, an assumption which is known to hold for...


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