Description: This paper reports an exploratory study on resources and resource sharing among researchers in Intelligent Information Access (IIA). The investigation consists of two stages. In Stage One, the authors conducted a content analysis to identify resources used in 145 research papers and reports in two subfields of IIA; and in Stage Two, the authors carried out an online survey of IIA researchers to understand resource-sharing channels and the researchers' perspectives on resource sharing. The results demonstrate that IIA researchers make use of various types of resources developed by others. Most of these resources are knowledgeable sources or software systems that are freely available online. However, IIA researchers encounter various difficulties during the course of resource acquisition and use. The study suggests that a resource management system built on a well-established knowledge-management model could greatly facilitate the creation, sharing, and use of resources in the IIA community.

Description: This paper was part of a series by the Smithsonian Photography Initiative 'Click! Photography Changes Everything'. This paper discusses family photographs and how sometimes seemingly unremarkable snapshots can be truly remarkable.

Description: This paper discusses extraction and parsing of herbarium specimen data. Abstract: Herbaria around the world house millions of plant specimens; botanists and other researchers value these resources as ingredients in biodiversity research. Even when the specimen sheets are digitized and made available online, the critical information about the specimen stored on the sheet are not in a usable (i.e., machine-processible) form. This paper describes a current research and development project that is designing and testing high-throughput workflows that combine machine- and human-processes to extract and parse the specimen label data. The primary focus of the paper is the metadata needs for the workflow and the creation of the structured metadata records describing the plant specimen. In the project, the authors are exploring the use of the new Dublin Core Metadata Initiative framework for application profiles. First articulated as the Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles in 2007, the use of this framework is in its infancy. The promises of this framework for maximum interoperability and for documenting the use of metadata for maximum reusability, and for supporting metadata applications that are in conformance with Web architectural principles provide the incentive to explore and add implementation experience regarding this new ...

Description: This paper discusses building contextual mass in digital aggregations for scholarly use. Abstract: At present there are no established collection development methods for building large-scale digital aggregations. However, to realize the potential of the collective base of digital content and advance scholarship, aggregations must do more than provide search of sizable bodies of content. Informed by empirical understanding of scholarly information practices, the IMLS Digital Collections and Content project developed an aggregation strategy for building Opening History, one of the largest digital cultural heritage aggregations in the country. The strategy applied policy-driven collecting based on the principle of contextual mass, and conspectus-style evaluation of collection-level metadata to identify strong subject areas within the aggregation. Analysis of density, interconnectedness, diversity, and small/large collection complementary determined subject concentrations and thematic strengths to be prioritized for future collection development and used as organizational structures for browsing and visualization. The approach models how scholars build their own personal research collections, as they follow leads from collection to collection across institutions near and far, and adds value that cannot be achieved through conventional retrieval and browsing at the item-level.

Description: This paper presents a new area of research in library and information sciences - investigation into collection-level subject metadata that describes entire digital collections as integral wholes - and reports results of the multi-method exploratory study combining comparative content analysis of collection-level subject metadata in three large-scale aggregations of digital collections in the USA and Europe, transaction log analysis of user interactions with one of these portals, as well as interviews and observations of aggregation users.