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Large-scale continuous mobility surveys have some advantages over less frequent (usually every 10 years), even larger-scale cross-sectional surveys; these advantages have been well documented in previous papers (Ampt & Ortúzar, 2004).

In this paper we first define what we mean by ‘ongoing mobility surveys’. We then describe the state of practice in this context, briefly reviewing the state of affairs in all the cases that we are aware of. We then discuss some problems encountered in practice and offer ideas for improvement. In particular, we discuss a wide range of issues that are likely to act as barriers to a high quality and sustainable implementation and suggest approaches for improvement. Issues covered include sampling frames and sampling methods, survey methods, respondent burden, weighting processes and expansion, and the increased importance of developing and maintaining field staff motivation. We also touch briefly on the practical/political issue of securing ongoing funding. Throughout, we advance some thoughts to try and explain why this method has not gained wider acceptance, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere where there are more examples of travel surveys in general.

The paper also raises some ideas and issues about the way in which ongoing mobility surveys can best collect data for the environmental accounting of travel. Finally, we raise questions about the environmental impact of the survey methods themselves as a stimulus for further consideration.

The very headline of this presentation hints at least two things. First, what is meant is the history of American sociology, though it is some what awkward to say so outright. Second, the history of American sociology is accomplished, in an impor tant sense, but one should not say that so out‐right, either. In philosophy, as Wittgenstein advised, whereof we can not speak, thereof we must be silent. A different rule reigns in sociology: whereof we can hint at, thereof we must prove. My first task, there fore, is to prove that no matter how embarrassing it may seem one canspeak of a his tory of American sociology after all. My second task is to prove that it has already been on a course of development specifically characteristic of it. And, finally, my last point will be that this specific course is brought to its desired end. Every thing in its own time. Talking about the history of American sociology is extremely risky. But it is the risk that it makes it worth trying. Part of the risk stems from the issue if there is a history of sociology at all, as well as from the issue if there is American sociology in the proper sense of the word. Apart from this, there is the consideration that it may be the American nature proper of that sociology that makes it the least likely to have its own history. First things first.

The purpose of this paper is to make a systematic review of the library metadata development history listing out the most significant landmarks and influencing events from Thomas Bodley's rules to the latest BIBFRAME architecture, compare their significance and suitability in the modern-day Web environment.

Four time divisions were identified, namely pre-1900 era, 1900–1950, post-1950 to pre-Web era and post-Web era based on pre-set information available to the authors regarding catalogue rules. Under these four divisions, relevant information sources regarding the purpose of the study were identified; various metadata standards released at different times were consulted.

Library catalogue standards have undergone transitive changes from one form to another primarily influenced by the changing work environment and different forms of resource availability in libraries. Modern-day metadata standards are influenced by the opportunities provided by the World Wide Web towards libraries and work as a suitable base for data organisation at par with Semantic Web standards.

Information organisation processes have gone towards a more data-centric approach than earlier document-centric nature in current Semantic Web environment. Libraries had to make a move in this process, and modern-day guidelines in this regard bring the possibility of large-scale discovery services through curated information resources.

The study discovers relationships between key events in the course of development of metadata standards and provides suggestions and predictions regarding it's future developments.

An automatic text annotation system (ATAS) that can collect resources from different databases through Linked Data (LD) for automatically annotating ancient texts was developed in this study to support digital humanities research. It allows the humanists referring to resources from diverse databases when interpreting ancient texts as well as provides a friendly text annotation reader for humanists interpreting ancient text through reading. The paper aims to discuss whether the ATAS is helpful to support digital humanities research or not.

Based on the quasi-experimental design, the ATAS developed in this study and MARKUS semi-ATAS were compared whether the significant differences in the reading effectiveness and technology acceptance for supporting humanists interpreting ancient text of the Ming dynasty’s collections existed or not. Additionally, lag sequential analysis was also used to analyze users’ operation behaviors on the ATAS. A semi-structured in-depth interview was also applied to understand users’ opinions and perception of using the ATAS to interpret ancient texts through reading.

The experimental results reveal that the ATAS has higher reading effectiveness than MARKUS semi-ATAS, but not reaching the statistically significant difference. The technology acceptance of the ATAS is significantly higher than that of MARKUS semi-ATAS. Particularly, the function comparison of the two systems shows that the ATAS presents more perceived ease of use on the functions of term search, connection to source websites and adding annotation than MARKUS semi-ATAS. Furthermore, the reading interface of ATAS is simple and understandable and is more suitable for reading than MARKUS semi-ATAS. Among all the considered LD sources, Moedict, which is an online Chinese dictionary, was confirmed as the most helpful one.

This study adopted Jieba Chinese parser to perform the word segmentation process based on a parser lexicon for the Chinese ancient texts of the Ming dynasty’s collections. The accuracy of word segmentation to a lexicon-based Chinese parser is limited due to ignoring the grammar and semantics of ancient texts. Moreover, the original parser lexicon used in Jieba Chinese parser only contains the modern words. This will reduce the accuracy of word segmentation for Chinese ancient texts. The two limitations that affect Jieba Chinese parser to correctly perform the word segmentation process for Chinese ancient texts will significantly affect the effectiveness of using ATAS to support digital humanities research. This study thus proposed a practicable scheme by adding new terms into the parser lexicon based on humanists’ self-judgment to improve the accuracy of word segmentation of Jieba Chinese parser.

Although some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists, most of them have still not provided a friendly digital reading environment to support humanists on interpreting texts. For this reason, this study developed an ATAS that can automatically retrieve LD sources from different databases on the Internet to supply rich annotation information on reading texts to help humanists interpret texts. This study brings digital humanities research to a new ground.

This study proposed a novel ATAS that can automatically annotate useful information on an ancient text to increase the readability of the ancient text based on LD sources from different databases, thus helping humanists obtain a deeper and broader understanding in the ancient text. Currently, there is no this kind of tool developed for humanists to support digital humanities research.