Transforming Print

In this book, collection management staff at academic libraries will find fertile ideas for transforming print collections to become more engaging and widely used by the diverse communities they serve.

Biometrics refers to the authentication techniques that depend on measurable physical characteristics and behavioural characteristics to identify an individual. The biometric systems consist of different stages such as image acquisition, preprocessing, feature extraction and matching. Biometric techniques are widely used in the security world. The various types of biometric systems use different techniques for the preprocessing, feature extraction and classifiers.The dorsum of the hand is known as the finger back surface. It is highly used for personal authentication and has not yet attracted the attention of convenient researchers. It is mostly used due to contact free image acquisition. It is reported that the skin pattern on the finger-knuckle is extremely rich in texture due to skin folds and creases, and hence, can be considered as a biometric identifier. Furthermore, advantages of using Finger Knuckle Print (FKP) include rich in texture features, easily accessible, contact-less image acquisition, invariant to emotions and other behavioral aspects such as tiredness, stable features and acceptability in the society. As a result of that, there is less known use of finger knuckle pattern in commercial or civilian applications. The local features of an enhanced palmprint image are extracted using Fast Discrete Orthonormal Stockwell Transform (FDOST). The Fourier transform of an image is obtained by increasing the scale of FDOST to infinity. The Fourier transform coefficients extracted from the palmprint image and FKP image are considered as the global information. The local and global information are physically linked by means of the framework of time frequency analysis. The global feature is exploited to refine the arrangement of FKP images in matching. The proposed schemes make use of the local and global features to verify finger knuckle-print images. The weighted average of the local and global matching distances is taken as the final matching distance of two FKP images. The investigational results indicate that the proposed works outperform the existing works.

Over the next few years political and financial power will move in the direction of individuals, companies and nations that are able to use energy in a more efficient way. This book describes this challenge and presents a way forward by which we may achieve the goal of increased energy efficiency in the different areas that need to change.

The Information Commons (IC) strives to unite all the facts and figures of the world into a resource available to everyone. This work presents the how-to information necessary for institutions considering the development of an information commons. Offering advice on what works, it includes case studies from small and large academic libraries.

In mid-nineteenth century Britain, literacy was by no means universal, and printed imagery captured the popular imagination in a way that words alone could not. This study shows how the widening dissemination of print led to the transformation of popular cultural experience such that by 1840 an essentially modern mass culture had begun to develop. Focusing on four illustrated magazines, but looking also at penny fiction and broadsides, Anderson interprets a wide variety of neglected sources. A recurring theme is the decline of the role of high art reproduction. Anderson combines modern cultural theory and historical evidence to demonstrate how people of all kinds--especially workers and women--interacted with the printed image, helping to shape the increasingly visual culture that was ultimately to lead to the growth of twentieth-century mass media.