PurposeThis study proposes a framework for performance measurement of library consortia services by implementing the indicators listed in ISO 11620. The framework is validated by using real data from ...HEAL-Link, the national consortium of Greek academic and research libraries to calculate the indicators.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports on the related work regarding the services consortia offer to their members and the known methods and tools for assessing consortia services; the HEAL-Link case study, the aggregation and handling of data, is presented; ISO 11620 performance indicators for HEAL-Link services are calculated, and the results are discussed in terms of what was learnt- about the consortium, about measuring consortia services performance, and about the standard.FindingsISO 11620 could be used to measure performance for assessing consortia services. The performance indicators’ results reflect the two major events (mergers and COVID pandemic) that took place during the time of the study. ISO 11620 offers a basic insight that could be well complemented with other tools and standards.Originality/valueThe current study suggests that a widely accepted, easily applied, benchmarking ISO standard could be used to measure common consortia services’ performance, thus contributing to consortia assessment.
Research e-infrastructures, digital archives and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades has become ever more collaborative, distributed and ...data-intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use has lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users' expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and various other extant or experimental services. The on-going evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarises lessons learned, and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through ARIADNE.
This paper develops a benchmark stock-flow consistent model that links functional with personal income distribution. The model consists of various household groups that receive income from different ...sources or from the same sources in different proportions. The dynamic linkage between functional and personal income distribution is formulated as part of a complete macroeconomic system. Inequality decomposition techniques are employed to associate income sources with personal income distribution. Simulation exercises are conducted to reveal the various ways through which functional and personal income distribution interact. In the simulations, a rise in the exogenous component of low-skilled workers' wage share reduces inequality in the short run; in the medium to long run inequality starts increasing due to certain macroeconomic developments, but remains lower than its initial level in almost all cases. A change in functional income distribution due to a rise in the dividend payout ratio of firms increases inequality both in the short run and the long run.
Advances in the publishing world have emerged new models of digital library development. Open access publishing modes are expanding their presence and realize the digital library idea in various ...means. While user-centered evaluation of digital libraries has drawn considerable attention during the last years, these systems are currently viewed from the publishing, economic and scientometric perspectives. The present study explores the concepts of usefulness and usability in the evaluation of an e-print archive. The results demonstrate that several attributes of usefulness, such as the level and the relevance of information, and usability, such as easiness of use and learnability, as well as functionalities commonly met in these systems, affect user interaction and satisfaction.
This study investigated causal mechanisms of poverty reproduction in EU countries by placing emphasis on the parental background effect on sons’ poverty risk after having controlled for endogeneity ...among observable and non‐observable effects of the involved mechanisms. The countries under investigation were old EU member states representing the four welfare regimes in the EU. Having employed path models and utilised EU‐SILC 2005 data, the analysis yielded no statistically significant direct effect of parental background on sons’ poverty risk in Denmark. Greece, however, exhibited a statistically significant and quite strong direct effect. Germany and the United Kingdom stood in‐between. Moreover, the analysis found indirect channels through which the parental background affects sons’ poverty risk. These findings are expected to enrich the academic discourse and inform the policy‐making process on poverty reproduction and social protection in the EU.
Integration of library data into the Semantic Web environment is a key issue for libraries and is approached on the basis of interoperability between conceptual models. Several data models exist for ...the representation and publication of library data in the Semantic Web and therefore inter-domain and intra-domain interoperability issues emerge as a growing number of web data are generated. Achieving interoperability for different representations of the same or related entities between the library and other cultural heritage institutions shall enhance rich bibliographic data reusability and support the development of new data-driven information services. This paper aims to investigate common ground and convergences between four conceptual models, namely Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), FRBR Object-Oriented (FRBRoo), Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME) and Europeana Data Model (EDM), enabling semantically-richer interoperability by studying the representation of monographs, as well as of content relationships (derivative and equivalent bibliographic relationships) and of whole-part relationships between them.
Digital libraries, e-journal platforms, portals, e-prints and other web-based information systems provide services supporting users to perform intense work tasks that require complex interaction ...activities. The main components of such services are the users, the offered content and the system on which they are performed. This paper presents a model, which analyses the attributes of the electronic information services' components that affect user interaction and correlates them in the usefulness and usability evaluation process. An experimental study traces the relations between usefulness and usability, indicating that these evaluation parameters are interconnected and users do not find discriminating differences between them. The analysis of the content and system attributes suggests that user interaction is affected equally by content and system characteristics. Finally, the study illustrates users' preference for the attributes that constitute a useful system in contrast to those that support usability.
Employing panel data techniques, we investigate the macroeconomic and institutional determinants of inequality and poverty in the EU over the period 1994-2008. We pay particular attention to the ...effects of macroeconomic environment, social protection and labour market institutions. The empirical analysis shows that the social transfers in cash, and principally the transfers that do not include pensions, exert a prominent impact on inequality and poverty. Also significant is the effect of the GDP per capita. The impact of employment on inequality and poverty is not empirically sound. The same holds for the labour market institutions; an exception is the union density, which appears conducive to a less dispersed personal income distribution. Importantly, the results support the view that the social protection system acts as a catalyst in determining the effectiveness of social spending and the distributive role of economic growth and employment.
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