http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/authors/emma-tonkin/ Recent content in Emma Tonkin on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Sat, 16 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/75/tonkin/ Sat, 16 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/75/tonkin/       'Now let's take this parsnip in.'       'Parsnip?'       'Parsnip, coffee. Perrin, Wellbourne. What does it matter what we call things?'       – David Nobbs, The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin Introduction What does it matter what we call things? David Nobbs' fictional character Reggie Perrin suggests in the quote above that it doesn't matter at all. Yet we should keep in mind that Reggie tells us this after almost three hundred pages of tragicomic confusion brought on by his habit of arbitrarily replacing nouns with others such as 'parsnip' or 'earwig' ('When I say earwig, I mean your wife') and his serial adoption of half-a-dozen new identities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tonkin-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tonkin-rvw/ In her introduction to this collection, Hagar [1] – who coined the term ‘crisis informatics’ [2] - begins by providing the following definition of the term ‘crisis’ (taken from Johnston, The Dictionary of Human Geography,  2002 [3]) - ‘an interruption in the reproduction of economic, cultural, social and/or political life’. This book discusses crises as diverse as wartime disruption, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, viruses and terrorist activity. As a central theme, the concept of crisis is broad. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/tonkin-rvw/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/tonkin-rvw/ Published by O'Reilly, as part of the Theory In Practice series, this book is essentially academic in focus. It takes the form of thirty chapters. The first eight of these aim to provide an introduction to the area of software engineering, or more specifically, the collection and use of supporting evidence to support software engineering practices. These initial chapters are satisfyingly broad in scope, covering topics from human factors and personality to complexity metrics and the process of authoring a systematic review. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/tonkin-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/tonkin-rvw/ DefinitionsTAXON”OMY, n. [Gr. order, and law.] Classification; a term used by a French author to denote the classification of plants. Webster’s Revised Dictionary (1828 Edition) [1] Tax*on”omy (?), n. [Gr. an arrangement, order + a law.] That division of the natural sciences which treats of the classification of animals and plants; the laws or principles of classification. Webster’s Revised Dictionary (1913 Edition) [1] Taxonomy Classification, esp. in relation to its general laws or principles; that department of science, or of a particular science or subject, which consists in or relates to classification; esp. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/chaudhri-et-al/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/chaudhri-et-al/ The development of the Dublin Core Application Profiles (DCAPs) has been closely focussed on the construction of metadata standards targeted at specific resource types, on the implicit assumption that such a metadata solution would be immediately and usefully implementable in software environments that deal with such resources. The success of an application profile would thus be an inevitable consequence of correctly describing the generalised characteristics of those resources. Yet despite the earlier success of application profiles, more recent growth in usage of the DCAPs funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has been slow by comparison [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Due in large part to the appearance since mid-2006 of increasingly affordable devices making use of e-Ink technology (a monochrome display supporting a high-resolution image despite low battery use, since the screen consumes power only during page refreshes, which in the case of ebooks generally represent page turns), the ebook has gone from a somewhat limited market into a real, although presently still niche, contender. Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in 2008 [1]; Sony sold 300,000 of its Reader Digital Book model between October 2006 and October 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-rvw/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-rvw/ In the introduction to this 227-page work [1], editors Eugene Loos, Enid Mante-Meijer and Leslie Haddon provide a concise history of the organisation underlying the research area - the social dynamics of information and communication technology, or ICT to those on first-name terms - and the political stance that called it into being. The European Commission and national governments, it seems, are of the opinion that information and communication technologies as a whole can be seen as enablers for the furtherance of democratic society. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-strelnikov/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-strelnikov/ The IEMSR, a metadata schema registry, exists to support the development and use of metadata standards; in practice, what does this entail? Metadata is not a recent invention. It dates from at least the time of the Library of Alexandria, at which hundreds of thousands of scrolls were described using a series of indexes retaining various characteristics such as line count, subject classification, author name and biography. However, specific metadata standards, schemas and vocabularies are created on a regular basis, falling into and out of favour as time passes and needs change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/tonkin-rvw/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/tonkin-rvw/ The casual visitor to the area of digital library research could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the sheer mass and complexity of the world of metadata, not to mention the speed at which things move on. It is in no sense a rare occurrence, even for those taking an active role in the field, to find that something else has changed and that one has, as they say in other walks of life, 'missed a memo'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/tonkin/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/tonkin/ What Is a Persistent Identifier, and Why?Persistent identifiers (PIs) are simply maintainable identifiers that allow us to refer to a digital object – a file or set of files, such as an e-print (article, paper or report), an image or an installation file for a piece of software. The only interesting persistent identifiers are also persistently actionable (that is, you can “click” them); however, unlike a simple hyperlink, persistent identifiers are supposed to continue to provide access to the resource, even when it moves to other servers or even to other organisations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/tonkin-rvw/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/tonkin-rvw/ This book is all about computerisation movements – CMs, for short. CMs are social, professional, intellectual and/or scientific movements [1], collective movements fuelled by a group of people who share a vision of the way that things should be, and are ready to promote that vision. For some readers, this may sound a little abstract, so I will begin with a little descriptive preamble, which others are welcome to skip. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Social tagging, which is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, and social indexing, allows ordinary users to assign keywords, or tags, to items. Typically these items are Web-based resources and the tags become immediately available for others to see and use. Unlike traditional classification, social tagging keywords are typically freely chosen instead of using a controlled vocabulary. Social tagging is of interest to researchers because it is possible that with a sufficiently large number of tags, useful folksonomies will emerge that can either augment or even replace traditional ontologies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/tonkin-tourte-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/tonkin-tourte-rvw/ Introduction: Needles, Haystacks and MagnetsSince the early days of metadata, powerful textual search methods have been, as Wodehouse’s Wooster might have put it, ‘of the essence’. Effective use of search engines is all about understanding the use of the rich query syntax supported by that particular software. Examples include the use of Boolean logic (AND, OR and NOT), and wildcards, such as and ?. Search engines such as Google naturally include their own selection of rich functionality and usage tricks, and O’Reilly has a book out to cover that, too (see Phil Bradley’s review of ‘Google Hacks’ in Ariadne [1]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ecdl-2007-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ecdl-2007-rpt/ This was the first time this event was held in the majestic and architecturally impressive city of Budapest. It was organised by The Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI) [1] and held at the Europa Congress Centre. The event brought together a very mixed group of people from computer scientists, researchers, librarians, professors and managers. There were over 200 participants, from 36 countries. There were a total of 119 full paper submissions of which 36 were accepted after peer review, giving an acceptance rate of 30%. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tonkin-rvw/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tonkin-rvw/ Ambient Findability is to all external appearances an O'Reilly book. It boasts the familiar line drawing of an animal, on this occasion a Verreaux's sifaka, a large and engagingly thoughtful-looking lemur. Judging the book by its cover would suggest that it be placed on the shelf together with O'Reilly's classic line of reference books, upon which developers all over the world depend for sparsely presented, accurate information and advice. But this book is of a different breed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tourte-tonkin/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tourte-tonkin/ The recent Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2006) [1] was a rare opportunity to try out a few new pieces of technology. With events that occur at a different location each year, it is often difficult to do so, since the infrastructure at the venue may not be suitable, and it is difficult to liase effectively with technical staff at the venue before the event in order to put all the necessary technology into place. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/tonkin/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/tonkin/ Despite the stability of many key technologies underlying today's Internet, venerable workhorses such as TCP/IP and HTTP, the rise of new candidate specifications frequently leads to a sort of collaborative manic depression. Every now and then, a new idea comes along and sparks a wave of interest, the first stage in the Internet hype cycle. Transformed with the addition of a series of relatively content-free conceptual buzzwords, the fragile idea is transmitted between and within communities until disillusionment sets in, when the terminology becomes an out-of-date reminder of a slightly embarrassing era that tomorrow's computer industry professionals will laugh about over a pint of beer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/tonkin/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/tonkin/ Introduction: What is a Wiki?Software use cases are necessarily incomplete, a failing which seems to intensify in reverse proportion to the degree of simplicity in the software in question. Complex software responds to a given set of requirements, simple software as a partial solution to a much broader problem set. More concisely put, certain ideas just seem to catch on, particularly the simple, brilliant, ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ class of ideas.