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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • (2005) Zhu, Liming; Aurum, Aybuke; Jeffery, David; Gorton, Ian
    Journal Article
    Software architecture evaluation involves evaluating different architecture design alternatives against multiple quality-attributes. These attributes typically have intrinsic conflicts and must be considered simultaneously in order to reach a final design decision. AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), an important decision making technique, has been leveraged to resolve such conflicts. AHP can help provide an overall ranking of design alternatives. However it lacks the capability to explicitly identify the exact tradeoffs being made and the relative size of these tradeoffs. Moreover, the ranking produced can be sensitive such that the smallest change in intermediate priority weights can alter the final order of design alternatives. In this paper, we propose several in-depth analysis techniques applicable to AHP to identify critical tradeoffs and sensitive points in the decision process. We apply our method to an example of a real-world distributed architecture presented in the literature. The results are promising in that they make important decision consequences explicit in terms of key design tradeoffs and the architecture`s capability to handle future quality attribute changes. These expose critical decisions which are otherwise too subtle to be detected in standard AHP results.

  • (2009) Kennan, Mary-Anne; Kingsley, Danny A
    Journal Article
    This paper provides the first full description of the status of Australian institutional repositories. Australia presents an interesting case because of the government’s support of institutional repositories and open access. A survey of all 39 Australian universities conducted in September 2008 shows that 32 institutions have active repositories and by end of 2009, 37 should have repositories. The total number of open access items has risen dramatically since January 2006. Five institutions reported they have an institution–wide open access mandate, and eight are planning to implement one. Only 20 universities have funding for their repository staff and 24 universities have funding for their repository platform, either as ongoing recurrent budgeting or absorbed into their institutions’ budgets. The remaining are still project funded. The platform most frequently used for Australian repositories is Fedora with Vital. Most of the remaining sites use EPrints or DSpace.

  • (2006) Kennan, Mary Anne; Wilson, Concepción
    Journal Article
    To review the current literature and discussion on institutional repository (IR) and open access (OA) issues, to provide examples from the Information Systems (IS) literature, and to propose the use of IS literature and further research to inform understanding of institutional repository implementations for library managers. Methodology/Approach: Recent literature is reviewed to provide the background to, and current issues in, the development of institutional repositories to support open access to refereed research output. Practical implications: Existing research is identified, as are areas for potential research. Brief examples from IS literature are provided which may provide strategies for libraries and other organisations to speed up their implementation of IR to provide access to, and management of, their own institutions refereed research output. Value of paper: The paper brings together recent opinion and research on IR and OA to provide librarians and other information managers with a review of the field, and proposes research on IR and OA building on existing IS as well as information management and librarianship research.

  • (2007) Kennan, Mary Anne
    Journal Article
    This paper briefly describes the rapidly changing research evaluation and funding landscape in Australian universities, specifically in relation to open access and institutional repositories. Recent announcements indicate that funding and evaluation bodies are becoming increasingly concerned that publicly funded research be made publicly available. The paper then reports a survey of all levels of academic staff plus research students at one Australian university conducted in May 2006, prior to the introduction of an institutional repository. The survey, in line with previously reported surveys, found that while there was a high level of engagement with scholarly publishing, there was a low level of awareness of, or concern with, either open access (‘green’ or ‘gold’) or the roles repositories can play in increasing accessibility of research. Practically, this indicates that much work needs to be done within this university to increase knowledge of, and change behaviours with regard to, open access and repositories if the university and its academics are to make the most of new funding requirements and research evaluation processes.

  • (2006) Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia; Wilson, Concepción
    Journal Article
    This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of position vacant announcements appropriate for library and information studies (LIS) graduates appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald over a four week period in each of the following years: 2004, 1994, 1984 and 1974. The period studied witnessed change-demanding developments in information technologies as well as changes in workplace conditions and client expectations. The study collected data on the demands of employers as expressed through job advertisements that included data on work status (full-time, part-time, contract, casual), qualifications and the experience required of the information professional at the selected timeslots. To investigate similarities and differences between periods a content analysis and co-word analysis of the job advertisements was undertaken. The ads indicated a movement from simple advertisements in 1974 inviting applications for reference or technical services librarians, to complex and specialised positions being advertised in 2004 where the most called for attributes were interpersonal skills and behavioural characteristics.

  • (2008) Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia; Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka; Wilson, Concepción
    Journal Article
    The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the knowledge, skills and competencies demanded of early career information systems (IS) graduates in Australia. Online job advertisements from 2006 were collected and investigated using content analysis software to determine the frequencies and patterns of occurrence of specific requirements. This analysis reveals a dominant cluster of core IS knowledge and competency skills that revolves around IS Development as the most frequently required category of knowledge (78% of ads) and is strongly associated with: Business Analysis, Systems Analysis; Management; Operations, Maintenance & Support; Communication Skills; Personal Characteristics; Computer Languages; Data & Information Management; Internet, Intranet, Web Applications; and Software Packages. Identification of the core cluster of IS knowledge and skills – in demand across a wide variety of jobs – is important to better understand employers’ needs for and expectations from IS graduates and the implications for education programs. Much less prevalent is the second cluster that includes knowledge and skills at a more technical side of IS (Architecture and Infrastructure, Operating Systems, Networks, and Security). Issues raised include the nature of entry level positions and their role in the preparation of their incumbents for future more senior positions. The findings add an Australian perspective to the literature on information systems job ads and should be of value to educators, employers, as well as current and future IS professionals.

  • (2005) Janson, Marius; Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka
    Journal Article
    Purpose – To provide a social-theoretic framework which explains how e-commerce affects social conditions, such as availability of information and equality of access to information, influences actors’ behavior, shapes e-commerce business models, and in turn impacts industry structure. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical investigation based on one-hour interviews with owners/managers of nine vehicle dealerships and six vehicle buyers in a large US metropolitan region. The hermeneutic method of understanding was used, involving a circular process from research design and attentiveness to data, to data collection and interpretation. This circular process exemplified the dialectic relationship between the theoretical framework (derived from Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action) and empirical data, through which interpretation and theoretical explanations grounded in the data emerged. Findings – Demonstrates that e-commerce gives rise to increasing competition among the dealers, decreasing prices and migration of competition to price, decreasing profitability of the average dealer, and erosion of traditional sources of competitive advantage. Moreover, e-commerce emancipates and empowers vehicle purchasers while reducing the power of automobile dealers. Research limitations/implications – The research findings focus on the effects of e-commerce on the automobile distribution industry. However, one could argue that a number of the findings extend to other retailing-based industries. Practical implications – The paper illustrates a research methodology that may be useful to study other e-commerce applications. Originality/value – This paper illustrates the application of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action to studying the effect of e-commerce.

  • (2009) White, Howard D; Boell, Sebastian K; Yu, Hairong; Davis, Mari; Wilson, Concepción S; Cole, Fletcher TH
    Journal Article
    Bibliometric measures for evaluating research units in the book-oriented humanities and social sciences are underdeveloped relative to those available for journal-oriented science and technology. We therefore present a new measure designed for book-oriented fields: the “libcitation count.” This is a count of the libraries holding a given book, as reported in a national or international union catalog. As librarians decide what to acquire for the audiences they serve, they jointly constitute an instrument for gauging the cultural impact of books. Their decisions are informed by knowledge not only of audiences but also of the book world, e.g., the reputations of authors and the prestige of publishers. From libcitation counts, measures can be derived for comparing research units. Here, we imagine a matchup between the departments of history, philosophy, and political science at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney in Australia. We chose the 12 books from each department that had the highest libcitation counts in the Libraries Australia union catalog during 2000–2006. We present each book’s raw libcitation count, its rank within its LC class, and its LC-class normalized libcitation score. The latter is patterned on the item-oriented field normalized citation score used in evaluative bibliometrics. Summary statistics based on these measures allow the departments to be compared for cultural impact. Our work has implications for programs such as Excellence in Research for Australia and the Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom. It also has implications for data mining in OCLC’s WorldCat.