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The Impact of the Internet on Information Searching and Demand for Traditional Information Resources

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The Internet is an efficient information search tool whose growth may have caused a structural change in information search and acquisition behaviors.

This study investigates the effects of growing Internet accessibility on these behaviors. Using U.S. public library circulation counts to quantify changes in the use of information resources, the analysis indicates that greater Internet accessibility contributes to increased demand for traditional information sources.

That is, a complementary relationship exists between Internet and traditional sources. Further, the results suggest that limiting Internet access can reduce the demand for traditional content. These outcomes imply that improvements in Internet accessibility can have profound effects on human capital development.

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1856056

How should editors respond to plagiarism? COPE discussion paper

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This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to plagiarism. Different types of plagiarism are described in terms of their: extent, originality of the copied material, context, referencing, intention, author seniority, and language. Journal responses to plagiarism are also described including: educating authors, contacting authors’ institutions, issuing corrections, and issuing retractions. The current COPE flowcharts recommend different responses to major and minor plagiarism. Possible, more detailed, definitions of these are proposed for discussion. Decisions about when to use text-matching software are also outlined. The appendix describes other systems for classifying plagiarism and links to related documents and resources.

URL : http://www.publicationethics.org/files/COPE_plagiarism_discussion_%20doc_26%20Apr%2011.pdf

AgriDrupal : repository management integrated into a content management system

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One of the main obstacles towards a more efficient management and sharing of agricultural knowledge is the lack of good standard-compliant tools whose adoption and maintenance is really sustainable. In particular, in the implementation of repositories, agricultural Institutions have often faced some common issues in the selection of appropriate software tools, like the need to integrate a repository search and browse interface with their website, the need to implement custom content models, or custom metadata models, and the need to be able to exchange information with other systems and participate in networks. The proposed poster will describe AgriDrupal, a “suite of solutions” for agricultural information management and dissemination, with special functionalities for repository management, built on the Drupal Content Management System.

These solutions are provided, discussed and tested by different Institutions and individuals who are sharing their experiences in the AgriDrupal community. Besides being available as modular solutions for Drupal, AgriDrupal can also be delivered as a full-fledged information management and dissemination tool putting together the best solutions implemented by the members of the community. This tool can be considered a “reference demo package”, it is not a software tool that the community maintains or gives assistance for: it is a normal Drupal installation with a customized configuration and special modules, and support for Drupal and its modules can be found directly in the Drupal community.

This is one of the reasons why AgriDrupal is a sustainable project. Indeed the focus of the project is on sustainability: beside minimizing maintenance issues by leaving the bulk of maintenance to the community of Drupal developers, the adoption of AgriDrupal does not involve writing code in house or contracting a company, it leverages the open source approach and the wide community behind the tool, therefore benefitting from continuous improvements and upgrades to the latest technological developments. In addition, the features are not just developed ad hoc: the tool allows to handle all common needs of information management and is easily customizable to specific needs: the definition of metadata models, display criteria and browse/search functionalities can be done through an administration panel, and consequently it doesn’t require highly skilled IT capacities.

The AgriDrupal reference tool has advanced features for managing open access repositories in compliance with widely adopted library standards and the OAI-PMH protocol. The document repository features include: a) a cataloguing interface that out of the box provides the most commonly used metadata elements in bibliographic databases, in particular those defined by the Agris Application Profile , but is easily extendable to include any other element;
b) internal authority lists for authors (personal and corporate), journals and conferences;
c) special input interface for subject indexing with the Agrovoc thesaurus;
d) search and browse functionalities;
e) exposure of records through the OAI-PMH protocol, implementing the Dublin Core metadata set;
f) exposure of records also as RDF feed and XML file: the XML file is compliant with the above mentioned Agris AP, while RDF feeds can be customized in order to include properties from any vocabulary, thus making the repository fully interoperable – the use of Agrovoc URIs also linking it to a published Linked Open Data (LOD) triple store;
g) extensible import and harvesting functionalities that also facilitate the exchange of information with other Institutions and the building of networks.

Since it can be very easily extended to manage any information type according to any metadata standard, AgriDrupal allows to easily integrate a document repository with a website and more in general with an integrated information system. The current 0.7.3 release of AgriDrupal manages documents, news, events, vacancies, institutions, experts and of course web pages. The resulting integrated information system exposes RDF feeds for each type of information managed in the system, and the vocabularies and properties used in the RDF output can be customized, thus making an AgriDrupal installation a potential Linked Data provider.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15768

Best practices and policies in institutional repositories development: The Ktisis case

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Libraries worldwide have realized the importance of institutional repositories in the intellectual life and output of an institution. Institutional repositories are now clearly recognized as essential infrastructure in the digital world. An institutional repository is a means for the institutions to manage the product of their academic research and to increase accessibility to that product. Generally, institutional repository development is still in the process of establishing guiding principles and best practices, through established cases which can be used to learn development options and risks.

This paper begins with a brief description of the implementation process of Ktisis, the open access institutional repository of the Cyprus University of Technology, and continues to describe the set of activities used in the strategic plan of Ktisis. Among those activities was the definition of the promotional plan, the engagement in the international community and the definition of the Ktisis policy of use.

URL : http://ktisis.cut.ac.cy/handle/10488/4837

The FAO Open Archive

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Since 1998, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been publishing its electronic publications in the FAO Corporate Document Repository (CDR). The electronic publishing workflow is maintained by the Electronic Information Management System (EIMS). The EIMS-CDR holds more than 38 500 documents and is the gateway to FAO’s publications. The EIMS-CDR coexists with the FAODOC – the online catalogue for documents produced by FAO. FAODOC catalogues and indexes both electronic and printed documents while the EIMS-CDR manages full text documents and a minimal set of metadata. This paper discusses the merger of the EIMS-CDR and the FAODOC into a unique FAO Open Archive based on the integration of the electronic publishing and the bibliographic cataloguing requirements.

The FAO Open Archive will be the foundation for the collection, management, maintenance and timely dissemination of material published by FAO. To improve the effectiveness of the proposed repository, it is necessary to streamline the current electronic publishing workflow. The merger of the EIMS-CDR and the FAODOC will strengthen FAO’s role as a knowledge dissemination organization. Especially, as one of the principal tasks of the FAO is to efficiently collect and disseminate information regarding food, nutrition, agriculture, fisheries and forestry.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15652

Polish network of Digital Libraries

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The article presents the political context and the current status of digital libraries network in Poland. It demonstrates the major challenges in the various areas in which libraries operate, problems which should be discussed.

It describes some important library initiatives that emerged in order to coordinate activities, and presents concrete examples (WBC, KPBC, POLONA) of the actual digital collections accessible via the Internet. The author also attempts to diagnose the situation and indicate solutions, which may bring measurable benefits to Poland and Europe.

URL : http://kpbc.umk.pl/Content/40554/Polish_Network_of_Digital_Libraries-2008.pdf

Tragedy of the Data Commons

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Accurate data is vital to enlightened research and policymaking, particularly publicly available data that are redacted to protect the identity of individuals.

Legal academics, however, are campaigning against data anonymization as a means to protect privacy, contending that wealth of information available on the Internet enables malfeasors to reverse-engineer the data and identify individuals within them.

Privacy scholars advocate for new legal restrictions on the collection and dissemination of research data. This Article challenges the dominant wisdom, arguing that properly de-identified data is not only safe, but of extraordinary social utility.

It makes three core claims. First, legal scholars have misinterpreted the relevant literature from computer science and statistics, and thus have significantly overstated the futility of anonymizing data. Second, the available evidence demonstrates that the risks from anonymized data are theoretical – they rarely, if ever, materialize. Finally, anonymized data is crucial to beneficial social research, and constitutes a public resource – a commons – under threat of depletion.

The Article concludes with a radical proposal: since current privacy policies overtax valuable research without reducing any realistic risks, law should provide a safe harbor for the dissemination of research data.”

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1789749