In this issue:
Enhancing Visibility of Vendor Accessibility Documentation
Samuel Kent Willis and Faye O’Reilly
As accessibility of online resources becomes an increasingly visible priority for libraries, ensuring that our licensed content vendors meet the same standards is more important. This article describes a method of increasing the visibility of vendor accessibility documentation for the benefit of our users.
Efficiently Processing and Storing Library Linked Data using Apache Spark and Parquet
Kumar Sharma, Ujjal Marjit, and Utpal Biswas
Many library management systems are moving toward linked data storage and retrieval systems. To use this format for our cataloging metadata, libraries need ways to store, manipulate, and process RDF triples. This article proposes a distributed solution for efficiently processing and storing the large volume of library linked data stored in traditional storage systems. Apache Spark is used for parallel processing of large data sets and a column-oriented schema is proposed for storing RDF data.
The Open Access Citation Advantage: Does It Exist and What Does It Mean for Libraries?
Colby Lil Lewis
This Ex Libris/LITA Student Paper Award winning article reexamines the conclusions reached by Davis and Walters in 2011 by providing a critical review of OACA literature that has been published since then, and explores how increases in OA publication trends could serve as a leveraging tool for libraries against the high costs of journal subscriptions.
Of the People for the People: Digital Literature Resource Knowledge Recommendation Based on User Cognition
Wen Lou, Hui Wang, and Jiangen He
In this article, the authors propose a method to use user comments and reviews of books to enhance the discovery of the items themselves. They describe the process by which they attempted to improve user satisfaction with the effects of retrieval results and visual appearance by employing users’ own information.
PAL: Toward a Recommendation System for Manuscripts
Scott Ziegler and Richard Shrake
Recommender systems for books are frequently employed in libraries and bookstores. In this article, the authors provide a method for creating recommender systems for archival or other special collections based on user actions and collection metadata from finding aids created using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standards.
Library Space Information Model Based on GIS – A Case Study of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Yaqi Shen
This article describes a method for showing library users the precise location of books, study tables, computers, and other in-library resources via a web interface and GIS location data.
Editorial Content
- Letter from the Editor (Kenneth J. Varnum)
- President’s Message: Rebuilding Our Identity, Together (Bohyun Kim)
- Editorial Board Thoughts: Getting to Yes: Stakeholder Buy-In for Implementing Emerging Technologies in Your Library (Ida Arlene Joiner)
- Information Technology and Libraries at 50: The 1980s in Review (Mark Dehmlow)
Contact ITAL Editor Ken Varnum at varnum@umich.edu with your proposal. Current formats are generally:
- Articles – original research or comprehensive and in-depth analyses, in the 3000-5000 word range.
- Communications – brief research reports, technical findings, and case studies, in the 1000-3000 word range.
For all other questions or comments related to LITA publications, contact us at (312) 280-4268 or lita@ala.org
