This study explored the acceptance of cloud computing (CC) services by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Lagos, Nigeria, which has been missing from CC services literature. It aimed to understand the motivations for adoption, the uses of the services, and the benefits they derive from it. The uses and gratification theory was applied as the theoretic framework for this endeavor. An online survey with close-ended and open-ended questions was distributed to 1200 randomly selected participants through email. In total, 392 valid responses were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics and categories. The results found that SMEs in Lagos, Nigeria had a low level of awareness and appreciation of CC services. The adoption rate was also low. Unlike their counterparts in other regions, SMEs primary concerns were service downtime, stable power supply, and better internet access. The study found that SMEs were not taking full advantage of the capabilities of CC services. Some sections, however, were doing better than others, such as the information and communications sub-sector. This study suggested that targeted interventions should be conducted to raise the awareness of CC services in SMEs, and to improve their efficient and effective use of CC services. The uses and gratification …

Advice for Web designers often includes an admonition to use short, scannable, bullet-pointed text, reflecting the common belief that browsing the Web most often involves scanning rather than reading. Literature from several disciplines focuses on the myriad combinations of factors related to online reading but studies of the users' interests and motivations appear to offer a more promising avenue for understanding how users utilize information on Web pages. This study utilized the modified Personal Involvement Inventory (PII), a ten-item instrument used primarily in the marketing and advertising fields, to measure interest and motivation toward a topic presented on the Web. Two sites were constructed from Reader's Digest Association, Inc. online articles and a program written to track students' use of the site. Behavior was measured by the initial choice of short versus longer versions of the main page, the number of pages visited and the amount of time spent on the site. Data were gathered from students at a small, private university in the southwest part of the United States to answer six hypotheses which posited that subjects with higher involvement in a topic presented on the Web and a more positive attitude toward the Web would tend to select …

The growing complexity of machines has led to a concomitant increase in the amount and complexity of the information needed by those charged with servicing them. This, in turn, has led to a need for more robust methods for storing and distributing information and for a workforce more sophisticated in its use of information resources. As a result, the service trades have "professionalized," adopting more rigorous academic standards and developing ongoing certification programs. The current paper deals with the acceptance of advanced electronic information technology by skilled service personnel, specifically, automotive service technicians. The theoretical basis of the study is Davis' technology acceptance model. The purpose of the study is to determine the effects of three external factors on the operation of the model: age, work experience, and education/certification level. The research design is in two parts, beginning with an onsite observation and interviews to establish the environment. During the second part of the research process a survey was administered to a sample of automotive service technicians. Results indicated significant inverse relationships between age and acceptance and between experience and acceptance. A significant positive relationship was shown between education, particularly certification, and acceptance.

This exploratory research examined an information policy formation process for the adoption of open source software (OSS) in Uganda. Grounded in a pragmatist tradition, this theoretical and empirical study pursued a qualitative research approach with a triangulation of theoretical concepts, data collection, and analysis techniques in an iterative and interactive process. The design provided a powerful context to develop and conduct field activities in Kampala with a purposeful sample of 22 participants, 20 in interviews and 5 in a focus group discussion. The research design enhanced consistency in the evidence from the data, increased robustness in the results, and confidence in the findings. The results highlighted a vibrant ICT sector in Uganda, underlined the multiple stakeholders and their competing interests in the policy, revealed a lack of consensus between the government and OSS promoters on the meaning of OSS, and illuminated the benefits in the OSS model over proprietary software. The stakeholders' conflicting perceptions appear to be too far apart to allow meaningful progress and are derailing the policy. Unless their conflicting perceptions are resolved, the OSS policy will continue stagnating. The study fills critical information gaps in Uganda’s policy formation processes, provides timely and relevant information to holistically understand …

This dissertation is organized in a traditional format while including three essays that address specific research questions. Essay 1 examined the relationship between physical activity and community engagement and their effect on mental well-being among older men and women. Data from National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) from 2018 to 2020 were explored and the posited relationships were tested. This essay provides empirical support that older adults who are reasonably active and involved in the community have greater mental well-being than those who isolate themselves. Essay 2 provides insight into older adults' motivation to improve their physical activity through the use of a fitness tracker. The key finding from this study is that wearables, especially fitness trackers, can significantly facilitate increased physical activity. Essay 3 is a mixed-methods study to understand older adults' perception of the usefulness of fitness trackers and interaction with such devices. Findings suggest that to increase the adoption of fitness trackers among older adults, makers could improve the esthetics and quality of the wristband in addition to the battery life of the tracker.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive modeling are tools used to diagnose a disease, determine how much a home is worth, estimate insurance risks, and detect fraud. AI and predictive modeling are so ubiquitous that they can be why one gets spam and why spam is automatically deleted. Information science integrates interdisciplinary elements of data-driven, behavioral, design, interpretive, and analytical research methodologies to design and understand interactions between digital media, information systems, and humans. This research focuses on the interaction between humans, AI, and predictive models. This research proposes a theoretical framework and a conceptual research model to understand the antecedents to reliance on AI and predictive modeling. The dissertation follows a traditional format that includes three studies. Study 1 employed a deductive quantitative research approach as a survey to model the relationship between trust in science and reliance on formal news sources. Study 2 employed a deductive quantitative research approach as a survey to understand the impact of framing questions and consider an alternative method of measuring society's reliance on science using predictive models. Study 3 employed a deductive quantitative research approach in the form of a survey to posit a new model based on the first two studies. This …

The applicability of SERVPERF as a tool for judging the quality of services used by biomedical information professionals was tested using standard statistical procedures. Data was gathered nationally via a combination of electronic and non-electronic forms, from Area Health Education Center (AHEC) information professionals and the results consolidated to provide information for the study. It was determined that SERVPERF was applicable in making judgements about service quality for AHEC information professionals. Their perceptions about service quality tended to have a greater influence than did their level of actual satisfaction on whether or not they planned to use a particular service in the future. There is currently no validated tool available to ascertain the quality of services offered to these valuable members of the rural health care team. This dissertation proposes to provide such a tool, and to serve as a guide or template for other professionals seeking a means to judge service quality in their own disciplines.

The purpose of the study was to contribute to the overall understanding of terrorist organizations' use of the Internet and to increase researchers' knowledge of Web site effectiveness. The methodological approach was evaluation of the perceived credibility of Web sites based on existing criteria derived from information users. The Web sites of four terrorist organizations were assessed: two secular nationalist groups, the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers); and two religious nationalist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. The findings of this analysis showed differences in perceived credibility factors among terrorist organizations' Web sites and positive levels of perceived credibility for the Web sites. These findings indicate the potential for positive impressions of the organizations' Web sites by information users, which would help empower the organizations with the capacity to reach their objectives. By using Web sites, these groups can effectively increase their support base through disseminating information, improving recruiting, and attracting monetary contributions, and can establish themselves as legitimate components of society.

This study is designed to reveal whether students acquire the domains and levels of library skills discussed in a learning library skills theory after participating in an online library instruction tutorial. The acquisition of the library skills is demonstrated through a review of the scores on online tutorial quizzes, responses to a library skills questionnaire, and bibliographies of course research papers. Additional areas to be studied are the characteristics of the participants enrolled in traditional and online courses at a community college and the possible influence of these characteristics on the demonstrated learning of library skills. Multiple measurement methods, identified through assessment of library instruction literature, are used to verify the effectiveness of the library skills theory and to strengthen the validity and reliability of the study results.

Research in scholarly communication is usually limited to the use and dissemination of scientific material by scholars. This excludes the transfer of knowledge from research producers to service providers. Some may argue the primary function of science is to investigate the conditions in the lab so everyday interactions with the environment are more effective and efficient. This is the underlying philosophy of the science of behavior analysis. Comprised of a basic science, an applied science and a philosophy the field of behavior analysis relies on research developments to inform effective practice. Guided by dissemination processes studied in information science, this investigation revealed the content layer in behavior analysis is primarily comprised of journal articles. Ninety four percent of the research artifacts cited in the current content layer are from journal articles. Other dissemination channels used to develop the behavior analytic content layer included scientific magazine articles, oral reports, dissertations and theses, and unpublished manuscripts. The information use environment for professionals in this field is very different than that of the scholars; most professionals do not have access to a university library. Therefore, the research producers are disseminating developments via communication channels some service providers cannot access. This investigation reveals the …

Automatic language identification has been applied to short texts such as queries in information retrieval, but it has not yet been applied to metadata records. Applying this technology to metadata records, particularly their title elements, would enable creators of metadata records to obtain a value for the language element, which is often left blank due to a lack of linguistic expertise. It would also enable the addition of the language value to existing metadata records that currently lack a language value. Titles lend themselves to the problem of language identification mainly due to their shortness, a factor which increases the difficulty of accurately identifying a language. This study implemented four proven approaches to language identification as well as one open-source approach on a collection of multilingual titles of books and movies. Of the five approaches considered, a reduced N-gram frequency profile and distance measure approach outperformed all others, accurately identifying over 83% of all titles in the collection. Future plans are to offer this technology to curators of digital collections for use.

The ethnographic study utilized the research techniques of observations, content analysis, and semi-structured interviews with tween participants (i.e., 9 through 13 year-old youth) during an 8-week literary blog project. Twenty-six participants created individual blog pages within a member-only classroom blog site that allowed for online communication between members. the blog project incorporated social networking applications with which youth frequently engage. the research questions ensured data regarding what facets participants found appealing and motivating during the project was collected. the questions allowed for determining if participants utilized peer blogs for reading material selection or repurposed the blogs to discuss other topics. Components of self-determination theory and engagement theory underlay the project design and aided in identifying motivational aspects of the data. Frequency tables outlined the identified patterns and structures of participants’ online activity. Participants found the ability to change the colors of their blog backgrounds and to design their individual blogs and the giving and receiving of feedback to be the two most appealing features of the project. Participants chose books from peer suggestions in the online world but also selected materials from recommendations they received in face-to-face interactions with their peers, their teacher, and the school librarian. Little evidence of …

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the style of a user interface (i.e., its look and feel) has an effect on the usability of a synchronous computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) environment for delivering Internet-based collaborative content. The problem motivating this study is that people who are located in different places need to be able to communicate with one another. One way to do this is by using complex computer tools that allow users to share information, documents, programs, etc. As an increasing number of business organizations require workers to use these types of complex communication tools, it is important to determine how users regard these types of tools and whether they are perceived to be useful. If a tool, or interface, is not perceived to be useful then it is often not used, or used ineffectively. As organizations strive to improve communication with and among users by providing more Internet-based collaborative environments, the users' experience in this form of delivery may be tied to a style of user interface look and feel that could negatively affect their overall acceptance and satisfaction of the collaborative environment. The significance of this study is that it applies the technology …

Science fiction has long promised the digitalization of books. Characters in films and television routinely check their palm-sized (or smaller) electronic displays for fast-scrolling information. However, this very technology, increasingly prevalent in today's world, has not been embraced universally. While the convenience of pocket-sized information pieces has the techno-savvy entranced, the general public still greets the advent of the e-book with a curious reluctance. This lack of enthusiasm seems strange in the face of the many advantages offered by the new medium - vastly superior storage capacity, searchability, portability, lower cost, and instantaneous access. This dissertation addresses the need for research examining the reading comprehension and the role emotional response plays in the perceived performance on e-document formats as compared to traditional paper format. This study compares the relative reading comprehension on three formats (Kindle, iTouch, and paper) and examines the relationship of subject's emotional response and relative technology exposure as factors that affect how the subject perceives they have performed on those formats. This study demonstrates that, for basic reading comprehension, the medium does not matter. Furthermore, it shows that, the more uncomfortable a person is with technology and expertise in the requested task (in this case, reading), the …

The exponential growth in medical pharmaceuticals and related clinical trials have created a need to better understand the decision-making factors in the processes for developing hospital medication formularies. The purpose of the study was to identify, rank, and compare major factors impacting hospital formulary decision-making among three prescriber groups serving on a hospital's pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committee. Prescribers were selected from the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center which is a large, multi-facility, academic oncology hospital. Specifically, the prescriber groups studied were comprised of physicians, midlevel providers, and pharmacists. A self-administered online survey was disseminated to participants. Seven major hospital formulary decision-making factors were identified in the scientific literature. Study participants were asked to respond to questions about each of the hospital formulary decision-making factors and to rank the various formulary decision-making factors from the factor deemed most important to the factor deemed least important. There are five major conclusions drawn from the study including three similarities and two significant differences among the prescriber groups and factors. Similarities include: (1) the factor "pharmacy staff's evaluation of medical evidence including formulary recommendations" was ranked highest for all three prescriber groups; (2) "evaluation of medications by expert physicians" was ranked …

This mixed-method study explored cataloger’s judgment through the presence of text as entered by catalogers for the 11 electronic resource items during the National Libraries test for Resource Description and Access (RDA). Although the literature discusses cataloger’s judgment and suggests that cataloging practice based on new cataloging code RDA will more heavily rely on cataloger’s judgment, the topic of cataloger’s judgment in RDA cataloging was not formally studied. The purpose of this study was to study the differences and similarities in the MARC records created as a part of the RDA National Test and to determine if the theory of bounded rationality could explain cataloger’s judgment based on the constructs of cognitive and temporal limits. This goal was addressed through a content analysis of the MARC records and various statistical tests (Pearson’s Chi-square, Fisher’s Exact, and Cramer’s V). Analysis of 217 MARC records was performed on seven elements of the bibliographic record. This study found that there were both similarities and differences among the various groups of participants, and there are indications that both support and refute the assertion that catalogers make decisions based on the constructs of time and cognitive ability. Future research is needed to be able to …

Modeling the "thick description" of photographs began at the intersection of personal and institutional descriptions. Comparing institutional descriptions of particular photos that were also used in personal online conversations was the initial phase. Analyzing conversations that started with a photographic image from the collection of the Library of Congress (LC) or the collection of the Manchester Historic Association (MHA) provided insights into how cultural heritage institutions could enrich the description of photographs by using informal descriptions such as those applied by Facebook users. Taking photos of family members, friends, places, and interesting objects is something people do often in their daily lives. Some photographic images are stored, and some are shared with others in gatherings, occasions, and holidays. Face-to-face conversations about remembering some of the details of photographs and the event they record are themselves rarely recorded. Digital cameras make it easy to share personal photos in Web conversations and to duplicate old photos and share them on the Internet. The World Wide Web even makes it simple to insert images from cultural heritage institutions in order to enhance conversations. Images have been used as tokens within conversations along with the sharing of information and background knowledge about them. The …

This exploratory, mixed-methods study investigated the relationship between information literacy and critical thinking. The research question guiding the first portion of the study was: How do information literacy and critical thinking relate in undergraduate students conducting academic research? Using two standardized assessments, the study assessed the information literacy and critical thinking skills of a small population of college students from a private, university in Texas. The correlational analysis of the scores from the two assessments showed a statistically significant, positive, moderate correlation. The study also explored the likelihood of gender differences in cognitive processing using information literacy and critical think skills assessments. The independent samples t-tests for both assessments demonstrated no statistically significant differences between female and male participants. Finally, a qualitative component comprised of a questionnaire provided context to the assessment scores through items requesting information on participant source selection priorities via the three middle stages of Kuhlthau's information search process model as well as their criteria for selecting sources of information. Though only a small number of the participants completed the questionnaire, the responses highlighted areas of interest for future research.

Reality TV is the most popular genre of television programming today. The number of reality television shows has grown exponentially over the last fifteen years since the premier of The Real World in 1992. Although reality TV uses styles similar to those used in documentary film, the “reality” of the shows is questioned by critics and viewers alike. The current study focuses on the “reality” that is presented to viewers and how that “reality” is created and may differ from what the participants of the shows experience. I appeared on two reality shows, Faking It and That's Clever, and learned a great deal as a participant observer. Within the study, I outline my experience and demonstrate how editing changed the reality I experienced into what was presented to the viewers. O'Connor's (1996) representation context web serves as a model for the realities created through reality television. People derive various benefits from watching reality TV. Besides the obvious entertainment value of reality TV, viewers also gather information via this type of programming. Viewers want to see real people on television reacting to unusual circumstances without the use of scripts. By surveying reality TV show viewers and participants, this study gives insight …

This dissertation creates an information agent that correctly identifies Web pages containing scholarly research approximately 96% of the time. It does this by analyzing the Web page with a set of criteria, and then uses a classification tree to arrive at a decision. The criteria were gathered from the literature on selecting print and electronic materials for academic libraries. A Delphi study was done with an international panel of librarians to expand and refine the criteria until a list of 41 operationalizable criteria was agreed upon. A Perl program was then designed to analyze a Web page and determine a numerical value for each criterion. A large collection of Web pages was gathered comprising 5,000 pages that contain the full work of scholarly research and 5,000 random pages, representative of user searches, which do not contain scholarly research. Datasets were built by running the Perl program on these Web pages. The datasets were split into model building and testing sets. Data mining was then used to create different classification models. Four techniques were used: logistic regression, nonparametric discriminant analysis, classification trees, and neural networks. The models were created with the model datasets and then tested against the test dataset. Precision …

In this research the focus is on data-centric AI with a specific concentration on data quality evaluation and improvement for machine learning. We first present a practical framework for data quality evaluation and improvement, using a legal domain as a case study and build a corpus for legal argument mining. We first created an initial corpus with 4,937 instances that were manually labeled. We define five data quality evaluation dimensions: comprehensiveness, correctness, variety, class imbalance, and duplication, and conducted a quantitative evaluation on these dimensions for the legal dataset and two existing datasets in the medical domain for medical concept normalization. The first group of experiments showed that class imbalance and insufficient training data are the two major data quality issues that negatively impacted the quality of the system that was built on the legal corpus. The second group of experiments showed that the overlap between the test datasets and the training datasets, which we defined as "duplication," is the major data quality issue for the two medical corpora. We explore several widely used machine learning methods for data quality improvement. Compared to pseudo-labeling, co-training, and expectation-maximization (EM), generative adversarial network (GAN) is more effective for automated data augmentation, especially …

Indigenous communities around the world are losing their languages at accelerating rates to the effects of the climate crisis and global capitalism. To preserve samples of these languages facing endangerment and extinction, samples of language use (e.g., audio-video recordings, photographs, textual transcriptions, translations, and analyses) are created and stored in language archives: repositories intended to provide long-term preservation of and access to language materials. In recent years, archives of all kinds are considering their origins and audiences. With the emergence of the community paradigm of archiving framework, the roles of archivists, communities, and institutions are under re-examination. Language archives too are reflecting this trend, as it becomes more common for speakers of Indigenous languages (also known as language communities) to document and archive their own languages and histories. As the landscape of language archiving expands, we now see increased emphasis on the re-use of archival material, particularly to support language revitalization—efforts to increase and maintain the use of the language. There are calls for language documentation (and, by extension, language archiving) to prioritize revitalization efforts. This dissertation is a case study of one language archive collection: the Boro Language Resource in the Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive. …

There is currently no effective tool available to quickly and economically measure a change in landmass in the setting of biomedical professionals and environmental specialists. The purpose of this study is to structure and demonstrate a statistical change-detection method using remotely sensed data that can detect the presence of an infectious land borne disease. Data sources included the Texas Department of Health database, which provided the types of infectious land borne diseases and indicated the geographical area to study. Methods of data collection included the gathering of images produced by digital orthophoto quadrangle and aerial videography and Landsat. Also, a method was developed to identify statistically the severity of changes of the landmass over a three-year period. Data analysis included using a unique statistical detection procedure to measure the severity of change in landmass when a disease was not present and when the disease was present. The statistical detection method was applied to two different remotely sensed platform types and again to two like remotely sensed platform types. The results indicated that when the statistical change detection method was used for two different types of remote sensing mediums (i.e.-digital orthophoto quadrangle and aerial videography), the results were negative due to …

Accurately predicting the deck condition rating of a bridge is crucial for effective maintenance and repair planning. Despite significant research efforts to develop deterioration models, a nationwide model has not been developed. This study aims to identify an appropriate machine learning (ML) algorithm that can accurately predict the deck condition ratings of the nation's bridges. To achieve this, the study collected big bridge data (BBD), which includes NBI, traffic, climate, and hazard data gathered using geospatial information science (GIS) and remote sensing techniques. Two sets of data were collected: a BBD for a single year of 2020 and a historical BBD covering a five-year period from 2016 to 2020. Three ML algorithms, including random forest, eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), were trained using 319,404 and 1,246,261 bridge decks in the BBD and the historical BBD, respectively. Results showed that the use of historical BBD significantly improved the performance of the models compared to BBD. Additionally, random forest and XGBoost, trained using the historical BBD, demonstrated higher overall accuracies and average F1 scores than the ANN model. Specifically, the random forest and XGBoost models achieved overall accuracies of 83.4% and 79.4%, respectively, and average F1 scores of …