Information Technology and Libraries

Letter from the Editors

Kenneth J. Varnum; Marisha C. Kelly — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Letter from the editors, including a summary of articles in this issue, our move to a new publishing platform this summer, and a preview of our April call for Editorial Board members.

Virtual Production at Cloud901 in the Memphis Central Library

David Mason, Alan Ji — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

In order to explore the connection between cinematography and graphics programming at Cloud901, I am using my experience in film and programming to develop a “virtual production” initiative in our space. This project serves the purpose of teaching youth how to write programs within Unreal Engine while creating a platform where those interested in the film, programming, music, and visual art aspects of our space can collaborate.

The Current State and Challenges in Democratizing Small Museums’ Collections Online

Avgoustinos Avgousti, Georgios Papaioannou — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This article focuses on the problematic democratization of small museum collections online in Cyprus. While the web has enabled cultural heritage organizations to democratize information to diverse audiences, numerous small museums do not enjoy the fruits of this digital revolution; many of them cannot democratize their collections online. The current literature provides insight into small and large museums’ challenges worldwide. However, we do not have any knowledge concerning small Cypriot museums. This article aims to fulfill this gap by raising the following research question: What is the current state of small museum collections online in Cyprus, and what challenges do they face in democratizing their collections online? We present our empirical results from the interview summaries gathered from six small museums.

Services to Mobile Users

Yan Quan Liu, Sarah Lewis — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Libraries are adapting to the changing times by providing mobile services. One hundred fifty-one libraries were chosen based on circulation, with at least one library or library system from each state, to explore the diverse services provided to mobile users across the United States. According to the data, mobile apps, mobile reference services, mobile library catalogs, and mobile printing are among public libraries’ most-frequently offered services, as determined by mobile visits, content analysis, and librarian survey responses. Every library examined had at least one mobile website, mobile catalog, mobile app, or webpage adapted for a mobile device. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, services such as mobile renewal, subscriber database access, mobile reservations, and the ability to interact with a librarian were expanded to allow better communication with customers—all from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Libraries are continually looking for innovative methods to assist their mobile customers as the world changes.

Decision-Making in the Selection, Procurement, and Implementation of Alma/Primo

Jin Xiu Guo, Gordon Xu — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This case study examines the decision-making process of library leaders and administrators in the selection, procurement, and implementation of Ex Libris Alma/Primo as their library services platform (LSP). The authors conducted a survey of libraries and library consortia in Canada and the United States who have implemented or plan to implement Alma. The results show that most libraries use both request for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) in their system selection process, but the vendor-offered training is insufficient for effective operation. One-third of the libraries surveyed are considering switching to open-source options for their next automation system. These insights can benefit libraries and library consortia in improving their technological readiness and decision-making processes.

Exploring Final Project Trends Utilizing Nuclear Knowledge Taxonomy

Faizhal Arif Santosa — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

The National Nuclear Energy Agency of Indonesia (BATAN) taxonomy is a nuclear competence field organized into six categories. The Polytechnic Institute of Nuclear Technology, as an institution of nuclear education, faces a challenge in organizing student publications according to the fields in the BATAN taxonomy, especially in the library. The goal of this research is to determine the most efficient automatic document classification model using text mining to categorize student final project documents in Indonesian and monitor the development of the nuclear field in each category. The kNN algorithm is used to classify documents and identify the best model by comparing Cosine Similarity, Correlation Similarity, and Dice Similarity, along with vector creation binary term occurrence and TF-IDF. A total of 99 documents labeled as reference data were obtained from the BATAN repository, and 536 unlabeled final project documents were prepared for prediction. In this study, several text mining approaches such as stem, stop words filter, n-grams, and filter by length were utilized. The number of k is 4, with Cosine-binary being the best model with an accuracy value of 97 percent, and kNN works optimally when working with binary term occurrence in Indonesian language documents when compared to TF-IDF. Engineering of Nuclear Devices and Facilities is the most popular field among students, while Management is the least preferred. However, Isotopes and Radiation are the most prominent fields in Nuclear Technochemistry. Text mining can assist librarians in grouping documents based on specific criteria. There is also the possibility of observing the evolution of each existing category based on the increase of documents and the application of similar methods in various circumstances. Because of the curriculum and courses given, the growth of each discipline of nuclear science in the study program is different and varied.

Japanese Military “Comfort Women” Knowledge Graph

Haram Park, Haklae Kim — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Materials related to Japanese military “comfort women” in Korea are managed by several institutions. Each digital archive has their own metadata schema and management policies. So far, a standard or a common guideline for describing digital records is not formalized.

We propose a Japanese military “comfort women” knowledge graph to semantically interlink the digital records from distributed digital archives. To build a Japanese military “comfort women” knowledge graph, digital records and descriptive metadata were collected from existing digital archives. A list of metadata was defined by analyzing commonly used properties and a knowledge model designed by reusing standard vocabularies. Knowledge was constructed by interlinking the collected records, external data sources, and enriching data. The knowledge graph was evaluated using the FAIR data maturity model.