http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/firefox/ Recent content in Firefox on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/skilton-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/skilton-et-al/  Augmented reality, a capability that has been around for decades, is shifting from what was once seen as a gimmick to a bona fide game-changer. [1] Augmented Reality (AR) has been listed in the Horizon Reports, key predictors of the potential impact of new technology on education. The 2011 Report [1] sparked the idea for an innovative project - SCARLET: Special Collections using Augmented Reality to Enhance Learning and Teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Although the move from print to electronic journals over the last two decades has been enormously beneficial to academic libraries and their users, the shift from owning material outright to renting access has restricted the autonomy of librarians to grant access to these journals. The ProblemLicence restrictions imposed by publishers define and limit access rights and librarians have increasingly taken on the role of restricting access on behalf of the publisher, rather than granting access on behalf of their institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/blackwell-hackneyblackwell/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/blackwell-hackneyblackwell/ Quotation is the heart of scholarly argument and teaching, the activity of bringing insight to something complex by focused discussion of its parts. Philosophers who have reflected on the question of quotation have identified two necessary components: a name, pointer, or citation on the one hand and a reproduction or repetition on the other. Robert Sokolowski calls quotation a 'curious conjunction of being able to name and to contain' [1]; V. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/prior-salter/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/prior-salter/ In the current fiscal climate faced by educational institutions in the UK, elearning tools and technologies that promise efficiency savings as well as enhancing the quality and quantity of course offerings are gaining popularity. One such technology is Web conferencing where lectures, seminars, meetings or presentations take place online and allow for remote participation and collaboration via audio, video, instant chat and a virtual ‘whiteboard.’[1]. Web conferencing also has the potential to provide a sustainable and economic alternative to face-to-face professional development conferences [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Open source (OS) usually refers to an application whose source code is made available for use or modification in line with users’ needs and requirements. OS projects usually develop in the public domain where contributors participate in a collaborative manner and update or refine the product. OS offers more flexibility and freedom than software purchased with licence restrictions. Both the OS community and the library world share many common principles. They share and promote open standards and believe in sharing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Large amounts of money are spent building scholarly resources on the web. Unlike online retailers, large publishers and banks, scholarly institutions tend not to monitor very closely the way visitors use their web sites. In this article I would like to show that a look at the traces users leave behind in the Web servers’ log files can teach us much about our sites’ usability and about the way visitors use them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ This was the 13th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1] to be organised by UKOLN [2] held at the University of Sheffield from 12 to 14 July 2010. The theme was 'The Web in Turbulent Times' [3]. As such, there was a healthy balance of glass-half-empty-doom-and-gloom, and glass-half-full-yes-we-can. More detailed reporting, including live blogging by Kirsty McGill of T Consult Ltd [4] and blog posts by presenters, can be found at the IWMW Blog [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/jisc-dev8d-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/jisc-dev8d-rpt/ Firstly some background as to why dev8D came about. David Flanders (JISC) and Ben O'Steen (Oxford University Library Services) over the years have attended many conferences: what they found were that the places and talks from which they benefited most were outside the programmed seminars and presentations. It was during conversations between sessions at these events with other developers, managers, delegates that they felt learned most. For David and Ben the real benefit of these events were derived from the backchannel, the fringe events and random conversations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/voss/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/voss/ In recent years the principle of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown increasingly important in digital library systems. More and more core functionalities are becoming available in the form of Web-based, standardised services which can be combined dynamically to operate across a broader environment [1]. Standard APIs for searching (SRU [2] [3], OpenSearch [4]), harvesting and syndication (OAI-OMH [5], ATOM [6]), copying (unAPI [7] [8]), publishing, editing (AtomPub [9], Jangle [10], SRU Update [11]), and more basic library operations, either already exist or are being developed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/joyce-et-al/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/joyce-et-al/ The evolution of the Web has changed the way that people access information. Web 2.0 technologies have allowed information providers to integrate their services in people's existing online spaces, and users expect to be able to synthesise, edit and customise content for their own specific purposes. Intute, the JISC-funded service that aims to offer the best of the Web for Higher and Further Education, has responded to these changes by developing a variety of integration services which offer flexible ways of delivering its content to users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Torrential rain, thunder and lightening provided the backdrop to the Institutional Web Management Workshop [1], held this year at the University of York. Dramatic as they were, the conditions did not in any way dampen the enthusiasm of the delegates over the three days. The programme this year consisted of plenary sessions, discussion groups, parallel sessions and the famed social events. New this year was the IWMW Innovation Competition, where participants were invited to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies as well as the IWMW logo. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brack-rvw/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brack-rvw/ Greg Notess has brought together techniques and strategies for Web search training not only from his own experience but also from a number of well known Web search trainers; readers will recognise the names of Joe Barker, Paul Barron, Phil Bradley, John Ferguson, Alice Fulbright, Ran Hock, Jeff Humphrey, Diane Kovacs, Gary Price, Danny Sullivan, Rita Vine, and Sheila Webber. As the author notes, 'Teaching web search engines is complex', and this book is an attempt to recognise the diversity of approaches by offering different styles, techniques and examples. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/powell-recordon/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/powell-recordon/ OpenID [1][2] is a single sign-on system for the Internet which puts people in charge. OpenID is a user-centric technology which allows a person to have control over how their Identity is both managed and used online. By being decentralised there is no single server with which every OpenID-enabled service and every user must register. Rather, people make their own choice of OpenID Provider, the service that manages their OpenID. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/newsline/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/newsline/ Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) Training Programme Either: Birmingham, Bristol or London, 8 February to 27 April 2007 http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/ The TASI programme of practical hands-on training includes three brand new workshops: Digital Photography - Level 2 Provides an introduction to the effective operation of a digital SLR, explaining how the camera's manual controls can be used to improve photography. The course also explains how to illuminate small 2D and 3D objects using tungsten studio lights. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/miller/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/miller/ Over the summer of 2006, there was much talk about extending and enriching the online offerings of the library. Reports for the Library of Congress [1] and University of California [2] were still being cogitated upon. North Carolina State University's [3] Endeca-powered catalogue was attracting a lot of interest [4]. The Next Generation Catalog list [5] was going from strength to strength, and two competitions in particular invited entrants to re-imagine the library and aspects of its online service delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/wikido-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/wikido-rpt/ The ‘Wikido’ [pron. ‘wiki-doo’], as I have come to refer to it affectionately, was held at Austin Court, Birmingham on Friday 3 November 2006. Its organisation by Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, was as a direct result of feedback and discussions carried out by the Web Management Community at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2006 and on the JISCmail web-support list. It was therefore interesting (and encouraging) to see so many delegates from communities in addition to that of Web management attending. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/iwmw-2006-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/iwmw-2006-rpt/ The 10th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2006) [1] returned to its spiritual home in Bath this year, headquarters of the workshop organisers UKOLN [2] and the venue of the fourth IWMW workshop held in 2000. It was the first workshop to be chaired by Marieke Guy following nine years with Brian Kelly at the helm from its inception in 1997. This year the workshop theme was 'Quality Matters', reflecting the fact that institutional Web sites have been around for over ten years and are now taken as a given. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Common Web tools and techniques cannot easily manipulate library resources. While photo sharing, link logging, and Web logging sites make it easy to use and reuse content, barriers still exist that limit the reuse of library resources within new Web services. [1][2] To support the reuse of library information in Web 2.0-style services, we need to allow many types of applications to connect with our information resources more easily. One such connection is a universal method to copy any resource of interest. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collectionsThe UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. Course OutlineThis course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ "I want my browser to recognise information in Web pages and offer me functionality to remix it with relevant information from other services. I want to control which services are offered to me and how they are offered." In this article I discuss the ingredients that enable users to benefit from a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by combining services according to their preferences. This concept can be summarised as a user-accessible machine-readable knowledge base of service descriptions in combination with a user agent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/lauke/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/lauke/ When it comes to assessing a Web site's accessibility, any Web designer should know by now that simply running the mark-up though an automated testing tool is not enough. Automated tools are limited, purely testing for syntax, easily ascertained "yes or no" situations and a set of (sometimes quite arbitrary) heuristics, which are often based on an interpretation of accessibility guidelines on the part of the tool's developers. Nonetheless, automated checkers are a useful tool in the arsenal of accessibility-conscious designers, provided that their results are checked for false positives/negatives [1] and backed up by the necessary manual checks, carried out by a knowledgeable human tester who is familiar with any potential access issues and how they manifest themselves in a Web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ We have recently come through several decennial celebrations: the W3C, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, D-Lib Magazine, and now Ariadne. What happened clearly in the mid-nineties was the convergence of the Web with more pervasive network connectivity, and this made our sense of the network as a shared space for research and learning, work and play, a more real and apparently achievable goal. What also emerged - at least in the library and research domains - was a sense that it was also a propitious time for digital libraries to move from niche to central role as part of the information infrastructure of this new shared space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ When people get together and talk about open source, there are three things that come into the conversation early on. Firstly, they argue about open source licences; secondly, they ask "but is it really free?"; and thirdly, they state that "it's all about the community". That last one is definitely worth unpacking further. When a new project starts, or an existing project is being assessed, everyone will ask "what sort of community does it have? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/editorial/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/editorial/ Having opined elsewhere in this august organ that it would not be my policy to produce themed issues, I suppose I had better put my hand up at least to accumulating a majority of main articles which address the theme of accessibility from various and interesting perspectives. Having argued on the grounds that Ariadne issues which concentrate unduly on one topic inevitably leave a lot of readers feeling excluded, I can see that that the majority of readers who do not live with significant visual, physical or other impairments will feel hurt and almost certainly betrayed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ In a previous issue of Ariadne [1], I gave a brief overview of Mozilla Firefox [2] and introduced a few of its most useful extensions. In this article, we will use one of these extensions, Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar [3], to aid us in a preliminary assessment of a web site's accessibility. Although awareness of web accessibility has steadily increased in recent years, many web developers are still uncertain about how to evaluate their sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/iwmw2005-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/iwmw2005-rpt/ The 9th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1], a three-day event held at the Manchester Conference Centre [2], Manchester University [3], UK, 6-8 July 2005 had as its theme this year 'Whose web is it anyway?'. How apt at a time when we are all continuing to attempt delivery of systems and services to meet users' needs and requirements within institutional demands and pressures on resource. The format this year was six plenary sessions, two parallel workshop slots, two sessions for regional groups to discuss Content Management Systems (CMS), two panel sessions and one slot for delegates to attend an extra discussion session or look round the poster displays/vendor stalls. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/chudnov/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/chudnov/ Library users have never before had so many options for finding, collecting and sharing information. Many users abandon old information management tools whenever new tools are easier, faster, more comprehensive, more intuitive, or simply 'cooler.' Many successful new tools adhere to a principle of simplicity - HTML made it simple for anyone to publish on the Web; XML made it simple for anyone to exchange more strictly defined data; and RSS made it simple to extract and repurpose information from any kind of published resource [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/editorial/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/editorial/ Tomorrow, 31 January 2005 will be the moment of truth for those institutions among some 100,000 public authorities which received a request for information on the first operative day of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United Kingdom. For by tomorrow they must have responded to the request within 20 working days. No doubt many senior administrators in HE and FE institutions up and down the country will be wondering how many requests their institution has really received, as opposed to the number that have actually been reported - at least one aspect of the legislation that will not have endeared itself to them, quite understandably. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lauke/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lauke/ Mozilla Firefox [1] is a free, open-source Web browser based on the Mozilla codebase. Version 1.0 was recently released after two years of development, so now may be a good time to evaluate this browser's capabilities. "Out of the box" Mozilla Firefox offers a variety of features catering to both occasional Web surfers and power users. The more advanced functionality can be particularly noted as a real time saver during the Web development process. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/biome/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/biome/ BIOME Hot TopicsBIOME “Hot Topics” are proving extremely popular with lots of positive feedback. We have received suggestions for particular areas of interest and recent themes have included breast cancer, AIDS, and pet ownership. So check out the new topics at Hot Topics [1]. BIOME Mailing ListAre you interested in finding out more about BIOME? Join the BIOME JISCmail to keep up to date with developments [2]. BIOME Search Plugin for FirefoxUsers of the Mozilla Firefox browser may have noticed that up in the top right corner of Firefox, there is a handy search box that allows you to search various databases and search engines from within the browser. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ 2004 was a particularly interesting year for Internet search; we saw a lot of new search engines appearing on the scene, a number of purchases and a lot of innovations, particularly in the last quarter, with Microsoft bringing out its Beta MSN Search [1], Google doubling the size of its index [2], releasing Google Scholar [3] and Google Suggest [4]. We also saw a rise in the number of desktop search applications, particularly from Google [5] and Microsoft [6], and an increase in attempts to provide a personalised version of popular search engines. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/web-focus/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/web-focus/ Wikis: are they the latest cool Web technology or a pointless tool which merely duplicates features provided in content management systems and virtual learning environments? I have heard both views expressed recently. To some extent both views have some validity: a Wiki is a technology which has been adopted initially by those in Web developer communities (such as the Semantic Web community) to enable collaborative documents to be produced quickly and easily.