There are a vast and continually growing number of information resources on the World Wide Web su... more There are a vast and continually growing number of information resources on the World Wide Web such as text, image, audio, video and so on. Many of these resources remain hidden from commonly used search methods, such as Google or Yahoo search engines. Sri Lanka is not an exception to this scenario as majority of the higher educational institutions in Sri Lanka also seem to operate its information resources with less exchange and retrieval of metadata. The interoperability of Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is an effective way for complete metadata exchange and sharing. The larger repositories in the world such as OCLC OAIster, OpenDOAR, Europeana, etc. bring records using OAI-PMH and allow users to search the records of various institutions in one place. This paper tends to apply the OAI-PMH related process and related outputs among the Sri Lankan institutional information resources. Also, it discusses about the Sri Lankan institutional information resources interoperability with World Wide larger metadata service providers. The findings show that more than 40 online information portals available in Sri Lanka include universities and research institutions. However, all online resource portals have not been configured for OAI-PMH yet. There are only 20 Sri Lankan online portals fully enabled with OAI-PMH out of which only 13 on-line portals have been registered and have shared metadata with other larger metadata service providers. At last, the current research article has additionally proposed the applicable technical framework for sharing metadata within the nation as well as outside the country.
Digital Library is a popular concept in the West. It is considered as an efficient tool for impro... more Digital Library is a popular concept in the West. It is considered as an efficient tool for improving access to information. This study has made an attempt to justify the need for a digital library on Statistical Information for Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka. The possibility for a Digital Library of Statistical Information to be sustainable was justified with the data on availability of infrastructure and enthusiasm of prospective patrons. At the same time, actual user needs and preferred presentation formats were identified. The research tool was a survey. Seventy five per cent of the sample think statistical information is very significant in their routine work. But they believe that such information is difficult to find. It was revealed that Internet is 387 times efficient in retrieving information than Books. This demonstrates the possibility of building up an Internet based information source. Seventy nine per cent of the sample had access to Internet at office. Therefore having access to an Internet based Digital Library is not a problem for Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka. More information related to agriculture should be included. The first level of data should be presented as abstracts. Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka think of Digital Libraries positively. They are even willing to pay for information. Thus, a Digital Library Project would find its audience in Sri Lanka
Journal of The University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka, Feb 4, 2013
Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of d... more Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content in the modern world. Evidently, manual classification of documents is very painstaking and laborintensive task. It takes much time to organize a collection of documents according to the subject area. This research has developed a computer programme that can automatically classifying a given text document. Therefore, the user gets correct classification results just after feeding the document to the new system. For the process of classification, we use a new algorithm developed by enhancing basic form of an existing text classifier called tf-idf. The results were obtained for classification accuracy of the new text classification algorithm. They were compared with the results obtained for the basic tf-idf classifier. The research revealed that, the newly developed classifier algorithm can obtain better classification accuracy than the basic tf-idf classifier.
Information managers have a strategic interest in the tools and technologies that facilitate the ... more Information managers have a strategic interest in the tools and technologies that facilitate the discovery and access to the resources for the communities that their serve. Traditional online catalogues, repositories and journals databases provide separate interfaces and platforms for users. In contrast, federated search engines and metadata harvesters enable searching from a single interface. This paper documents the success and challenges faced in introducing a virtual union catalogue of repositories. Vufind, an open source OAI-PMH based discovery tool was selected as the best fit for the purpose. NILIS, University of Colombo agreed to host the trial system (codenamed UNICAT) in their servers. UNICAT accesses selected remote systems (partners), and build copies of metadata in the local server. Whenever a search is performed, it displays information from all copies of catalogues, and accessing the full text (if available) is one click away. Full text is not hosted on the local servers, but is accessible via links to the original locations. The first stage of the project was limited to linking institutional repositories. Several repositories had already enabled the OAI-PMH module in their repository software, which was mainly DSpace. Twelve repositories and one network (HELLIS) are now connected. However, there are differences in metadata schema used. Opening repository metadata and common consensus on the metadata schema are policy decisions to be taken by all partner organisations. If the project is recognised at the national level, this has the potential to be the National Digital Union Catalogue (NDUC) of Sri Lanka, which supplements the efforts of the National Union Catalogue (NUC) maintained by the National Library and Documentation Services Board. Keywords: union catalogue; National Digital Union Catalogue; metadata harvesting; OAI-PMH; Vufind;
An ontology based fully automatic document classification system using an existing semi-automatic... more An ontology based fully automatic document classification system using an existing semi-automatic system
The following reflection briefly describes the unpredicted drive of online LIS education during t... more The following reflection briefly describes the unpredicted drive of online LIS education during the COVID-19 lockdown at the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILIS), University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is a unique story in an unconventional educational setting supported by a handful of institutional academic staff and a band of visiting lecturers from various institutions. University of Colombo (UOC) is a high ranked government funded University in Sri Lanka which consists of nine faculties, seven institutes and seven centers on its academic profile. Unlike other faculties and institutions within the UOC system, NILIS does not have a uniform supply of learners through regular channels since it does not offer undergraduate courses. However, NILIS provides Advanced Certificate to Diploma/Higher Diploma (professional) and Postgraduate Diploma to MPhil/PhD (postgraduate) education in Library and Information Science, Teacher Librarianship and Information Managemen...
Introducing a Library Automation Package as a Customer Care System. INFLIBNET's Institutiona... more Introducing a Library Automation Package as a Customer Care System. INFLIBNET's Institutional Repository. ...
Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponentia... more Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content and because manual or semi-automatic organization is not effective. On one hand, manual and semi-automatic classification is very painstaking and labor-intensive. On the other hand, misclassifications due to vagueness of the documents and classification schemes are inevitable in these two methods. Hence, the current study sought to shed a light on these issues. This research proposes an automated system that can completely classify a given text document by minimizing the vocabulary ambiguities. One of our previous studies has developed a semi-automatic system for document classification and here we propose to extend it furthermore to obtain a fully automatic document classification system.
This article presents how young adults with intellectual disability (ID) from Sri Lanka, who had ... more This article presents how young adults with intellectual disability (ID) from Sri Lanka, who had not previously used the Internet, interacted with Google search while enhancing their web search abilities throughout three web search workshops. Considering the little attention paid to the learning needs of people with ID in the current offering of web search learning tools, we iteratively developed a suite of learning tools to support our participants when they need help in the web search workshops. We employed an iterative participatory approach, with observations and semi-structured interviews, to reflect on how to design eLearning tools that enhance the participants’ interactions with web search. The qualitative thematic analysis resulted in five distinct themes on strategies to support, build on, and develop the abilities of young adults with IDs as they engage with Google search in their native language: application of existing abilities, basic skills to match learning needs, con...
Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka, 2009
Page 1. Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka. Vol.13 (Issue 1). 2009 47 ... more Page 1. Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka. Vol.13 (Issue 1). 2009 47 EXTENDED ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LIBRARY ASOSCIATION WEB SITES RUWAN GAMAGE1 BSc (Colombo), MLS (Colombo), PhD (Wuhan, PRC). Abstract ...
New library buildings. Proceedings of the Satellite Conference of the IFLA Library Buildings and Equipment Section "Making ends meet: high quality design on a low budget" held at Li Ka Shing Library, Singapore Management University, 15-16 August 2013, 2000
Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponentia... more Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content and because manual or semi-automatic organization is not effective. On one hand, manual and semi-automatic classification is very painstaking and labor-intensive. On the other hand, misclassifications due to vagueness of the documents and classification schemes are inevitable in these two methods.
Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the rapid increase of digit... more Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the rapid increase of digital information. Evidently, manual classification of documents is a tough work due to occurrences of vocabulary ambiguities of classification schemes as well as the language used in the text in hand.
In our study, we made an attempt to resolve this matter. This research has developed a computer program that can automatically classify a given text document based on a well developed ontology. Therefore, the user gets correct options of classification just after feeding the document to the new system. The new ontology is a domain ontology which is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme and the Sears List. Data was obtained for classification accuracy for both manual and automatic methods. Moreover, the relationship between the vagueness of language in documents and the inaccuracy of classification were determined against manual classification and manual classification with automatic aid.
The research revealed that the results were more accurate when the newly developed automatic system was used. In addition, it also revealed that the vagueness of documents affects more in manual classification than in manual classification with the automatic aid.
JavaScript has a comparatively long history as an online information retrieval tool. During the l... more JavaScript has a comparatively long history as an online information retrieval tool. During the last decade SilverPlatter's popular WebSPIRS 4.0 started using JavaScript for its search functions. International Children's Digital Library is a current system that applies JavaScript for category based information retrieval. However, JavaScript capabilities for quick browsing and searching small collections is under utilized in light of advanced server-side technologies. Focussing on search engines using data arrays in scripts, this paper tries to justify one possible reason behind this -high response time for the starting search. To cope up with the situation, the paper introduces a model for interface design. Also it reveals that the script search is superior to server side techniques in terms to response time, when the user's session is several searches long.
Users with slow internet connections experience slow retrieval of results in web catalogues. Java... more Users with slow internet connections experience slow retrieval of results in web catalogues. JavaScript search engines can be used to enable client side search, reducing the load on the server, and increasing the response time. However, it is not a popular method until now, because of various reasons including limitation of number of data objects and lengthier response time for the first search. Here the author suggests negotiating the issue of response delay with the user. This would enable high speed basic search in small catalogues, usually with less than 300 data objects. Larger catalogues can be divided into smaller ones. Special or rare collections, multimedia artifacts and subject (web) directories are prospective candidates for this type of search systems. A prototype catalogue of ‘Sri Lankan Web Sites’ was tested in www.srilankasupersearch.com. Users’ behavior and response to the system is yet to be studied.
There are a vast and continually growing number of information resources on the World Wide Web su... more There are a vast and continually growing number of information resources on the World Wide Web such as text, image, audio, video and so on. Many of these resources remain hidden from commonly used search methods, such as Google or Yahoo search engines. Sri Lanka is not an exception to this scenario as majority of the higher educational institutions in Sri Lanka also seem to operate its information resources with less exchange and retrieval of metadata. The interoperability of Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is an effective way for complete metadata exchange and sharing. The larger repositories in the world such as OCLC OAIster, OpenDOAR, Europeana, etc. bring records using OAI-PMH and allow users to search the records of various institutions in one place. This paper tends to apply the OAI-PMH related process and related outputs among the Sri Lankan institutional information resources. Also, it discusses about the Sri Lankan institutional information resources interoperability with World Wide larger metadata service providers. The findings show that more than 40 online information portals available in Sri Lanka include universities and research institutions. However, all online resource portals have not been configured for OAI-PMH yet. There are only 20 Sri Lankan online portals fully enabled with OAI-PMH out of which only 13 on-line portals have been registered and have shared metadata with other larger metadata service providers. At last, the current research article has additionally proposed the applicable technical framework for sharing metadata within the nation as well as outside the country.
Digital Library is a popular concept in the West. It is considered as an efficient tool for impro... more Digital Library is a popular concept in the West. It is considered as an efficient tool for improving access to information. This study has made an attempt to justify the need for a digital library on Statistical Information for Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka. The possibility for a Digital Library of Statistical Information to be sustainable was justified with the data on availability of infrastructure and enthusiasm of prospective patrons. At the same time, actual user needs and preferred presentation formats were identified. The research tool was a survey. Seventy five per cent of the sample think statistical information is very significant in their routine work. But they believe that such information is difficult to find. It was revealed that Internet is 387 times efficient in retrieving information than Books. This demonstrates the possibility of building up an Internet based information source. Seventy nine per cent of the sample had access to Internet at office. Therefore having access to an Internet based Digital Library is not a problem for Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka. More information related to agriculture should be included. The first level of data should be presented as abstracts. Science and Technology Personnel in Sri Lanka think of Digital Libraries positively. They are even willing to pay for information. Thus, a Digital Library Project would find its audience in Sri Lanka
Journal of The University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka, Feb 4, 2013
Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of d... more Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content in the modern world. Evidently, manual classification of documents is very painstaking and laborintensive task. It takes much time to organize a collection of documents according to the subject area. This research has developed a computer programme that can automatically classifying a given text document. Therefore, the user gets correct classification results just after feeding the document to the new system. For the process of classification, we use a new algorithm developed by enhancing basic form of an existing text classifier called tf-idf. The results were obtained for classification accuracy of the new text classification algorithm. They were compared with the results obtained for the basic tf-idf classifier. The research revealed that, the newly developed classifier algorithm can obtain better classification accuracy than the basic tf-idf classifier.
Information managers have a strategic interest in the tools and technologies that facilitate the ... more Information managers have a strategic interest in the tools and technologies that facilitate the discovery and access to the resources for the communities that their serve. Traditional online catalogues, repositories and journals databases provide separate interfaces and platforms for users. In contrast, federated search engines and metadata harvesters enable searching from a single interface. This paper documents the success and challenges faced in introducing a virtual union catalogue of repositories. Vufind, an open source OAI-PMH based discovery tool was selected as the best fit for the purpose. NILIS, University of Colombo agreed to host the trial system (codenamed UNICAT) in their servers. UNICAT accesses selected remote systems (partners), and build copies of metadata in the local server. Whenever a search is performed, it displays information from all copies of catalogues, and accessing the full text (if available) is one click away. Full text is not hosted on the local servers, but is accessible via links to the original locations. The first stage of the project was limited to linking institutional repositories. Several repositories had already enabled the OAI-PMH module in their repository software, which was mainly DSpace. Twelve repositories and one network (HELLIS) are now connected. However, there are differences in metadata schema used. Opening repository metadata and common consensus on the metadata schema are policy decisions to be taken by all partner organisations. If the project is recognised at the national level, this has the potential to be the National Digital Union Catalogue (NDUC) of Sri Lanka, which supplements the efforts of the National Union Catalogue (NUC) maintained by the National Library and Documentation Services Board. Keywords: union catalogue; National Digital Union Catalogue; metadata harvesting; OAI-PMH; Vufind;
An ontology based fully automatic document classification system using an existing semi-automatic... more An ontology based fully automatic document classification system using an existing semi-automatic system
The following reflection briefly describes the unpredicted drive of online LIS education during t... more The following reflection briefly describes the unpredicted drive of online LIS education during the COVID-19 lockdown at the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILIS), University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is a unique story in an unconventional educational setting supported by a handful of institutional academic staff and a band of visiting lecturers from various institutions. University of Colombo (UOC) is a high ranked government funded University in Sri Lanka which consists of nine faculties, seven institutes and seven centers on its academic profile. Unlike other faculties and institutions within the UOC system, NILIS does not have a uniform supply of learners through regular channels since it does not offer undergraduate courses. However, NILIS provides Advanced Certificate to Diploma/Higher Diploma (professional) and Postgraduate Diploma to MPhil/PhD (postgraduate) education in Library and Information Science, Teacher Librarianship and Information Managemen...
Introducing a Library Automation Package as a Customer Care System. INFLIBNET's Institutiona... more Introducing a Library Automation Package as a Customer Care System. INFLIBNET's Institutional Repository. ...
Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponentia... more Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content and because manual or semi-automatic organization is not effective. On one hand, manual and semi-automatic classification is very painstaking and labor-intensive. On the other hand, misclassifications due to vagueness of the documents and classification schemes are inevitable in these two methods. Hence, the current study sought to shed a light on these issues. This research proposes an automated system that can completely classify a given text document by minimizing the vocabulary ambiguities. One of our previous studies has developed a semi-automatic system for document classification and here we propose to extend it furthermore to obtain a fully automatic document classification system.
This article presents how young adults with intellectual disability (ID) from Sri Lanka, who had ... more This article presents how young adults with intellectual disability (ID) from Sri Lanka, who had not previously used the Internet, interacted with Google search while enhancing their web search abilities throughout three web search workshops. Considering the little attention paid to the learning needs of people with ID in the current offering of web search learning tools, we iteratively developed a suite of learning tools to support our participants when they need help in the web search workshops. We employed an iterative participatory approach, with observations and semi-structured interviews, to reflect on how to design eLearning tools that enhance the participants’ interactions with web search. The qualitative thematic analysis resulted in five distinct themes on strategies to support, build on, and develop the abilities of young adults with IDs as they engage with Google search in their native language: application of existing abilities, basic skills to match learning needs, con...
Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka, 2009
Page 1. Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka. Vol.13 (Issue 1). 2009 47 ... more Page 1. Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka. Vol.13 (Issue 1). 2009 47 EXTENDED ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LIBRARY ASOSCIATION WEB SITES RUWAN GAMAGE1 BSc (Colombo), MLS (Colombo), PhD (Wuhan, PRC). Abstract ...
New library buildings. Proceedings of the Satellite Conference of the IFLA Library Buildings and Equipment Section "Making ends meet: high quality design on a low budget" held at Li Ka Shing Library, Singapore Management University, 15-16 August 2013, 2000
Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponentia... more Automatic classification of documents has become an important research area due to the exponential growth of digital content and because manual or semi-automatic organization is not effective. On one hand, manual and semi-automatic classification is very painstaking and labor-intensive. On the other hand, misclassifications due to vagueness of the documents and classification schemes are inevitable in these two methods.
Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the rapid increase of digit... more Automatic classification has become an important research area due to the rapid increase of digital information. Evidently, manual classification of documents is a tough work due to occurrences of vocabulary ambiguities of classification schemes as well as the language used in the text in hand.
In our study, we made an attempt to resolve this matter. This research has developed a computer program that can automatically classify a given text document based on a well developed ontology. Therefore, the user gets correct options of classification just after feeding the document to the new system. The new ontology is a domain ontology which is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme and the Sears List. Data was obtained for classification accuracy for both manual and automatic methods. Moreover, the relationship between the vagueness of language in documents and the inaccuracy of classification were determined against manual classification and manual classification with automatic aid.
The research revealed that the results were more accurate when the newly developed automatic system was used. In addition, it also revealed that the vagueness of documents affects more in manual classification than in manual classification with the automatic aid.
JavaScript has a comparatively long history as an online information retrieval tool. During the l... more JavaScript has a comparatively long history as an online information retrieval tool. During the last decade SilverPlatter's popular WebSPIRS 4.0 started using JavaScript for its search functions. International Children's Digital Library is a current system that applies JavaScript for category based information retrieval. However, JavaScript capabilities for quick browsing and searching small collections is under utilized in light of advanced server-side technologies. Focussing on search engines using data arrays in scripts, this paper tries to justify one possible reason behind this -high response time for the starting search. To cope up with the situation, the paper introduces a model for interface design. Also it reveals that the script search is superior to server side techniques in terms to response time, when the user's session is several searches long.
Users with slow internet connections experience slow retrieval of results in web catalogues. Java... more Users with slow internet connections experience slow retrieval of results in web catalogues. JavaScript search engines can be used to enable client side search, reducing the load on the server, and increasing the response time. However, it is not a popular method until now, because of various reasons including limitation of number of data objects and lengthier response time for the first search. Here the author suggests negotiating the issue of response delay with the user. This would enable high speed basic search in small catalogues, usually with less than 300 data objects. Larger catalogues can be divided into smaller ones. Special or rare collections, multimedia artifacts and subject (web) directories are prospective candidates for this type of search systems. A prototype catalogue of ‘Sri Lankan Web Sites’ was tested in www.srilankasupersearch.com. Users’ behavior and response to the system is yet to be studied.
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Papers by Ruwan Gamage
In our study, we made an attempt to resolve this matter. This research has developed a computer program that can automatically classify a given text document based on a well developed ontology. Therefore, the user gets correct options of classification just after feeding the document to the new system. The new ontology is a domain ontology which is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme and the Sears List. Data was obtained for classification accuracy for both manual and automatic methods. Moreover, the relationship between the vagueness of language in documents and the inaccuracy of classification were determined against manual classification and manual classification with automatic aid.
The research revealed that the results were more accurate when the newly developed automatic system was used. In addition, it also revealed that the vagueness of documents affects more in manual classification than in manual classification with the automatic aid.
In our study, we made an attempt to resolve this matter. This research has developed a computer program that can automatically classify a given text document based on a well developed ontology. Therefore, the user gets correct options of classification just after feeding the document to the new system. The new ontology is a domain ontology which is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme and the Sears List. Data was obtained for classification accuracy for both manual and automatic methods. Moreover, the relationship between the vagueness of language in documents and the inaccuracy of classification were determined against manual classification and manual classification with automatic aid.
The research revealed that the results were more accurate when the newly developed automatic system was used. In addition, it also revealed that the vagueness of documents affects more in manual classification than in manual classification with the automatic aid.