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GlossaryA | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z AApplication sharing—A feature of many videoconferencing applications that enables the conference participants to simultaneously run the same application. The application itself resides on only one of the machines connected to the conference. Asset management (e.g., DSpace)—Used here to refer to the activities required to build and maintain digital collections to capture and preserve the intellectual output of a single- or multiuniversity community and/or academic discipline. See also “Institutional repository.” Audio conferencing—The process of conducting a conference between two or more participants in such a way that only the voices of the participants are heard. Auto-classification—An automated, computerized process to sort items into a taxonomical system, such as matching numbers in the Dewey Decimal Classification system to book titles. Automatic taxonomy creation—Generation of a taxonomy structure by parsing a document’s keyword phrase distributions. Automatic text categorization—Uses statistical models or hard-coded rules to rate a document’s relevancy to certain subject categories, which helps organize information better by grouping similar subjects together while separating dissimilar texts. Autonomous systems—Systems that solve problems or robustly maintain a level of functionality while limiting human intervention. Typically based on rules and statistical methods that have been developed for artificial intelligence. BBandwidth—A measure of capacity in a channel for electronic communication. Bandwidth is often expressed by users as a measurement of speed. The higher the bandwidth, the less time it takes to transmit information. Blog (or Web log)—A Web-based journal of short, dated entries in reverse chronological order. Most blogs focus on one subject area and are updated daily. Entries typically consist of links to external Web pages with summaries of or commentary on the content.See also “Corporate blogging.” BPM (Business process management)—The process of integrating and managing an enterprise’s processes for efficiency and effectiveness. Bulletin board—A bulletin board functions very much like a newsgroup with the users of the board posting messages; these messages are then displayed to all those who access the bulletin board. It is a low-tech solution for providing a forum for users whose numbers are too small or whose focus of interest is too specialized to be supported by a newsgroup. CChat—The process of communicating with other Internet users in real time. Commercial grids—Grids formed for nonscientific, nontechnical tasks across multiple enterprises to address a single, large-scale purpose. Grids can also be used within one enterprise. The term “grid” is sometimes misused to denote the related technologies of distributed and utility computing. Competitive intelligence—The analysis of an enterprise’s business environment. Consumer digital rights management—Consumer-oriented protection from misuse of copyright of intellectual property, distributed in digital form. Content aggregation and syndication—Aggregation allows content from multiple sources to be consolidated into one repository or Web site. Syndication allows desired content to be distributed between servers efficiently. Content aggregator—An individual or organization that amasses or collects information for resale. Content integration—Tools to link the content that is dispersed throughout the enterprise in diverse applications and databases. Corporate blogging—The application of personal online publishing “Web log” styles—that is, online publishing in a daily or frequently updated “log” format—to corporate objectives. CRM (Customer relationship management)—A system for managing and integrating all of an enterprise’s interactions with customers to provide consistency and effectiveness. DData mining—Transforming raw data into higher-level constructs, such as predictive models, explanatory models, filters or summaries by using algorithms from fields such as artificial intelligence and statistics. Techniques used can range from very simple models, such as arithmetic averages; those of intermediate complexity, for example, linear regression, clustering, decision trees, case-based reasoning and k-nearest neighbor; to very complicated models including neural networks and Bayesian networks. Desktop sharing—Using conferencing technology to enable multiple users to see one computer desktop, often used for product demonstrations. Dewey Decimal Classification—A general knowledge organization tool owned by OCLC Online Computer Library Center that is continuously revised to keep pace with knowledge. www.oclc.org/dewey Digital asset management—Provides a repository for data types such as images, audio and video. Functionality should include search and manipulation of these objects. Digital divide—A metaphorical description of the boundary between people affluent enough to have a personal computer regularly at their disposal and those who can not. Digital Rights Management (DRM)—Technology or technologies that enable the secure distribution, promotion and sale of digital media content. Disintermediation—Occurs when simplifications in technology, economic forces or other causes displace someone, usually an intermediary, from a customary role in a process. This term is also used as a verb to describe how this displacement process happens; for example, computerized typesetting systems in the newspaper companies disintermediated the linotype machines; operators who were their predecessors a few generations earlier disintermediated manual typesetters. Disruptive technologies—New products or distribution processes superior to the ones they replace. They characteristically simplify those processes, improve the product and reduce costs so much that they change the basis of competition in an entire industry. Disruptive technologies typically destroy companies and even whole industries. The eventual disruption of the integrated steel producing companies by the minimills is the historical process that gave rise to this concept. Document exchange—The sharing of documents over the Internet. Document imaging—A mature technology for rendering paper documents as electronic images. Document management—A server-based repository that offers library services at a minimum, with many extended and related technologies. Document visualization—Display of two-dimensional maps that place similar documents together. DOI (Digital Object Identifiers)—System for identifying and exchanging intellectual property in the digital environment. It allows for the construction of automated services and transactions for e-commerce. www.doi.org Dublin Core—The outcome of a workshop held in 1995 by OCLC and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at which the participants explored simpler ways of describing the wide variety of resources held by various organizations including libraries, museums, archives, governments and publishers. Participants proposed a core set of metadata elements for describing Web-based resources for easier search and retrieval. The resulting Dublin Core is a 15-element set intended to emphasize retrieval, as described above, rather than description. It facilitates discovery of electronic resources and enables interoperability between metadata repositories. http://dublincore.org EEAD (Encoded Archival Description)—A standard for encoding archival finding aids using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). E-book readers—Handheld digital devices to store and display text. Most can store many books and have backlit screens and adjustable fonts. E-books (content)—Books, including textbooks, fiction, nonfiction consumer and educational, made available digitally and electronically rather than by codex. This includes text that has been converted from print to digital form, digital images and digital audio books, as well as content that was “born digital.” ebXML—A family of commercial standards, including ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement, ebXML Implement, ebXML Messaging and ebXML Registry, designed to provide for common formats and processes for conducting collaborative commerce. http://ebxml.org E-commerce—The general exchange of goods and services electronically. E-commerce can occur between users and vendors, or business-to-business (B2B) through electronic data interchange (EDI). Economies of scale—Economies based on the principle that the more you produce of any item, the less cost of each item. This principle is apparent especially in mechanized and automated-production processes. Unit costs usually decrease when volumes increase for many reasons, ranging from enhanced worker skill to price savings in the purchase of raw materials. E-journals—Journals, magazines, e-zines, webzines, newsletters and types of serial publications that are available electronically. E-learning—The use of electronic technologies to deliver cognitive information and training that improves understanding and competency. E-mail—A form of electronic messaging where a user creates a text message (that may have a number of attachments) and sends it to a recipient. Enabling technology—A technology that enables or drives changes in any number of downstream phenomena: product cost, user expectations, product quality, etc. Expertise location and management—A tacit knowledge capture and sharing process supported by dynamic profiling technologies and workflow. Extended enterprise—A term used to denote a company and the partners and allies with which it works very closely. It can appear as though they collectively constitute a single enterprise. External Web services deployments—The use of Web services to provide enterprises with data interchange and noninvasive application integration. FFRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records)—A 1998 recommendation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to restructure catalog databases to reflect the conceptual structure of information resources. The FRBR model includes four levels of representation: work, expression, manifestation and item. Future-state vision—An encompassing term for many future aspects of an organization, such as the purpose of the organization; what it wants to accomplish; how it wishes others to perceive it; strategies for carrying out work (and the rationales behind them); organizational premises, objectives, culture and common values. GGrid computing—A form of networking. Unlike conventional networks that focus on communication among devices, grid computing harnesses unused processing cycles of all computers in a network for solving problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine. Grid computing requires special software that is unique to the computing project for which the grid is being used. www.gridcomputing.com HIIdea management—A process for developing, identifying and using valuable insights or alternatives that would otherwise not have emerged. Identity Management—A broad administrative area that deals with identifying individuals in a system (a network, a country, an enterprise) and controlling their access to resources within that system by associating user rights and restrictions with the established identity. ILL (Interlibrary Loan)—A protocol that establishes a messaging framework for borrowing and lending transactions between libraries. IM (Instant messaging)—The generic name of a technology that enables private chat to take place. When the user of this technology logs in to the Internet he or she will be informed which correspondents are online. They also receive any messages their friends have left for them and they can then interact with their friends using online chat. Information extraction—Culls concepts, such as names, geographic entities and relationships, from unstructured data (mostly text). Information literacy—The skills required to use the search-and-find technologies to locate and sift through information as well as the skills needed to use that information effectively. Information quality—A characteristic that establishes the relevance, reliability and other attributes that make information suitable to support knowledge work, decision-making and legal reporting requirements. Information retrieval/search—The retrieval of documents based on a similarity metric applied to a user’s query. Institutional repository—Digital collections that capture and preserve the intellectual output of a single- or multiuniversity community. Intelligent agents—Software that exhibits a large degree of autonomy, decentralized authority and robustness in dynamically changing environments. Internal Web services—The use of Web services inside enterprise security perimeters to accomplish noninvasive integration. ISO ILL—An international standard for conducting interlibrary loans between systems. JJ2EE (Java 2, Enterprise Edition)—Widely-used platform for building, deploying and managing Web services. KLLCSH—Library of Congress Subject Headings. Learning object—A mixture of content, assessment and learning outcomes that are tightly bound for a particular learning topic and can be repurposed. Library Web services—Web services that enable the sharing of library resources among users. Location-aware services—Cellular network technology to provide services that are relevant to a specific user location, e.g., safety, information and tracking. LOM (Learning Object Metadata)—Metadata specification for describing learning objects, defined here as any entity, digital or nondigital, that can be used, reused or referenced during technology-supported learning. MMARC21—Machine Readable Cataloging standard. Mass customization—Mass customization is to be distinguished from mass production. Mass production follows the “one-size-fits-all” model. Unique customer needs are more or less ignored. Mass customization implies more advanced management and marketing techniques for ordering, manufacturing and delivering relatively customized products to unique customer segments. Mass customization meets and satisfies special needs much better by delivering relatively customized products to common-interest customer groups. METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard)—Standard for encoding descriptive, administrative and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language. Mind share—A market research term. If a product or brand name is so completely familiar that most members of a defined population instantly recall it when stimulated by associated ideas, text, product or brand, this product or name is said to have mind share. MODS (Metadata Object Description Scheme)—Could be called “MARC Lite.” A bibliographic element set that may be used for a variety of purposes, and particularly for library applications. It includes a subset of MARC fields and uses language-based tags rather than numeric ones, in some cases regrouping elements from the MARC 21 bibliographic format. MODS is expressed using the XML schema language. NNatural-language-based searching—Allows users to phrase their search strings as normal sentences. NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol)—A protocol for the exchange of library circulation information between circulation/interlibrary loan applications and other related applications. Nomadic computing—The use of portable computing devices (such as laptop and handheld computers) in conjunction with mobile communications technologies to enable users to access the Internet and data on their home or work computers from anywhere in the world. OOAI (Open Archives Initiative)—An organization dedicated to developing interoperability standards to facilitate the dissemination of content. www.openarchives.org OAIS (Open Archival Information System)—A conceptual framework for a generic digital archiving system, to supply common terminology and concepts for describing and comparing data models and archival architectures; expand consensus on the elements and processes endemic to digital information preservation and access; and create a framework to guide the identification and development of standards. OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)—A not-for-profit consortium that leads development of e-business standards.www.oasis-open.org OCLC FAST—To make bibliographic control systems easier to use, understand and apply, OCLC Research has modified the Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) with a simpler syntax. FAST retains the very rich vocabulary of LCSH while making the schema easier to understand, control, apply and use. www.oclc.org/research/projects/fast/ ONIX (Online Information eXchange)—An initiative of publishers and booksellers, ONIX is the international standard for representing and communicating book industry product information in electronic form, for Web stores and e-commerce purposes. www.editeur.org/onix.html Ontologies—Lists of terms that provide formalized views of certain parts of the world. They explain entities within domains, their attributes and their relationships with other entities. Open eBook—Open eBook Forum (OeBF) is a trade and standards organization dedicated to the development and promotion of electronic publishing by developing, publishing and maintaining common specifications relating to electronic books. www.openebook.org Open source—Commonly used to refer to software that is released with its source code. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with “free software.” The Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org) Web site states that the term should be used only to describe software that has been certified by OSI. Open source content—Open source intellectual property. Open source databases—Open source relational databases or other structured data stores. Open source grid engines—Open source software for distributed, and possibly multiowned, computing resource management and allocation. Open source software—A program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design, free of charge. OpenURL—Syntax to create Web-transportable packages of metadata and/or identifiers about an information object. Such packages are at the core of context-sensitive or open link technology. By standardizing this syntax, the OpenURL will enable many other innovative user-specific services. www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html PPeak of Inflated Expectations (Gartner, Inc. term)—This phase of a Hype Cycle is characterized by overenthusiasm and unrealistic projections. A flurry of well-publicized activity by technology leaders results in some successes, but more failures, as the technology is pushed to its limits. Often, the only enterprises making money during this phase are conference organizers and magazine publishers. Personal knowledge management—Powerful knowledge management (KM) systems on the desktop that automatically adapt to usage patterns and integrate knowledge sources. Personal knowledge networks—Virtual networks centered on individual knowledge workers that provide role-, device- and location-based connectivity and information. Personalization (general)—Gears a system’s activities (a Web site, call center or the entire enterprise) toward a user’s specific information needs and preferences. Plateau of Productivity (Gartner, Inc. term)—During this phase of a Hype Cycle, the real-world benefits of the technology are demonstrated and accepted. Tools and methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter their second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market. Approximately 30 percent of the technology’s target audience have or are adopting the technology as it enters the Plateau. Platform—In the current world of computer systems and product innovation, the platform concept generically describes a closely related family of products, technologies or computer systems. Platform implies characteristics that make the technology or product instantly recognizable within its family. A platform, accordingly, effectively serves a manufacturer as a de facto standard and plays a useful part in making the company clear and comprehensible both internally and externally. POD—Print On Demand, a publishing model where books can be printed as they’re needed by a buyer, point of sale or library. Portal—Used in the information industries as a figurative open door through which selected, organized information passes into a defined community of users. The term has become more generalized in recent years so that it now also refers to companies or electronic systems that provide a portaling service. See also “Transparent portal” and “Vertical portal.” Portals as Web services consumers—The use of an enterprise portal to serve as the device through which the results of Web services are displayed. Presence management—The ability to detect whether other users are online and whether they are available. PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators)—An initiative of OCLC Research to alleviate “404 document not found” problems on the Web. A PURL is a special URL that instead of pointing directly to the location of an Internet resource points to an intermediate resolution service. The PURL resolution service associates the PURL with the actual URL and returns that URL to the client. The client can then complete the URL transaction in the normal fashion. In Web parlance, this is a standard HTTP “redirect.” http://purl.org QRRDF (Resource Discovery Framework)—Describes formal metadata that provides interoperability between applications that exchange information on the Web. The primary use of RDF is to enable automated processing of Web resources. www.w3.org/RDF Real-time collaboration—Interaction between participants in real time, using a meeting or presentation format. Includes application and whiteboard sharing. Recommender systems and personalization—The ways in which information and services can be tailored to match the unique and specific needs of an individual or a community. Recommender systems are a particular type of personalization that learn about a person’s needs and then proactively identify and recommend information that meets those needs. Records management—The management of knowledge content through its complete life cycle. RFID (Radio frequency identification)—Applied at the unit level, RFID uses tags with data-storage capability to store manufacturing and product details. Passive tags do not require power, as they get their energy from the reader. There have been suggestions in the library literature that RFIDs will be used for collection inventories and circulation. SSCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model)—A suite of technical standards that enable Web-based learning systems to find, import, share, reuse and export learning content in a standardized way. www.adlnet.org Search engine—A service that scans content on the Internet using a computer program that searches for specific keywords and returns a list of content in which they were found. Secure Web services—Implementations of Web services that resist hacking or damage through computer attack. Security Assertion Markup Language—A standard format specification for security assertions related to identity and authentication. Supports reduced sign-on across domains and enterprises and enables participants within a community of trust to vouch for the authentication of participants. Semantic Web—Extends the Web through semantic markup languages, such as Resource Description Framework, Web Ontology Language and Topic Maps that describe entities and their relationships in the underlying document. www.w3.org/2001/sw Shibboleth—A project of Internet2/MACE to develop architectures, policy structures, practical technologies and an open-source implementation in support of interinstitutional sharing of Web resources subject to access controls. In addition, Shibboleth will develop a policy framework that will allow interoperation within the higher education community. http://shibboleth.internet2.edu Shifted Librarian—Someone who works to make libraries more portable to meet users’ information needs in their world (Jenny Levine coined this term). Slope of Enlightenment (Gartner, Inc. term)—This phase of a Hype Cycle is characterized by focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range of organizations that lead to a true understanding of the technology’s applicability, risks and benefits. Commercial, off-the-shelf methodologies and tools ease the development process. Smart card—A plastic card, about the size of a credit card, that provides tamper-resistant storage of such personal information as passwords or digital signatures. Smart enterprise suites—The convergence of portals, content management and collaboration functionality into a single product. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)—Allows one application to invoke a remote procedure call on another application or pass an object to a remote location using an XML message and the Internet. www.w3.org/TR/SOAP Social networks—Social networking to exchange information is still one of the most popular means for obtaining information, particularly if those information needs are fuzzy. Interestingly, processes to support social networking are fairly well-known and often very cheap (e.g., “brown bag” lunches or virtual communities). Social software—A term used to describe the application of all types of Internet-based collaborative software, from e-mail and instant messaging to Web logs. SRW/SRU (Search and Retrieve on the Web and Search and Retrieve with URLs)—SRW is the protocol that aims to integrate access to various networked resources and to promote interoperability among distributed databases. It is a Web service-based protocol that builds on the Z39.50 protocol. TTablet PC—Meets all the criteria for a notebook PC, except that it is equipped with a pen and on-screen digitizer. Tablet PCs also have removable keyboards or rotating screens that can be positioned on the outside when the lid is closed. Taxonomy—A classification, often hierarchical, of information components (e.g., terms, concepts, graphics and sounds) and the relationships among them that support the discovery of and access to information. Team collaboration support—Team-oriented collaboration tools that bring together real-time communications and asynchronous collaboration for team activities and tasks. Technology Trigger (Gartner, Inc. term)—A breakthrough, public demonstration, product launch or other event that generates significant press and industry interest. TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)—An international and interdisciplinary standard that helps libraries, museums, publishers and individual scholars represent all kinds of literary and linguistic texts for online research and teaching. Time to Plateau/Adoption Speed (Gartner, Inc. term)—The time required for the technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity phase of the Hype Cycle. Transparency—An intermediate step in a production or distribution process that is invisible to those who use or work in the process. Transparent portal—An information portal, typically located between two other portals. From the other sides, it is not possible to “see” that the intermediate information portal exists. A college library that assembles and presents digitized information to students in an undergraduate course may be said to be functioning as a transparent portal, if the students are unaware that the library is involved in the process of generating, aggregating and presenting information to them through the “course portal.” See also “Portal.” Trough of Disillusionment (Gartner, Inc. term)—Because the technology does not live up to its inflated expectations during this phase of a Hype Cycle, a product or service rapidly becomes unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a few cautionary tales. UUDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Protocol)—Provides a type of directory service for enterprises to publish, search for and use Web services. www.uddi.org VValue chain partners—Business firms or other productive agencies that have linked themselves together into a chain that is managed as one entity in a production process (even though it includes more than one company). Each step of this process creates additional value, and the total produces more value than the sum of the parts. Vertical portal—A specialized or customized information service. In a vertical portal, selected classes and sources of information are bundled into a package that is defined by fairly clear topic boundaries. These topic boundaries are chosen to meet identified needs of the users. Video conferencing—The process of conducting a conference between two or more participants over a network in such a way that the participants are visible. Point-to-point video conferencing involves just two participants, while multipoint video conferencing involves three or more. Virtual community—A self-selecting, peer-to-peer group that connects people by interest, skills and practices. Virtual communities complement, but do not supersede, teams and reporting structures. Virtual content repositories—Portals and Content Management (CM) systems that abstract access to and management of a variety of Web content, including documents, records and digital assets. Virtual teams—A project-oriented group of knowledge workers who are not required to work in the same location or time zone. WWeb-content management—Controlling Web site content through the use of specific tools. Web content management (WCM) solutions offer core functionality that goes well beyond simply managing HTML pages. Web services—Programmatic interfaces attached to Web-based applications, supported by a suite of application-to-application communication protocols. Web Services Description Language—A formal XML vocabulary and grammar that lets enterprises describe, discover and use Web services. Web services enabled business models—New approaches for doing business that would not have been possible without the benefits of Web services. “What’s related” functionality—Provides a simple way of drilling down into a particular area, given that the user has already discovered a useful document (i.e., searching for “more like this”). This functionality is a basic form of personalization and there are several simple ways to implement this, e.g., by keyword search engine using “relevance feedback,” by collaborative filtering or by other affinity calculations. Whiteboard—An area on a display screen on which multiple users can write or draw. Whiteboards are a principal component of teleconferencing applications because they enable visual as well as audio communication. Wi-Fi—Wireless fidelity refers to wireless local area networks that use one of the three 802.11 standards (802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11b). Wiki—A Web site designed for collaborative use. Workflow—The process whereby items of work move from one person or process to another in an organization. WSDL (Web Services Description Language)—A formal XML vocabulary and grammar that let enterprises describe, discover and use Web services. XXML—A language designed to identify document elements and attributes in a text stream for application processing in multiple domains. Because it is plain text, users as well as computers can understand the purpose of the data if descriptive labels are used. Xquery—A query language that supports processing of XML-based documents. XSLT (XML Stylesheet Language Transformations)—Language for transforming XML documents in other XML document types. YZZ39.50—A client/server-based protocol for searching and retrieving information across remote databases. ZING—“Z39.50-International: Next Generation.” Covers a number of initiatives (SRU, CQL, SRW, Zoom) to make the semantic content of Z39.50 more broadly available and applicable. www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/zing-home.html |
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