Designing and Developing Internet Reference Services to Support Firefighter Distance Learners in Illinois

SUMMARY

This article discusses issues surrounding the development of a small special library's Internet reference services to support firefighter distance learners for the University of Illinois Fire Service Institute's (IFSI) online Firefighter II Certification Program, the first of its kind in the nation. Planning for the Internet reference services involves consideration of user needs, funding, staff management, and collection development. In addition, this article explores how the IFSI Library has established a collaboration and partnership with the online course and Information Technology teams, and local public and community college libraries.     

Using Courseware Discussion Boards to Engage Graduate Students in Online Library Workshops

ABSTRACT

Librarians at Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries used the discussion board features of Blackboard courseware to create an interactive experience for graduate students at a distance who could not attend the on-campus “Literature Review Workshops.” These recently developed workshops have been extremely popular with graduate students across the disciplines and have generated a growing demand from distance education graduate students and faculty to offer similar information online. Reluctant to simply deliver content via an online tutorial, librarians sought to duplicate the workshop atmosphere by making the sessions available for a short time-period online, asking participants to respond to discussion questions at specific points in the workshop, and offering audio-mediated online demonstrations of tools and resources. Student feedback and follow-up requests for more workshops support the perception that this approach offered a rewarding learning experience that addressed their specific adult learning needs.     

Trying it on for Size

ABSTRACT

Most colleges are continuing to see growth in their online education programs. Academic libraries are attempting to strike a balance between traditional library offerings and new online resources and services. Determining how to allocate funds is complicated by the fact that many students in online classes today live near enough campus to come to the library. Should libraries at institutions where most online students live near campus devote scarce resources to providing services such as online reference? One community college library is attempting to answer that question by testing online reference with Elluminate vClass in a limited way.     

A Historical Overview of Internet Reference Services for Distance Learners

SUMMARY

The advent of library services and collections on the Internet revolutionized reference services to students enrolled in distance learning programs. Prior to the Internet, reference librarians who supported distance learning programs had few methods, and many of them costly, to provide the equivalent library services advocated by the ACRL Guidelines. Through the Internet, these librarians were able to approximate the services and resources that had always been available to students who came into the library. This article describes the development of reference services on the Internet in a variety of libraries that support distance learners.     

Distance Library Services for Doctor of Pharmacy Students

SUMMARY

Doctor of Pharmacy students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spend their final year of study working side-by-side with pharmacists throughout Wisconsin. Clerkship rotations often take place outside of Madison, away from familiar and dependable library resources and services. To make the transition from campus to community as smooth as possible, librarians have developed a focused orientation and a detailed field guide to provide students with the tools for a productive and successful year working and studying at a distance.

This article will outline the library's orientation program, describe the elements included in the distance services field guide, and highlight the pre- and post-clerkship assessment tools to be used in measuring satisfaction with the program in the future.     

The S.A.G.E. Project

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the process and creation of a library resources and services Web page within WebCT, a course authoring program that is being used to deliver complete course content over the Internet in a distance education program at The Ohio State University. A librarian at the Prior Health Sciences Library was asked to join a faculty team to teach and provide library services for a series of three courses. The students are working health professionals who cannot attend regularly scheduled classes. Illustrations are included of the WebCT course page and the library resources and services page. The initial process and planning are described, and recommendations for future research are identified.     

Information Literacy and the Distant Student

SUMMARY

This article discusses the development and implementation of a required, credit bearing online information literacy course at the University of Maryland University College. Key factors in its success include administrative support, student and faculty interaction in the online classroom, and outcomes assessment. Student persistence in the course is high, and grade distributions indicate that students are being challenged.     

Does Anyone Need Help Out There?

SUMMARY

In order to provide online help for distance students, as well as the increasing number of on-campus students who regularly access library resources, a team of librarians from the Marshall University Libraries created an online library assistance site (HELP). This site brings together traditional print handouts, FAQs, online subject guides, course-specific guides, learning modules, and instructional videos in one central location where users can get assistance with library-related questions at their point of need. This article discusses the rationale for developing the site, the process of creating it and incorporating user input, ongoing content development, the impact upon the Libraries' Web site, and future development plans.     

An adaptive doctor-recommender system

ABSTRACT

Recommender systems use machine-learning techniques to make predictions about resources. The medical field is one where much research is currently being conducted on recommender system utility. In the last few years, the amount of information available online that relates to healthcare has increased tremendously. Patients nowadays are more aware and look for answers to healthcare problems online. This has resulted in a dire need of an effective reliable online system to recommend the physician that is best suited to a particular patient in a limited time. In this article, a hybrid doctor-recommender system is proposed, by combining different recommendation approaches: content base, collaborative and demographic filtering to effectively tackle the issue of doctor recommendation. The proposed system addresses the issue of personalization through analysing patient's interest towards selecting a doctor. It uses a novel adoptive algorithm to construct a doctor's ranking function. Moreover, this ranking function is used to translate patients’ criteria for selecting a doctor into a numerical base rating, which will eventually be used in the recommendation of doctors. The system has been evaluated thoroughly, and result show that recommendations are reasonable and can fulfil patient's demand for reliable doctor's selection effectively.     

The Buck Stops Where?

SUMMARY

University students-whether adult, distance learner, or traditional age-need access to university services and quick accurate answers to their questions beyond traditional “business” hours. Students' busy schedules and changing life patterns dictate that university services meet their needs. At DePaul University in Chicago, student focus groups repeatedly pointed to the need for one central place to get an answer or solve a problem. DePaul Central was created as an information and referral service to satisfy that student need, at the same capitalizing on the value of the librarian skill set.     

A Review of “Hiring,Training, and Supervising Library Shelvers”

Abstract

The emergence of the Internet has dramatically changed information access capabilities through computers. Tools and resources available on the Internet affect library services in various ways. Many health science librarians are using Internet resources to meet the information needs of health care providers and themselves. This study examines different applications of the Internet components in medical library settings with a special emphasis on reference services. It also discusses the role of the Internet in fulfilling National Network of Libraries of Medicine's (NN/LM) objectives and analyzes the merit and demerits of using the Internet as a reference tool in health sciences libraries.     

Embedding Library Reference Services in Online Courses

SUMMARY

The University of Wyoming has a long tradition of providing library services to distance education students. As technology changed and enhanced the delivery mode of distance education courses, the library altered the ways in which it offered services to distance learners. The institution was an early adopter of Web courses, so offering library support in this new environment was a natural expansion of our services. This expansion supports the goals of the ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services and the goals of the University. This article will describe the integration of library reference services into online courses.     

A Nontraditional Application of MetaSearch

ABSTRACT

Federated searching has become an increasingly popular way for academic libraries to provide access to their diverse and rapidly growing collections of electronic resources. IUPUI University Library handled the implementation of its federated search project somewhat differently than many academic libraries. The cornerstone of their efforts was to not only create a gateway to the library's electronic resources, but to build upon previous experience as a beta site for Ex Libris' SFX cross-referencing software by using MetaSearch in conjunction with SFX to permit teaching faculty to link to online bibliographies through the university's course management system, Oncourse. Issues of working with two closed systems needed to be overcome, but a product resulted that was embraced by the faculty and gave direction for future developments. doi:10.1300/J136v12n03_04     

Applying Learning Style Theory to Web Page Design

ABSTRACT

Library Web sites can be instructional tools, especially for those patrons who utilize library resources from their homes. Many libraries are developing online tutorials, but there is an opportunity for Web instruction on another level. The organization and design of a Web site can act as an instructional tool in itself. This paper is a call to library Web designers to assess their work in terms of learning style preferences. Learning style theory is based on how people process information and learn new material. Applying these ideas to Web page design can make library resources more accessible and improve the patron's comprehension of how the library works.     

Centralizing Information About Library Services and Resources

SUMMARY

The School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona (UA) has a mix of local and distance students in its program. The librarian at the UA Library who works with this program developed a Web site that centralizes information about several library services and resources that benefit distance learners: online orientation and research guides, chat reference, document delivery, and more. Bringing together this information with a focus on distance learners provides a platform for delivering the library to all users, whatever their distance from the library.     

D-side: A facility and workforce planning group multi-criteria decision support system for Johnson Space Center

“To understand and protect our home planet, to explore the universe and search for life, and to inspire the next generation of explorers” is NASA's mission. The Systems Management Office at Johnson Space Center (JSC) is searching for methods to effectively manage the Center's resources to meet NASA's mission. D-Side is a group multi-criteria decision support system (GMDSS) developed to support facility decisions at JSC. D-Side uses a series of sequential and structured processes to plot facilities in a three-dimensional (3-D) graph on the basis of each facility's alignment with NASA's mission and goals, the extent to which other facilities are dependent on the facility, and the dollar value of capital investments that have been postponed at the facility relative to the facility's replacement value. A similarity factor rank orders facilities based on their Euclidean distance from Ideal and Nadir points. These similarity factors are then used to allocate capital improvement resources across facilities. We also present a parallel model that can be used to support decisions concerning allocation of human resources investments across workforce units. Finally, we present results from a pilot study where 12 experienced facility managers from NASA used D-Side and the organization's current approach to rank order and allocate funds for capital improvement across 20 facilities. Users evaluated D-Side favorably in terms of ease of use, the quality of the decision-making process, decision quality, and overall value-added. Their evaluations of D-Side were significantly more favorable than their evaluations of the current approach.     

Fostering Library as a Place for Distance Students: Best Practices From Two Universities

The concept of library as a place is now in action in many academic libraries: from physical library spaces to Web presences. In the constantly growing market of online and distance learning, however, libraries must foster library as a place for students who may never set foot in the physical building. This article provides a profile of two universities serving two very different bodies of distance students as well as the challenges associated with these populations. These libraries work to provide services to distance students that cultivate the library as a place to go for learning, research, and support by focusing on six categories: access, environment, resources, instruction, availability at the point of need, and “being real.” Tangible examples and best practices are provided throughout. This article is based on a presentation given at the 15th National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries in Philadelphia in March 2011.     

改进复杂网络模型的形状特征提取

目的 传统的基于欧氏距离的复杂网络表示方法容易受形状的非刚性变形影响。鉴于此,提出一种基于复杂网络模型与相对一致性距离相结合的形状特征提取方法。方法 首先,提取形状的边界轮廓点作为网络的节点,利用节点间的相对一致性距离作为边的权值构建初始的复杂网络模型;然后,利用阈值演化方法对初始网络模型进行动态演化,得到一系列子网络;最后,提取不同演化阶段下子网络的拓扑特征,实现对形状特征的提取。结果 分类和检索实验结果表明,相比于传统的复杂网络描述方法,本文方法对形状图像具有更强的描述和识别能力。结论 相比于传统的距离度量,相对一致性距离对形状的非刚性变形具有更强的稳定性。     

Ask a UT System Librarian

SUMMARY

University of Texas System libraries initiated a chat reference program to support distance learners enrolled at University of Texas component institutions, including the UT Telecampus Digital Library. Librarians at several geographically distant campuses staffed the collaborative chat reference service.

Librarians assisted students at other UT System campuses, in effect becoming “distance librarians” who must have thorough knowledge of both their own library resources and the resources available at other campus libraries.

Librarians at The University of Texas at San Antonio share their experiences with this collaborative chat reference service.     

采用积分图块间距离检测图像边缘

目的 边缘是图像的重要特征之一,是后续测量、基于形状配准的基础,为了更好地获得图像中的边缘信息,提出一种利用积分图块间距离检测图像边缘的方法。方法 首先,分析欧氏距离图理论,给出采用局部区块内和距离的方式检测图像边缘的方法。其次,提出采用积分图完成高斯模板块内求和算法,并利用这种方法加速完成了图像块内像素求和,以此提高算法的执行速度。最后,给出了本文算法的执行流程。结果 以人工标注模拟图像的边缘为标准,采用本文方法得到的边缘检测结果重叠率高于97%,Canny算法的重叠率为80%、高斯曼哈顿距离与欧式距离算法的重叠率分别低于63%和28%。从真实图像实验结果上看,随着图像尺寸的增加,Canny与本文方法的执行时间均略有增加,但幅度不大,在处理1024×768的图像时分别耗时1.7 s与4.6 s。由于本文方法增加了积分图及块内和的求解,因此耗时略高于Canny方法。综上,采用本文方法获得的边缘检测结果不仅具备较高的重叠率,而且执行时间较少,其执行速度不会随图像尺寸的增加而大幅度降低。结论 由实验结果可见,本文提出的图像边缘检测方法具备较高的准确性与实用性。由于本文方法具备较高的执行速度,因此适用于所有以边缘检测结果为基础的后期图像处理技术,包括对于实时性要求较高的视频流边缘检测与分析。