Progress report Submitted: 2004-05-12

Norway : Oslo University College, Faculty of Journalism, Library and Information Science

Author info

1. Mission statement:

We are an educational institution offering the following degrees:
- a bachelor degree (180 credits = 3 years study) consisting of modules of 60 credits in library science.
- a master degree in ICT in library science (120 credits on top of a bachelor degree)
- a master degree in information policy, economy and organization (120 credits on top of a bachelor degree)

2. Computer networks and Internet connectivity

a. In general HW, SW:

Internet connection via UNINETT.

3. Library automation

a. In general HW, SW:

All libraries at Oslo University College use BIBSYS.

In our library laboratory we use Mikromarc, Tiedemann, Bibliofil, LibraryWorld, BiblioMatic and to some extent MinISIS and AutoGraphics.

9. Research and technology development projects

30% of the professors' work at our department is used in R&D projects. 70% of the R&D is within the social sciences and technology. 80% of our research is applied research, and the rest is development. Some of the projects are mentioned below.

The faculty has several PhD projects running:

- Geometric information retrieval in vector space: some implications for the development of the user interface.

- "Do the library find the answer?" is a project studying the reference services in public libraries.

- Users' search formulation: The impact of eliciting problem statements and word associations on the users' abilities to identify concepts and terms relevant in a search situation.

In addition, faculty members and students are working on some other projects:

- Analysing reference chat services in libraries

- The EU-project "Local Community - Openness, Transparency, Information - A European perspective" (http://www.hb.se/bhs/locomotive/)

- A large project concerning the new city library in Oslo (Deichmanske bibliotek). The project is a cooperation between our department and the city library and will cover almost all aspects of the library and library operations such as digital library, the library's role in a larger city etc.

- An ongoing project is "Automatic indexing of digital documents", testing the possibility of using algorithms for categorization in subject indexing.

- Two master students are working on projects involving search and retrieval from databases based on the FRBR model

- Several staff members and students are involved in the INEX project, about search and retrieval in collections of XML documents