User participation in the categorisation of the State Library of Queensland digital image collections: characteristics, motivations and experiences

In 2010, the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) donated their out-of-copyright Queensland images to Wikimedia Commons. One direct effect of publishing the collections at Wikimedia Commons is the ability of general audiences to participate and help the library in processing the images in the collection. This paper will discuss a project that explored user participation in the categorisation of the State Library of Queensland digital image collections. The outcomes of this project can be used to gain a better understanding of user participation that lead to improving access to library digital collections. Two techniques for data collection were used: documents analysis and interview. Document analysis was performed on the Wikimedia Commons monthly reports. Meanwhile, interview was used as the main data collection technique in this research. The data collected from document analysis was used to help the researchers to devise appropriate questions for interviews. The interviews were undertaken with participants who were divided into two groups: SLQ staff members and Wikimedians (users who participate in Wikimedia). The two sets of data collected from participants were analysed independently and compared. This method was useful for the researchers to understand the differences between the experiences of categorisation from both the librarians’ and the users’ perspectives. This paper will provide a discussion on the preliminary findings that have emerged from each group participant. This research provides preliminary information about the extent of user participation in the categorisation of SLQ collections in Wikimedia Commons that can be used by SLQ and other interested libraries in describing their digital content by their categorisations to improve user access to the collection in the future.

Preliminary insights from a multiple case study on process modelling impact

Process modelling – the design and use of graphical documentations of an organisation’s business processes – is a key method to document and use information about business processes in organisational projects. Still, despite current interest in process modelling, this area of study still faces essential challenges. One of the key unanswered questions concerns the impact of process modelling in organisational practice. Process modelling initiatives call for tangible results in the form of returns on the substantial investments that organisations undertake to achieve improved processes. This study explores the impact of process model use on end-users and its contribution to organisational success. We posit that the use of conceptual models creates impact in organisational process teams. We also report on a set of case studies in which we explore tentative evidence for the development of impact of process model use. The results of this work provide a better understanding of process modelling impact from information practices and also lead to insights into how organisations should conduct process modelling initiatives in order to achieve an optimum return on their investment.

Potentials of social media for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians : preliminary findings

Tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, such as the sharing of clinical experiences, skills, or know-how, or know-whom, is known to have a significant impact on the quality of medical diagnosis and decisions. This paper posits that social media can provide new opportunities for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a review of relevant literature and a survey conducted with physicians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten physicians from around the world who were active users of social media. Initial thematic analysis revealed eight themes as potential contributions of social web tools to facilitate tacit knowledge flow amongst physicians. The emergent themes are defined, linked to the literature, and supported by instances of interview transcripts. Findings presented here are preliminary, and final results will be reported after accomplishing all phases of data collection and analysis.

Encouraging learners to drive using game elements and smartphones

Young drivers aged 17-24 years are at a risk of death and injury from road crashes primarily due to their age and inexperience on the road. Our research aims to investigate if a gamified mobile tracking and intervention tool can help to address this issue. We aim to build a smartphone application to support the current process of logging driving hours using a physical logbook and pen in Queensland. This provides an easier way to log driving hours than recording them in a logbook. In an attempt to engage Learners and encourage them to undertake more diverse driving practice we will explore how game elements can be integrated into the experience to motivate Learners. Previous research in other domains has shown that framing tasks as game-like can help engage and motivate users, however the addition of game elements to this space provides some interesting design challenges. This paper presents an overview of the research and presents these challenges for further discussion.

Exploiting medical hierarchies for concept-based information retrieval

Search technologies are critical to enable clinical sta to rapidly and e ectively access patient information contained in free-text medical records. Medical search is challenging as terms in the query are often general but those in rel- evant documents are very speci c, leading to granularity mismatch. In this paper we propose to tackle granularity mismatch by exploiting subsumption relationships de ned in formal medical domain knowledge resources. In symbolic reasoning, a subsumption (or `is-a') relationship is a parent-child rela- tionship where one concept is a subset of another concept. Subsumed concepts are included in the retrieval function. In addition, we investigate a number of initial methods for combining weights of query concepts and those of subsumed concepts. Subsumption relationships were found to provide strong indication of relevant information; their inclusion in retrieval functions yields performance improvements. This result motivates the development of formal models of rela- tionships between medical concepts for retrieval purposes.

Semantic judgement of medical concepts : combining syntagmatic and paradigmatic information with the tensor encoding model

This paper outlines a novel approach for modelling semantic relationships within medical documents. Medical terminologies contain a rich source of semantic information critical to a number of techniques in medical informatics, including medical information retrieval. Recent research suggests that corpus-driven approaches are effective at automatically capturing semantic similarities between medical concepts, thus making them an attractive option for accessing semantic information. Most previous corpus-driven methods only considered syntagmatic associations. In this paper, we adapt a recent approach that explicitly models both syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations. We show that the implicit similarity between certain medical concepts can only be modelled using paradigmatic associations. In addition, the inclusion of both types of associations overcomes the sensitivity to the training corpus experienced by previous approaches, making our method both more effective and more robust. This finding may have implications for researchers in the area of medical information retrieval.

An integrated approach to supporting land-use decisions in site redevelopment for urban renewal in Hong Kong

Urban renewal is a significant issue in developed urban areas, with a particular problem for urban planners being redevelopment of land to meet demand whilst ensuring compatibility with existing land use. This paper presents a geographic information systems (GIS)-based decision support tool (called LUDS) to quantitatively assess land-use suitability for site redevelopment in urban renewal areas. This consists of a model for the suitability analysis and an affiliated land-information database for residential, commercial, industrial, G/I/C (government/institution/community) and open space land uses. Development has occurred with support from interviews with industry experts, focus group meetings and an experimental trial, combined with several advanced techniques and tools, including GIS data processing and spatial analysis, multi-criterion analysis, as well as the AHP method for constructing the model and database. As demonstrated in the trial, LUDS assists planners in making land-use decisions and supports the planning process in assessing urban land-use suitability for site redevelopment. Moreover, it facilitates public consultation (participatory planning) by providing stakeholders with an explicit understanding of planners' views.

A six-year descriptive analysis of hospitalisations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions among people born in refugee-source countries

Background: Hospitalisation for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSHs) has become a recognised tool to measure access to primary care. Timely and effective outpatient care is highly relevant to refugee populations given the past exposure to torture and trauma, and poor access to adequate health care in their countries of origin and during flight. Little is known about ACSHs among resettled refugee populations. With the aim of examining the hypothesis that people from refugee backgrounds have higher ACSHs than people born in the country of hospitalisation, this study analysed a six-year state-wide hospital discharge dataset to estimate ACSH rates for residents born in refugee-source countries and compared them with the Australia-born population. Methods: Hospital discharge data between 1 July 1998 and 30 June 2004 from the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset were used to assess ACSH rates among residents born in eight refugee-source countries, and compare them with the Australia-born average. Rate ratios and 95% confidence levels were used to illustrate these comparisons. Four categories of ambulatory care sensitive conditions were measured: total, acute, chronic and vaccine-preventable. Country of birth was used as a proxy indicator of refugee status. Results: When compared with the Australia-born population, hospitalisations for total and acute ambulatory care sensitive conditions were lower among refugee-born persons over the six-year period. Chronic and vaccine-preventable ACSHs were largely similar between the two population groups. Conclusion: Contrary to our hypothesis, preventable hospitalisation rates among people born in refugee-source countries were no higher than Australia-born population averages. More research is needed to elucidate whether low rates of preventable hospitalisation indicate better health status, appropriate health habits, timely and effective care-seeking behaviour and outpatient care, or overall low levels of health care-seeking due to other more pressing needs during the initial period of resettlement. It is important to unpack dimensions of health status and health care access in refugee populations through ad-hoc surveys as the refugee population is not a homogenous group despite sharing a common experience of forced displacement and violence-related trauma.

Briefing paper on eTextbooks and third party eLearning products and their implications for Australian university libraries

The briefing paper was commissioned by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) to examine the current picture and evolving role of electronic textbooks (eTextbooks) and third party eLearning products in the academic arena. The study reviews industry trends, identifies the major players and considers the different stakeholder perspectives of eTextbook adoption. Within the context of learning and teaching in the digital age, specific areas of research, policy and practice are highlighted to consider the implications that eTextbooks might have for universities in general and for university libraries in particular. An environmental scan focused on the analysis of current developments and the anticipated future directions of digital learning resources in Australia, as well as in other major English speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. This research guided the development of key interview questions aimed at examining, at a deeper level, diverse stakeholder perspectives about the roles university libraries can play in the adoption of digital learning content.

Understanding process behaviours in a large insurance company in Australia : a case study

Having a reliable understanding about the behaviours, problems, and performance of existing processes is important in enabling a targeted process improvement initiative. Recently, there has been an increase in the application of innovative process mining techniques to facilitate evidence-based understanding about organizations' business processes. Nevertheless, the application of these techniques in the domain of finance in Australia is, at best, scarce. This paper details a 6-month case study on the application of process mining in one of the largest insurance companies in Australia. In particular, the challenges encountered, the lessons learned, and the results obtained from this case study are detailed. Through this case study, we not only validated existing `lessons learned' from other similar case studies, but also added new insights that can be beneficial to other practitioners in applying process mining in their respective fields.

A typology for business transformations (research in progress)

The term “business transformation” is a buzzword, often used to signify fundamental changes undergone by organisations. Despite numerous works in enterprise transformation, IT-enabled business transformation and organizational transformation, there appears to be a lack of consensus on what actually constitutes a business transformation as opposed to other types of redesign or organisational improvement projects. Consequently, knowledge about which elements of a business system that are impacted by such an endeavour is largely inconsistent, and partially conflicting. We present a business transformation typology that considers 18 attributes pertaining to the transforming organisation and the transformation initiative. To explore our typology, we analysed 10 published case studies and classified them along two dimensions – one ranging from marginal to fundamental changes, and another on internal and external visibility. Our literature review reveals how the terminology has been misused, and we provide some directions to provide more clarity around transformation phenomena in IS research.

Collaborative tagging in participatory webs : the death of information organisation?

Many organisations, companies and libraries started to use participatory webs to extend their services and engage more users. However, some librarians are still hesitated to implement participatory webs in their libraries, particularly in developing countries. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of participatory webs focusing on collaborative tagging. This paper draws from the literature of published articles discussing topics but not limited to participatory webs, participatory libraries, collaborative tagging, folksonomy and taxonomy. The advantages of implementation of the participatory webs in the library outweigh the disadvantages of it. Participatory webs do not necessarily mean the death of information organisation but it can supplement and improves information organisation in the library. This paper may help to broaden knowledge of LIS professionals in the implementation of participatory webs in the library.

A study on the effects of routing symbol design on process model comprehension

Process modeling grammars are used to create models of business processes. In this paper, we discuss how different routing symbol designs affect an individual's ability to comprehend process models. We conduct an experiment with 154 students to ascertain which visual design principles influence process model comprehension. Our findings suggest that design principles related to perceptual discriminability and pop out improve comprehension accuracy. Furthermore, semantic transparency and aesthetic design of symbols lower the perceived difficulty of comprehension. Our results inform important principles about notational design of process modeling grammars and the effective use of process modeling in practice.

WebPut : Efficient web-based data imputation

In this paper, we present WebPut, a prototype system that adopts a novel web-based approach to the data imputation problem. Towards this, Webput utilizes the available information in an incomplete database in conjunction with the data consistency principle. Moreover, WebPut extends effective Information Extraction (IE) methods for the purpose of formulating web search queries that are capable of effectively retrieving missing values with high accuracy. WebPut employs a confidence-based scheme that efficiently leverages our suite of data imputation queries to automatically select the most effective imputation query for each missing value. A greedy iterative algorithm is also proposed to schedule the imputation order of the different missing values in a database, and in turn the issuing of their corresponding imputation queries, for improving the accuracy and efficiency of WebPut. Experiments based on several real-world data collections demonstrate that WebPut outperforms existing approaches.

Untanglings: A novel approach to analyzing concurrent systems

Substantial research efforts have been expended to deal with the complexity of concurrent systems that is inherent to their analysis, e.g., works that tackle the well-known state space explosion problem. Approaches differ in the classes of properties that they are able to suitably check and this is largely a result of the way they balance the trade-off between analysis time and space employed to describe a concurrent system. One interesting class of properties is concerned with behavioral characteristics. These properties are conveniently expressed in terms of computations, or runs, in concurrent systems. This article introduces the theory of untanglings that exploits a particular representation of a collection of runs in a concurrent system. It is shown that a representative untangling of a bounded concurrent system can be constructed that captures all and only the behavior of the system. Representative untanglings strike a unique balance between time and space, yet provide a single model for the convenient extraction of various behavioral properties. Performance measurements in terms of construction time and size of representative untanglings with respect to the original specifications of concurrent systems, conducted on a collection of models from practice, confirm the scalability of the approach. Finally, this article demonstrates practical benefits of using representative untanglings when checking various behavioral properties of concurrent systems.