ITAL Information Technology and Libraries (E-Journal)
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Seeing the Wood for the Trees: Enhancing Metadata Subject Elements with Weights
Get PDFSubject indexing has been conducted in a dichotomous way in terms of what the information object is primarily about/of or not, corresponding to the presence or absence of a particular subject term, respectively. With more subject terms brought into information systems via social tagging, manual cataloging, or automated indexing, many more partially relevant results can be retrieved. Using examples from digital image collections and online library catalog systems, we explore the problem and advocate for adding a weighting mechanism to subject indexing and tagging to make web search and navigation more effective and efficient. We argue that the weighting of subject terms is more important than ever in today’s world of growing collections, more federated searching, and expansion of social tagging. Such a weighting mechanism needs to be considered and applied not only by indexers, catalogers, and taggers, but also needs to be incorporated into system functionality and metadata schemas
President's Message: Membership, Leadership, Emerging Leaders, and LITA
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Usability of the VuFind Next-Generation Online Catalog
Get PDFThe VuFind open–source, next-generation catalog system was implemented by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois as an alternative to the WebVoyage OPAC system. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began offering VuFind alongside WebVoyage in 2009 as an experiment in next generation catalogs. Using a faceted search discovery interface, it offered numerous improvements to the UIUC catalog and focused on limiting results after searching rather than limiting searches up front. Library users have praised VuFind for its Web 2.0 feel and features. However, there are issues, particularly with catalog data
Librarians and Technology Skill Acquisition: Issues and Perspectives
Get PDFLibraries are increasingly searching for and employing librarians with significant technology skill sets. This article reports on a study conducted to determine how well prepared librarians are for their positions in academic libraries, how they acquired their skillss and how difficult they are to hire and retain. The examination entails a close look at ALA-accredited LIS program technology course offerings and dovetails a dual survey designed to capture experiences and perspectives from practitioners, both library administrators and librarianss who have significant technology roles
Editorial and Technological Workflow Tools to Promote Website Quality
Get PDFoai:ital.corejournals.org:article/1764Library websites are an increasingly visible representation of the library as an institution, which makes website quality an important way to communicate competence and trustworthiness to users. A website editorial workflow is one way to enforce a process and ensure quality. In a workflow, users receive roles, like author or editor, and content travels through various stages in which grammar, spelling, tone, and format are checked. One library used a workflow system to involve librarians in the creation of content. This system, implemented in Drupal, an opensource content management system, solved problems of coordination, quality, and comprehensiveness that existed on the library’s earlier, static website
Cataloging Theory in Search of Graph Theory and Other Ivory Towers
Get PDFThis paper summarizes a research program that focuses on how catalogers, other cultural heritage information workers, web/Semantic Web technologists, and the general public understand, explain, and manage resource description tasks by creating, counting, measuring, classifying, and otherwise arranging descriptions of cultural heritage resources within the bibliographic universe and beyond it. A significant effort is made to update the nineteenth-century mathematical and scientific ideas present in traditional cataloging theory to their twentieth- and twenty-first-century counterparts. There are two key elements in this approach: (1) a technique for diagrammatically depicting and manipulating large quantities of individual and grouped bibliographic entities and the relationships between them, and (2) the creation of resource description exemplars (problem–solution sets) that are intended to play theoretical, pedagogical, and IT system design roles
From Static and Stale to Dynamic and Collaborative: The Drupal Difference
Get PDFEditor’s Note: This paper is adapted from a presentation given at the 2010 LITA Forum
Editorial Board Thoughts: Is Open Access the Answer?
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Editorial Board Thoughts: Sharing Responsibility in the Digital Age
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