http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/document-format/ Recent content in Document Format on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Early writing which first appeared as cuneiform protocols and then emerged in manuscript form and as printed materials is currently entering a new stage in its development – in the form of electronic publications. The Internet has drastically changed our understanding of access to library resources, to publication schemas, and has introduced brand new ways of information delivery. And as a result, the present situation could be described as a continuous increase in the amount of material being published only in electronic form, together with wide-scale conversion of paper-based material to digital formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/hitchcock-tarrant/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/hitchcock-tarrant/ Preservation: The Effect of Going Digital Preservation of scholarly content seemed more straightforward when it was only available in printed form. Production, dissemination and archiving of print are performed by distinctly separate, specialist organisations, from publishers to national libraries and archives. Preservation of publications established as having cultural significance - printed literature, books and, in the academic world, journals fall into this category - is self-selecting and systematic in a way that has not yet been fully established for digital content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ It seems fair to say that the lion’s share of work on developing online tools for reference and citation management by students and researchers has focused on familiar types of publication. They generally comprise resources that can be neatly and discretely bound in the covers of a book or journal, or their electronic analogues, like the Portable Document Format (PDF): objects in established library or database systems, with ISBNs and ISSNs underwritten by the authority of formal publication and legal deposit. 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/53/cliff-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/cliff-rvw/ Principles of Data Management might not sound like a thrilling title and, given its business focus, you might think not all that relevant to many readers of Ariadne. However, before dismissing it out of hand, consider this: may not the research outputs of an institution be regarded as business assets that require management (in, for example, an institutional repository)? On what other data does a university rely? Staffing, recruitment, enrolment, courses, library stock, costs? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Information Retrieval Today: An Overview of Issues and MethodsDiscussionDavid Pullinger (UK Cabinet Office), in charge of the pan-government search solution, commented that ordinary people searching for government documents use terms other than the government's argot. Ironically, Google finds these documents effectively, because it picks up words that are associated with links, often written in plainer English. Conrad drew attention to a 2003 paper on e-democracy by Danny Budzak [5], comparing terms used to describe services on local government Web sites to those chosen by users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Efforts to archive a large amount of digital material are being developed by many cultural heritage institutions. We have evidence of this in the numerous initiatives aiming to harvest the Web [1-5] together with the impressive burgeoning of institutional repositories [6]. However, getting the material inside the archive is just the beginning for any initiative concerned with the long-term preservation of digital materials. Digital preservation can best be described as the activity or set of activities that enable digital information to be intelligible for long periods of time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Web Tools for EU Research Projects Tuesday 7 February 2006 - Cambridge, UK EU research projects share lots of information and involve joint working amongst organisations from many different countries. There are many software tools which can support them, from shared workspaces to resource planning and reporting tools, from electronic meetings to web content management. But which tools are effective for EU research projects? Management tools for coordinating a construction project are rarely suitable for the more uncertain world of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/carey/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/carey/ Accessibility and UsabilityBefore embarking on the major strands of my argument it would be as well to consider definitions. There is now a fine old Pharisaic, or perhaps we might better say Scholastic, discussion about the delineation of accessibility - the capability of a system to cater for the needs of disabled people - as a highly specific segment in the usability - the capability of a system to behave in a way which most closely accords with human behaviour - sector as a whole. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) - 24-26 June, TorontoThe Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) is the international meeting for organisations and individuals involved in the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials. This year, JTS is scheduled to be held in Toronto, Canada, June 24-26, 2004. Preliminary program information is now available on the JTS 2004 website. See: http://www.jts2004.org/english/program.htm For more information please see the website or contact the organization responsible for coordinating the event on behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA): http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/alexander/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/alexander/ This article reports on a recent study of the accessibility of Australian university Web sites. A selection of key pages from all 45 Australian tertiary education Web sites were analysed to assess their compliance with basic accessibility standards, as required by Australian anti-discrimination legislation. The results–98% of sites failed to comply–suggest that Australian university Web sites are likely to present significant barriers to access for people with disabilities. Web accessibility is poorly understood by university Web publishers, and procedures are not in place to ensure that university Web sites provide equitable access to important online resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/ecdl-web-archiving-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/ecdl-web-archiving-rpt/ On 21 August 2003, the 3rd ECDL Workshop on Web Archives [1] [2] was held in Trondheim, Norway in association with the 7th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) [3]. This event was the third in a series of annual workshops that have been held in association with the ECDL conferences held in Darmstadt [4] and Rome [5]. These earlier workshops primarily focused on the activities of legal deposit libraries and the collection strategies and technologies being used by Web archiving initiatives [6]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/public-libraries/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/public-libraries/ What is the primary role and function of the public library in 21st Century Britain? Are public libraries in danger of trying to do too many things? Are they trying to please all of the people all of the time? How can the People's Network be sustained post-lottery funding? What is special about public libraries - do they have a Unique Selling Point? Are traditional, book-based services being run down as the focus switches to ICT and e-everything? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eprint-archives/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eprint-archives/ This article outlines some of the main stages in setting up an institutional e-print archive. It is based on experiences at the universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham which have both recently developed pilot e-print servers(1). It is not the intention here to present arguments in favour of open access e-print archives – this has been done elsewhere(2). Rather, it is hoped to present give an account of some of the practical issues that arise in the early stages of establishing an archive in a higher education institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Christine L. Borgman, From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure: access to information in the networked world. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, 2000. xviii, 324 pp. £27.95. ISBN 0-262-02473-X. Christine Borgman’s book From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure was published in March 2000 in the Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing series edited by William Arms. The book is an excellent introduction to a wide range of issues related to the development of digital libraries and to what is called here a ‘global information infrastructure. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/rydberg-cox/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/rydberg-cox/ Digital libraries can be an extremely effective method of extending the services of a traditional library by enabling activities such as access to materials outside the physical confines of the library [1]. The true benefit of a digital library, however, comes not from the replication and enhancement of traditional library functions, but rather in the ability to make possible tasks that would not be possible outside the electronic environment, such as the hypertextual linking of related texts, full text searching of holdings, and the integration of knowledge management, data visualization, and geographic information tools with the texts in the digital library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ The purpose of this article is to introduce The Question Bank contents and situate the resource in the context of its Information Space, that is its relationship to other projects that aim to make social surveys more accessible. I have the subsidiary aim of using this text to present the choices and decisions that need to be identified, preferably before undertaking the introduction of a medium sized web-based information resource. I aim to be decidedly non-technical, however many of the problems the Question bank team has overcome have been solved because of the increasing flexibility that newer software offers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/pubmed/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/pubmed/ In my opinion, there is no real question that completely paperless systems will emerge in science and in other fields. The only real question is “when will it happen?” We can reasonably expect, I feel, that a rather fully developed electronic information system … will exist by the year 2000, although it could conceivably come earlier. F. Wilfrid Lancaster (1978) [1] Predicting the future is very dangerous. Wilfrid Lancaster’s 21 year old comment may seem unduly optimistic when it mentions the arrival of ‘completely paperless’ systems, but the Internet and the World Wide Web would appear (almost) to be his ‘fully developed electronic information system’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ SEAMLESS is a two year research project, funded by the British Library, which aims to develop a new model for citizens’ information - one which is distributed, and based on partnerships and common standards. The objectives of the SEAMLESS project are to: build strong and sustainable partnerships between the various information providers operating in the regiondevelop and implement common standards (technical and informational) so as to achieve interoperability between their systems and datadevelop a SEAMLESS interface which will allow simultaneous querying of distributed information sources (whether stored in a database, made available on a website, or in word processed documents) and return all the information back to the user in a unified listfacilitate electronic communication between the information providers and their customers, and between the various participating agenciesdevelop a current awareness/alerting service for users (second phase)Currently the project team (Essex Libraries, Fretwell Downing Data Systems Ltd. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/examnet/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/examnet/ Abstract The ExamNet project offers access to past De Montfort University examination papers in electronic form. Exam papers from the past three semesters have been scanned and indexed and are available to all students, members of staff and researchers within De Montfort University via the World Wide Web. This article discusses why and how the system was implemented and offers guidelines for library and information systems developers at other educational institutions who may be considering setting up a similar service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/what-is/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/what-is/ About XMLWhat is XML? XML stands for the Extensible Markup Language. XML has been designed to address a number of deficiencies in HTML. Which deficiencies in particular? HTML is not extensible. Submitting proposals for extensions to HTML can be a very lengthy process. Browser software vendors can short-circuit the standardisation process by introducing their own extensions, but this has caused problems, as we have seen with controversial extensions such as Netscape’s <BLINK> and Microsoft’s <MARQUEE> elements. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/ppt/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/ppt/ Parallel Publishing for Transactions (PPT){1] is a research and development project for a parallel online version of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, an internationally-renowned journal of geographical research with a sixty-year pedigree. The project partners in PPT are the editor of Transactions, based at the Department of Geography, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and the Electronic Publishing Research Group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Every day, subscribers to the the NewJour mailing list [1] receive notification of new Internet-available electronic serials. The NewJour definition of a serial covers everything from journals to magazines and newsletters; from the British Accounting Review to Ariadne, to The (virtual) Baguette and I Love My Nanny. Some days, a dozen or more publications are announced. As of 13th February 1997, the NewJour archive contained 3,240 items. Most of these electronic serials, or e-serials, along with most other electronic publications currently available on the World Wide Web, are stored and represented using one or more of a relatively limited number of document formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ As electronic library initiatives begin to move out of the research phase and into full production, one product is emerging as a dominant force in the presentation of electronic documents. Adobe's Acrobat software [1], which is used for both generating and viewing Portable Document Format (PDF) files, is gaining widespread acceptance in the world of higher education. PDF files allow documents to look like on-screen versions of their print equivalents. The format is based upon Adobe's own PostScript page-description language, which has for years been the industry standard. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/acorn/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/acorn/ Project ACORN (Access to Course Resources via Networks) began in August 1996 and its distinguishing features are firstly the involvement of Swets & Zeitlinger (the international periodicals subscription agency) in the project consortium, and secondly its sole focus on journal articles. The overall aim of the project is to develop a transferable model of the whole process of making short loan journal articles available electronically, and in particular to focus on the role of a third party agent in gaining copyright clearance and providing digital copies to libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/technical-day/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/technical-day/ This long-awaited and well-attended concertation day had 35 'teccies' (slang for technical / systems / computer-orientated people) in attendance. A wide range of issues were discussed, probably too many for one day and certainty too many to be covered in this article. One of the main outcomes of the day was the identification of major issues, of interest to many projects, which warrant further discussion. It was an informal day allowing for a lot of attendee input and interaction.