Abstract: This study is posed to explore the practice of Public Access Computers (PACs) in academic libraries in Kaduna State, Nigeria. The study aimed to determine the computers and other tools available, their services and challenges of the practices. Three questions were framed to identify number of public computers and tools available, their services and problems faced during the practice. The study used qualitative research design along with semi-constructed interview and observation as tools for data collection. Descriptive analysis was employed to analyze the data. The sample size of the study comprises 52 librarian and IT staff from the seven academic institutions in Kaduna State. The findings revealed that, PACs were provided for access to the Internet, digital resources, library catalogue and training services. The study further explored that, despite the limit number of the computers, users were not allowed to enjoy many services. The study recommends that libraries in Kaduna state should provide more public computers to be able to cover the population of their users; libraries should allow users to use the computers without limitations and restrictions.
Abstract: Since the discovery of the manuscript, mechanical methods for storing, transferring and using the information have evolved into digital methods over the time. In this process, libraries that are the center of the information have also become digitized and become accessible from anywhere and at any time in the world by taking on a structure that has no physical boundaries. In this context, some criteria for information obtained from digital libraries have become more important for users. This paper evaluates the user criteria from different perspectives that make a digital library more useful. The Step-Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis-Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (SWARA-WASPAS) method is used with flexibility and easy calculation steps for the evaluation of digital library criteria. Three different digital libraries are evaluated by information technology experts according to five conflicting main criteria, ‘interface design’, ‘effects on users’, ‘services’, ‘user engagement’ and ‘context’. Finally, alternatives are ranked in descending order.
Abstract: This paper presents an unsupervised color image segmentation method. It is based on a hierarchical analysis of 2-D histogram in RGB color space. This histogram minimizes storage space of images and thus facilitates the operations between them. The improved segmentation approach shows a better identification of objects in a color image and, at the same time, the system is fast.
Abstract: This paper presents an approach for the classification of
an unstructured format description for identification of file formats.
The main contribution of this work is the employment of data mining
techniques to support file format selection with just the unstructured
text description that comprises the most important format features for
a particular organisation. Subsequently, the file format indentification
method employs file format classifier and associated configurations to
support digital preservation experts with an estimation of required file
format. Our goal is to make use of a format specification knowledge
base aggregated from a different Web sources in order to select file
format for a particular institution. Using the naive Bayes method,
the decision support system recommends to an expert, the file format
for his institution. The proposed methods facilitate the selection of
file format and the quality of a digital preservation process. The
presented approach is meant to facilitate decision making for the
preservation of digital content in libraries and archives using domain
expert knowledge and specifications of file formats. To facilitate
decision-making, the aggregated information about the file formats is
presented as a file format vocabulary that comprises most common
terms that are characteristic for all researched formats. The goal is to
suggest a particular file format based on this vocabulary for analysis
by an expert. The sample file format calculation and the calculation
results including probabilities are presented in the evaluation section.
Abstract: Explosion in information management and information system technology has brought dramatic changes in learning and library system environments. The use of academic digital libraries does witness the spectacular impact on academic societies’ way of performing their study in Malaysia, a country with a multi-racial people. This paper highlights a research on examining the socio-demographic differences on the preference and use of academic digital libraries as compared to physical libraries at higher learning institutions. Findings indicate that preference towards digital libraries differed between ethnicity, gender and university. However none of the socio-demographic factors is statistically significant in terms of the use of digital libraries.
Abstract: Digital libraries become more and more necessary in
order to support users with powerful and easy-to-use tools for
searching, browsing and retrieving media information. The starting
point for these tasks is the segmentation of video content into shots.
To segment MPEG video streams into shots, a fully automatic
procedure to detect both abrupt and gradual transitions (dissolve and
fade-groups) with minimal decoding in real time is developed in this
study. Each was explored through two phases: macro-block type's
analysis in B-frames, and on-demand intensity information analysis.
The experimental results show remarkable performance in
detecting gradual transitions of some kinds of input data and
comparable results of the rest of the examined video streams. Almost
all abrupt transitions could be detected with very few false positive
alarms.
Abstract: With a growing number of digital libraries and other
open education repositories being made available throughout the
world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the
desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, allinclusive
search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of
Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search,
Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network
functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes
how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and
data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data
sources include website click-through data, query logs, web server
log files and user account data. Based on a descriptive analysis of its
current use, modifications to the platform's design are recommended
to better address goals of the system, along with recommendations
for additional phases of research.
Abstract: Now a days, a significant part of commercial and governmental organisations like museums, cultural organizations, libraries, commercial enterprises, etc. invest intensively in new technologies for image digitization, digital libraries, image archiving and retrieval. Hence image authorization, authentication and security has become prime need. In this paper, we present a semi-fragile watermarking scheme for color images. The method converts the host image into YIQ color space followed by application of orthogonal dual domains of DCT and DWT transforms. The DCT helps to separate relevant from irrelevant image content to generate silent image features. DWT has excellent spatial localisation to help aid in spatial tamper characterisation. Thus image adaptive watermark is generated based of image features which allows the sharp detection of microscopic changes to locate modifications in the image. Further, the scheme utilises the multipurpose watermark consisting of soft authenticator watermark and chrominance watermark. Which has been proved fragile to some predefined processing like intentinal fabrication of the image or forgery and robust to other incidental attacks caused in the communication channel.
Abstract: Lately there has been a significant boost of interest in
music digital libraries, which constitute an attractive area of research
and development due to their inherent interesting issues and
challenging technical problems, solutions to which will be highly
appreciated by enthusiastic end-users. We present here a DL that we
have developed to support users in their quest for classical music
pieces within a particular collection of 18,000+ audio recordings.
To cope with the early DL model limitations, we have used a refined
socio-semantic and contextual model that allows rich bibliographic
content description, along with semantic annotations, reviewing,
rating, knowledge sharing etc. The multi-layered service model
allows incorporation of local and distributed information,
construction of rich hypermedia documents, expressing the complex
relationships between various objects and multi-dimensional spaces,
agents, actors, services, communities, scenarios etc., and facilitates
collaborative activities to offer to individual users the needed
collections and services.
Abstract: Academic digital libraries emerged as a result of advances in computing and information systems technologies, and had been introduced in universities and to public. As results, moving in parallel with current technology in learning and researching environment indeed offers myriad of advantages especially to students and academicians, as well as researchers. This is due to dramatic changes in learning environment through the use of digital library system which giving spectacular impact on these societies- way of performing their study/research. This paper presents a survey of current criteria for evaluating academic digital libraries- performance. The goal is to discuss criteria being applied so far for academic digital libraries evaluation in the context of user-centered design. Although this paper does not comprehensively take into account all previous researches in evaluating academic digital libraries but at least it can be a guide in understanding the evaluation criteria being widely applied.
Abstract: Increase in using internet makes some problems that
one of them is "internet anxiety". Internet anxiety is a type of anxious
that people may feel during surfing internet or using internet for their
educational purpose, blogging or streaming to digital libraries. The
goal of this study is evaluating of internet anxiety among the
management students. In this research Ealy's internet anxiety
questionnaire, consists of positive and negative items, is completed
by 310 participants. According to the findings, about 64.7% of them
were equal or below to mean anxiety score (50). The distribution of
internet anxiety scores was normal and there was no meaningful
difference between men-s and women's anxiety level in this sample.
Results also showed that there is no meaningful difference of internet
anxiety level between different fields of study in Management. This
evaluation will help managers to perform gap analysis between the
existent level and the desired one. Future work would be providing
techniques for abating human anxiety while using internet via human
computer interaction techniques.
Abstract: In this paper we present semantic assistant agent
(SAA), an open source digital library agent which takes user query
for finding information in the digital library and takes resources-
metadata and stores it semantically. SAA uses Semantic Web to
improve browsing and searching for resources in digital library. All
metadata stored in the library are available in RDF format for
querying and processing by SemanSreach which is a part of SAA
architecture. The architecture includes a generic RDF-based model
that represents relationships among objects and their components.
Queries against these relationships are supported by an RDF triple
store.