Selective dissemination of information

Last updated

Selective dissemination of information ("SDI") was originally a phrase related to library and information science. SDI refers to tools and resources used to keep a user informed of new resources on specified topics, including the current-awareness services used to inform about new library acquisitions. [1]

SDI services pre-date the World Wide Web, and the term itself is somewhat dated. Contemporary analogous systems for SDI services include alerts, current awareness tools or trackers. These systems provide automated searches that inform the user of the availability of new resources meeting the user's specified keywords and search parameters. Alerts can be received a number of ways, including email, RSS feeds, voice mail, Instant messaging, and text messaging.

Selective dissemination of information was a concept first described by Hans Peter Luhn of IBM in the 1950s. Software was developed in many companies and in government to provide this service in the 1950s and 60s, which allowed distribution of items recently published in abstract journals to be routed to individuals who are likely to be interested in the contents. For example, the system at Ft. Monmouth automatically sent out (by mail) a different set of abstracts to each of about 1,000 scientists and engineers in the army depending on what they were working on. The selection was based on an "interest profile," a list of keywords that described their interests. In some organizations, the 'interest profile' was much more than a simple list of keywords. Librarians or information professionals conducted extensive interviews with their clients to establish a fairly complex profile for each individual. Based on these profiles, the information professionals would then distribute selectively appropriate information to their clients. This labour-intensive operation, while initially costly, over time was made less so. A survey at the time (1970s) indicated that a large number of projects were affected by the SDI service. The software was developed by Edward Housman at the Signal Corps Laboratories Technical Information Division.

Related Research Articles

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory services play an important role in developing intranet and Internet applications by allowing the sharing of information about users, systems, networks, services, and applications throughout the network. As examples, directory services may provide any organized set of records, often with a hierarchical structure, such as a corporate email directory. Similarly, a telephone directory is a list of subscribers with an address and a phone number.

SDI may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maildir</span> E-mail format

The Maildir e-mail format is a common way of storing email messages in which each message is stored in a separate file with a unique name, and each mail folder is a file system directory. The local file system handles file locking as messages are added, moved and deleted. A major design goal of Maildir is to eliminate the need for program code to handle file locking and unlocking.

Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn.An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of library and information science</span>

This page is a glossary of library and information science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westlaw</span> Online legal research service

Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms and other information resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Entrez</span> Cross-database search engine for health sciences

The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website. The NCBI is a part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is itself a department of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which in turn is a part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The name "Entrez" was chosen to reflect the spirit of welcoming the public to search the content available from the NLM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chemical Abstracts Service</span> Division of the American Chemical Society

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information and is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States.

Hans Peter Luhn was an American researcher in the field of computer science and Library & Information Science for IBM, and creator of the Luhn algorithm, KWIC indexing, and selective dissemination of information ("SDI"). His inventions have found applications in diverse areas like computer science, the textile industry, linguistics, and information science. He was awarded over 80 patents.

A sequence profiling tool in bioinformatics is a type of software that presents information related to a genetic sequence, gene name, or keyword input. Such tools generally take a query such as a DNA, RNA, or protein sequence or ‘keyword’ and search one or more databases for information related to that sequence. Summaries and aggregate results are provided in standardized format describing the information that would otherwise have required visits to many smaller sites or direct literature searches to compile. Many sequence profiling tools are software portals or gateways that simplify the process of finding information about a query in the large and growing number of bioinformatics databases. The access to these kinds of tools is either web based or locally downloadable executables.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News aggregator</span> Client software that aggregates syndicated web content

In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. The updates distributed may include journal tables of contents, podcasts, videos, and news items.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server designates the middleware software package that is part of the BlackBerry wireless platform supplied by BlackBerry Limited. The software plus service connects to messaging and collaboration software on enterprise networks to redirect emails and synchronize contacts and calendaring information between servers, desktop workstations, as well as mobile devices. Some third-party connectors exist, including Scalix, Zarafa, Zimbra, and the Google Apps BES Connector, although these are not supported by BlackBerry Limited. As of June 2018, BlackBerry Enterprise Server has been renamed to BlackBerry Unified Endpoint Manager (UEM).

Rogue security software is a form of malicious software and internet fraud that misleads users into believing there is a virus on their computer and aims to convince them to pay for a fake malware removal tool that actually installs malware on their computer. It is a form of scareware that manipulates users through fear, and a form of ransomware. Rogue security software has been a serious security threat in desktop computing since 2008. An early example that gained infamy was SpySheriff and its clones, such as Nava Shield.

A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), also called geospatial data infrastructure, is a data infrastructure implementing a framework of geographic data, metadata, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an efficient and flexible way. Another definition is "the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PMB (software)</span>

PMB is a fully featured open source integrated library system. It is continuously developed and maintained by the French company PMB Services.

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

A CCSO name-server or Ph protocol was an early form of database search on the Internet. In its most common form, it was used to look up information such as telephone numbers and email addresses. Today, this service has been largely replaced by LDAP. It was used mainly in the early-to-middle 1990s. The name-server was developed by Steve Dorner at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, at the university's Computing and Communications Services Office (CCSO).

XRumer is a piece of software made for spamming online forums and comment sections. It is marketed as a program for search engine optimization and was created by BotmasterLabs. It is able to register and post to forums with the aim of boosting search engine rankings. The program is able to bypass security techniques commonly used by many forums and blogs to deter automated spam, such as account registration, client detection, many forms of CAPTCHAs, and e-mail activation before posting. The program utilises SOCKS and HTTP proxies in an attempt to make it more difficult for administrators to block posts by source IP, and features a proxy checking tool to verify the integrity and anonymity of the proxies used.

EmailTray is a lightweight email client for the Microsoft Windows operating system. EmailTray was developed by Internet Promotion Agency S.A., a software development d.

References

  1. Britannica. "Library: User services".

The Library Quarterly 37 (4): 373–391. Accessed December 11, 2015, URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4305823.