Yong Kim, Eun Jeong Kim and Min Gyo Chung
The purpose of this paper is to describe a Six Sigma‐based method to renovate library and information services with great emphasis on the information acquisition process.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a Six Sigma‐based method to renovate library and information services with great emphasis on the information acquisition process.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper conducts a case study into a corporate research library of a telecom company in Korea to identify and remove ineffective components and unnecessary steps in library works and services. Specifically, it uses Six Sigma's DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) methodology to improve the process of purchasing overseas academic/scientific information and to enhance user satisfaction with information utilization.
Findings
The paper identifies 12 key factors, which have a great effect on information acquisition time and information utilization, and then proposes the improvement plans for those identified factors. Thanks to the successful implementation of Six Sigma, information acquisition time has been reduced from 25.9 days to 8.1 days, and the level of user satisfaction with information utilization has been greatly increased from 6.74 points to 8.46 points on the Likert scale.
Originality/value
This study is very meaningful in that it is the first attempt in Korea to apply Six Sigma to library and information services. In this work, Six Sigma has been applied only to an information purchase process, but can be extended to a variety of other library processes such as loan, cataloging, etc. for the purpose of raising the efficiency of library works and improving the quality of other information services.
Details
Keywords
This paper seeks to describe a personal recommendation service (PRS) involving an innovative hybrid recommendation method suitable for deployment in a large‐scale multimedia user…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to describe a personal recommendation service (PRS) involving an innovative hybrid recommendation method suitable for deployment in a large‐scale multimedia user environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed hybrid method partitions content and user into segments and executes association rule mining, collaborative filtering, and contents popularity algorithms over various combinations of content partitions and user groups. The process results in recommended content for end‐users based on the linear combination of candidate data sets.
Findings
This study reveals that: the use of usage frequency is an effective way to analyse user's behaviour patterns and their selection of content; the partitioning of content and users into meaningful groups and the identification of optimal parameter values of constituent recommendation methods, yields successful results in the implementation; the hybrid method performs better than any constituent methods in most evaluation metrics.
Practical implications
The PRS system serves as a useful reference for electronic libraries or information centres considering the development of personalised information services.
Originality/value
The PRS system is designed and implemented to work efficiently in the large‐scale multimedia user environment. It can also be applied to small and medium‐scale environments or mobile platforms.
Details
Keywords
Min Gyo Chung, Taehyung (George) Wang and Phillip C.‐Y. Sheu
Video summarisation is one of the most active fields in content‐based video retrieval research. A new video summarisation scheme is proposed by this paper based on socially…
Abstract
Purpose
Video summarisation is one of the most active fields in content‐based video retrieval research. A new video summarisation scheme is proposed by this paper based on socially generated temporal tags.
Design/methodology/approach
To capture users' collaborative tagging activities the proposed scheme maintains video bookmarks, which contain some temporal or positional information about videos, such as relative time codes or byte offsets. For each video all the video bookmarks collected from users are then statistically analysed in order to extract some meaningful key frames (the video equivalent of keywords), which collectively constitute the summary of the video.
Findings
Compared with traditional video summarisation methods that use low‐level audio‐visual features, the proposed method is based on users' high‐level collaborative activities, and thus can produce semantically more important summaries than existing methods.
Research limitations/implications
It is assumed that the video frames around the bookmarks inserted by users are informative and representative, and therefore can be used as good sources for summarising videos.
Originality/value
Folksonomy, commonly called collaborative tagging, is a Web 2.0 method for users to freely annotate shared information resources with keywords. It has mostly been used for collaboratively tagging photos (Flickr), web site bookmarks (Del.icio.us), or blog posts (Technorati), but has never been applied to the field of automatic video summarisation. It is believed that this is the first attempt to utilise users' high‐level collaborative tagging activities, instead of low‐level audio‐visual features, for video summarisation.
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Keywords
This article was based on the information from The 5th International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies held in the University of British Columbia…
Abstract
Purpose
This article was based on the information from The 5th International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies held in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada in which the author was a presenter in session 4.2.9a of the Early life of Yuan Shikai and the formation of Yuan family. The paper aims to include comprehensive analysis and development of the history of Chinese migration. An annotated bibliography of suggested readings was offered to highlight the subject knowledge for further research in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper includes comprehensive analysis and development of the history of Chinese migration and the experiences and family histories of overseas Chinese in Canada. An annotated bibliography of suggested readings was offered to highlight the subject knowledge for further research in this area.
Findings
The paper offers full description and comprehensive analysis of the history of Chinese migration and overseas Chinese studies in Canada. A bbibliography of suggested readings was offered for further research in this area.
Research limitations/implications
This research study has a strong subject focus on Chinese migration, overseas Chinese studies, and resource-sharing in the subject area. It is a specific field for research in Asian studies.
Practical implications
The result of this study will assist students, researchers, and the general public in the area of overseas Chinese studies and developing their interests in the social and historical value of Chinese migration history and resource-sharing in the area.
Originality/value
Very little research has been done in the area of Chinese migration and historical development. The paper would offer historians, sociologists, ethnologists, librarians, administrations, professors, as well as students in the fields of Asian history, anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, and other Asian-related interdisciplinary studies.