The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate (1) students' interest in reading English books, (2) students' interest in using an online Virtual Library (VL), and (3) students' experiences and preferences relating to the implementation of an online VL within an Academic English Program (AEP). First-year students (N=136) from a public…

The Extensive Reading (ER) approach to second language acquisition is increasingly one of the methods of choice amongst English as a Foreign Language (EFL) educators around the world. This method requires learners to read a large volume of easily comprehensible text, and teachers to track and manage their students' progress in some manner. There…

Innovative behavior can be described as a process in which new ideas are generated, created, developed, applied, promoted, realized, and modified by employees to benefit role performance. Various reasons, such as rapid technological and social changes in society, underline the necessity for innovative behavior of employees and certainly of…

We asked the same 60 questions using DRS (digital reference services) in Japanese public libraries, face-to-face reference services and Q & A (question and answer) sites. It was found that: (1) The correct answer ratio of DRS is higher than that of Q & A sites; (2) DRS takes longer to provide answers as compared to Q & A sites; and (3)…

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of collaboration in cultural heritage preservation in East Asia, including digital projects, and to suggest practical improvements based on a cultural structuralism perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Through exploratory research, the paper addresses aspects for successful…

The Biennial Report presents a selection of UNESCO-UNEVOC's activities during 2014 and 2015. The activities contributed to UNESCO's sectoral priorities and programmatic objectives and assisted Member States to provide equitable, inclusive and quality education and promote lifelong learning for sustainable development. Importantly, the selected…

Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the…

Drawing on a critical theoretical paradigm and critically engaging with the externalization thesis that Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Jurgen Schriewer have developed, this article examines the politics of "Finnish education" in the ongoing Japanese education reform debate. More specifically, it examines the various discursive uses of…

In 2004-2005, The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) conducted a survey for the IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)--an alliance founded jointly by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL) and the national libraries of…

ELNET (Electronic Library Network), a Japanese language database, allows searching of index terms and free text terms from articles and stores the full text of the articles on an optical disc system. Users can order fax copies of the text from the optical disc. This article also explains online searching and discusses machine translation. (LRW)

This paper outlines the market developments, governmental promotion policies, and efforts by private industries for online database services in Japan since the late 1970s. The combination of these efforts over the years has resulted in an online database service market of US$20 billion annually, of which approximately one third is Western online…

This conference, jointly organised by OECD's Department for Science, Technology and Industry and the Italian Ministry for Innovation and Technology, was attended by approximately 350 representatives from industry, academia and government. Rapporteurs presented summaries in terms of issues and areas where there was agreement and/or convergence…