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Books Reviews Published

(most recent listed first)

The fourth edition of this standard student text, Organizing Knowledge, incorporates extensive revisions reflecting the increasing shift towards a networked and digital information environment, and its impact on documents, information, knowledge, users and managers.

Offering a broad-based overview of the approaches and tools used in the structuring and dissemination of knowledge, it is written in an accessible style and well illustrated with figures and examples. The book has been structured into three parts and twelve chapters and has been thoroughly updated throughout.

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Due to increasing demands for dimensionality reduction, research on feature selection has deeply and widely expanded into many fields, including computational statistics, pattern recognition, machine learning, data mining, and knowledge discovery. Highlighting current research issues, Computational Methods of Feature Selection introduces the basic concepts and principles, state-of-the-art algorithms, and novel applications of this tool.

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With billions of computers in existence, cyberspace, 'the virtual world created when they are connected,' is said to be the new medium of power. Computer hackers operating from anywhere can enter cyberspace and take control of other people's computers, stealing their information, corrupting their workings, and shutting them down. Modern societies and militaries, both pervaded by computers, are supposedly at risk. As Conquest in Cyberspace explains, however, information systems and information itself are too easily conflated, and persistent mastery over the former is difficult to achieve.

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Ethnography for Marketers is designed as a standard training and reference resource to help corporate managers and marketers design and implement ethnographic studies. It is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying ethnography or research methods in a variety of programs including business, sociology, anthropology and education.

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Agility and innovation are necessary to achieve global excellence and customer value in twenty-first century business; yet most approaches to business process engineering sacrifice these in favor of operational efficiency and economics. Moreover, the IT systems used to automate and encapsulate business processes are unresponsive to the dynamic business environment. Mitra and Gupta provide insight to close this gap - showing how innovation can be systematized with normalized patterns of information, how business processes and information systems may be tightly aligned, and how these processes and systems can be designed to automatically adapt to change by reconfiguring shared patterns of knowledge. A modular approach to building business systems that parallels that of object oriented software is presented. Practical templates required for accelerating integration, analysis and design are provided. This book will appeal to consultants, analysts, and managers in IT as well as researchers and graduate students in business, management and IT.

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Here is an in-depth and wide-ranging look at libraries and librarianship in the Caribbean region today. Editors Cheryl Peltier-Davis and Shamin Renwick set out “to document the state of Caribbean libraries in the 21st century by examining the responses of these institutions to the changes, challenges, and choices in an increasingly electronic and virtual information environment.” More than 40 practitioners joined in the effort, contributing 25 chapters that address the myriad obstacles and opportunities facing Caribbean libraries.

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Following a computer program orientation, Core Concepts focuses on more than just concepts. It actually shows how to effectively do project management. The book is organized around the project management life cycle, mirroring the way a real-world project is completed. Readers will gain a better understanding of essential project management fundamentals as they learn the material they'll need to know for the Project Management Body of Knowledge certification program.

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Here is a unique and practical reference for anyone who teaches Web searching. Greg Notess shares his own techniques and strategies along with expert tips and advice from a virtual “who's who” of Web search training: Joe Barker, Paul Barron, Phil Bradley, John Ferguson, Alice Fulbright, Ran Hock, Jeff Humphrey, Diane Kovacs, Gary Price, Danny Sullivan, Rita Vine, and Sheila Webber.

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Social software lets libraries show a human face online, helping them communicate, educate, and interact with their communities. This nuts-and-bolts guide provides librarians with the information and skills necessary to implement the most popular and effective social software technologies: blogs, RSS, wikis, social networking software, screencasting, photo-sharing, podcasting, instant messaging, gaming, and more.

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In an ideal world, everyone would always have the right information, in the right form, with the right context, right when they needed it. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. This book looks at how people in the real world currently manage to store and process the massive amounts of information that overload their senses and their systems, and discusses how tools can help bring these real information interactions closer to the ideal.

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What is Documentation? includes the first English translation of Briet's remarkable manifesto on the nature of documentation, Qu'est-ce que la documentation? (Paris: EDIT, 1951). A pamphlet of 48 pages, Part I sought to push the boundaries of the field beyond texts to include any material form of evidence ("Is a living animal a document?" she asked). Part II argued that a new and distinct profession was emerging. Part III urged the societal need for new and active documentary services.

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Domesticating Information: Managing Documents Inside the Organization examines records and documents as complex business objects and explores the many different perspectives required for their management. Viewing documents as business objects requires a much different perspective from treating them as cultural artifacts, where preservation is the primary concern. When viewed as business objects, documents must be looked at in terms of integration with business processes, in defense of litigation subpoenas, or in the implementation of information technology. As a consequence, records managers are business analysts, and therefore are treated as such in this book. How information technology, the law, archives, and library & information science scholarship address and affect document and records management are all considered. Topics covered include: how to manage documents and records in any environment, hard copy vs. electronic documents, and how to create a foundation for managing records that addresses the needs of business and government. By addressing the needs of business and government, the needs of citizens, business web stakeholders, and archivists are also fully addressed.

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Making Sense of Data educates readers on the steps and issues that need to be considered in order to successfully complete a data analysis or data mining project. The author provides clear explanations that guide the reader to make timely and accurate decisions from data in almost every field of study. A step-by-step approach aids professionals in carefully analyzing data and implementing results, leading to the development of smarter business decisions. With a comprehensive collection of methods from both data analysis and data mining disciplines, this book successfully describes the issues that need to be considered, the steps that need to be taken, and appropriately treats technical topics to accomplish effective decision making from data.

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Four times in western history: in the 1400s, the early 1800s, the 1880s, and again in the mid-20th century, we learned to duplicate and disseminate the printed word more cheaply. And each time strange events followed.

For with each of these changes in the gritty production of glamorous content, expensive and secret bodies of knowledge abruptly became cheap and easy to spread. Once-rare and sometimes disorienting impressions rained down on once-sheltered folks. New and otherwise inexpert hands mixed them into whole new breeds of information, myth, logic, and viewpoints. There were fantastic scientific advances, mass migrations, bold social experiments, financial upheavals, and much bloodshed. In the harrowing decades that followed, powerful new kinds of governments, businesses, and groups came to elbow aside old ones. In all of these periods, there were great, creaking shifts in politics, wealth, religions, and even the way we learn, think, and see. And in the last decade, the costs of producing and distributing printed knowledge have fallen a fifth time, far and fast and almost to free.

Paradigms Lost traces the history of the accidents, inventions, forces, eccentrics, and geniuses who accelerated information in the past, examines what happened each time they succeeded, and provides some background for what, if the past is any guide, may be coming.

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With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing-and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained-or lost-by the decisions we make today

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Introducing the basic concepts in total program control of the intelligent agents and machines, Intelligent Internet Knowledge Networks explores the design and architecture of information systems that include and emphasize the interactive role of modern computer/communication systems and human beings. Here, you'll discover specific network configurations that sense environments, presented through case studies of IT platforms, electrical governments, medical networks, and educational networks.

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The Second Edition of this fundamental textbook maintains the book's tradition of clear, thought-provoking instruction. Readers are provided once again with an instructive mix of mathematics, physics, statistics, and information theory.

All the essential topics in information theory are covered in detail, including entropy, data compression, channel capacity, rate distortion, network information theory, and hypothesis testing. The authors provide readers with a solid understanding of the underlying theory and applications. Problem sets and a telegraphic summary at the end of each chapter further assist readers. The historical notes that follow each chapter recap the main points.

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This book details a funded study of the mental models of six United States and four Australian teacher-librarians. It analyzes and compares their espoused (before), in-action (during), and reflective (after) models while they were teaching two students-in one-on-one sessions-how to use a computer information database resource. The authors discover the what, how, and why of teacher-librarians' thinking, beliefs, and images (i.e. their mental models) as delineated through their verbalizations and actions before, during, and after each of two lessons.

The authors also demonstrate the ways and extent to which stimulated recall methods can inform our understanding of teaching with electronic computer databases, and thereby prove a useful tool, not just for researchers, but also for teachers who want to discover more about their teaching and what their students were thinking.

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Cryptography plays a crucial role in many aspects of today's world, from internet banking and ecommerce to email and web-based business processes. Understanding the principles on which it is based is an important topic that requires a knowledge of both computational complexity and a range of topics in pure mathematics. This book provides that knowledge, combining an informal style with rigorous proofs of the key results to give an accessible introduction. It comes with plenty of examples and exercises (many with hints and solutions), and is based on a highly successful course developed and taught over many years to undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and computer science.

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This text enables readers to effectively manage mobile database systems (MDS) and data dissemination via wireless channels. The author explores the mobile communication platform and analyzes its use in the development of a distributed database management system. Workable solutions for key challenges in wireless information management are presented throughout the text.

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After the September 11th attacks, "connecting the dots" has become the watchword for using information and intelligence to protect the United States from future terrorist attacks. Advanced and emerging information technologies offer key assets in confronting a secretive, asymmetric, and networked enemy. Yet, in a free and open society, policies must ensure that these powerful technologies are used responsibly, and that privacy and civil liberties remain protected.

Emergent Information Technologies and Enabling Policies for Counter-Terrorism provides a unique, integrated treatment of cutting-edge counter-terrorism technologies and their corresponding policy options. Featuring contributions from nationally recognized authorities and experts, this book brings together a diverse knowledge base for those charged with protecting our nation from terrorist attacks while preserving our civil liberties.

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