Areas
of Interest
My major areas of research are information retrieval (IR) and digital libraries.
I have done research and supervised doctoral dissertations in IR in text, multimedia,
and the Web environments. My teaching areas reflect my research interests; I
have taught courses on digital libraries, digital image collections, information
retrieval (both theory and practice), indexing and abstracting, and electronic
information systems
Biographical Sketch
I joined SLAIS in July, 2003 as Professor and Director
of the School after an academic and professional career
in Canada, the US, England and New Zealand, which began
with an undergraduate degree from the University of British
Columbia, thus bringing me full circle. I received a B.Sc.
from UBC and an M.Sc. from McMaster University, both in
Chemistry, an M.L.S. from the University of Western Ontario,
and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University
of Sheffield, England. I held professional positions with
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in Ontario as a Technical
Information Officer, and with Agriculture Canada as Librarian
at the Kentville, Nova Scotia, Research Station. Before
joining SLAIS I served on the faculty of the School of
Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, USA for
15 years, most recently as Professor. While there I chaired
the Doctoral Studies committee, and served as Department
Chair for three years. I have also held appointments at
the School of Library and Information Studies at Dalhousie
University, Nova Scotia, Canada, the School of Library
Science at the Institiut Teknoloji MARA, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
and at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
I have been active in the Information Retrieval and Digital
Library research communities, serving as Conference Chair
for the ACM International Conference on Research and Development
in Information Retrieval in 1993 and the ACM International
Conference on Digital Libraries in 1997, and as Conference
Chair for the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Society
for Information Science & Technology. I am currently
on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Information
Systems, Information Processing & Management, Information
Retrieval, and Text Technology.
Statement of Research & Scholarship
I am interested in the mechanism by which information retrieval takes place
in a digital information system. However well structured the database, however
well defined the information need, at some point a decision must be made
to recommend a specific document as a candidate match for a specific information
need, and with what probability. The ability of the system to make this recommendation
with a high degree of success is a function of the quality of the document
representation, the matching algorithm, and the system interface. This problem
is not unique to text, but also arises in multimedia environments, and of
course in the Web with its variety of formats and search engines. I am interested
in exploring the wide range of factors which lead to an improvement in the
performance of information retrieval systems. My interest in digital libraries
arises from the opportunity they provide to extend the availability of digital
materials on an international level. By integrating recent developments in
information retrieval with new technologies for digital libraries, the accessibility
and use of digital information is facilitated.
Selected Recent Publications, Presentations and other Scholarly Activities [2003-2006]
Refereed Publicaions
Borgman, CL and EM Rasmussen. 'Usability of digital libraries in a multicultural environment'. Design and Usability of Digital Libraries: Case Studies in the Asia Pacific. Ed. Yin-Leng Theng and Schubert Foo. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2005. 270 - 284.
Rasmussen, EM. 'Retrieval challenges for digital libraries'. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 3334 (2004): 95 - 103.
Rasmussen, EM. 'Indexing and retrieval for the Web'. ANNUAL REVIEW OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. 37 (2003): 91 - 124.
Choi, Y and EM Rasmussen. 'Searching for images: The analysis of users' queries for image retrieval in American history'. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. 54.6 (APR 2003): 498 - 511.
Books and Book Chapters
Borgman, CL and EM Rasmussen. 'Usability of digital libraries in a multicultural environment'. Design and Usability of Digital Libraries: Case Studies in the Asia Pacific. Ed. Yin-Leng Theng and Schubert Foo. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2005. 270 - 284.
Invited Presentations
(March 2005) LIS Education: Bringing Down Invisible Walls; Transborder Library Forum (FORO); Chihuahua, Mexico
Courses taught at SLAIS in last two years
LIBR 558: Information Retrieval Systems: Structures and Algorithms
LIBR 559e: Digital Libraries
LIBR 559d: Digital Image Collections
LIBR 560: Foundations of Information Organizations
LIBR 600: Advanced Seminar in Research Methods
LIBR 610: Theoretical and Research Foundations
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