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SFX is an XML-based product designed to inter-link electronic resources with other resources in a context-sensitive manner. SFX was first developed at the University of Ghent by Herbert Von de Sompel and has been released as a commercial product by Ex Libris. Use statistics garnered from SFX's statistics module since its implementation in July 2001 are discussed in the context of an academic research library environment. The results from usability testing conducted at Washington State University are reported. These usage statistics demonstrated a pattern of increasing use and exceptional use from FirstSearch databases.

The author conducted a study comparing two lists of full-text content available in Academic Search Full-Text Elite. EBSCO provided the lists to the University College of the Fraser Valley. The study was conducted to compare the accuracy of the claims of full-text content, because the staff and library users at University College of the Fraser Valley depend on this database as part of the libraries’ journal collection. Interlibrary loan staff routinely used a printed list of Academic Search Full Text Elite to check whether the journal was available at UCFV in electronic form; therefore, an accurate supplemental list or lists of the libraries' electronic journals was essential for cost conscious interlibrary loan staff. The study found inaccuracies in the coverage of 57 percent of the journals sampled.

Ontologies have established themselves as the major framework for knowledge transfer and sharing. They allow consistent understanding of data to both computers and human modellers. This is done through a standard representation of a domains world view which captures the classes and relationships that exist in a particular domain. The interest in capturing a domains world view has led to the creation of many ontologies as ontological developers create ontologies to model their world views. An ontologies world view is a major contributor to reuse and interoperation. The significant number of ontologies produced has created a wealth a knowledge but particular application or domain specific views creates issue for others. The issue is com- munication and interoperation between ontologies. With so many different designs and terminology it is difficult to make use of existing terms and instances within these ontolo- gies without creating some way to relate or translate terminology. This thesis tackles the problem of data collection among ontologies through answering the question: How does one model the domain of data collection using an ontology while maintaining a level of domain agnosticism such that the ontology can be reused for any domain? We propose that a mid level ontology design can be used to model the domain of data collection while remaining domain generic otherwise. Consequently, we present the Data Collection Ontology (DCO) and evaluate it to show that we enable reusability through its high level class hierarchies that allow domain level terminology to be represented within the DCO. Direct contributions of this work include the Data Collection Ontology (DCO), the DCO Survey Ontology as well the philosophy of Classifiers as a way to introduce reasoning and dynamic ontology support.