EXAMINING VIRTUAL REFERENCE SERVICES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

This research focuses on examining the availability of Virtual Reference Services in academic libraries in the Middle East. Virtual Reference Services could be provided in several ways, for example: by telephone, email, live chat, video conferencing, texting, and recently using social media applications like Twitter. This research will explore the presence of Virtual Reference Services in Middle Eastern academic libraries, and the ways in which they are presented. 55 academic libraries’ websites have been examined with a checklist that includes: the nature of reference services available, the time it took to locate the Virtual Reference Services, the text included in the link to describe the services, and the number of links navigated on the webpage to find the reference services. The main objective of this research is to examine the use of Virtual Reference Services in Middle Eastern university libraries and to increase the awareness of the libraries’ resources and services. Findings of this study showed that live chat as a Virtual Reference Service in the Middle East is not very prevalent. In addition, it was found that email as a means of virtual communication is used most commonly by the academic libraries that provided Virtual Reference Services.

Fast Hyperparameter Calibration of Sparsity Enforcing Penalties in Total Generalised Variation Penalised Reconstruction Methods for XCT Using a Planted Virtual Reference Image

The reconstruction problem in X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is notoriously difficult in the case where only a small number of measurements are made. Based on the recently discovered Compressed Sensing paradigm, many methods have been proposed in order to address the reconstruction problem by leveraging inherent sparsity of the object’s decompositions in various appropriate bases or dictionaries. In practice, reconstruction is usually achieved by incorporating weighted sparsity enforcing penalisation functionals into the least-squares objective of the associated optimisation problem. One such penalisation functional is the Total Variation (TV) norm, which has been successfully employed since the early days of Compressed Sensing. Total Generalised Variation (TGV) is a recent improvement of this approach. One of the main advantages of such penalisation based approaches is that the resulting optimisation problem is convex and as such, cannot be affected by the possible existence of spurious solutions. Using the TGV penalisation nevertheless comes with the drawback of having to tune the two hyperparameters governing the TGV semi-norms. In this short note, we provide a simple and efficient recipe for fast hyperparameters tuning, based on the simple idea of virtually planting a mock image into the model. The proposed trick potentially applies to all linear inverse problems under the assumption that relevant prior information is available about the sought for solution, whilst being very different from the Bayesian method.

Impact of digital reference on the delivery of reference in New Zealand public libraries

<p>This study looks at digital reference services in New Zealand public libraries to find out what types of services are being provided and what impact they are having on traditional reference services. A survey was sent to twenty-seven selected public libraries with a further sixteen selected libraries added after a low response rate from the first group, to collect information on their digital reference services. The libraries included large, medium and small and were selected from all areas of New Zealand. A questionnaire was used to collect the information and the data was statistically analysed. All large and the majority of medium selected libraries are providing a digital reference service in the form of email or web form. Four of the large libraries are participating in AnyQuestions - a virtual reference service for New Zealand school children, and one large library has their own virtual service. The low response rate and deficiencies in the survey design have resulted in inconclusive results for this study. We know libraries are providing digital reference services and we know something about how the services are provided, but it is still unclear whether these services are having an impact on traditional reference services.</p>

Impact of digital reference on the delivery of reference in New Zealand public libraries

<p>This study looks at digital reference services in New Zealand public libraries to find out what types of services are being provided and what impact they are having on traditional reference services. A survey was sent to twenty-seven selected public libraries with a further sixteen selected libraries added after a low response rate from the first group, to collect information on their digital reference services. The libraries included large, medium and small and were selected from all areas of New Zealand. A questionnaire was used to collect the information and the data was statistically analysed. All large and the majority of medium selected libraries are providing a digital reference service in the form of email or web form. Four of the large libraries are participating in AnyQuestions - a virtual reference service for New Zealand school children, and one large library has their own virtual service. The low response rate and deficiencies in the survey design have resulted in inconclusive results for this study. We know libraries are providing digital reference services and we know something about how the services are provided, but it is still unclear whether these services are having an impact on traditional reference services.</p>

Accuracy Assessment of the Network Real-Time Kinematic Techniques for Geodetic and Plane Coordinates

Virtual Reference Station (VRS), Master-Auxiliary Corrections (MAX) and Individualised Master-Auxiliary Corrections (IMAX) are among the Network Real-Time Kinematic (NRTK) techniques supported by Malaysia Real-Time Kinematic GNSS Network (MyRTKnet) in rendering network-based solution to users. However, different network corrections have different limitations due to different manufacturers hence offering varieties output. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the accuracy of VRS, MAX and IMAX for geodetic and plane coordinates. Three (3) techniques were implemented to observe points at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and cadastral lot in Johor Bahru. The results were analysed based on assessment with known values and baseline lengths. The findings showed that the accuracy of all techniques ranged from 0.16 to 3.61 cm (horizontal) and 2.86 to 6.20 cm (vertical) for geodetic coordinates. For plane coordinates, the values varied from 0.3 to 4.22 cm (horizontal) and 2.1 to 8.26 cm (vertical). IMAX provided the worst accuracy compared to others due to incompatibility of Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) format. Moreover, the accuracy decreases as the baseline length between rover and reference station increases. In conclusion, VRS and MAX yielded acceptable accuracy and can be safely chosen rather than IMAX. Furthermore, the baseline length for applications involving high accuracy measurement should also be considered.

A Large-scale Analysis of Mixed Initiative in Information-Seeking Dialogues for Conversational Search

Conversational search is a relatively young area of research that aims at automating an information-seeking dialogue. In this article, we help to position it with respect to other research areas within conversational artificial intelligence (AI) by analysing the structural properties of an information-seeking dialogue. To this end, we perform a large-scale dialogue analysis of more than 150K transcripts from 16 publicly available dialogue datasets. These datasets were collected to inform different dialogue-based tasks including conversational search. We extract different patterns of mixed initiative from these dialogue transcripts and use them to compare dialogues of different types. Moreover, we contrast the patterns found in information-seeking dialogues that are being used for research purposes with the patterns found in virtual reference interviews that were conducted by professional librarians. The insights we provide (1) establish close relations between conversational search and other conversational AI tasks and (2) uncover limitations of existing conversational datasets to inform future data collection tasks.

Layanan Referensi Virtual Sebagai Strategi Pelayanan di Masa Pandemi Covid-19

Pademi covid-19 datang secara tiba-tiba dan telah merubah semua sisi kehidupan, kebijakan dan pembatasan yang diterapkan diberbagai negara menjadikan manusia mengurangi interaksinya dengan manusia lain, hal tersebut dilakukan untuk memutus rantai penularan virus covid-19. Kebijakan pemerintah Indonesia meniadakan pembelajaran tatap muka baik tingkat universitas maupun sekolah-sekolah dan menggantinya dengan pembelajaran online/daring membuat penurunan kunjungan dan pemanfaatan perpustakaan oleh pemustaka. Dengan kenyataan tersebut diperlukan sebuah strategi agar perpustakaan khususnya perpustakaan perguruan tinggi tetap bisa berperan sebagai jantung perguruan tinggi. Salah satu strategi layanan yang bisa dilakukan perpustakaan dimasa pandemi ini adalah dengan cara menyediakan layanan referensi vitual. Layanan referensi virtual merupakan salah satu strategi perpustakaan peguruan tinggi dengan menyediakan layanan referensi secara online sehingga layanan tersebut tetap bisa diakses dimanapun berada tanpa harus datang langsung ke perpustakaan. Layanan ini juga sebagai wujud nyata peran serta perpustakaan perguruan tinggi dalam menerapkan social distancing dan mencegah perpustakaan sebagi klaster penularan baru. Pandemic covid-19 came suddenly, has changed all sides of life, policies and restrictions applied in various countries make humans reduce their interaction with other humans, it is done to break the chain of transmission of the covid-19 virus. The wisdom of the Indonesian government to eliminate face-to-face learning at both the university and school levels and replace it with online learning makes a decrease in visits and utilization of libraries by the library. With this fact, a strategy is needed so that libraries, especially college libraries, can still act as the heart of the college. One of the service strategies that libraries can do in this pandemic period is to provide virtual reference services. Virtual reference services are one of the strategies of high learning libraries by providing online reference services so that they can still be accessed anywhere in the world.

Active Sensor Algorithm Approach to Optimize Nitrogen Rate Fertilization in Cotton Production

Variable nitrogen(N) rate fertilization based on remote sensing is challenging for cotton production fields, but active crop canopy sensors (ACS) appear as an alternative to make this practical on farm since they can be used at night as well. The crop spatial variability in inherent in crop production in general, and not on-the-go solutions can be used with this type of active sensing technologies. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the potential of two vegetation indices to identify the N requirement variability for cotton plants and to develop prototype algorithms for topdressing nitrogen variable rate on commercial and experimental areas, using the N-sufficiency methodology based on virtual reference. The concept of virtual reference is to use a histogram to characterize the vegetation index of properly fertilized plants without establishing an N-rich plot as a reference strip. The experiment was conducted in strips with four different N rates (0, 45, 90 and 180 kgN ha-1) during the 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 crop seasons in partnership with large cotton producers in Mato Grosso and also in experimental area of Embrapa Agrosilvopastoral. Two algorithms for variable rate nitrogen fertilization for cotton were developed, namely: 1) N recommendation algorithm for cotton in commercial production system: N rate (kg.N ha-1) = -234.79 ISN2 + 49,879 ISN + 195.15; R&sup2; = 0.97; and 2) for cotton grown in experimental area: N dose (kgN ha-1) = -174.73 ISN2 - 107.21 ISN + 306.78; R&sup2; = 0.94.