New preprints

Two new preprints were recently added.

• "Adoption of E-Book Readers among College Students: A Survey" by Nancy M. Foasberg

• "Editorial and technological workflow tools to promote website quality" by Emily G. Morton-Owens
  (Originally presented at the 2010 LITA National Forum)

New preprints

Two new preprints have been added to the ITAL Web site today.
http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/ital/prepub/index.cfm

"Investigations into Library Web Scale Discovery Services" by Jason Vaughan

 "Graphs in Libraries: A Primer" by James E. Powell, Daniel Alcazar, Matthew Hopkins, Robert Olendorf, Tamara M. McMahon, Amber Wu, Linn Collins

A Simple Scheme for Book Classification Using Wikipedia, by Andromeda Yelton

Editor’s note: This article is the winner of the LITA/Ex Libris Student Writing Award, 2010.

Because the rate at which documents are being generated outstrips librarians’ ability to catalog them, an accurate, automated scheme of subject classification is desirable. However, simplistic word-counting schemes miss many important concepts; librarians must enrich algorithms with background knowledge to escape basic problems such as polysemy and synonymy. I have developed a script that uses Wikipedia as context for analyzing the subjects of nonfiction books. Though a simple method built quickly from freely available parts, it is partially successful, suggesting the promise of such an approach for future research.

The Internet Public Library (IPL): An Exploratory Case Study on User Perceptions, by Monica Maceli, Susan Wiedenbeck, and Eileen Abels

The Internet Public Library (IPL), now known as ipl2, was created in 1995 with the mission of serving the public by providing librarian-recommended Internet resources and reference help. We present an exploratory case study on public perceptions of an “Internet public library,” based on qualitative analysis of interviews with ten college student participants: some current users and others unfamiliar with the IPL. The exploratory interviews revealed some confusion around the IPL’s name and the types of resources and services that would be offered. Participants made many positive comments about the IPL’s resource quality, credibility, and personal help.

Semantic Web for Reliable Citation Analysis in Scholarly Publishing, by Ruben Tous, Manel Guerrero, and Jaime Delgado

Analysis of the impact of scholarly artifacts is constrained by current unreliable practices in cross-referencing, citation discovering, and citation indexing and analysis, which have not kept pace with the technological advances that are occurring in several areas like knowledge management and security. Because citation analysis has become the primary component in scholarly impact factor calculation, and considering the relevance of this metric within both the scholarly publishing value chain and (especially important) the professional curriculum evaluation of scholarly professionals, we defend that current practices need to be revised. This paper describes a reference architecture that aims to provide openness and reliability to the citation-tracking lifecycle. The solution relies on the use of digitally signed semantic metadata in the different stages of the scholarly publishing workflow in such a manner that authors, publishers, repositories, and citation-analysis systems will have access to independent reliable evidences that are resistant to forgery, impersonation, and repudiation. As far as we know, this is the first paper to combine Semantic Web technologies and public-key cryptography to achieve reliable citation analysis in scholarly publishing.

Web Accessibility, Libraries, and the Law, by Camilla Fulton

With an abundance of library resources being served on the web, researchers are finding that disabled people oftentimes do not have the same level of access to materials as their nondisabled peers. This paper discusses web accessibility in the context of United States’ federal laws most referenced in web accessibility lawsuits. Additionally, it reveals which states have statutes that mirror federal web accessibility guidelines and to what extent. Interestingly, fewer than half of the states have adopted statutes addressing web accessibility, and fewer than half of these reference Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. Regardless of sparse legislation surrounding web accessibility, librarians should consult the appropriate web accessibility resources to ensure that their specialized content reaches all.

Usability of the VuFind Next-Generation Online Catalog, by Jennifer Emanuel

The 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.