PurposeThis paper aims to explore the literature on integration of digital libraries and virtual learning environments (VLEs).Design/methodology/approachSearches were carried out on Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), from 2000 to 2008 using the terms “digital libraries” and “virtual learning environments”. In addition, references of relevant articles found in LISA were used to identify additional sources. In total, this literature review analyses 23 articles.FindingsDigital libraries and VLEs have been designed, developed and maintained rather separately. Integration is essential to provide seamless access to content and services to the academic community. The integration process is confronted with many challenges where technical, human and administrative challenges are central concerns. The integration would promote a collaborative approach to learning, re‐usability of resources, cross‐searching and time saving for academics, librarians and students. In addition, librarians have to rethink their profession and role in the digital age as well as provide the integration with conceptual and theoretical frameworks.Research limitations/implicationsLISA was used but other databases, including educational databases, such as ERIC, were not consulted for sources. The language of the documents was limited to English only.Originality/valueThis paper can help the academic and library community to understand the challenges, issues and implications of integration of digital libraries and VLEs. This literature review is also built upon previous literature reviews, and is one of the few of its kind in the topic.

The cultural heritage sector has embraced social tagging as a way to increase both access to online content and to engage users with their digital collections. In this article, we build on two current lines of research. (a) We use Waisda?, an existing labeling game, to add timebased annotations to content. (b) In this context, we investigate the role of experts in human-based computation (nichesourcing). We report on a small-scale experiment in which we applied Waisda? to content from film archives. We study the differences in the type of timebased tags between experts and novices for film clips in a crowdsourcing setting. The findings show high similarity in the number and type of tags (mostly factual). In the less frequent tags, however, experts used more domain-specific terms. We conclude that competitive games are not suited to elicit real expert-level descriptions. We also confirm that providing guidelines, based on conceptual frameworks that are more suited to moving images in a time-based fashion, could result in increasing the quality of the tags, thus allowing for creating more tag-based innovative services for online audiovisual heritage.

Since the appearance of digital research infrastructures in the humanities in the last decade, important efforts are being made to understand and model scholarly processes. Different methods are used in those investigations, which often result in abstract representations of research phases, taxonomies of scholarly activities, in conceptual frameworks, or in scholarly ontologies. While the aim of these representations is to inform the design of the digital infrastructures, the complexity and diversity of scholarly work pose the question about the applicability of those models for design and evaluation of research infrastructures and tools. In this paper, we explore a methodology to analyze workflows from a micro-perspective, which aims at capturing the transitions between activities. We use two scholarly projects as case studies, describe their research activities in detail by using existing ontologies and describe the connections between activities, and analyse generic transitions. We discuss what kinds of implications this approach has to evaluation and design of information systems and services to facilitate scholars' complex and varied research processes. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → HCI design and evaluation methods; Interactive systems and tools; • Information systems → Information systems applications; Information retrieval.

como un medio útil para la gestión documental, de información y del conocimiento en proyectos de investigación, más allá de su función original de gestión de cursos en línea. Esta experiencia, aún en proceso, ha posibilitado importantes logros en estos grupos de investigación, al convertirse en un modelo para esta universidad, y presentar esta opción de trabajo utilizando este tipo de plataforma, disponible en la mayoría de las universidades aunque inicialmente para uso de la docencia, como una herramienta clave para un adecuado desarrollo investigador en cualquier proyecto o grupo de investigación.