Gobinda Chowdhury

From digital libraries to digital preservation research: the importance of users and context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to point out the commonalities of research in digital libraries and digital preservation with regard to the issues of users and context of information.Design/methodology/approach – The papers approach is a review of selected literature and reports of research projects focusing particularly on digital preservation research.Findings – It is noted that just like the digital library community the digital preservation research community is also confronted with the challenges of capturing, storing and making use of the information related to users and context.Practical implications – The paper points out some current research in digital preservation that aims to handle the users and context information for building future digital preservation systems. It highlights some major challenges in these areas.Originality/value – The paper reports on the state of the art research in digital preservation.

Building environmentally sustainable information services: A green is research agenda

Climate change has become a major area of concern over the past few years and consequently many governments, international bodies, businesses, and institutions are taking measures to reduce their carbon footprint. However, to date very little research has taken place on information and sustainable development in general, and on the environmental impact of information services in particular. Based on the data collected from various research papers and reports, this review article shows that information systems and services for the higher education and research sector currently generate massive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and it is argued that there is an urgent need for developing a green information service, or green IS in short, that should be based on minimum GHG emissions throughout its lifecycle, from content creation to distribution, access, use, and disposal. Based on an analysis of the current research on green information technology (IT), it is proposed that a green IS should be based on the model of cloud computing. Finally, a research agenda is proposed that will pave the way for building and managing green ISs to support education and research/scholarly activities.

An agenda for green information retrieval research

Nowadays we use information retrieval systems and services as part of our many day-to-day activities ranging from a web and database search to searching for various digital libraries, audio and video collections/services, and so on. However, IR systems and services make extensive use of ICT (information and communication technologies) and increasing use of ICT can significantly increase greenhouse gas (GHG, a term used to denote emission of harmful gases in the atmosphere) emissions. Sustainable development, and more importantly environmental sustainability, has become a major area of concern of various national and international bodies and as a result various initiatives and measures are being proposed for reducing the environmental impact of industries, businesses, governments and institutions. Research also shows that appropriate use of ICT can reduce the overall GHG emissions of a business, product or service. Green IT and cloud computing can play a key role in reducing the environmental impact of ICT. This paper proposes the concept of Green IR systems and services that can play a key role in reducing the overall environmental impact of various ICT-based services in education and research, business, government, etc., that are increasingly being reliant on access and use of digital information. However, to date there has not been any systematic research towards building Green IR systems and services. This paper points out the major challenges in building Green IR systems and services, and two different methods are proposed for estimating the energy consumption, and the corresponding GHG emissions, of an IR system or service. This paper also proposes the four key enablers of a Green IR viz. Standardize, Share, Reuse and Green behavior. Further research required to achieve these for building Green IR systems and services are also mentioned.

Carbon footprint of the knowledge sector: what's the future?

– The purpose of this paper is to produce figures showing the carbon footprint of the knowledge industry – from creation to distribution and use of knowledge, and to provide comparative figures for digital distribution and access., – An extensive literature search and environmental scan was conducted to produce data relating to the CO2 emissions from various industries and activities such as book and journal production, photocopying activities, information technology and the internet. Other sources such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA ), Copyright Licensing Agency, UK (CLA), Copyright Agency Limited, Australia (CAL), etc., have been used to generate emission figures for production and distribution of print knowledge products versus digital distribution and access., – The current practices for production and distribution of printed knowledge products generate an enormous amount of CO2. It is estimated that the book industry in the UK and USA alone produces about 1.8 million tonnes and about 11.27 million tonnes of CO2 respectively. CO2 emission for the worldwide journal publishing industry is estimated to be about 12 million tonnes. It is shown that the production and distribution costs of digital knowledge products are negligible compared to the environmental costs of production and distribution of printed knowledge products., – Given the astounding emission figures for production and distribution of printed knowledge products, and the associated activities for access and distribution of these products, for example, emissions from photocopying activities permitted within the provisions of statutory licenses provided by agencies like CLA, CAL, etc., it is proposed that a digital distribution and access model is the way forward, and that such a system will be environmentally sustainable., – It is expected that the findings of this study will pave the way for further research and this paper will be extremely helpful for design and development of the future knowledge distribution and access systems.

How digital information services can reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Purpose – The study aims to determine the environmental impact of printed content in libraries and thus to find out how a digital information service can help libraries and institutions play a key role in helping the environment.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected and analysed through a combination of environment scan and document analysis, and some mathematical calculations. Comparative data for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from printed books and journals in certain countries, and some specific university libraries in Australia and New Zealand are presented. A lifecycle analysis approach is used to identify various factors that are responsible for GHG emissions for printed as well as digital information resources.Findings – The study found that dematerialisation, i.e. the replacement of printed content with digital information services, can help libraries and institutions to reduce their impact on the environment. However it is also noted that further research is needed to develop benchma...

Sustainability of digital information services

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a model which serves to illustrate that a number of factors are responsible for, and contribute to, the different forms of sustainability of digital information services. It also seeks to identify some areas of information research and their interrelationship in the context of sustainability of digital information services. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on critical analysis of a range of research and policy documents, and an environment scan, in different aspects of sustainability of information systems and services. Recent and relevant past research studies as well as some relevant government policies and initiatives have been critically analyzed in order to identify various factors that are said to contribute to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of information services. Findings – It is noted that the sustainability of information has not been studied within the mainstream information science research. However, several previ...

Measuring the Impact of Research: Lessons from the UK’s Research Excellence Framework 2014

Impactful academic research plays a stellar role in society, pressing to ask the question of how one measures the impact created by different areas of academic research. Measuring the societal, cultural, economic and scientific impact of research is currently the priority of the National Science Foundation, European Commission and several research funding agencies. The recently concluded United Kingdom’s national research quality exercise, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, which piloted impact assessment as part of the overall evaluation offers a lens to view how impact of research in different disciplines can be measured. Overall research quality was assessed through quality of outputs, ‘impact’ and research environment. We performed two studies using the REF 2014 as a case study. The first study on 363 Impact Case Studies (ICSs) submitted in 5 research areas (UoAs) reveals that, in general, the impact scores were constructed upon a combination of factors i.e. quantity of quartile-one (Q1) publications, quantity and value of grants/income, number of researchers stated in the ICSs, spin-offs created, discoveries/patents and presentation of esteem data, informing researchers/ academics of the factors to consider in order to achieve a better impact score in research impact assessments. However, there were differences among disciplines in terms of the role played by the factors in achieving their overall scores for the ICSs. The outcome of this study is thus a set of impact indicators, and their relationship with the overall score of impact of research in different disciplines as determined in REF2014, which would in the first instance provide some answers to impact measures that would be useful for researchers in different disciplines. The second study extracts the general themes of impact reported by universities by performing a word frequency analysis in all the ICSs submitted in the five chosen research areas, which were substantially varied owing to their fields.

Digital library research (1990-2010): a knowledge map of core topics and subtopics

In the paper, we briefly present a methodology and a digital library (DL) research knowledge map of core topics and subtopics (1990-2010) which can be used to create a visual knowledge map of DL research, and also to develop a new DL curriculum. The knowledge map can be an essential knowledge platform for DL researchers, educators, students and practitioners.

Sustainability of digital libraries: a conceptual model and a research framework

This paper aims to develop a conceptual model and a research framework for study of the economic, social and environmental sustainability of digital libraries. The major factors that are related to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of digital libraries have been identified. Relevant research in digital information systems and services in general, and digital libraries in particular, have been discussed to illustrate different issues and challenges associated with each of the three forms of sustainability. Based on the discussions of relevant research that have implications on sustainability of information systems and services, the paper proposes a conceptual model and a theoretical research framework for study of the sustainability of digital libraries. It shows that the sustainable business models to support digital libraries should also support equitable access supported by specific design and usability guidelines that facilitate easier, better and cheaper access; support the personal, institutional and social culture of users; and at the same time conform with the policy and regulatory frameworks of the respective regions, countries and institutions. It is also shown that measures taken to improve the economic and social sustainability should also support the environmental sustainability guidelines, i.e. reduce the overall environmental impact of digital libraries. It is argued that the various factors affecting the different sustainability issues of digital libraries need to be studied together to build digital libraries that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

Interpreting the knowledge map of digital library research (1990–2010)

A knowledge map of digital library (DL) research shows the semantic organization of DL research topics and also the evolution of the field. The research reported in this article aims to find the core topics and subtopics of DL research in order to build a knowledge map of the DL domain. The methodology is comprised of a four-step research process, and two knowledge organization methods (classification and thesaurus building) were used. A knowledge map covering 21 core topics and 1,015 subtopics of DL research was created and provides a systematic overview of DL research during the last two decades (1990–2010). We argue that the map can work as a knowledge platform to guide, evaluate, and improve the activities of DL research, education, and practices. Moreover, it can be transformed into a DL ontology for various applications. The research methodology can be used to map any human knowledge domain; it is a novel and scientific method for producing comprehensive and systematic knowledge maps based on literary warrant.