http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/infrastructure/ Recent content in Infrastructure on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/editorial/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/editorial/ The requirement to make a business case to maintain or establish a service or a project is a familiar process for many of us working in Libraries.  Many libraries are asked to justify their very existence on a regular basis.  Some succeed, others unfortunately do not. We all seem to be doing more with less, and 'lean' is how we normally describe our staffing level. 14 months ago we made a case to top level University administration for an initiative around citations improvement, seeking funds for investment in a service to improve publication performance and citations analysis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/lawton-flynn/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/lawton-flynn/ This article will focus on how open access publishing may add value to a number of health and social care professionals and their work in the health services. The results of two recent surveys are explored in relation to the research activity, barriers and awareness about open access publishing by health and social care professionals (HSCPs) working in the Irish health system. The majority of peer-reviewed research is published in subscription journals, which are only accessible to those in institutions, or those willing or able to pay subscription fees. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/guy-et-al/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/guy-et-al/ In the past, discussions around Open Education have tended to focus on content and primarily Open Educational Resources (OER), freely accessible, openly licensed resources that are used for teaching, learning, assessment and research purposes. However Open Education is a complex beast made up of many aspects, of which the opening up of data is one important element. When one mentions open data in education a multitude of questions arise: from the technical (what is open data? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Brisbane, Queensland, Australia was the host location for the second Open Access and Research 2013 conference [1]. The conference was held at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point campus over 31 October – 1 November 2013. QUT has over 45,000 students and has a wide range of specialist research areas. There are two research institutes: The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) which is a collaborative institute devoted to improving the health of individuals; and the Institute for Future Environments (IFE) which is a multidisciplinary institute focusing on our natural, built and virtual environments, and how to find ways to make them more sustainable, secure and resilient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ The ShaRe Project (Shared Repository Project 2008-2009), which aimed to promote the concept of consortial repositories and facilitate their implementation, has made a significant contribution to the rapid growth of institutional repositories (IRs) in Japan. Following precedents including White Rose Research Online (UK) and SHERPA-LEAP (UK), 14 regional consortial repositories have been set up on a prefectoral basis across Japan*. Their success is demonstrated by the fact that as many as 92 bodies have set up IRs despite having no institutional hardware of their own. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ As I depart this chair after the preparation of what I thought would be the last issue of Ariadne [1], I make no apology for the fact that I did my best to include as much material  to her ‘swan song’ as possible. With the instruction to produce only one more issue this year, I felt it was important to publish as much of the content in the pipeline as I could. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ Mon, 15 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ In Japan, Chiba University established the country's first institutional repository, CURATOR [1] in 2003. Since then, over the last 10 years or so, more than 300 universities and research institutions have set up repositories and the number of full-text items on repositories has exceeded one million [2]. All the contents are available on Japanese Institutional Repositories Online (JAIRO) [3] operated by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) [4] in Japan. 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/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/71/rafiq-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rafiq-rvw/ The Information Society offers a detailed discussion on the concept and dynamics of the information society from a historical perspective to the present era of information societies. The book offers in-depth discussion and analysis of how information has been accumulated, analysed and disseminated in the past, and focuses on great shifts in the paradigm of human communications that have taken place in the history of mankind.  It offers a detailed account of the development of human communication, mass media, Internet, Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ In 2012 the University of Oxford Research Committee endorsed a university ‘Policy on the management of research data and records’ [1]. Much of the infrastructure to support this policy is being developed under the Jisc-funded Damaro Project [2]. The nascent services that underpin the University’s RDM (research data management) infrastructure have been divided into four themes: RDM planning;managing live data;discovery and location; andaccess, reuse and curation.The data outputs catalogue falls into the third theme, and will result in metadata and interfaces that support discovery, location, citation and business reporting for Oxford research datasets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/reese/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/reese/ Assessment of electronic resources has long proven a difficult challenge for librarians when looking to make collection development decisions.  Often, these decisions are made by looking at usage statistics provided by the vendor, and through informal conversations with selected faculty within affected disciplines.  The ability to capture point-of-use information from users remains a significant challenge for many institutions.  The purpose of this paper will be to suggest a novel approach to providing intercept survey functionality for librarians looking to simplify the gathering of user feedback for library provided materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/jabes-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/jabes-rpt/ In what has now become something of a tradition, the ‘Corum’ Congress Centre in Montpellier, France, hosted the twelfth in the series of the Journées de l’Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur (ABES - Higher Education Bibliographic Agency) [1]. The main objectives of ABES are the development and maintainance of the shared catalogue of French academic libraries (Système Universitaire de Documentation, SUDOC) [2], the management of the theses processes and the administrative and financial support for group purchasing of e-resources for Higher Education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/garrett-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/garrett-et-al/ KAPTUR (2011-13) [1], funded by Jisc and led by the Visual Arts Data Service, was a collaborative project involving four institutional partners: the Glasgow School of Arts; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and the University of the Arts London. Research data have in recent years become regarded as a valuable institutional resource and their appropriate collection, curation, publication and preservation as essential. This has been driven by a number of internal and external forces, and all UK Research Councils now require it as a condition of funding [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ On Friday, 8 March 2013, I attended the fifth in the series of DataCite workshops run by the British Library [1]. The British Library Conference Centre was the venue for this workshop on the theme 'Making Citation Work: Practical Issues for Institutions'. I counted myself lucky to get a place: the organisers had had so much interest they had started a reserve list for the event.  I could believe it as it was standing room only at one point, though an awkwardly placed pillar may have contributed to that. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/henshaw-kiley/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/henshaw-kiley/ Online access is now the norm for many spheres of discovery and learning. What benefits bricks-and-mortar libraries have to offer in this digital age is a subject of much debate and concern, and will continue to be so as learning resources and environments shift ever more from the physical to the virtual. In order to maintain a place in this dual environment, most research libraries strive to replicate their traditional offerings in the digital world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Wikipedia, the world’s fifth most-used Web site [1], is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, “Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptance” [2], Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology. He concluded that ‘If Wikipedia is the first port of call, as it already seems to be, for information requirement traffic, then there is a commitment to build on Open Educational Resources (OERs) of various kinds and improve their quality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in  15 different countries across 4 continents. My colleague Monica Duke and I attended the most recent conference in Taipei both to represent the Digital Curation Centre – CODATA's national member for the UK – and to participate in a track of talks on data publication and citation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ CURATEcamp is ‘A series of unconference-style events focused on connecting practitioners and technologists interested in digital curation.’ [1] The first CURATEcamp was held in the summer of 2010, and there have been just over 10 Camps since then. The activity at CURATEcamps is driven by the attendees; in other words, ‘There are no spectators at CURATEcamp, only participants.’ [2] Camps follow the ‘open agenda’ model: while organisers will typically build the activity around a particular theme within the field of digital curation, and sometimes (but not always) collect topics for discussion, there is no preset agenda. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/turner/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/turner/ At the moment organisations often make significant investments in producing Web-based material, often funded through public money, for example from JISC. But what happens when some of those organisations are closed or there  is no longer any money or resources to host the site? We are seeing cuts in funding or changes in governmental policy, which is resulting in the closure of some of these organisations. What happens to those Web resources when the organisations are no longer in existence? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/emtacl12-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/emtacl12-rpt/ The three-day conference consisted of eight keynote presentations by invited speakers and a number of parallel sessions. The main themes set out for this year’s conference were supporting research, organisational change within the library, linked open data and other semantic web applications in the library, new literacies, and new services/old services in new clothes, along with other relevant perspectives on emerging technologies. We attended the conference to gain an overview of organisational changes happening across the sector in relation to technological developments and to gather opinion on the relevance of the academic library within a digital society. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/hydra-2012-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/hydra-2012-11-rpt/ Hydra, as described in the opening presentation of this event, is a project initiated in 2008 by the University of Hull, Stanford University, University of Virginia, and DuraSpace to work towards a reusable framework for multi-purpose, multi-functional, multi-institutional repository-enabled solutions for the management of digital content collections [1]. An initial timeframe for the project of three years had seen all founding institutional partners successfully implement a repository demonstrating these characteristics.  Key to the aims of the project has always been to generate wider interest outside the partners to foster not only sustainability in the technology, but also sustainability of the community around this open source development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lyons/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lyons/ It is indisputable that the use of e-resources in university libraries has increased exponentially over the last decade and there would be little disagreement with a prediction that usage is set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The majority of students both at undergraduate and post-graduate level now come from a background where online access is the de facto standard. Add to this the ubiquity of mobile devices in the form of netbooks, tablets and smart phones and it is apparent that a considerable percentage of the service provision from libraries does and will continue to involve on-line resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/cox-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/cox-et-al/ For many UK HEIs, especially research-intensive institutions, Research Data Management (RDM) is rising rapidly up the agenda. Working closely with other professional services, and with researchers themselves, libraries will probably have a key role to play in supporting RDM. This role might include signposting institutional expertise in RDM; inclusion of the topic in information literacy sessions for PhD students and other researchers; advocacy for open data sharing; or contributing to the management of an institutional data repository. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/eurocris-2012-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/eurocris-2012-11-rpt/ euroCRIS membership meetings [1] are held twice a year, providing members and invited participants with updates on strategic and Task Group progress and plans, as well as the opportunity to share experience of Current Research Information System (CRIS)-related developments and seek feedback. A CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) tutorial is usually included on the first morning for those new to the standard, and the host country reports on local CRIS initiatives in the ‘national’ session. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/rumsey-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/rumsey-rvw/ Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are planning and implementing infrastructure and services to manage research data more urgently than they did for research publications. One policy framework sent to UK vice-chancellors from a major UK funding body (EPSRC), which set out clear expectations of responsibilities for data management at institutions within a given timetable, appears to have been the spark that prompted research data management (RDM) to be taken up by the upper echelons of management, and concrete activities set in place to start addressing the problem. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/eduserv-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/eduserv-2012-rpt/ The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management. This year’s theme of big data is certainly stimulating interest, but what exactly are the implications for those working in research, learning, and operations in Higher Education? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ A workshop on Research Information Management (RIM) and CERIF was held in Bristol on 27-28 June 2012, organised by the Innovation Support Centre [1] at UKOLN, together with the JISC RIM and RCSI (Repositories and Curation Shared Infrastructure) Programmes. It was a follow-up to the CERIF Tutorial and UK Data Surgery [2] held in Bath in February. Workshop Scope and AimsThe aim was to bring together people working on the various elements of the UK RIM jigsaw to share experience of using CERIF and explore ways of working together more closely. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ I’ve been working with repositories in various ways for over five years, so I have, of course, attended the major international conference Open Repositories before. I have never actually presented anything or represented a specific project at the event, though. This year was different. This year I had a mission -  to present a poster on the DataFlow Project [1] and to talk to people about the work we had been doing for the past 12 months and (I hoped) to interest them in using the Open Source (OS) systems we had developed during that period. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ The 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 12) took place at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower – a building with a stunning panoramic view over the volcanic city.  The event brought together 172 delegates and attracted an additional 165 viewers to the live video stream of the plenary sessions over the three days. This year's theme focussed on embedding innovation, and the event featured a range of case studies and examples of embedded practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/datacite-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/datacite-2012-rpt/ On Friday, 6 July 2012 I made my way to the British Library Conference Centre for the second in a series of DataCite workshops [1]. The theme was Describe, Disseminate, Discover: Metadata for Effective Data Citation. In welcoming us to the event, Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Scientific, Technical and Medical Information at the British Library, said there had been some doubt as to whether anyone would turn up to an event about metadata, but as it happened there were 36 of us, drawn from across the UK and beyond. 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/68/callaghan-et-al/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/callaghan-et-al/ Data are the foundation upon which scientific progress rests. Historically speaking, data were a scarce resource, but one which was (relatively) easy to publish in hard copy, as tables or graphs in journal papers. With modern scientific methods, and the increased ease in collecting and analysing vast quantities of data, there arises a corresponding difficulty in publishing this data in a form that can be considered part of the scientific record. 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/68/elbert-et-al/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/elbert-et-al/ This article presents a summary of some results of the study Perceptions of Public Libraries in Africa [1] which was conducted to research perceptions of stakeholders and the public towards public libraries in six African countries. The study is closely linked with the EIFL Public Library Innovation Programme [2], which awarded grants to public libraries in developing and transition countries to address a range of socio-economic issues facing their communities, including projects in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/iassist-2011-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/iassist-2011-rpt/ The IASSIST [1] Conference is a long-standing annual event which brings together researchers, statistical analysts as well as computer and information professionals interested in all aspects of research data, from discovery to reuse. This 37th meeting spanned five days where participants could attend workshops, IASSIST business meetings and a myriad of presentations. This year, the event focused on the sharing of tools and techniques which ‘improves capabilities across disciplines and along the entire data life cycle’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/escidoc-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/escidoc-rpt/ eSciDoc is a well-known open source platform for creating eResearch environments using generic services and tools based on a shared infrastructure. This concept allows for managing research and publication data together with related metadata, internal and/or external links and access rights. Development of eSciDoc was initiated by a collaborative venture between FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Research libraries have traditionally supported the scholarly research and communication process, largely through supporting access to and preservation of its published outputs. The library cornerstones have been positioned around a long-established publication process tailored to deliver the peer-reviewed scholarly article or monograph; but now the research landscape is dramatically changing. The application of computational science and growth of data-intensive research, combined with a veritable explosion of social media tools and Web technologies, are reshaping research practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rin-foi-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rin-foi-rpt/ Since 2008 the Research Information Network (RIN) has organised a series of workshops dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge about the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) 2000. In previous years these workshops have centred on how the legislation could be used as a research tool [1]. In response to a growing media focus on the Higher Education (HE) sector, this year’s workshops (held at Manchester, UCL and Strathclyde universities respectively) sought not only to continue to raise awareness but also to address the potential impact of the legislation on universities in their capacity as ‘public bodies’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/editorial/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/editorial/ For readers who might have been wondering, I shall resist Mark Twain’s remark about reports of his demise being exaggerated, and reassure you that while Ariadne has been undergoing changes to the way in which it will be delivered to the Web, it has been business as usual in the matter of the content, as you will see from the paragraphs that follow. Issue 67, while currently not looking any different, is in the process of being migrated to a new platform developed to enhance functionality and give a more user-friendly look and feel to the publication. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/scaife/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/scaife/ When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian’s life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still. It is characterised by the decay of a static URL which has, for example, been placed in a library catalogue to reference a relevant Web site resource which has subsequently been moved to a different server or else removed altogether. 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/dcc-2011-03-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/dcc-2011-03-rpt/ The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is staging a series of free regional data management roadshows to support institutional data management, planning and training. These events run over three days, presenting best practice and showcasing new tools and resources. Each day is designed for a different audience with complementary content so that participants can attend the days that best meet their needs. Presentations from both the second roadshow in Sheffield and the first one in Bath in November 2010 are on the DCC Web site [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ The Open Educational Resources Hack Day event was designed to bring together those interested in rapidly developing tools and prototypes to solve problems related to OER. Whilst there is a growing interest in the potential for learning resources created and shared openly by academics and teachers, a number of technical challenges still exist, including resource retrieval, evaluation and reuse. This event aimed to explore some of these problem areas by partnering developers with the creators and users of OER to identify needs and potential solutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rinaldo-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rinaldo-et-al/ The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) [1] is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that co-operate to digitise and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global ‘biodiversity commons.’ [2] The participating libraries hold more than two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago. Thus it was that the sixth conference in the series [3], entitled ‘Participation and Practice: Growing the Curation Community through the Data Decade’, came to be held jointly by the DCC, UIUC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coetsee/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coetsee/ The Phytomedicine Programme of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa [1]. The programme investigates problems in the wide area of infections, especially microbial and parasitic infections in the process of training postgraduate students. They co-operate with many specialists in other areas in the application of extracts and isolated compounds to improve the health and productivity of plants, animals and humans. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/parsons/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/parsons/ When reflecting on a methodological approach and set of research practices with which he was closely associated, Bruno Latour suggested that, “there are four things that do not work with actor-network theory; the word actor, the word network, the word theory and the hyphen!” [1]. In a similar vein, it could be suggested that, “there are three things that do not work with academic liaison librarianship: the word academic, the word liaison and the word librarianship”. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ The University of Oxford began to consider research data management infrastructure in earnest in 2008, with the ‘Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data’ Project [1]. Two further JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded pilot projects followed this initial study, and the approaches taken by these projects, and their findings, form the bulk of this article. Oxford’s decision to do something about its data management infrastructure was timely. A subject that had previously attracted relatively little interest amongst senior decision makers within the UK university sector, let alone amongst the public at large, was about to acquire a new-found prominence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/editorial/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/editorial/ You may have already noted in the editorial section of this issue a link to the Reader Survey which I ask you seriously to consider completing, whether you are a frequent Ariadne reader or are reading the Magazine for the first time. Moves are afoot to give Ariadne some effort towards improvements in your experience of the publication and I cannot emphasise enough the value I place on suggestions and comments from you. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/briston-estlund/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/briston-estlund/ Permanent records of the University of Oregon (UO) are archived by the Special Collections and University Archives located within the University Libraries. In the digital environment, a new model is being created to ingest, curate and preserve electronic records. This article discusses two case studies working with the Office of the President to preserve electronic records. The first scenario describes working with the outgoing president, receiving records in a manner very similar to print records, where the Archives acted as a recipient once the records were ready to be transferred. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Thursday 14 OctoberTrack A: Looking Ahead to ValueA102: Future of Academic LibrariesMal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus. As this new building should be able to respond to demands for many years to come, Mal emphasised how important it is to consider the future users as well as library and technology developments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ In 1999 Sir John Taylor [1], then Director General of the UK Research Councils, talked about e-Science, i.e. global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will support it. It encompasses computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments or that uses immense datasets that require grid computing. In the US the term cyberinfrastructure has been used to describe the new research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualisation and other computing and information processing services over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ 2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team. 2 September 2010Opening the event proper on Thursday morning, Sheila Cannell, Director of Library Services, University of Edinburgh, used the imminent Edinburgh festival fireworks as a metaphor for the repository development endeavour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/survive-thrive-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/survive-thrive-rpt/ Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/mahey-walk/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/mahey-walk/ Software developers are important to Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE). They are needed to develop and implement local FEI (Further Education Institution) and HEI (Higher Education Institution) solutions, to build e-infrastructure, and to innovate and develop ideas and prototypes that can be exploited by others. They also play an important part in the development and uptake of open standards and interoperability. With the increasing accessibility and affordability of high-quality development tools, collaborative environments and industrial-grade infrastructure, the potential for even a single software developer advantageously to affect a wide range of activities in and around research, teaching and learning has never been so great. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ On Thursday 6 May 2010 an historic event took place. The event allowed people to express their opinions on potential future action in a highly significant area. No, not the British general election, and I'm sure the concurrence of dates was unintentional! This event was the Blue Ribbon Task Force Symposium on sustainable digital preservation and access, held at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre in London [1]. The symposium, companion event to the national conversation which took place in Washington DC in April 2010 [2], provided an opportunity for stakeholders to respond to the recent Blue Ribbon Task Force report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/day-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/day-rvw/ It is normal in some subject disciplines to publish volumes of edited papers in honour of a respected colleague, usually to mark a significant birthday or career change. The contributors to such Festschriften* are usually made up of former colleagues or pupils of the person being honoured. This volume celebrates the work of Professor Peter Brophy, the founder of the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM), which since 1998 has been based at the Manchester Metropolitan University. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Computational science and raw and derivative scientific data are increasingly important to the research enterprise of higher education institutions. Academic libraries are beginning to examine what the expansion of data-intensive e-science means to scholarly communication and information services, and some are reshaping their own programmes to support the digital curation needs of research staff. These changes in libraries may involve repurposing or leveraging existing services, and the development or acquisition of new skills, roles, and organisational structures [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ This meeting on 11 May 2010, chaired by Anthony Watkinson, was organised by the University College London Department of Information Studies. Some 40 people attended the ‘e-book’ conference with the specific title; ‘Data as Content’. Eight papers were presented with a final panel question and answer session that explored some of the issues that had arisen during the day. Papers Presented Unfortunately, the first billed presentation, by Matthew Day (Nature) on ‘The role of publishers in data management, now and next’, had to be cancelled. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/editorial/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/editorial/ In these cash-strapped times among all the admonitions to save money here, and resources there, I rather hope to hear much about the necessity of protecting and building the knowledge economy if the UK is to make its way in the globalised world, since we cannot pretend to compete easily in other areas of endeavour. Hence research has to be regarded as one of the aces remaining to us, and thus I hope the importance of gathering, managing and preserving for long-term access research outcomes will be widely appreciated and supported. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ The Eduserv Symposium 2010 on the mobile university brought together colleagues from academia and practice to discuss the impact of the growth in mobile technologies on Higher Education: for example, on the student experience, learning and teaching initiatives, research, libraries, role of the educators, and the computer services support. Stephen Butcher and Andy Powell of Eduserv gave the welcome addresses. Stephen mentioned how this symposium was the largest that Eduserv had hosted and gave a background of Eduserv’s activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/emtacl10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/emtacl10-rpt/ The emerging technologies in academic libraries (or emtac10) [1] conference was held from 26 - 28 April 2010 at the Rica Nidelven Hotel in Trondheim – winners of “Norges beste frokost” (Norway’s Best Breakfast) for 5 years running, as the sign proudly states outside the hotel. They certainly fed us copious amounts of fantastic food, and had evening functions including an organ recital in the impressive cathedral, but what about the contents of the conference itself? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ More than 60 delegates convened at the Rose Bowl in Leeds on 7 May 2010 for this event to explore the developing relationship and overlap between Open Access research repositories and so called 'CRISs' – Current Research Information Systems – that are increasingly being implemented at universities. The Welsh Repository Network (WRN) [1], a collaborative venture between the Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in Wales, funded by JISC, had clearly hit upon an engaging topic du jour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Over 7-8 June 2010 DataCite held its First Summer Meeting in Hannover, Germany. More than 100 information specialists, researchers, and publishers came together to focus on making datasets visible and accessible [1]. Uwe Rosemann, German Technical Library (TIB), welcomed delegates and handed over to the current President of DataCite, Adam Farquhar, British Library. Adam gave an overview of DataCite, an international association which aims to support researchers by enabling them to locate, identify, and cite research datasets with confidence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Digital collections at LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science)[1] are significant and growing, as are the requirements of their users. LSE Library collects materials relevant to research and teaching in the social sciences, crossing the boundaries between personal and organisational archives, rare and unique printed collections and institutional research outputs. Digital preservation is an increasing concern alongside our commitment to continue to develop innovative digital services for researchers and students. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Eager to prove their relevance among scholars leaving print behind, libraries have participated vocally in the last half-decade's conversation about digital research data. On the surface, libraries would seem to have much human and technological infrastructure ready-constructed to repurpose for data: digital library platforms and institutional repositories may appear fit for purpose. However, unless libraries understand the salient characteristics of research data, and how they do and do not fit with library processes and infrastructure, they run the risk of embarrassing missteps as they come to grips with the data challenge. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/gambles/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/gambles/ The Library of Birmingham (LoB) will open in 2013 as a world-class centre for culture, learning and knowledge, rewriting the book for public libraries in the 21st century. 'Rewriting the Book', which is integral to the new LoB brand, recognises and embraces the present and future challenge to libraries – it accepts that established means of accessing knowledge are changing rapidly and dynamically, with a significant digital dimension, and that increasingly radical responses to this challenge are demanded from leaders in the library sector. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Way back in prehistory, when libraries were buildings with books in, identity management was a pretty simple challenge for them. A library was either truly 'public', in which case you did not care who came in (the more people, the more popular you were, which was 'a good thing'). Otherwise, you had to be a member, and the security officer on the door knew your face, or you could show him (it was usually a 'him', then) a card or something to prove you were a member. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/segbertelbert-fuegi/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/segbertelbert-fuegi/ In November 2008, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant to Stichting eIFL.net to help the National Library of Mongolia (NLM) create a strategic plan in the course of 2009. eIFL.net [1] is an international not-for-profit organisation with a base in Europe and a global network of partners. It works with libraries around the world to enable sustainable access to high-quality digital information for people in developing and transition countries [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rdmf4-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rdmf4-rpt/ The fourth meeting of the Research Data Management Forum was held in Manchester on 10 and 11 March 2010, co-sponsored by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] and the Research Information Network (RIN) [2]. The event took Dealing with Sensitive Data: Managing Ethics, Security and Trust as its theme [3]. Day 1: 10 March 2010DCC Associate Director Liz Lyon and RIN Head of Programmes Stéphane Goldstein welcomed the 45 delegates to the event, and began by introducing the keynote speaker, Iain Buchan, Professor of Public Health Informatics and Director of the Northwest Institute for Bio-Health Informatics (NIBHI), University of Manchester. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ At the end of November 2009, JISC launched a year-long suite of activities under the heading Research 3.0: driving the knowledge economy. A series of events, publications and Web activity are stimulating discussion about how advanced digital technologies are creating a revolution in research and the way researchers work. With a central role in making these technologies available, JISC is also hoping to learn more about the concerns, views and requirements of researchers and the institutions that support them, especially given the financial constraints they are now under. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/nicholas-et-al/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/nicholas-et-al/ Discussion of digital identifiers, and persistent identifiers in particular, has often been confused by differences in underlying assumptions and approaches. To bring more clarity to such discussions, the PILIN Project has devised an abstract model of identifiers and identifier services, which is presented here in summary. Given such an abstract model, it is possible to compare different identifier schemes, despite variations in terminology; and policies and strategies can be formulated for persistence without committing to particular systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/editorial/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/editorial/ Readers of last year's issues will possibly have been aware of a small initiaitive on Ariadne's part to give practitioners with in the archives field the opportunity to voice their views on developments in their airspace. You may recall in Issue 61 an open and sincere investigation by Michael Kennedy into his views of the wider involvement of non-professionals in the generation of information for archival entries. In Cautionary Tales: Archives 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ The Fedora digital repository system 1 is an open source solution for the management of all types of digital content. Its development is managed through DuraSpace [2], the same organisation that now oversees DSpace, and carried out by developers around the world. The developers, alongside the extensive body of Fedora users, form the community that sustains Fedora. Although there have been regular international user group meetings for the Fedora community, hosted in recent years as part of the Open Repositories conference, there have also been a number of more regional initiatives to foster interaction amongst Fedora users and provide assistance to those adopting the software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform – February 2010UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform: A chance to see one of the world's top 10 best intranets Free informal Intranets Forum meeting for UKeiG members ERM, 2/F Exchequer Court, 33 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AA Friday 26 February 2010, 4.00 - 5.30 p.m. http://www.ukeig.org.uk/ Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the world's leading environmental consultancy firm was recognized in a recent survey by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) as having one of the world's top 10 best intranets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/bl-subject-repos-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/bl-subject-repos-rpt/ Institutional repositories are now common in Higher Education, but successful examples of subject repositories, which cater to an entire discipline, are much rarer. The Subject Repositories conference taught some key lessons about the role of transnational collaboration in setting up a subject repository. The conference drew on the expertise of renowned specialists in the field and the two and a half-year-long development process of Economists Online [1]. Economists Online was created by the Network of European Economists Online (NEEO) [2], which consists of 24 European and international partners (disclosure: the author was a work package leader for this project and one of the conference organisers). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/loureirokoechlin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/loureirokoechlin/ Competition, complex environments and needs for sophisticated resources and collaborations compel Higher Education institutions (HEIs) to look for innovative ways to support their research processes and improve the quality and dissemination of their research outcomes. Access, management and sharing of information about research activities and researchers (who, what, when and where) lie at the heart of all these needs and driving forces for improvements. The planning of new research needs to consider information about current and previous related activities, and about relevant expertise for collaboration which may cross subject field boundaries. 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/61/editorial/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/editorial/ Perhaps one of the current benchmarks for gauging when a Web technology has migrated from the cluttered desks of the technorati to the dining tables of the chatterati is if it becomes a topic for BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze [1]. More accustomed to discussing matters such as child-rearing or a controversial pronouncement of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the panel members who, over the years have ranged from the liberal to the harrumphing illiberal (and in one case, both at the same time), recently did battle over Twitter [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ The Internet has caused a revolution in the way scientists and scholars have access to scholarly output. Only 15 years ago, the (university) library decided what sources should be offered to the staff and individual scientists could only hope the librarian would listen to their wishes. In this system scientists frequently had no instantaneous access to the information they wanted. In such instances they had to rely on the Interlibrary Loan System. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ The previous article about the Overlay Journal Infrastructure for Meteorological Sciences (OJIMS) Project [1] dealt with an introduction to the concept of overlay journals and their potential impact on the meteorological sciences. It also discussed the business cases and requirements that must be met for overlay journals to become operational as data publications. There is significant interest in data journals at this time as they could provide a framework to allow the peer-review and citation of datasets, thereby encouraging data scientists to ensure their data and metadata are complete and valid, and granting them academic credit for this work. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/stracchino-feng/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/stracchino-feng/ An overview of the first phase of developing a digital repository for multimedia resources at York University has recently been outlined by Elizabeth Harbord and Julie Allinson in Ariadne [1]. This article aims to provide a technical companion piece reflecting on a year’s progress in the technical development of the repository infrastructure. As Allinson and Harbord’s earlier article explained, it was decided to build the architecture using Fedora Commons [2] as the underlying repository, with the user interface being provided by Muradora [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ 5th International Digital Curation Conference – Moving to Multi-Scale Science: Managing Complexity and DiversityMillennium Gloucester Hotel, Kensington, London 2-4 December 2009 http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2009/ The International Digital Curation Conference is an established annual event reaching out to individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains involved in curating data for e-science and e-research. The Digital Curation Centre, which is responsible for organising the Conference, will be hosting a full day of workshops on 2 December including Disciplinary Dimensions of Digital Curation: New Perspectives on Research Data; Digital Curation 101 Lite Training; Citability of Research Data; and Repository Preservation Infrastructure (REPRISE). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/bevan/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/bevan/ The National Library of Wales has recently published a new Strategy for the Web [1] which integrates Web 2.0 with the existing Web portfolio and seeks to provide an approach to Web 2.0 which is focused on the organisation. Rather than centring on technical developments, this paper outlines a strategic research approach and discusses some of the outcomes which may speak to others seeking to engage with emerging Web technologies and approaches. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/strsp-rpt/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/strsp-rpt/ I recently attended the Back to School event [1] run by the Repositories Support Project (RSP)[2] at Matfen Hall [3], Northumberland, where I gave a workshop on metadata and also attended the second and third days of the event as a delegate. I was sorry not to be able to attend the sessions on the first day, but arrived in time for dinner so was able to meet the delegates and other presenters. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Institutional repositories are a major element of the Open Access movement. More specifically in research and education, the main purpose is to make available as much of the research output of an institution as possible. However, a simple search box and a long list of returned (keyword) artefacts derived from either an individual institutional repository (IR) or a federated search that would generate an even longer list, is no longer sufficient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ I recently attended the first biennial Conference of the British Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK) [1] entitled ‘Content Architecture: Exploiting and Managing Diverse Resources’. It was organized in co-operation with the Department of Information Studies, University College London. If the intention was to focus on the diversity of resources out there, I also felt that the audience was very diverse in terms of levels of expertise and perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/hess-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/hess-et-al/ Introduction: The Evolving Field of Artefact DocumentationDigital heritage technologies promise a greater understanding of cultural objects cared for by museums. Recent technological advances in digital photography and image processing not only offer a high level of documentation, they also provide powerful analytical tools for conservation monitoring of cultural objects. Museums are increasingly turning to digital documentation and relational databases to administer their collections for a variety of tasks: detailed description, intervention planning, loan. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ In the bucolic setting of the Cotswolds, on one of the hottest weeks of the summer, 200 delegates gathered to discuss the future of online content and to examine why UK universities need a sustainable digital content strategy to deliver successfully accessible learning and research materials for the future. Over two days, the delegates heard from a series of keynote speakers in plenary sessions and attended breakout ‘strand sessions’ on five different themes: Managing Content; Content Development Strategies; Content in Education; User Engagement; and Looking into the Future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/callaghan-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/callaghan-et-al/ Historically speaking, scientific publishing has focused on publicising the methodology that the scientist uses to analyse a dataset, and the conclusions that the scientist can draw from that analysis, as this is the information that can be easily published in text format with supporting diagrams. Datasets do not lend themselves easily to normal hard copy publication, even if the size of the dataset were small enough to allow this, and datasets are more useful stored in digital media. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/beagrie-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/beagrie-et-al/ Data has always been fundamental to many areas of research but it in recent years it has become central to more disciplines and inter-disciplinary projects and grown substantially in scale and complexity. There is increasing awareness of its strategic importance as a resource in addressing modern global challenges such as climate change, and the possibilities being unlocked by rapid technological advances and their application in research. In the US the National Science Board has stated that: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/takle/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/takle/ The National Library of Norway is in the process of establishing itself as a digital national library and of taking on a key role in the country’s digital library service. The most ambitious outcome of this positioning is that the National Library has comprehensive plans to digitise its entire collection. The digital national library has been given the name NBdigital, and its objective of establishing itself as a digital library is also reflected in the institution’s practices. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/editorial/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/editorial/ I am grateful to Marieke Guy not least since she still manages to write for Ariadne when she has her own blog [1] on remote working to maintain. Having begun her series of articles with A Desk Too Far?: The Case for Remote Working, a treatment of the organisational issues surrounding the suitability of remote working as a business case, which she followed with a wealth of information on supportive technologies entitled Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke returns, not exactly full circle, but back to an organisational perspective in her third contribution A Support Framework for Remote Workers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/morris/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/morris/ The University of Southampton has around 22,000 students across six campuses: five in the city of Southampton and one in Winchester. It is a broad-based, research-intensive institution, a member of the Russell Group of UK Universities. The University comprises three Faculties: Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths; Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, and the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences. Within the three Faculties, there are currently 21 academic Schools which are responsible for the delivery of education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/ifla-3p-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/ifla-3p-rpt/ The IFLA Presidential Meeting ‘Access to Knowledge: Networking Libraries’ [1], was the third and last event in a series of conferences held during the IFLA presidency of Claudia Lux between 2007 and 2009. Intended as international platforms for exchange about the topic of ‘free access to information’, the motto shared by all three meetings, each of the conferences focused on a different cultural/geographical region: Central and Eastern Europe in 2007, Asia in 2008, and Arab and Islamic countries in 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/handshake-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/handshake-rpt/ I was a participant in the repository handshake group discussions at the JISC-, SURF- and DRIVER-funded International Repositories Workshop in Amsterdam in March 2009 [1]. Motivation for deposit was widely discussed at the start of the day. It also became apparent after a few hours that the premise of the discussions, i.e. 'repository handshake', was not a universally clear concept. Some felt the term referred to technical protocols, and some to business processes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ The first conference of the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) Project was held at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands (KB) in The Hague on 6 and 7 April 2009. A total of 136 participants from over 30 countries attended. The main focus of the event was on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies and their use in supporting the large-scale digitisation of historical text resources. It was also an opportunity to introduce the IMPACT Project to a wider audience and to describe some of its initial results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/nsf-2009-03-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/nsf-2009-03-rpt/ I was recently invited to attend a 'Software Sustainability Workshop', organised by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Indiana University at its University Place Conference Center in Indianapolis. The invitation, which included a call for position papers, described the event as follows: The workshop will focus on identifying strategies to create sustainable models for use, support, maintenance, and long-term sustainability of cyberinfrastructure software that is developed and used by research communities working in areas related to the NSF mission. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/newsline/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/newsline/ Digital Preservation – The Planets WayRoyal Library Copenhagen, Denmark 22-24 June 2009 http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/ Does your organisation know what to preserve digitally for the future? Do you want to discuss your strategies for digital preservation with colleagues and experts? Do you know how to preserve your collections for the future? Do you know which tools and services to use for this? There has been an explosion in the volume of information world-wide which will grow to 180 exabytes by 2011. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/waaijers/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/waaijers/ Now that publications are increasingly being enriched with databases and audio-visual elements, the need for non-proprietary review systems – that is, peer review systems that do not require the assignment of copyright to the organiser of the peer review i.e. the publisher - is becoming ever-more pressing. Although there is a steadily growing number of peer-reviewed Open Access journals [1] and an active Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association [2], the supply fails to keep pace with the demand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Since 2006, the EU-sponsored DRIVER Project has aimed to build an interoperable, trusted and long-term repository infrastructure. As part of the DRIVER Project, a survey was carried out in order to obtain an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union in 2006 [1]. This study was updated by an expanded survey in 2008, in which 178 institutional research repositories [2] from 22 European countries participated. In this article we will present the most important results [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Worldwide, the research paradigm is in the process of expanding into eResearch and open scholarship. This implies new ways of collaboration, dissemination and reuse of research results, specifically via the Web. Developing countries are also able to exploit the opportunity to make their knowledge output more widely known and accessible and to co-operate in research partnerships. Although there are exisiting examples of eResearch activities, the implementation of eResearch is not yet being fully supported in any co-ordinated way within the South African context. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ The e-Framework for Education and Research was founded in 2005 as a partnership between the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK, and the then Department of Education Science and Technology (DEST) in Australia. Since the foundation of the e-Framework, a major government reorganisation in Australia has replaced DEST with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), and the initial partnership has expanded to include SURF in the Netherlands, and the New Zealand Ministry of Education/Te Tahuhu o te Matauranga. 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/58/dplta-hep-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/dplta-hep-rpt/ High-energy physics (HEP) experiments acquire huge datasets that may not be superseded by new and better measurements for decades or centuries. Nevertheless, the cost and difficulty of preserving both the data and the understanding of how to use them are daunting. The small number of cases in which data over ten years old have been reanalysed has only served to underline that such analyses are currently very close to impossible. The recent termination of data taking by the H1 and ZEUS experiments at DESY’s HERA collider, and by the BaBar experiment at SLAC, plus the imminent termination of other major experiments, prompted the organisation of this workshop. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/editorial/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/editorial/ Having returned once more to the fray somewhat chastened by the experience of eye surgery, alone and without a general anaesthetic (with apologies to Rumpole and the late lamented John Mortimer [1] ), but hugely impressed by the ministrations of the NHS, I am struck once again by the enormous importance of people, both within the community that Ariadne serves as well as those domains beyond, and in which all are nonetheless increasingly, but quite naturally, dependent on technology for their success. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/newsline/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/newsline/ JISC Digital Media (formerly TASI) Training ScheduleFour brand new courses are on offer for the 2009 season dealing with: Finding free images onlineEditing and managing images using Photoshop Lightroom 2Audio Production (recording lectures, seminars, interviews and podcasts)Digitising analogue video recordings.Courses are already filling up fast and several courses now have multiple dates to accommodate demand. Spring 2009 Programme:10 March 2009 Introduction to Photoshop Lightroom 2 http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/training-photoshop-lightroom.html 19 March 2009 Copyright and Digital Images http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ I had managed to miss the previous two PASIG (Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group)[1] meetings, so was delighted to find myself finally able to participate by attending the Fall meeting. Conveniently the event was arranged to follow immediately the SPARC Digital Repositories meeting [2], also held in Baltimore, and which I also attended. PASIG is a group sponsored by and centred on Sun Microsystems (Sun) which is a prominent vendor of data storage hardware and which is building a new business around systems to support digital preservation and archiving. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/boyle-et-al/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/boyle-et-al/ Digital preservation is an area which is pervasive and challenging for many sectors – it impinges on the landscape from high-level business and e-government to an individual's personal digital memories. One sector where the challenges of preservation and long-term access to resources are well rehearsed is within the archives sector. There has been innovative research within the archives community including the Paradigm [1] and the DARP [2] projects. The initiative described in this article focuses on the local authority archives sector and is an outcome of collaborative work from the authors, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [3] and The National Archives (TNA) [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/borda/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/borda/ The Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI) [1] was the first State-funded initiative of its kind in Australia. The establishment of VeRSI follows on the heels of the former Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) [2] decision to commission the then Australian eResearch Coordinating Committee [3] to undertake a comprehensive review of eResearch and to recommend how Australia, cognisant of efforts elsewhere, such as the UK eScience Programme [4], could coordinate a national eResearch initiative. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ The European Film Gateway (EFG) [1] is one in a series of projects funded by the European Commission, under the eContentplus Programme, with the aim of contributing to the development and further enhancement of Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive [2]. Officially launched on 20 November 2008, the prototype Europeana service provides access to about four million digital objects from archives, audio-visual archives, museums and libraries across Europe. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ In her second Get Tooled Up article on the subject of remote working Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke Guy takes a look at the many technologies that support remote working, from broadband to Web 2.0 social networking tools. Readers may also be interested to read her blog on remote working which I am definitely finding interesting [1]. I am greatly indebted to Marieke, who as many IWMW delegates will attest, is indisputably one of Life's finishers and who, in her delivery of both this article and its predecessor 'A Desk Too Far? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/davies/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/davies/ Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive - is a two-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a service giving users direct access initially to some two million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers, rising to a target of 10 million by 2010. The development of the Europeana service is a flagship activity of the European Digital Libraries Initiative [1] [2], designed to increase access to digital content across four identified key domains (libraries, museums, archives and audio/visual archives) is now gaining momentum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy/ My previous article A Desk Too Far?: The Case for Remote Working [1] explored the cultural background to remote working, reasons why people might choose to work from home and some of the challenges that face them and their host organisations. This article will consider both the technology that facilitates remote working and the tools that can support remote workers by enabling them to carry out the tasks that they need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/milne-tuck/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/milne-tuck/ ‘The purpose of legal deposit is to ensure that the nation’s published output (and thereby its intellectual record and future published heritage) is collected systematically and as comprehensively as possible, both in order to make it available to current researchers within the libraries of the legal deposit system and to preserve the material for the use of future generations of researchers’ [1]. In his Alexandria article of 2004, Dr Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library (2001-2006), provided a detailed account of the Legal Deposit Libraries Bill and its progress through Parliament to the statute book. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ TASI Courses for Remainder of 2008TASI (the JISC Advisory Service for still images, moving images and sound) has a few places left on its autumn/winter training programme. http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/training.html 14 November 2008 Optimising your Images using Adobe Photoshop21 November 2008 Introduction to Image Metadata27 November 2008 Essential Techniques in Digital Image Capture28 November 2008 Advanced Techniques in Digital Image Capture03 December 2008 Digital Photography - Taking Control of your SLR11 December 2008 Scanning with the CLA Licence12 December 2008 Copyright and Digital ImagesThe following newly released course has just been added to the programme: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ The new framework for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources, OAI-ORE, had its European release in April 2008 [1]. Amongst its practical uses, OAI-ORE has a role to play in digital preservation and continued access to files. This article describes the basic outline of the framework and how it can support the PRESERV2 project digital preservation model of provision of preservation services and interoperability for digital repositories. The PRESERV approach recognises that effective preservation is founded on three fundamental actions on data: copy, move and monitor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/eresearch-australasia-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/eresearch-australasia-rpt/ The following overview of eResearch Australasia 2008 by Ann Borda is intended to give a sense of the diversity of the programme and key themes of the Conference at a glance. A selection of workshops and themes are explored in more detail by fellow contributing authors in the sections below: Bridget Soulsby on the 'Data Deluge', Gaby Bright on 'Uptake of eResearch' and Tobias Blanke on 'Arts & Humanities eResearch'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/ipres-2008-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/ipres-2008-rpt/ iPRES 2008, the Fifth International Conference on Digital Preservation, was held at the British Library on 29-30 September, 2008. From its beginnings five years ago, iPRES has retained its strong international flavour. This year, it brought together over 250 participants from 33 countries. iPRES has become a major international forum for the exchange of ideas and practice in Digital Preservation. The theme of the conference was ‘Joined Up and Working: tools and methods for digital preservation’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ In June this year UKOLN hosted an ‘unconference’[1] which was given the title ‘DRY/CRIG’. Jointly funded through the IE Demonstrator Project [2] and the Common Repositories Interfaces Group (CRIG) [3], this event was intended to allow technical representatives of (mainly) JISC-funded ‘Shared-Infrastructure-Services [4] to meet software developers from UK Higher Education institutions (HEIs). The ‘DRY’ part of the name is an acronym standing for ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’, a general principle in software engineering, which was deemed appropriate for an event mostly concerned with reusable shared services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/guy/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/guy/ Introduction: A New Way of Working In the 21st Century work has changed. Remote working or teleworking [1] is an employment arrangement in which employees can complete their work from a location other than their office base, be it their home, a sub-office or even the local coffee shop. As Woody Leonhard puts it in the Underground Guide to Telecommuting, “Work is becoming something you do, not a place you go to. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ross/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ross/ The Resource Discovery iKit [1] is the result of a recently completed project to produce an information kit for tools and reports related to resource discovery created by JISC-funded projects and services. Created by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde, the iKit has exploited the Centre’s expertise in the area of digital libraries to create a dynamic retrieval system which uses multi-faceted control vocabularies to allow researchers and developers a quick and easy interface for the discovery and retrieval of a comprehensive range of quality-assessed resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of ‘Web 2.0’ and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Minding the Skills Gap: A Workshop for Key Training ProvidersLeeds University Business School 3 September 2008 Over the last few years, researchers have enthusiastically embraced new technologies and services that allow them to discover, locate, gain access to and create information resources on their desktops. Yet there is evidence to suggest that their research information skills and competencies have not kept up with the rapid pace of change. 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/56/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ The third meeting of Sun's Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group took place in San Francisco in May. The event, the third PASIG meeting in the last year, drew around 180 participants from Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America to discuss a broad range of issues surrounding digital repositories. Presentations ranged from geographically or community-themed high-level perspectives of repository- related activity, through to detailed technical analysis and reports of development activity at an institutional or project level. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ukmw08-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ukmw08-rpt/ Following the success of the inaugural event last year [1], the Mashed Museum day was again held the day before the Museums Computer Group UK Museums on the Web Conference. The theme of the conference was 'connecting collections online', and the Mashed Museum day was a chance for museum ICT staff to put this into practice. The Mashed Museum DayEarlier this year I received an email that read: You are invited to a day of coding, thinking and idea sharing with a select group of museum colleagues. 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/55/henty/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/henty/ The growing capacity of ICT to contribute to research of all kinds has excited researchers the world over as they invent new ways of conducting research and enjoy the benefits of bigger and more sophisticated computers and communications systems to support measurement, analysis, collaboration and publishing. The expanding rate of ICT development is matched by the numbers of people wanting to join in this funfest, by growth in the amount of data being generated, and by demands for new and improved hardware, software, networks, and data storage. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/kim-conf-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/kim-conf-2008-rpt/ The KIM Project [1] is a £5.5 million research programme involving eleven UK universities and funded primarily by the EPSRC [2] and ESRC [3]. The Project’s tagline is ‘Knowledge and Information Management Through Life’, and it is primarily focussed on long-lived engineering artifacts and the companies that produce and support them. The driver for the research is a ‘product-service paradigm’ that is emerging in several industrial sectors, whereby a supplier is contracted not only to deliver a product such as an aircraft or building, but to maintain and adapt it throughout its lifecycle. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ As part of its new Libraries of the Future programme [1], JISC held three events during its annual conference in Birmingham to explore some of the questions facing libraries today: in an information world in which Google apparently offers us everything, what place is there for the traditional, and even the digital, library? In a library environment which is increasingly moving to the delivery of online rather than print resources, what of the academic library’s traditional place at the heart of campus life? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/maccoll/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/maccoll/ RLG Programs became part of OCLC in the summer of 2006. In November of last year, RLG Programs announced the appointment of a European Director, John MacColl. This article explains the rationale behind the combination of RLG with the OCLC Office of Research, and describes the work programme of the new Programs and Research Group. It argues for co-operation as the necessary response to the challenges presented to research libraries as the Web changes the way researchers work, and it lays out a new programme dedicated to research outputs, which will have significant European Partner involvement. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vandeventer-pienaar/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vandeventer-pienaar/ Knowledge exchange is critical for development. 'Bridging the knowledge divide' does not only refer to the North-South divide. It also refers to the divide between richer and poorer countries within the same region as well as to the divide between larger and smaller organisations within one country. Lastly it refers to the divide between those individuals who have access to an environment that allows for rapid knowledge creation and those less fortunate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lilac-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lilac-2008-rpt/ The LILAC 2008 has already received plenty of Web coverage, notably in Sheila Webber’s IL blog [1], where lots of other weblog posts on the event have been collected. I also produced an official blog [2] myself, as part of the conditions of my student award conference bursary. As a newcomer to the information and library profession, and a postgraduate masters student, I hope to offer a different perspective on this event, focussing on the highlights and my personal impressions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/civallero/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/civallero/ Cultural HeritageHeritage can be defined as a heterogeneous ensemble of environmental and cultural elements - material or otherwise - that are transmitted from generation to generation, creating the foundations on which people build and orientate their identity and vision of the world. According to the definition reached during the UNESCO Experts´ Round Table in Turin (Italy, 2001), heritage includes: ’… peoples’ learned processes along with the knowledge, skills and creativity that inform and are developed by them, the products they create, and the resources, spaces and other aspects of the social and natural context necessary to their sustainability’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/grl2020-rpt/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/grl2020-rpt/ Welcome to the Future and Day OneResearch, scholarship, science, and discovery have been transformed by the Internet and communication technologies across all sectors on a global basis. In order for research libraries to play a central role in this increasingly multi-institutional and cross-sector environment, we must find new approaches for how they operate and add value to research and discovery on a global basis. This was a rare opportunity to make a start on thinking longer term with invitees from across sectors and across countries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ The Museum Computer Network (MCN) celebrated its 40th anniversary during its annual meeting, this year held at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza. In 1967, museum professionals in New York City gathered to discuss the utility of computers in museum settings. This initial meeting provided the seed for what would become the Museum Computer Network [1]. 40 years later, 310 delegates from 14 countries and 32 states in the US gathered to take stock of successes and issues in the networked museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ UkeiG Course: Information Law for Information ProfessionalsInformation Law for Information Professionals: What you need to know about Copyright, Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Accessibility and Disability Discrimination Laws CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE 19 February 2008, 9.30-16.30 Course outline In particular, four key legal areas currently affect the work of many information professionals in the digital environment - copyright, data protection, freedom of information, and disability discrimination and accessibility. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ In the spring of 2005, the University of Hull embarked on the RepoMMan Project [1], a two-year JISC-funded [2] endeavour to investigate a number of aspects of user interaction with an institutional repository. The vision at Hull was, and is, of a repository placed at the heart of a Web services architecture: a key component of a university's information management. In this vision the institutional repository provides not only a showcase for finished digital output, but also a workspace in which members of the University can, if they wish, develop those same materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ First, a note about this reviewer. I am not a library historian although I am interested in our professional and institutional development. I received my library education in Ireland, although I have worked for much of my career in the UK and am now in the US. I observed the developments discussed in the latter parts of this volume and have contributed to the literature about them. I have met many of the contributors and am familiar with the writings of others. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/dc-2007-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/dc-2007-rpt/ The main theme of this year's international conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications was 'Application Profiles: Theory and Practice' [1]. The conference was hosted by the Singapore National Library Board and held in the Intercontinental Hotel, which was across the road from the superb National Library building. The main conference took place on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The keynote talks and the presentations of full papers took place in plenary sessions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/feijen-et-al/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/feijen-et-al/ Introduction: Why DRIVER Is NeededOpenDOAR [1] lists over 900 Open Access repositories worldwide. Approximately half of them are based in Europe, most of which are institutional repositories. Across Europe many more repositories are being set up and supported by national and regional initiatives such as the Repositories Support Project [2] in the UK and IREL-Open [3] in Ireland. A recurring challenge for repositories is that of engaging researchers in Open Access and motivating them to deposit their work in OA repositories. 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/53/editorial/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/editorial/ Given Ariadne's recent attempts to gather in contributions in the field of digital cultural heritage, which once upon a time would have found a home in Cultivate Interactive, I am particularly pleased, after some enquiries and kind offers of help along the way, to secure an article entitled The Video Active Consortium: Europe's Television History Online by Johan Ooman and Vassilis Tzouvaras. There will come a time when our civilisation will be assessed as much upon its cultural development as its historical path or scientific progress. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/hilton-thompson/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/hilton-thompson/ In a previous article [1] we discussed how the Wellcome Library had accepted that born digital material [2] will form part of its collections in the future. Work is now under way to give practical shape to these plans, and in the last six months born digital archival material has begun to be acquired by the Library. This article assesses the progress that has been made and discusses the experiences, and challenges, of dealing with real digital material. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/digitising-culture-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/digitising-culture-rpt/ The idiom of the ‘elephant in the room’ is one often conjured up when an obvious fact or presence is not acknowledged for fear that doing so will radically disturb people’s acceptance of the status quo. The conference in Berlin, Knowledge By Networking, Digitising Culture in Germany and Europe [1], had something of the elephant in the room. In this case the unmentioned presence was not the elephant, but the search engine Google. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ TASI Workshops in November & DecemberThere are currently places available on the following Nov/Dec workshops: 14 November 2007: Image Capture - Level 3, Bristol15 November 2007: Introduction to Image Metadata, Bristol23 November 2007: Image Optimisation - Correcting and Preparing Images, Bristol30 November 2007: Building a Departmental Image Collection, Bristol4 December 2007: Colour Management, Bristol13 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 1, Bristol14 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 2, BristolFull details of these and all TASI workshops are available from the Training page http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/fp6-2007-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/fp6-2007-rpt/ Digital preservation has become an area of strategic importance for the European Union in recent years. This has been reflected in the investment of €17 million in co-funding three major digital preservation projects under call 5 of its Framework Programme 6 in September 2005. Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) [1], CASPAR (Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) [2] and DPE (DigitalPreservationEurope) [3] are all co-ordinated by British organisations: Planets by the British Library, CASPAR by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (formerly CCLRC) and DPE by the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ While Cream of Science (Keur der Wetenschap), Promise of Science and the HBO Knowledge Bank (HBO Kennisbank) are among the inspiring results of the DARE Programme for the period 2003-06, what is more important in the long run is the new infrastructure that enables Dutch Higher Education and research institutions to provide easy and reliable open access to research results and teaching material as quickly as possible. Such open access ought to be the standard in a knowledge-driven society, certainly if the material and data have been generated with public funding. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ One of the defining challenges of e-Science is dealing with the data deluge [1] information overload and information overlook. More than 8,000 scientific papers are published every week (on Google Scholar, for example). Without sophisticated new tools, researchers will be unable to keep abreast of developments in their field and valuable new sources of research data will be under-exploited. The capability of text mining (TM) to find knowledge hidden in text and to present it in a concise form makes it an essential part of any strategy for addressing these problems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kirriemuir/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kirriemuir/ Introduction: Second Life Second Life (SL) [1] is an Internet-based virtual world developed by Linden Research Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab) and launched in 2003. A downloadable client program called the ‘Second Life Viewer’ enables its users (‘residents’) to interact with each other through avatars, providing an advanced level of social networking in the setting of a virtual world. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialise, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items (virtual property) and services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Europe's audiovisual heritage contains both a record and a representation of the past and as such it demonstrates the development of the 'audiovisual culture' we inhabit today. In this article we hope to offer an insight into the development of the Video Active Portal [1] which provides access broadcast heritage material retained by archives across Europe. We will explain how Video Active needed to find solutions for managing intellectual property rights, semantic and linguistic interoperability and the design of a meaningful user experience. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pratty/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pratty/ 24 Hour Museum [1] is a successful and sustainable cultural Web site. Type the word 'museum' into Google UK and up it pops as a top five search result. Unlike the other top sites, all national museums or galleries, 24HM's remit covers the whole country, in eclectic subject areas, reaching a wide variety of audiences with simple and accessible content. In 2006 24HM reached ten million visits in the year. 2007 sees the site reaching a million visitors a month, from home to office, schoolroom to museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/groenewegen-treloar/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/groenewegen-treloar/ This paper describes the work of the ARROW Project to meet the requirements of the forthcoming Research Quality Framework (RQF). The RQF is an Australian Federal Government initiative designed to measure the quality and impact of Australian research, and is based partly on the existing Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) held in the UK. The RQF differs from the RAE in its reliance on local institutional repositories for the provision of access to research outputs, and this paper will explain how it is envisaged that this role will be filled, and the challenges that arise from this role. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ The term ‘sustainable development’ was first coined by the Brundtland Commission, convened by the United Nations in 1983 [1]. It denotes ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Although defined originally to meet the concerns relating to environmental damage, it has since been used to encompass the broader needs of society through economic, social and political sustainability. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/wallace-et-al/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/wallace-et-al/ At Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) the Spoken Word [1], a project in the JISC / NSF Digital Libraries in the Classroom (DLiC) programme [2], was conceived in 2001-2002 in response to a set of pedagogical and institutional imperatives. A small group of social scientists had, since the 1990s, been promoting the idea of using 'an information technology-intensive learning environment' to recapture some of the traditional aspirations of Scottish Higher Education, in particular independent, critical and co-operative learning [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/vandergraf/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/vandergraf/ What is the current state of digital repositories for research output in the European Union? What should be the next steps to stimulate an infrastructure for digital repositories at a European level? To address these key questions, an inventory study into the digital repositories for research output in the European Union was carried out as part of the EU-financed DRIVER Project [1]. In this article the main results of the inventory study [2] are presented and used to formulate a European agenda for the further establishment of an infrastructure for digital repositories for research output. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ EThOSnet is a project funded by JISC, CURL and the project partners, to bring the UK to the forefront of international e-theses provision. It is a highly practical and participative project to turn the prototype e-theses infrastructure that was developed by EThOS, into a live service that will revolutionise the document supply arrangements for theses and greatly increase the visibility of UK research. The Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) Project arose after several earlier initiatives in the UK had articulated an urgent need to improve on the present methods for giving researchers access to PhD and other higher-level theses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ We are frequently reminded that, in a globalised market place, industrialised countries must ever look to a developing knowledge-based economy to ensure the green shoots of competitive innovation keep sprouting. Whether all governments have been as quick to invest whole-heartedly in the research that sustains that knowledge-based economy remains to be seen. However, if the industrialised nations think they have got their problems, then, like Barbara Kirsop, Leslie Chan and Subbiah Arunachalam, they would do well to consider the situation of the developing countries which must not only compete in a ferocious global market but do so without the depth of infrastructure and investment which the Western Hemisphere takes for granted. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ If institutional repositories (IRs) were all that their proponents could have hoped, they would be providing researchers with better access to research, improving institutional prestige, and assisting with formal research assessment [1][2][3]. The reality, though, is that IRs are less frequently implemented, harder to fill, and less visible than their advocates would hope or expect [4][5][6]. While technical platforms for IRs, such as DSpace [7] and ePrints [8] have seen an abundance of research, little is known about the users of IRs, neither how they use IR software, nor how usable it is for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/ja-sig-2007-06-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/ja-sig-2007-06-rpt/ JASIG, the organisation formerly known as the Java Architectures Special Interest Group, but which now is known more simply by its acronym, celebrated its 16th conference in Denver in June. JASIG was in many senses the first of the small wave of ‘Community Source’ organisations formed within Higher Education, mainly in North America, and largely spinning out of Andrew J Mellon Foundation-funded projects, in the first half of the decade. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/newsline/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/newsline/ Building Trust in Digital Repositories Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit Pre-SOA Conference Workshop: Building Trust in Digital Repositories Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit 27 August 2007, 11.00-16.00 The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/drambora-belfast-2007/ Running from 11.00am to 4.00pm, this practical tutorial will provide a contextual overview of the need for an evidence-based evaluation of digital repositories and offer an overview of the DCC pilot audits to date. The tutorial will then move on to demonstrate how institutions can make use of the DRAMBORA toolkit to design, develop, evaluate, and refine new or existing trusted digital repository systems and workflows. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/manuel-oppenheim/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/manuel-oppenheim/ Much can be learned from looking back and reflecting on events in the repository arena over the past few years. Repository systems, institutional managers, repository managers, advisory organisations and repository users have all come a long way in this short time. Looking back acts as a way of grounding prior activity in the present context. It can also provide invaluable insights into where repositories are headed. The activity of deliberating on past events may be of value to a range of individuals engaged in repository activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ This paper describes three inter-related repository projects. These projects were all funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government through the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative as part of the Commonwealth Government’s Backing Australia’s Ability - An Innovation Action Plan for the Future. The article will describe the background to all three projects and the way in which their development has been inter-related and co-ordinated. The article will conclude by examining how Monash University (the lead institution in all three projects) is re-conceiving the relationship between its different repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Researchers in all disciplines increasingly expect to be able to undertake a variety of research-associated tasks online. These range from collaborative activities with colleagues around the globe through to information-seeking activities in an electronic library environment. Many of the tools which enable these activities to take place are already available within the local IT infrastructure. However, in many cases, the tools are provided through discrete, bespoke interfaces with few links between them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/editorial/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/editorial/ Having emerged from the political arguments of the 1990s about what culture could be funded and whether it was better to fund soccer or opera, we have moved into an age where, in the UK at least, there are arguments as to what actually constitutes British culture. Fortunately more people are deciding to do culture for themselves than remain passive witnesses to the pundits' debate. The place where they are doing it is online and they are not waiting to see whether their offering attracts the experts' approval - and sometimes, admittedly, one might argue more's the pity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Introduction to Federated Searching Technology & DevelopmentsDate: 11 May 2007 Venue: Conference Room, Southport College, Mornington Road, Southport, PR9 0TT Delegate Fee: £50.00 This one day conference is aimed at further education library and information. As electronic content and sources of information, provided by academic libraries, become greater and vaster, the need for federated searching technologies has increased. This seminar will introduce delegates to the concepts of federated searching (also known as meta-searching) of library content, and will illustrate some of the current developments and initiatives within this field. 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/51/brophy-et-al/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brophy-et-al/ Cultural heritage has an important role to play in today’s society. Not only does it help us to understand our past but it also has an impact on social development, the economy and education. Developments in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have provided new opportunities for the manipulation of cultural heritage. Digitisation of cultural material has widened access beyond the boundaries of traditional memory institutions and has provided scope for adding value to collections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Opening Keynote AddressThe 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham. JISC Chairman Professor Sir Ron Cooke outlined JISC’s achievements over the last year, including the launch of the UK Access Management Federation [1], the launch of JISC Collections [2] as a mutual trading company and the launch of SuperJANET5 [3], the upgrade to the JANET network which quadruples its capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/young-thrower/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/young-thrower/ Virtualisation is a hot buzzword in the IT industry right now, with major players including Microsoft and IBM making multi-million pound investments into the technology. In essence the idea of virtualisation is that you allow one server, with one set of hardware to masquerade as a number of separate servers with ‘virtual hardware’, each of which can run its own operating system and set of applications. As you might imagine, the details of this technology are somewhat complex and its potential uses are myriad, but we’ll return to those points later. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference is held annually by the Digital Curation Centre [1] to bring together researchers in the field and promote discussion of policy and strategy. The second conference in this series [2], with the theme 'digital data curation in practice', was held between 21-22 November 2006 in Glasgow. Day OneOpening Keynote AddressHans Hoffman of CERN gave the opening keynote address. The e-Science 'revolution' is being both pushed by advances in technology and pulled by demands from researchers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/awre-rvw/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/awre-rvw/ We are not short of information on digital libraries and the technologies involved in building them. There have been multiple papers in many journals, of which Ariadne itself is key, many books and, now, many blogs enthusiastically informing us of the technical directions it is best to take. Nevertheless the constant evolution of available technologies, makes book publishing in the field a tricky business, risking irrelevance prior to release. However, it is valuable to be able to place markers along the evolutionary way and recognise the technical approaches that can be consolidated and built upon with an assurance that they will be around for some time to come. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/hilton-thompson/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/hilton-thompson/ Society trusts libraries and archives to ensure that the report we read or the information we rely on for research will still be available when next we need it. The digital world presents new challenges of acquisition and life cycle management for libraries, archives and readers. This article looks at the first steps taken by the Wellcome Library to include born digital material [1] into its collections. Plans for the Future The Wellcome Library acknowledges that digital material will form part of its collections in the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/rinascimento-digitale-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/rinascimento-digitale-rpt/ Hosting a conference next to Florence's Uffizi Gallery and the sculpture-studded Piazza dei Signori is not a bad place for a conference on preservation and access to digital cultural heritage. And the condition of the courtyards, palaces, frescoes around the city show that someone has done a pretty good job at old-style preservation - give or take the occasional flood. But could the same be said of the preservation of digital culture being created in the present? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/lervik-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/lervik-et-al/ Since the early 1980s the aim of knowledge management researchers and practitioners has been to develop technologies and systems to codify and share explicit knowledge efficiently through electronic means. With the growing appreciation of the importance of tacit knowledge [1], we have a new problem: how to facilitate other forms of systematic organisational learning and knowledge exchange where knowledge cannot be codified. In this article we take a further step by looking at the problem of analysing and managing complex knowledge in organisations that have multiple specialised knowledge communities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/oppenheim-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/oppenheim-et-al/ One of the common dilemmas faced by developers of information communication technology (ICT) initiatives is how to go about identifying potential early adopters of their service. This article outlines background research into this area and details the approaches taken within the JISC-funded Rights and Rewards in Blended Institutional Repositories Project to locate these key individuals within a Higher Education (HE) environment. The concept of an innovation is discussed and the differences between the terms innovation and invention are outlined. 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/49/gierveld/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/gierveld/ Institutional Repositories (IR) are a result of the vision to collect, secure, and provide access to scholarly publications in a novel, digital way, mostly initiated by the institutional library. Various factors have contributed to the emergence of these repositories, including technological innovations which allow a new form of collection management of a university's output, the desire to counteract the 'serials crisis', and the opportunity of promoting wide dissemination and quick access to publications. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Digital Data Curation in Practice: The Second International Digital Curation ConferenceThe second International Digital Curation Conference will take place over 21-22 November 2006 at the City Centre Hilton in Glasgow. The theme of the conference will be Digital Data Curation in Practice. The programme comprises a series of peer-reviewed papers covering a range of disciplines from social sciences and neurosciences to astronomy. The programme will also focus on a number of different aspects of the curation life cycle including the management of repositories, educating the data scientist and the role of policy and strategy. 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/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ This workshop was held at the University of Lancaster Centre for e-Science. The organisers were Rob Crouchley, Rob Allan and Caroline Ingram, there were 17 other attendees. The main aim of this workshop was to explore the relationship between digital repositories, e-Research and Portals in the UK with a view to discovering e-infrastructure gaps and articulating requirements. The hosts had been commissioned by JISC to undertake the ITT: JISC Information Environment Portal activity - supporting the needs of e-Research [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ A growing and significant part of the record and culture of the UK is now in digital form. The lives of staff working in our institutions, current students, and private individuals will be increasingly influenced by these trends and the growing demand for professionals to curate digital assets. The School of Library, Archives and Information Studies (SLAIS) at University College London aims to raise awareness of digital stewardship. Following the highly successful inaugural series of C21st Curation public lectures last year, SLAIS organised a second series of public lectures by eight leading speakers, open to students, professionals and general public during April and May 2006. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dpc-web-archiving-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dpc-web-archiving-rpt/ The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [1] ran its first Web archiving forum in 2002, when archiving the Web was still a relatively unexplored concept for most organisations. This second Web-archiving forum sought to review and update on national and international activities since then and provided delegates with an excellent opportunity to exchange experiences and identify emerging areas of research and future developments in Web archiving activities. Session 1: Technical Aspects The first session focused on technical aspects of archiving Web content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/editorial/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/editorial/ While the number of delegates at the Institutional Web Management Workshop did not quite match that of ECDL 2004 [1] when it too was hosted at the University of Bath, it would be fair to say the Workshop gave UKOLN almost as much to do. Inevitably the bulk of the workload fell upon the Workshop's new Chair Marieke Guy and also Natasha Bishop, UKOLN Events and Marketing Manager. There is little doubt there were many opportunities for networking within a workshop in which it was evident very many delegates were known to each other. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/curating-email-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/curating-email-rpt/ This workshop organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] brought together librarians, archivists and IT specialists from academic, commercial and government sectors. Email is a major universal communication tool. It’s used for both assigning responsibilities and for decision making. People using email have differing perspectives and expectations from those who manage the infrastructure. While there are common desires for preservation no one solution fits all circumstances. Day One: Emails as Records Seamus Ross, DCC, chaired the first session. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/fedora-users-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/fedora-users-rpt/ The Fedora Users Conference 2006, for users of the open source Fedora repository system [1] was the second to be run under the auspices of the core Fedora development team, following an initial conference at Rutgers University in June 2005. It is, though, one among a collection of conferences and meetings that have taken place over the past year based on using Fedora, with venues as diverse as Copenhagen, Aberystwyth, Sydney, and Hull. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/williams/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/williams/ This article aims to give an overview of Intute [1], the new face of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), in the context of the Internet information environment, and to describe how one JISC service has responded to its changing context. In order to do this it will briefly describe the environment and context for Intute, and will outline the new Intute service, its blueprint, current project activity, and Intute’s aspirations for the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Encapsulating the events of such an information-rich event as the JISC / CNI conference can be a tricky task, but the next few lines will, we hope, deliver a flavour of the occasion as well as a summary of a few significant themes. No single overarching theme dominated the event and indeed everyone we spoke to over the two-day event expressed a different opinion as to what they thought were the really important issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/moyle/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/moyle/ Much of UK Higher and Further Education (HE & FE) has begun to grapple with next-generation access management technology. Many UK developments in this area are underpinned by Shibboleth, which is conceptually simple, but architecturally complex. It is hoped that this article will benefit newcomers to Shibboleth. We offer a brief introduction to Shibboleth technology, in the context of the UK’s burgeoning federated access management infrastructure. We go on to describe the ShibboLEAP Project, which saw six University of London institutions implement Shibboleth under the guidance of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dunning/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dunning/ An article by Dan Greenstein and Jennifer Trant in an early edition (July 1996) of Ariadne introduced readers to the aims and organisation of the fledging Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) [1]. Exactly ten years on from that, as the AHDS undergoes a systematic review by its funders, it seems appropriate to take stock of how the AHDS has evolved, comparing its current position with that envisaged for it when the organisation commenced work in the 1990s. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/semple-jones/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/semple-jones/ The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) was formed in the belief that no single organisation can hope to address single-handedly all the challenges and issues associated with digital preservation. It was launched in February 2002 with an initial membership of 19, and has grown to 30 members as of June 2006. Its underlying principle is that intense collaboration and co-operation across and between sectors is essential as there is a far wider range of key players who need to be involved at various different stages in the life cycle of digital resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dpm-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dpm-rpt/ Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is commonly portrayed as a mechanism for restricting access to and use of digital content. On the contrary, a properly implemented Digital Policy Management infrastructure will facilitate the widest possible use of digital content, supporting the interests of library users, libraries and rights owners. 'Access and use policies' are a traditional element in the management of every library collection. There are many reasons why every item in a library collection may not be accessible to every library user; and the uses to which different items may be put are frequently not uniform across the complete collection. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/reese/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/reese/ Surveying the current metasearch tools landscape, it is somewhat surprising to find so few non-commercial implementations available. This is especially true considering that, as a group, the library community has cultivated a very vibrant open source community over the past ten or so years. One wonders then, why this particular service has been ceded to the world of commercial vendors. One can speculate that the creation and management of a metasearch knowledge base has likely played a large role [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/fenton/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/fenton/ The work of academics - in teaching and research - is not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past. As scholars have become more dependent upon the convenience and enhanced accessibility of electronic scholarly resources, concern about the long-term preservation and future accessibility of the electronic portion of the scholarly record has grown. One recent survey found that 83% of academic staff surveyed believe it is 'very important' to preserve electronic scholarly resources for future use [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ On 14 March 2006 we found ourselves back at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) for the 2006 JISC Conference. The annual conference [1] is both an opportunity for JISC to platform the variety of activities it funds and for delegates to learn about the full range of JISC's work by participating in seminars, debates, workshops and demonstrations. This report tries to capture the air of the event through a series of session snapshots. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond. These clusters seek to encompass many of the diverse issues being considered across the Digital Repositories Programme, including the different repository types (e-Learning and Scientific data), the infrastructural and technical issues (Integrating infrastructure and Machine services) and the social, cultural and legal topics (Legal and policy, Personal resource management strategies and Preservation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Since volume 36 (2002), the editor of ARIST has been Professor Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, Bloomington. Professor Cronin's introduction to the 2004 volume highlighted some of the difficulties with planning a publication like ARIST, noting that it has a habit of not quite turning out as it was initially conceived [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mchugh-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mchugh-rvw/ The sub-title of this book provides a broader explanation for those who may be puzzled by the use of the term "e-metrics". The book suggests that to reach a real understanding of how digital and virtual library collections are used and who is using them, generating data on a local level as well as employing vendor-generated data which conforms, or otherwise, to emerging standards, is important for libraries. Content OverviewThe book starts with a preface which summarises its contents, allowing the reader to choose between 3 sections - What e-metrics are; Why they are required by libraries; How libraries can build local collections of e-metrics data. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/law/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/law/ Training as a mediaeval historian encourages one to look backwards before looking forwards. In doing so it is difficult to overestimate the impact of technology push. The combination of increased speed, increased power and increased storage has transformed the opportunities available to the community at large and academics in particular. Twenty years ago we saw the first CD-ROMs with 650Mb capacity; today a standard entry-level PC will have 80Gb of storage, while 200-1000Gb is not uncommon. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/warwick-2005-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/warwick-2005-rpt/ Over recent years it has become clear that accessing and preserving digital data is increasingly important across a wide range of scientific, artistic and cultural activities. There has been a growing recognition of the need to address the fragility and accessibility of the digital information collected in all aspects of our lives. Access to digital information lies at the heart of the scientific and technical innovation vital for modern economies. A two-day workshop took place over 7 - 8 November at the University of Warwick to address these issues and to map out a future research agenda for digital curation and preservation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/rusbridge/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/rusbridge/ Excuse me…I have been asked to write an article for the tenth anniversary of Ariadne, a venture that I have enjoyed, off and on, since its inception in 1996 as part of the eLib Programme, of which I was then Programme Director. Some years ago I wrote an article entitled “After eLib” [1] for Ariadne. The original suggestion was for a follow-up “even more after eLib”; however, I now work for JISC, and that probably makes it hard to be objective! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Doctoral theses contain some of the most current and valuable research produced within universities, but are underused as research resources. Where electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are open access, they are used many times more often than paper theses that are available only via inter-library loan. Many universities and other organisations across Europe are now working hard to make ETDs more openly available and useful. In an attempt to co-ordinate this activity, an invitation-only workshop was held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in January, to see what could be learned from existing examples of best practice and to see how the participants might work together in the future. 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/46/lynch/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/lynch/ This brief paper explores changing conceptions of digital libraries and how they fit into the broader information flows and information landscapes in Higher Education and beyond. It includes a few observations comparing how thinking about these questions has evolved within the very different planning, funding and implementation contexts in the United Kingdom and the United States. The central argument here is that, over the past decade in the Higher Education and research sphere, we have seen several large-scale technological shifts, with all of the accompanying organisational, social and cultural changes, proceeding largely independently - the transformations of scholarly practice, of teaching and learning, of scholarly communication, and of 'traditional' research library services. 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/45/vanderkuil/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/vanderkuil/ ResultsCream of Science: The ChallengeOne of the key challenges of the DARE Programme [1] is to encourage scholars to deposit digital versions of their research output in a university archive (institutional repository) that, in turn, can make this output accessible on the Internet. With this in view, a project called Cream of Science was initiated in the summer of 2004. One of the prime aims of Cream of Science is to unlock top quality content to the scientific community and make it more easily and digitally accessible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/buildinginfogrid-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/buildinginfogrid-rpt/ The Danish Electronic Research Library (DEFF) [1] offered a two-day event, Building the Info Grid [2], focusing on the recent and upcoming developments in digital information management, more specifically on the possibilites and challenges of providing integrated access to scholarly content and communication, via distributed technological services and infrastructural software. In this report we will not cover all aspects of the conference, but rather focus on the specific topics that were the binding glue throughout the conference: Service-oriented Architecture (SOA); the Grid/Information Grid; Rights Management; Single Sign-on; and Google Scholar [3] development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] was a three-year project (August 2002-July 2005) based at the University of Glasgow and funded by JISC's Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2]. The project established a number of different services for research material at the University of Glasgow. This approach enabled us to explore an institutional repository model which used different software (ePrints, DSpace and PKP Harvester) for different content, including: Published and peer-reviewed papersPre-prints, grey literature and thesesAdditional services were also developed including an open access e-journal (JeLit) and a subject-based repository for the Erpanet Project (ERPAePRINTS). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dc-2005-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dc-2005-rpt/ This year's DC Conference took place over four days in the excellent facilities of the University of Carlos III in Leganes, which is a few minutes train ride south of Madrid in Spain. In excess of two hundred people attended coming from 34 countries around the world. As always it was a busy conference with many parallel strands to choose between. The rest of this report therefore covers only a fraction of all the papers and work that happened there: it is a fairly personal selection drawn from some of the sessions I attended. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dcc-1st-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dcc-1st-rpt/ The conference aimed to raise awareness of key issues in digital curation and to encourage active participation and feedback from the relevant stakeholder communities. The conference attracted an impressive range of keynote speakers and focused on the following areas: the work of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)the concepts and principles of digital curationglobal curation policiessocio-legal issues, sustainability, user requirements and the research agendaThe participants were a mix of researchers, curators, policy makers and representatives from funding agencies that are engaged, or have an interest, in the creation, use and management of digital data. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ The number of available online digital collections is growing all the time and with this comes the need to discover these collections, both by machine (m2m) and by end-users. There is also a trend towards service-orientated architectures and a likely critical part of this will be service registries to assist with discovering services andtheir associated collections. UKOLN and the JISC Information Environment Services Registry Project (IESR) [1] organised a two-day workshop to look at some of the issues that are likely to be present in building a distributed approach. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Under the aegis of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) Portals Programme [1] development projects have taken place to investigate the use of portals as the presentation path for a variety of search tools. A major output from these projects has been the development of a portal interface, a Web site that users could come to in order to make use of the functionality that the portal provided, particularly searching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ The ILI 2005 ConferenceThe ILI (Internet Librarian International) 2005 Conference [1], the seventh in the series, was held in the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London over 10-11 September 2005. This conference is aimed at information professionals and librarians who are using, developing and implementing Internet, Intranet and Web-based services in their daily work. One of the main themes at the conference explored at the conference was the potential for technologies such as Blogs and Wikis within a library context. 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/jisc-conf-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ The 2005 JISC Conference took place on 12 April at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) which this year - inexplicably - had a giant Ferris wheel thirty yards from the main entrance, entirely unconnected with the main event. The annual conference [1] is a chance for JISC to showcase the breadth of its activities [2] in providing support for the use of ICT in education and research, and as usual it was a bustle of networking and learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Public participation in the Internet has continued to boom, aided in no small measure by the 'weblog' (or, simply, 'blog'), one of the most accessible means of online publication, a term that is rapidly entering common parlance. Blogs are authored by people from many walks of life and are of many kinds: for instance, Penny Garrod has shown how they can support reading groups and community links, such as news from local councillors [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ TASI Offers Workshops over Summer and Autumn Months The JISC-funded Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) is offering a number of workshops in the coming months, of which two below are given as examples. Building a departmental resource 11 August 2005 This workshop aims to demonstrate the steps for creating, maintaining and delivering an image collection. Through a range of hands-on activities, attendees will investigate suitable Image Management Systems (IMS), be introduced to Metadata, and consider its practical application. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Virtual research environments (VREs), as one hopes the name suggests, comprise digital infrastructure and services which enable research to take place. The idea of a VRE, which in this context includes cyberinfrastructure and e-infrastructure, arises from and remains intrinsically linked with, the development of e-science. The VRE helps to broaden the popular definition of e-science from grid-based distributed computing for scientists with huge amounts of data to the development of online tools, content, and middleware within a coherent framework for all disciplines and all types of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/web-focus/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/web-focus/ About the WWW 2005 ConferenceThe WWW 2005 Conference was held in the Nippon Conference Centre in Chiba, Japan over 10-14 May 2005. This conference is the main event for the Web research community and provides an opportunity for researchers to present papers on research into developments in the Web infrastructure. In addition to its role for the research community, the conference also attracts delegates who are active in leading edge work in more mainstream areas. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/eurocamp-rpt/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/eurocamp-rpt/ The rapid expansion of the Web and Internet in recent years has brought many benefits. It has never been easier to access scholarly information from anywhere in the world in real time. However, this information is often held in disparate systems and is protected by a variety of access control mechanisms, such as usernames and passwords. Many users have to struggle with increasingly complicated access control systems in order to access information they require. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/mcleish/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/mcleish/ What and Why Is Shibboleth?One of the major issues that faces all today’s Internet users is identity management: how to prove to a Web site that you are who you claim you are, and do so securely enough to prevent someone else being able to convince the Web site that they are you. There are many initiatives attacking the problem, with approaches both technical and legal. Shibboleth [1] is a relatively new piece of software which concentrates on one specific area: trust management within the Higher Education community and between that community and the academic publishers which service it. 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/43/carpenter/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ In the early days of the shift from paper-based to digital means of holding administrative records, research data, publications and other academic resources, those responsible for its safety tended to breathe a sigh of relief once they had got a category of material into digital form. Reduced to bits and bytes, all they would have to do is make regular backups, perhaps keeping a copy off-site in case of disaster, and all would be well. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/dcc-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/dcc-rpt/ The Digital Curation Centre had its official launch in Edinburgh on 5 November 2004. Perhaps an odd date to pick for the launch of such an important international initiative, but it justified the inclusion of some virtual fireworks on the home page of the DCC launch Web site. The DCC is one of three major activities in Phase 2 of the UK e-Science Programme, along with the National Grid service and the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute, as well as being a key activity of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/beyond-email-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/beyond-email-rpt/ Many working in Higher Education are now thoroughly familiar with the particular problems and opportunities presented by the use of the Web and email, the applications that up to now have been the 'killer' applications which made the Internet such a vital part of the communications armoury of universities. However, new applications and ways of communicating are now starting to appear which push the accepted paradigms and demand both new perceptions and levels of technical awareness. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/shibboleth-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/shibboleth-rpt/ Staff and students in Higher and Further Education institutions currently experience an overload of information. In many cases, this information is held on different systems, available via widely differing levels of access control, ranging from open to strictly controlled access. Access controls are also subject to data protection legislation and/or tough licensing conditions. One way of overcoming the problem of accessing information from various systems is to build Web portals. These can provide a superficial environment for the presentation of information from various sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/metcalfe/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/metcalfe/ Imagine a world where software is free. For the moment, let's not split hairs about this. In this imagined world software costs virtually nothing to obtain. And you are free to do things with this software - free to study how it works (which means getting access to the underlying code, not just the binaries or executables); free to modify that code to suit your needs and/or improve it; free to re-distribute that modified code. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/white-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/white-rvw/ The problems of being an editor of a multi-author book probably do not escalate as the square of the number of contributors, but nevertheless it must be quite a significant function. You have the problems of selecting the authors in the first place, replacing those that drop out, coping with the 80% of contributors that miss the original deadline and then carrying out remedial work on authors that have failed to abide by the scope notes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/foster-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/foster-rvw/ In 2000, John Feather concluded the 3rd edition certain that libraries would endure as concrete entities due to the investment of time and money they represent and as bookstores. In this latest edition he is no longer sure, describing the library as no longer a location, but a concept and asking such tough questions as what place do librarians occupy in the context of these new developments and what challenges to our fundamental attitudes and skills must we overcome as we adapt to changing times. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/ecdl2004-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/ecdl2004-rpt/ This year it was the turn of the UK to host this major European conference and researchers and librarians took the opportunity to recharge and hear about and debate the latest research and technology advances in digital libraries. There were 47 peer-reviewed papers - a 32% acceptance rate. Remarkably papers were received from 27 countries. There was something for everyone: from digital library architectures through innovative technologies and techniques and particular kinds of libraries - personal and music - and I was particularly pleased to attend several sessions more focussed towards the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been able to achieve new business practices such as digitising its collections and hosting federated search services by exploiting recent standards including the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), handles for persistent identification, and metadata schemas for new types of content. Each instantiation of the OAI-PMH opens up new ways of creating and managing our digital libraries while making them more accessible for learning, teaching and research purposes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues...The JISC-funded CC-interop Project completed its work during 2004 and now is holding an event to disseminate the key findings of the project. The project built on the work of the successful eLib Phase 3 "Clumps" projects and investigated three broad areas to inform about interoperability between physical and distributed union catalogues. Find out about: how distributed and large physical union catalogues can interact, including the building of a distributed catalogue capable of accepting remote Z39. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ The conference on the sustainability of Big Lottery Fund projects was attended by about fifty participants from across the country and there were displays by members of the Sense of the South West Consortium, who organised the event. Approaches to SustainabilityThe first speaker was Chris Anderson, Head of Programmes at the Big Lottery Fund, successor to NOF, (New Opportunities Fund). He described the nof-digitise [1] projects, funded to the tune of £50m, as a great experiment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/vanderkuil/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/vanderkuil/ The SURF Programme Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) is a joint initiative of Dutch universities to make their academic output digitally accessible. The KB (National Library of the Netherlands), the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) also cooperate in this unique programme. DARE is being coordinated by the SURF Foundation [1]. The programme will run from January 2003 until December 2006. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/powell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/powell/ As a child I can remember watching an episode of Tomorrow's World (the BBC's weekly popular science programme of the time) [1] that showed the use of a video phone and how people would soon actually be able to see the person to whom they were talking.  "Wow," I thought, "that is the future." Well, it certainly was the future!  It's probably 30 years since that programme was aired and we still don't see this kind of technology widely deployed in the form of telephone handsets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/web-focus/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/web-focus/ About QA FocusThe JISC-funded QA Focus Project officially finished on 31 July 2004. The project, which started on 1 January 2002, supported JISC’s digital library programmes. QA Focus developed a quality assurance (QA) framework which could be used by projects funded by JISC’s Information Environment programmes to ensure that project deliverables were functional, widely accessible and interoperable. The quality assurance framework was supported by a wide range of briefing documents which provided brief, focussed advice on use of standards and best practices in a range of areas including selection of standards, digitisation, Web, metadata, software and service deployment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/godby/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/godby/ A Metadata Standard for Learning ObjectsAs learning objects grow in number and importance, institutions are faced with the daunting task of managing them. Like familiar items in library collections, learning objects need to be organised by subject and registered in searchable repositories. But they also introduce special problems. As computer files, they are dependent on a particular hardware and software environment. And as materials with a pedagogical intent, they are associated with metrics such as learning objectives, reading levels and methods for evaluating student performance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/e-culture-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/e-culture-rpt/ The eCulture symposium held for the second time in Salzburg from 27 - 28 September 2004, represents the annual gathering of leading thinkers brought together by the eCulture Group of Salzburg Research [1] to tackle specific themes in the area of research and technology development for the cultural heritage application field. This year's theme drew an audience of regional, national, and international experts from a broad selection of research institutions, multimedia companies and technology providers, as well as political decision makers, to explore the transition from digitisation to creating cultural experiences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/edina-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/edina-rpt/ EDINA [1] held its first general information event for the Higher and Further Education communities on Tuesday 11 May 2004. EDINA Exchange took place in the National E-Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh. The day began with an introduction by EDINA Director Peter Burnhill, who took us through the programme for the day, and highlighted some of EDINA's notable recent achievements. The morning session then began with presentations on the various subject and resource type clusters in which EDINA is active. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ A Little HistoryCornucopia is a searchable database of collections held by cultural heritage institutions throughout the UK. It is developed and managed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and was initially established in response to the Government’s Treasures in Trust report which called for a way to be found of recognising the richness and diversity of our collections. The original Cornucopia was set up in 1998. MLA, (then the Museums & Galleries Commission (MGC)), contracted Cognitive Applications to develop the site featuring data from the 62 museums in England holding collections which are ‘Designated’ as being of outstanding importance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Day OneIntroductionWelcome and KeynoteOverview of Persistent Identifier initiativesURNOpenURL - The Rough GuideInfo URIsThe DCMI Persistent Identifier Working GroupThe CENDI ReportARKPURLsOverview of the Handle SystemDOIDay TwoIdentifiers at the Coal FaceEPICURThe National Digital Data Archive (NDA)NBN:URN Generator and ResolverDIVAThe Publisher’s PerspectiveDigital Object Identifiers for Publishing and the e-Learning CommunitiesPublication and Citation of Scientific and Primary DataInformation and the Government of CanadaConclusion This event, organised by ERPANET [1], brought together around 40 key players with an interest in the topic of persistent identifiers in order to synthesize the current state of play, debate the issues and consider what lies on the horizon in this field of activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Seminar Invitation from DEF - Danish Electronic Research LibraryThe DEF XML Web Services project invites you to participate in the seminar: Building Digital Libraries with XML Web Services on Friday 27 August 2004 from 9:30 to 16:00 at the Technical University of Denmark, Building 303, DK-2800 Lyngby. The headlines of the seminar are: § Setting the scene: XML - tools, visions, initiatives - Introduction to XML and Open Source Web Services http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/pals-conf-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/pals-conf-rpt/ PALS [1] is the ongoing collaboration between UK publishers (ALPSP [2] and the Publishers Association [3]), and Higher/Further Education (JISC). PALS aims to foster mutual understanding and work collaboratively towards the solution of issues arising from electronic publication. This was a 'hot issue' conference [4], on a topic - institutional repositories - that has seen much interest, lots of activity and experiment. The general direction of the concept is not yet clear, but at least some of the issues are being exposed and are beginning to be clarified. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hey/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hey/ The University of Southampton has been one of the pioneers of open access to academic research, particularly, in the tireless advocacy of Professor Stevan Harnad and in the creation of the EPrints software [1], as a vehicle for creating open access archives (or repositories) for research. These activities have been supported by a long-standing programme of research into digital libraries, hypermedia, and scholarly communication. In the early days, before the vocabulary of open access issues was so well developed, we talked of the 'esoteric literature' - the 'not-for-profit' academic literature - and the Faustian bargain that the authors made with the publishers [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/teruggi/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/teruggi/ Memory is our major link to the past; it has greatly influenced the evolution of humankind. Since the beginning of humanity, we have sought to preserve memories through the creation of artefacts that will transcend our own lifetime and so assure ourselves some form of posterity, perhaps even eternity. For some time writing has been the major complex medium of preserved reality. Not only does writing record human actions, beliefs and emotions, but it is an intellectual tool in itself, giving a temporal perspective on our thought as well as providing increasing levels of abstraction. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/erpanet-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/erpanet-rpt/ On 15-17 December 2003, the ERPANET Project [1] and the ICSU (International Council for Science) Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) [2] held a joint workshop on the selection, appraisal and retention of digital scientific data at the National Library of Portugal (Biblioteca Nacional) in Lisbon. The workshop brought together around 80 participants, a mix of scientists, archivists and data specialists. Day OneAfter the opening introductions, the first presentation was an overview of CODATA data archiving activities given by Bill Anderson, co-chair of the CODATA Task Group on Preservation and Archiving of Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/pearce/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/pearce/ Personalisation has become an increasingly salient topic in the UK library and information management sector, yet to date much of the work undertaken has been in the academic and knowledge management sectors [1]. However, the South Yorkshire-based IT for Me Project [2] is looking to bring personalised access to online resources to public libraries. The project, which began in October 2003, will create a Web-based platform to provide access to personalised resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/terminologies-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/terminologies-rpt/ Co-sponsored by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and UKOLN, the JISC Terminology Services Workshop was held at the CBI Conference Centre in London on 13 February 2004. Terminology services are networked services which use knowledge organisation systems (such as ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and classification systems) that can be accessed at certain stages of the production and use of metadata. Chris Rusbridge, Director of Information Services at the University of Glasgow, welcomed the participants and outlined the primary purposes of the workshop: to give an overview of research and work on networked terminology services in multiple domains and to inform future JISC development activities in this area. 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/39/awre/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/awre/ When using various Web sites for work or leisure most of us have favourites that we start with and prefer interacting with. The reasons why we prefer one site over another may not be clear to us, but the interface of many Web sites is commonly tested to make using them as easy and straightforward as possible. Making that interface between the user and the functionality of the Web site intuitive and easy to navigate will encourage users and increase traffic. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/icdl2004-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/icdl2004-rpt/ An amazing event, in an amazing placeIndia is an amazing place, and one that broadens the experience of any Western first-time visitor. I was no exception, and my personal conceptual scales for many things have been extended way beyond where they ended before. (I thought that South Londoners, Parisians and Milanese would be obvious contenders for the world championships in dangerous urban driving - until I tried the Delhi rush-hour in a 3-wheel taxi! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ The Theses Alive! [1] Project, based at Edinburgh University Library and funded under the JISC Fair Programme [2], is aiming to produce, among other things, a software solution for institutions in the UK to implement their own E-theses or Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) online submission system and repository. In order to achieve this it has been necessary to examine existing packages that may provide all or part of the solution we desire before considering what extra development we may need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/newsline/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/newsline/ Slide Libraries and The Digital FutureWednesday 24th March, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU. For more information and for booking details contact laura.valentine@royalacademy.org.uk. Booking closes on 3 March 2004. AUDIENCE: UK Slide Librarians in HE and those responsible for visual collections "Higher education in the UK has always needed images, especially in the field of art and design, and institutions have built up their own slide libraries to service that demand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Spam, privacy and the lawAnother year gone and the millennium celebrations and Y2K bug already seem to belong to some dim and distant technological past. As 2003 drew to a close the spotlight was on the use and abuse of Information Technology: never was so much havoc caused by so few. The language employed by the media to describe events in the online world reflected global concerns about warfare and disease. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/talis-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/talis-rpt/ The day's programme [1] started with an introduction by Ken Chad, sales director at Talis who welcomed delegates. Public Libraries and Grids for LearningDavid Cheetham, project manager for the East Midlands Broadband Consortium (EMBC) gave a speech on the role of the broadband consortium, one of 10 regional networks in England established to deliver high-speed network connectivity to all Britain's schools. David gave a speech on the activities of EMBC [2] which was set up in the light of the government's pledge to connect all schools to broadband by 2005/06. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/ahds/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/ahds/ Established in 1995, the Arts and Humanities Data Service [1] was created with the objective of developing an infrastructure to manage the growing number of digital resources being created within the arts and humanities. One medium for discussing this initial development was Ariadne, and Daniel Greenstein and Jennifer Trant's 1996 article [2] gave a detailed account of the aims and organisation of the AHDS. Since the publication of that article, there has been little deviation in the key aims of the AHDS - collecting, describing, disseminating and preserving digital resources related to the arts and humanities, and helping develop a culture of common standards to ensure this happens within as wide a framework as possible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ The European Library (TEL) Project [1] completed at the end of January 2004. The key aim of TEL was to investigate the feasibility of establishing a new Pan-European service which would ultimately give access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe [2]. The project was partly funded by the European Commission as an accompanying measure under the cultural heritage applications area of Key Action 3 of the Information Societies Technology (IST) research programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ The 5/99 Programme, as it became known, was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] in the year 2000. Quite simply the name, 5/99, refers to the number of a JISC circular letter. It was the fifth circular issued by the JISC in 1999. So the name is pretty meaningless to those outside the JISC or not involved in one of 54 projects that were funded via the circular. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ The Event at a GlanceWelcome - Pat HarrisThe OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services Standard - Eric Van de VeldeThe Promise and History of the OpenURL - Oliver PeschRelated Linking Standards: CrossRef and DOI - Ed PentzWhy Should Publishers Implement the OpenURL Framework? - Andrew PacePanel 1: Link Resolvers ExplainedPanel 2: Practical Perspectives for Librarians Translating Your Needs into Visions for the Future - Herbert Van de SompelQuestionsThis one-day conference, held by NISO (US National Information Standards Organization) on Wednesday 29 October at the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC, USA, attended by 150 people, was so popular it was ‘sold out’ a week before the event. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/portole/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/portole/ Abstract The PORTOLE (Providing Online Resources To Online Learning Environments) Project was a JISC-funded project which sought to produce a range of tools for tutors which could be used to enable them to discover information resources and to embed these into their course modules from within a University Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The VLE in use at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford is the Bodington system. A key deliverable of the project was to produce tools that were designed with the ease of incorporation into other VLE environments in mind. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/williams/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/williams/ The Further Education sector has put significant resources into the development of managed learning environments to support their learners, but however good the technical infrastructure, the learner experience will only be as good as the resources they can access. This is where the RDN [1] can help. The RDN provides access to leading high-quality Web sites and resources on the Internet for use in learning and teaching. It is a free service, funded by the JISC [2], specifically designed to meet the needs of students and staff in Further and Higher Education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/hannabuss-rvw/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/hannabuss-rvw/ Any work on the information society attracts that ambivalent reaction that it might be trite and it could be seminal. But, with the logic that nothing that becomes cliché can be other than centrally relevant, above all when published by a professional body, (which should know these things), Challenge and change promises well. It aims for professional practice and academic study and will stand side-by-side with works like Feather’s Information society (2000) and Dearnley and Feather’s The wired world (2001) as particularly relevant to students on information/library courses, and new and prospective trainees and practitioners. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Welcome and IntroductionRachel Heery, UKOLN, University of BathDelegates were welcomed and reminded that this was the fourth and final in a series of workshops which have been organised by the Open Archives Forum Project. Rachel Heery explained that the project was a supporting action funded by the European Commission to bring together EU researchers and implementers working in the area of open access to archives. Fourth Open Archives Forum Technical Validation Report Birgit Matthaei, HU Berlin Technical validation based on Resource Database http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/andrew/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/andrew/ With the rapid uptake of digital media changing the way scholarly communication is perceived, we are in a privileged position to be part of a movement whose decisions now will help to decide ultimately future courses of action. A number of strategies have recently emerged to facilitate greatly enhanced access to traditional scholarly content, e.g. open access journals and institutional repositories. In this spirit of promoting access to scholarly resources, JISC has funded a number of projects under the banner of its Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/beer/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/beer/ The huge growth in Internet resources to support learning, teaching and research can make the business of finding high-quality relevant resources both time-consuming and frustrating. JISC Resource Guides, and a dedicated team of Resource Guide Advisers across seven subject areas direct researchers in UK Higher Education to a selection of key, high-quality resources. The Resource Guide team aims to raise awareness of key resources through a Web-based and print-based Guide with a subject-specific focus, and through awareness-raising via presentations and series of workshops with a hands-on focus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/web-focus/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/web-focus/ The UK Web Focus post was established by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] to advise the UK Higher Education Committee on Web developments. The post is based at UKOLN and located at the University of Bath. As post-holder I began work on 1 November 1996. UK Web Focus Activities“Advising on Web developments” is a very broad remit, especially when one considers that, for many, the Web is pervasive in many aspects of both our work and, nowadays, social activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/editorial/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/editorial/ Welcome to the July 2003 issue of Ariadne. I have to confess to an interest in preservation issues and so I feel a timely lesson comes to us all in the shape of the rescue of the BBC Domesday Project videodiscs. Jeffrey Darlington, Andy Finney and Adrian Pearce have put together their compelling account of how all the data gathered by the Domesday Project in the mid-1980s was rescued at the last moment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ The Joint Information Systems Committee [1] was founded by the Higher Education Funding Councils in 1993. It quickly established its sub-committees, one of which, the Information Systems Sub-committee (ISSC), reflected JISC’s interest in networked information services and datasets. At its May 1993 meeting, the ISSC designated Manchester and Bath as National Data Centres. (EDINA became a JISC-designated national data centre a few years later). Over the last ten years there have been advances to the Information Systems infrastructure within universities enabling new and advanced use of online information within research and teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/powell/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/powell/ This largely graphical article attempts to explain the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [1] by layering a set of fairly well-known services, projects and software applications over the network architecture diagram [2]. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) technical architecture specifies a set of standards and protocols that support the development and delivery of an integrated set of networked services that allow the end-user to discover, access, use and publish digital and physical resources as part of their learning and research activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ This event was organised jointly by UKOLN and the National e-Science Centre (NESC) [1]. Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, gave the introduction, reminding us that this was the second UKOLN-NESC workshop. The first happened about a year ago, bringing together the digital library and Grid computing communities for the first time. The presentations were as follows: Building a Semantic Infrastructure - David De RoureWhy Ontologies? - Jeremy RogersPublishing and Sharing Schemas - Rachel Heery and Pete JohnstonImplementing Ontologies in (my)Grid Environments - Carole GobleKnowledge Organisation Systems - Doug TudhopeConcluding Remarks - Carole GobleBuilding a Semantic InfrastructureIn his introductory talk, Building a Semantic Infrastructure, Professor David De Roure of the University of Southampton, provided a history lesson at a gallop on the Grid and the Semantic Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ This article presents some new digital library development activities which are predicated on the concept that research and learning processes are cyclical in nature, and that subsequent outputs which contribute to knowledge, are based on the continuous use and reuse of data and information [1]. We can start by examining the creation of original data, (which may be, for example, numerical data generated by an experiment or a survey, or alternatively images captured as part of a clinical study). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/spp/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/spp/ Portals are widely suggested as important tools to facilitate the hard task of finding and accessing useful information for learning, teaching and research [1]. In this context, the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [2] is enrolled in the Subject Portals Project (SPP) [3] with the aim of developing and deploying subject-based portals to provide the UK's HE and FE communities with integrated access to distributed resources within the JISC Information Environment (IE) [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ The national Collection Description Focus is based at UKOLN [1] and funded by the British Library [2], the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [3] , the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [4] and Resource [5]. It aims to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. The Showcase EventThere is an increasing emphasis on mapping and managing information resources in a way that will allow users to find, access, use and disseminate resources from a range of diverse collections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/eevl/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/miller/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/miller/ There is, unsurprisingly, an increasing recognition that digital resources of all kinds are eminently suitable to repurposing and reuse. The Iconex Project [1], for example, was funded under JISC's 5/99 Programme to look at the creation, storage and dissemination of reusable learning objects. Service providers of the Arts & Humanities Data Service [2] concern themselves with collecting the digital outputs of scholarly activity in order to preserve them for posterity, but also with facilitating their ongoing use and reuse by learners, teachers and researchers across the community [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ The field of classics has a long tradition of electronic editions of both primary and secondary materials for the study of the ancient world. Large electronic corpora of Greek and Latin texts are available from groups such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the Packard Humanities Institute, and the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, and in the Perseus Digital Library [1]. Because such large collections of primary texts have already been digitized, it is now possible to devote concerted effort to developing new computational tools that can transform the way that humanists work with these digitized versions of their primary sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/editorial/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/editorial/ Welcome to the December/January issue of Ariadne. This issue has as its focus the practicalities of resource sharing - not only at a technical level, but also in terms of business models. In Sharing history of science and medicine gateway metadata using OAI-PMH, David Little outlines the resource sharing arrangements between the MedHist gateway and the Humbul hub, using the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, and some of the issues it has raised. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ This conference was set up 'to consider the central importance of moving images and sound to our heritage and present-day culture, the necessity of adequate funding for the archives that preserve such materials, and asks why there is a lack of any coherent infrastructure for moving image and sound archives in the UK'. In fact the real subtext of this conference was the race to save 100 years worth of material. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is the world’s largest particle physics centre. It is located just outside of Geneva on the French-Swiss border. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. About the ConferenceThe workshop was organized by LIBER, SPARC-Europe and CERN Library and sponsored by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), OSI (Open Society Institute), and ESF (European Science Foundation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/ramsden-perrot/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/ramsden-perrot/ The interest in personalisation began with online commerce and the need for one-to-one relationships with customers in the early 1990s. Higher education is rapidly moving towards online delivery and mass education, so students could benefit from more personalised services, hence the recent interest in institutional portals, such as uPortal (1), which can personalise and present information. Within this context, the libraries of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and The Open University are embarking on a new programme of work to investigate personalised library environments through their respective projects, PESIC and MyOpenLibr@ry. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/sherpa/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/sherpa/   JISC announced its FAIR Programme (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) in January of this year. The central objective of the Programme is to test ways of releasing institutionally-produced content onto the web. FAIR describes its scope as: “to support access to and sharing of institutional content within Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and to allow intelligence to be gathered about the technical, organisational and cultural challenges of these processes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/china/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/china/ I was indeed fortunate to be invited to China to speak at the International Digital Library Conference [1] in Beijing in July 2002. The 3-day event was held at the Friendship Hotel, a large and splendid establishment built in traditional garden style and which retained some of the architectural character of times past. The conference was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture with support from other government departments and organized by the National Library of China NLC [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Judging by the number of articles written and conferences organised around them, portals are undoubtedly a hot topic in higher education, and seem likely to remain so for some time to come. This article reports on two portal-focussed conferences held in Canada and the UK during the summer of 2002. It also introduces some of the work underway at Hull to build an institutional portal, and the way in which a JISC-funded project shared between Hull and UKOLN will demonstrate the role of institutional portals in bringing resources provided by the JISC and others to the attention of those working within an institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/edner/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/edner/ The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Information Environment (IE, a development from the DNER - Distributed National Electronic Resource) is intended to help users in the UK academic sector maximise the value of published information resources by developing a coherent environment out of the confusing array of systems and services currently available. The EDNER Project (Formative Evaluation of the DNER,< http://www.cerlim.ac.uk/edner>) is funded to undertake ongoing evaluation of the developing IE over the full three years of the JISC 5/99 Learning & Teaching and Infrastructure Programme period i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/netlab-history/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/netlab-history/ Actually, that was really the way it was: a cake for the consumption of a group of people interested in the development of digital libraries. It was in 1991, long before this concept had been implanted into the heart of the library community. Indeed long before most people knew about the Internet. At this meeting the first seed for what was going to be NetLab [1] was sown - the multidisciplinary research- and developmental group aimed at digital libraries and global network based information systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ ‘ETDs’ is the acronym widely used in the US to stand for ‘Electronic Theses and Dissertations’. The father of the ETD movement, Professor Ed Fox of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), explains the acronym as containing an implicit Boolean ‘OR’: ‘ETs’ OR ‘EDs’ equals ‘ETDs’. This makes for a very convenient shorthand, whereby a digital object which is either an electronic thesis or an electronic dissertation can be referred to as ‘an ETD’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/internet2/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/internet2/ Internet2 is a consortium framework organisation (a bit like JISC in the UK) within which a large number of projects are cultivated and coordinated. Members are mainly US universities, US government agencies, and significant commercial partners such as IBM and Cisco Systems. Its' purpose is as its' title suggests: to foster the implementation of the "next generation" Internet. A meeting for all members is normally held each spring and autumn. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/information-grid/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/information-grid/ Many of the issues faced by the e-Science Programme and the Digital Library community world-wide are generic in nature, in that both require complex metadata in order to create services for users. Both need to process large amounts of distributed data. Recognition of this common interest within both communities resulted in this invitation-only one-day workshop at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh. It brought together interested parties from both the digital library and e-Science communities, and kicked off detailed discussion of the way forward for both. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/maybaum/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/maybaum/ In an article published in this journal last year [1], Editor Philip Hunter observed that the extent of use of web publishing systems in universities is surprisingly low, considering the technical sophistication of most academic environments, and he discussed some reasons that might account for this circumstance. At the University of Michigan (UM), we have developed an infrastructure (UM.SiteMaker) that is aimed at facilitating the use of websites for personal and professional communication by ordinary (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/www2002/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/www2002/ WWW2002 [1] was the 11th annual World Wide Web Conference, held this year in Tourist Hell (Waikiki), Hawaii. WWW2002 ran over three days, with 10 refereed tracks including one on the Semantic Web, and six ‘alternate’ tracks. All the papers from the conference are available online in html [2]. You might also like to look at the RDF Interest group chatlogs and blog pages for the days covering the conference [3] and I also have some photos [4] as does Dave Beckett [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-focus/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-focus/ The Institutional Web Management Workshop series is the main event organised by UK Web Focus. The workshop series began with a two-day event at King's College London in June 1997. The event has been repeated every year since then and, after the first event, was extended to a three-day format. Overview Of This Year's EventThis year's event was held at the University of Strathclyde. The full title of the workshop was " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/aim25/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/aim25/ AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25 area), a project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [1], and led by King's College London, provides a single point of networked access to collection descriptions of archives held in 49 higher education (HE) institutions and learned societies in the greater London area. The project has intended, where possible, to be comprehensive in its coverage of holdings by including deposited collections, in a wide range of subject areas, and also the administrative records of the participating institutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ The Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), a £30m initiative funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies, has spawned 53 projects and a number of studies and other activities. This brief overview aims to give a flavour of the Programme. Articles relating to particular projects will appear in future issues of Ariadne. But first, some background: RSLP derives from the deliberations of the Follett Review (1993)1 and the associated Anderson Report (1996). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/open-archives-forum/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/open-archives-forum/ The Open Archives Forum: Mission and GoalsThe Open Archives Forum provides a European focus for the dissemination of information about European activities in Open Archives. A particular focus is on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The Open Archives Forum aims to promote the idea of globally distributed digital archives within Europe, to support the establishment of new digital archives and their related services, and to initiate European special interest groups. It is important to add particular European interests to already existing models such as the Open Archives Initiative. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-focus/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-focus/ “Cool URIs”What are “cool URIs”? This term comes from advice provided by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). The paper “Cool URIs don’t change” [1] begins by saying: What makes a cool URI?A cool URI is one which does not change.What sorts of URI change?URIs don’t change: people change them.All Web users will, sadly, be familiar with the 404 error message. But, as W3C point out, the 404 error message does not point to a technical failure but a human one - hence the warning: “URIs don’t change: people change them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/archives/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/archives/ The Access to Archives project is one of the most exciting initiatives in the world of archives in England. It aims at developing a virtual national archival catalogue for the country. At a click of the mouse one will be able to find multilevel descriptions of some of the most important historical records of England. For family historians, school teachers and pupils, academic researchers or just curious life long learners the A2A gateway is a unique facility to pursue their interests and research from a PC terminal any time of the day, anywhere in the world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/digital-curation/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/digital-curation/ Digital preservation remains a significant and growing challenge for libraries, archives, and scientific data centres. This invitational seminar held in London on the 19th October sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition and the British National Space Centre, brought together international speakers to discuss leading edge developments in the field. Three developments were key to the timing and organisation of this international event: firstly, the imminent approval of the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model as an ISO standard; secondly, the launch of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a cross-sectoral coalition of over 15 major organisations; and, finally, the development of the e-science programme to develop the research grid in the UK. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Although the World Wide Web is less than a decade old, it already has had a profound impact on scientific publishing and scholarly communication. In particular, open standards and low-cost networking tools are opening many possibilities for reducing and even eliminating entirely the cost barriers to scientific publications. (1) One development that has great potential value for poorly-resourced countries is “open archiving”, or the deposition of scholarly research papers into networked servers accessible over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ This report covers a selection of the papers at the above conference, from those which I chose and was able to attend in a three-strand conference held over three days (with two additional days for workshops, which I did not attend). It includes the three keynote papers, as well as the paper which won the Vannevar Bush award for best conference paper. The conference was held in Roanoke, Virginia, in the Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center, which is owned by Virginia Tech (located in Blacksburg, some 40 miles away). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/gardner/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/gardner/ What are Web Services?The term web services has gaining visibility in recent months, there has been a W3C workshop on web services [1] and the big industry players such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun have been announcing their web services strategies. So what’s it all about and should you be involved? This article aims to be a starting point for answering these questions. Well, the term web services is fairly self-explanatory, it refers to accessing services over the web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/miller/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/miller/ In July of this year, Interoperability Focus [1] organised a meeting at the Office of the e–Envoy [2], the Cabinet Office unit responsible for driving forward the UK’s e–Government initiatives. Across an increasing number of initiatives and programmes, there is a growing recognition of the need for common ‘architectures’ within which truly useful applications and services may be constructed. Partly, these architectures form a philosophical basis within which developments may be undertaken. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/open-archives/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/open-archives/ A one day Open Archives event co-ordinated by the DNER, CURL and UKOLN was held on Wednesday 11th July at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Birdcage Walk, London. Birdcage walk is in a very impressive part of London, circumscribed by Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. Lucky for us the hot sun added to the splendor of the location. Catherine Grout giving the opening presentation The Institute of Mechanical Engineers building itself is also very grand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/kirriemuir/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/kirriemuir/ This article discusses some of the issues that arise when an academic department, unit or institution moves from possessing a few digital library projects and services, to possessing an integrated digital library centre. The article is based on: the experiences of the author, who has worked in four digital library centres (according to the definition in the next section) in UK higher education.replies from various people who have been employed by digital/electronic library projects and services over the past decade, to emailed questions about various aspects of digital library centre cultureexamples of incidents or case studies of things that have occurred within UK digital library centresIt does not prescribe a 'one model fits all' plan for all budding digital library centres. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/patel/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/patel/ “Managing Digital Video Content” [1], a two-day workshop on current and emerging standards for managing digital video content took place on 15-16th August, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop was sponsored by ViDe, the video development initiative [2], the Southeastern Universities Research Association, SURA [3], Internet2 [4] and the Coalition for Networked Information, CNI [5]. Approximately 180 delegates attended, the majority from the States, peppered by one or two from Europe and Australia. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Managing the development and delivery of electronic library services is one of the major current challenges for university library and information services. This article provides a brief overview of some of the key issues facing information professionals working in higher education institutions (HEIs). In doing so, it also picks up some of the real-world lessons which have emerged from the eLib (Electronic Libraries) programme now that it has come to a close. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/clark/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/clark/ The vision that created the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) grew out of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)s history of engagement with Higher and Further Education Institutions and significant research libraries in the UK. The DNER has an ambitious goal - to empower the HE/Post-16 community by providing quick, coherent and reliable access to a managed information environment that is geared to supporting learning and teaching activities. The JISC has established a great number of services that are helping to fulfil this vision of an integrated information environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-focus/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-focus/ The fifth Institutional Web Management Workshop was held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001. This year's workshop, which had the theme "Organising Chaos", was the largest to date with 150 delegates. It was also the longest workshop, lasting from Monday morning until Wednesday lunchtime. The extra half-day compared with the previous three workshops allowed us to run a full day of interactive parallel sessions. The workshop is aimed primarily at members of institutional Web management teams within UK HE and FE institutions, although participants from related communities are also welcome. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/chi/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/chi/ The “CHI” series of conferences sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM-SIGCHI) [1], in partnership with, among others, the British HCI Group, is the premier international conference on human aspects of computing. CHI2001: anyone. anywhere. [2], held in Seattle from 31 March – 5 April, focussed on the pervasiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) in contemporary life and the consequent imperative to make ICT accessible to people, whatever their characteristics or location. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/biome/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/biome/ The BIOME Service has been very fortunate in building partnerships with other information providers within the life sciences field. The Service is itself the product of a consortium [1] led by The University of Nottingham. For example, The Natural History Museum is a major contributor to the Service managing the Natural Selection Gateway within BIOME. Through partnerships BIOME has benefited from the subject expertise of many staff as well as being able to participate in related initiatives and increase the range of services available from the BIOME web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/inhale/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/inhale/ The Information for Nursing and Health in a Learning Environment (INHALE) Project [1] at the University of Huddersfield is one of forty-four projects supported nationally by the JISC as part of the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) learning and teaching development programme [2]. INHALE is creating portable, interactive learning materials for nursing and health students for use within a virtual learning environment such as Blackboard ©. The two year project, which commenced in September 2000, is using the ubiquity of the web to produce a series of units, each of which will help users to acquire the necessary skills to find and use quality information sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/metadata/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/metadata/ In the April 2001 issue of D-Lib Magazine, Peter Hirtle produced an editorial highlighting the potential for confusion between the standards being developed by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) [1] and the draft Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) [2]. He noted the frustration that can ensue when words that have a clearly understood meaning in one domain begin to be used by others in a different way. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/personalization/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/personalization/ World Wide Web services operate in a cut-throat environment where even satisfied customers and growth do not guarantee continued existence. As users become ever more proficient in their use of the web and are exposed to a wider range of experiences, they may well become more demanding, and their definition of what constitutes good service may be refined. Personalization is an ever-growing feature of on-line services that is manifested in different ways and contexts, harnessing a series of developing technologies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/gold/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/gold/ In the BeginningWay back in 1998 the University of Bath’s Centre for the Development of New Technologies in Learning became part of a three institution consortium responsible for the TLTP Phase 3 ‘Project GOLD’ [1]. GOLD stands for Guidance Online for those Learning at a Distance. The lead partner was the Royal College of Nursing Institute (the Higher Education arm of the RCN) supported by the Open Learning Foundation and the University of Bath. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ This seminar brought together experts in the field of linking technology with participants in the four projects which constitute the JOIN-UP programme, for exploration and discussion of recent technical developments in reference linking. The JOIN-UP project cluster forms part of the DNER infrastructure programme supported by the JISC 5⁄99 initiative. Its focus is development of the infrastructure needed to support services that supply users with journal articles and similar resources. The programme addresses the linkage between references found in discovery databases (such as Abstracting and Indexing databases and Table of Contents databases) and the supply of services for the referenced item (typically, a journal article), in printed or electronic form. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/hybrid/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/hybrid/ The five Hybrid Library projects – BUILDER [1], AGORA [2], MALIBU [3], HeadLine [4], and HyLife [5] - form part of the eLib Phase 3 developments and they build on the work of the first and second phases of eLib by investigating issues surrounding the integration of digital and traditional library resources. They are very different projects, but they all aim to provide some of the basic building blocks to create new models of library services, in which our users can create and sustain personal information spaces, and libraries can manage these spaces as part of their daily service delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/johnston/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/johnston/ After the Big Bang In her presentation to the JISC Technology Watch seminar in February, Dr Diana Oblinger of the University of North Carolina employed the metaphor of "the Big Bang" to characterise the impact of recent and ongoing rapid technological, social and economic change [1]. The last five years have witnessed major shifts in the way the commercial sector markets and delivers its products and services, and the results of those changes are only beginning to "coalesce" into recognisable patterns. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/news/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/news/ The Bridgeman Art Library acquires photographic archive of the Hamburg Kunsthalle Museum, GermanyThe Bridgeman Art Library announced today its acquisition of the photographic archive of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. All of the museum’s works will be available through Bridgeman on an exclusive basis, providing image users with a rich source of German art. Highlights from the museum’s four great galleries include a collection of magnificent mediaeval panel paintings, masterpieces by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich and important works by Paul Klee, Max Beckman and Edvard Munch. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/pub-libs/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/pub-libs/ After five and a half years at UKOLN I’m leaving. I’m having a small career break and will be indulging myself in some lie-ins, a bit of travel and a chance to find out just who are all those people wandering around the shops between 9 am and 5.30 pm, Monday to Friday. This then is my final Ariadne column and it’s a good opportunity to review the last five years and look forward to what the next five will bring. 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/27/digital-preservation/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/digital-preservation/ 1. Introduction Electronic resources form an increasingly large part of our cultural and intellectual heritage. In addition to electronic publications, the Web, and e-commerce, there is an array of new UK initiatives and legislation, from Modernising Government to the Freedom of Information Act, which is putting an onus on public organisations to provide access to, manage and archive their information in electronic form. In the research arena, there are also significant developments particularly in the sciences towards very large primary research data sets in electronic form e. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/web-focus/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/web-focus/ HTML is Dead?Previous Web Focus articles have reported on developments which have been the featured prominently in International World Wide Web conferences. These include XML, which was the highlight of the Sixth WWW conference in 1997 [1]. Have developments such as this affected mainstream Web services, or are they restricted to the research community? Indeed, wouldn’t it be sensible for HTML authors for mainstream Web services to be still be making use of the same HTML tags (and possibly authoring tools) they mastered several years ago? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/builder/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/builder/ Developing the Builder Products: InfrastructureThe project plan detailed a number of different products, or technology demonstrators, that BUILDER would develop as part of its researches into an ‘institutional hybrid library’. Initially each of these products was seen as a separate development having a unique set of needs and technological problems to solve. This view soon changed! As we started to look at implementation common strands started to appear. These strands included: authentication, profiled interfaces, secure delivery of files (Adobe Acrobat documents for example) and communication with databases. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/pub-libs/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/pub-libs/ The Public Library Web Managers workshop is a relatively new event for UKOLN. Held for the first time in 1999 [1] it aims to provide an annual opportunity for public library web managers to share their expertise, learn from each other's experiences and keep abreast of the latest Web technology developments. The emphasis of the event is always on the practical aspects of developing and managing a public library web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/dner/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/dner/ What is the relationship between the hybrid library and the DNER (the Distributed National Electronic Resource)? This paper discusses that question and suggests a number of ways in which DNER strategy and thinking can be informed by hybrid library developments. ‘Suggests’ is the word, since there is currently an investigation underway that is dealing with this question which is still to report. This is being coordinated by Stephen Pinfield, one of the authors of this article. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/subject-gateways/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/subject-gateways/ This brief paper outlines some of the features of the policy environment which led to the setting up of the influential 'subject gateways' as part of the Electronic Libraries Programme. It has the modest and partial ambition of putting some of the discussions of the time on record. It should be read as a companion piece to two other articles. The first, Law 1994, develops the historical context for the emergence of the data centres, a central component of JISC information infrastructure, and collaterally discusses the broad thrust of JISC's developing informational activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/app-profiles/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/app-profiles/ BackgroundThis paper introduces application profiles as a type of metadata schema. We use application profiles as a way of making sense of the differing relationship that implementors and namespace managers have towards metadata schema, and the different ways they use and develop schema. The idea of application profiles grew out of UKOLN’s work on the DESIRE project (1), and since then has proved so helpful to us in our discussions of schemas and registries that we want to throw it out for wider discussion in the run-up to the DC8 Workshop in Ottawa in October. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/foster/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/foster/ In 1997 The Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) published its review of the British higher education system. Underpinned by principles of inclusion and life-long learning the Report put forward wide-ranging recommendations in all areas of educational provision including students and learning, supporting research and scholarship, staff in higher education and the management and governance of higher education institutions. An important component of the Dearing vision is the utilization of new technology, which can provide universities with the potential to widen participation, to reach new markets and to make internal efficiency gains. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/sellic/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/sellic/ The Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information Centre (SELLIC) [1] Project at the University of Edinburgh has seen rapid changes in the context in which it operates. The project itself has therefore changed its emphasis in response to some of the challenges of the rapidly-evolving education environment. Staff at SELLIC are engaged in a number of projects, all of which are directed at some aspect of hybrid library development and aim to bring together library and academic interests in determining how new developments should be applied within the institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jisc-cni/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jisc-cni/ The conference was opened by Professor Maxwell Irvine, Chair of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), who extended a familiar transport metaphor to talk of the route maps and driving instructors needed to ensure the effective use of the information superhighway, observing that the JISC's DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) can be seen as the "overall integrated transport policy". He went on to highlight the international collaboration and partnerships which will be needed to bring true coherence to networked information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/pub-libs/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/pub-libs/ “May you live in interesting times.” I think we in library-land, and particularly public library-land, can lay claim to our share of those. On the national level, we have infrastructure, content creation, and training, all activity that the roll out of the People’s Network will require. In addition, regional strength and co-operation ensures participation and development on all levels. We have the opportunity to more than adapt to the changing information and communication environment: we can build on our traditional skills of networking, communication, organisation, and customer relations to create something truly innovative. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ This article is supplementary to the issue 23 report on the CLUMPS event at Goldsmiths College in March this year, and perhaps should be read in conjunction with both that report and Peter Stubley’s article on ‘What have the CLUMPS ever done for us?’ in the same issue. Details of presentations which were broadly similar to those given at Goldsmiths are not repeated here, but can be found in the Ariadne 23 report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/virtual-universities/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/virtual-universities/ Abstract: This article reports on a two-year research project that is investigating the way in which UK universities are attempting to build new technologies into higher education. In recent years there has been a phenomenal interest in the growth of what some are calling 'digital', 'online', or 'virtual' universities. Indeed, today, it is commonplace to read that information and communication technologies are radically reconfiguring the landscape of higher education, changing the very 'nature' of the university[1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-focus/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-focus/ The Ninth International World Wide Web conference (WWW9) was held at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam. The main part of the conference took place from Tuesday 16th till Thursday 18th May. A day of tutorial and workshops was held on Monday 15th May with the Developer's Day on Friday 19th May. About 1,400 delegates attended the conference. It was pleasing to note the large numbers of delegates from the UK - about 100 in total, with about 50% from the Higher Education community (and about 9 people from Southampton University and another 9 from Bristol University). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/honduras/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/honduras/ Christmas eve we wrapped up a few simple presents, a couple of polystyrene aeroplanes, some puppets, an alphabet colouring book and a kite. We also wrapped up a clockwork Torch. Very useful around here. In the morning we were picked up by motor boat and driven over to the house. We left the hotel and passed through the village. Here the islanders all live on the coast. Since the tide doesn't rise much more than a few feet the houses are safely built on stilts, actually over the sea. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/oxford-mellon/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/oxford-mellon/ In 1998 the University of Oxford initiated a nine-month study into its digitization activities: past, present, and future. The 'Scoping Study' as it has now become known, was funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation and completed its findings in July 1999. This paper briefly outlines the reasons behind the study, its methodology and how this might be applied to other institutions, the main results, and the planned next stages. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/epanet/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/epanet/ The civilizations of the ancient Near East produced the world's first written texts. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, recognizable texts begin to appear in the late fourth millennum B.C.[1] A well developed system of numerical tabulation combined with a varied and sophisticated repertoire of sealings and seal impression is evident even earlier across a wide geographical range in Western Asia[2] and evidence from recent archaeological discoveries in Egypt promises to push the origins of writing even further into antiquity. 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/22/das/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/das/ Public libraries serve their communities by fulfilling seven basic roles, including knowledge archival, the preservation and maintenance of culture, knowledge dissemination, knowledge sharing, information retrieval, education, and social interaction [1]. Each of these roles offers the general public the opportunity to recognize and view libraries as an integral part of a democratic society where access to free information has been (and still is) both expected and demanded. By comparison, community networks also have similar ideals for serving the public. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dempsey/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dempsey/ The Information Society Technologies programme within the EU's Framework Programme Five supports access to, and preservation of, digital cultural content. This document describes some common concerns of libraries, archival institutions and museums as they work together to address the issues the Programme raises. This accounts for three major emphases in the document. First, discussion is very much about what brings these organisations together, rather than about what separates them. Second, it describes an area within which a research agenda can be identified; its purpose is not to propose a programme of work or actions, rather a framework within such a programme might be developed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/unix/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/unix/ mod_perl [1] has to be one of the most useful and powerful of the Apache modules. Beneath the inconspicuous name, this module marries two of the most successful and widely acclaimed products of OSS, the Apache Webserver [2] and Perl [3]. The result is a kind of Web developers Utopia, with Perl providing easy access to, and control of, the formidable Apache API. Powerful applications can be rapidly created and deployed as solutions to anything from an office Intranet to Enterprise level Web requirements. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/dugdale/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/dugdale/ The 10th CTI-AFM Annual Conference was held during beautiful spring weather on 8 - 9 April in the historic setting of the Old Ship Hotel in Brighton. There was nothing traditional, however, about the papers that were presented. They constituted a stimulating collection of reports of ongoing research and teaching practices. All-in-all, a fitting set of papers for the last CTI-AFM Conference before the advent of the new Subject Centres that are being planned for next year. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/ecms/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/ecms/ The theme covered by this article is currently a matter for discussion in the digital library arena. Since the birth of the first digital libraries, publishers, authors and information consumers have been debating the best ways to manage access to information. It is within this context that this work is intended to make a small contribution. It illustrates the following points in an objective way: Copyright issues and Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMS);Advantages and disadvantages that result from the use of ECMS;Some conclusions and future perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/jisc-assist/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/jisc-assist/ JISC ASSIST (Activities, Services and Special Initiatives Support Team) is an “awareness raising” unit set up because the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)[1] recognises that “the opportunities presented by IT are outstripping the ability of the sector to assimilate and exploit them.”[2] This article is by way of an introduction to what will be a regular feature of ARIADNE which will highlight current, and future, JISC plans and activities and how these are assisting HEIs grapple with the many information and technology related challenges that are influencing the shape of HE for future generations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/metadata/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/metadata/ The Metadata Workshop held in Luxembourg on the 12 April was the third in an ongoing series of such meetings. The first Metadata Workshop was held in December 1997 and included a tutorial on metadata provided by UKOLN, some project presentations and break-out sessions on various metadata issues [1, 2]. The second workshop, held in June 1998, concentrated more on technical and strategic issues [3]. Around 50 people attended the third workshop, mostly drawn from organisations involved in European Union funded projects supplemented by a few Commission staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/public-libraries/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/public-libraries/ Dear LorcanIt is my view that, to appreciate what is happening in libraries today, we need to keep two contextual factors firmly in mind. Though these are telling on the library world, it is far too easy to underestimate their significance if we limit ourselves to consideration only of library matters. The first is an apparently inexorable shift away from public towards private provision of goods and services throughout society. There are lots of reasons for this (Thatcherism, globalisation, the end of the Cold War in victory for the West), but it is crucial for librarians to acknowledge the consequences of what has been called the ‘neo-liberal consensus’ for their long (and short)-term future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/disinhe/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/disinhe/ Over four percent of students in Higher Education have registered as having one or more disabilities, but the actual number of students may be closer to ten percent. Communications and Information Technology (C & IT) has an important part to play in supporting both staff and students with disabilities, and staff in Institutions clearly need to be aware of their moral and legal obligations, and know how to set up processes and practices to provide such support effectively and efficiently. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ The Eighth World Wide Web Conference (WWW8) was on a smaller scale than in the past few years. The numbers of delegates seemed to be down, and there was no accompanying exhibition. The conference appeared to be refocussing on the web research community, with delegates from commercial companies more likely to be software developers than marketing types. This refocussing also seemed to be reflected in the conference papers, which, as a number of people commented, seemed to be of a higher quality this year. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/cache/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/cache/ The UK JANET Web Caching Service, managed jointly by the Universities of Manchester and Loughborough, provides an efficient, state-of-the-art, caching facility for the UK Academic and Research community. Its primary objectives are to reduce unnecessary duplication of network traffic between the community and the Web, and to minimise the time taken to download Web pages from remote sites. The former results in a more cost-effective use of limited and expensive bandwidth; whilst the latter facilitates a more productive use of the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/down-your-way/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/down-your-way/ The University of Abertay Dundee's new library building is situated in the heart of the city centre. Recently voted Scotland's Best New Building in the Scottish Design Awards 1998, the four story structure of sandstone, steel and glass opened its doors to its users in February this year, and was formally opened by HM Queen on 30th of June. During the 18-month construction period, on billboards, and in the national press during the opening, the University proclaimed its ambition to be a Higher Education Institution 'for the Digital Age', with the library as physical manifestation of this ambition. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/batt/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/batt/ A title like that is going to take some effort to live up to. Whether taken in its original literal sense, as used by Lincoln Steffens reporting life in Russia in 1919, or as my intended double meaning, that IT will play a significant part in making the more abundant life, it remains quite a task to provide proof. It is a bold statement as a counterblast to the dystopic view of the future given at last year’s lecture by Trevor Hayward. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Over the last twelve months Knowledge Management (KM) has become the latest hot topic in the business world. There has been a phenomenal growth in interest and activity, as seen in many new publications, conferences, IT products, and job advertisements (including a post advertised by HEFCE). Various professional groups, notably HR professionals, IT specialists, and librarians, are staking their claims, seeing KM as an opportunity to move centre stage. People often used to describe librarianship as the organisation of recorded knowledge, so perhaps our time has come? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadiversity/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadiversity/ Introduction and contextFirst, we simply need to be moving faster to coordinate the information that already exists, on file cards and computers, scattered around the world’s major and minor museums and other collections. … Second these databases must be widely available and ‘customer friendly’. We need to accelerate current efforts for international cooperation and coordination, so that common formats are increasingly agreed and used. Robert M. May (1994) [1].  Biodiversity information managementThe management and exchange of information is an important part of the ongoing management of biodiversity and ecosystems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/news/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/news/ ANBAR and CHEST reach agreement ANBAR and CHEST have reached agreement on the provision of Anbar Management Intelligence, Computer Abstracts and International Civil Engineering Abstracts to eligible institutions for a fixed five-year period starting on 1st January 1999. Institutions can decide to join at any time during the term of the agreement and will be bound until the end of the agreement period. If you would like to know more about Anbar Management Intelligence, Computer Abstracts, International Civil Engineering Abstracts or CHEST, please contact: Lynn Coulton Anbar Electronic Intelligence 60-62 Toller Lane, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD8 9BY Email: anbar@anbar. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/cover/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/cover/ A British Library funded research project at the University of Surrey Library is using a questionnaire and a number of case studies to investigate devolved budgets. The work is being carried out in collaboration with David Haynes Associates and Information Management Associates. A full report will be published shortly, but some interesting issues have already emerged. What is meant by devolved budgeting?One of the fundamental points that has arisen from the study is the varied understanding of what devolved budgeting actually means. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/main/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/main/ The imperative for widening access to educational opportunity and attainment shows no sign of abating if recent national reports inter alia : Dearing, Kennedy and Fryer are considered indicators of interest. These reports, and government exhortation in United Kingdom, encourage delivery through vision, strategic thinking and resource application. This, together with the Prime Minister’s announcement of an additional half million students in further and higher education by 2002, suggest it is timely to consider the role of the library support services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/what-is/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/what-is/ BackgroundThe What Is …? article in the last edition of Ariadne gave an introduction to XML, the Extensible Markup Language [1]. XML has been developed to overcome HTML’s lack of extensibility - with XML you will be able to define your own element tags. We have already seen a variety of communities defining element tags for use within their community, such as MathML [2] and MusicML [3]. Besides lacking extensibility, HTML is also limited in its hyperlinking functionality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/news/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/news/ Government response to New Library: The People’s Network.On April 16th the Government issued its response to New Library: The People’s Network. Accompanied by statements by Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett, the statement was generally welcomed by the LIC and the LA. “New Library: The People’s Network” the Government’s Response identified the potential library service contribution to some major policy objectives. These included education, public access to information, social inclusion and the modernisation of public services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/web-focus/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/web-focus/ Australia is a long way to go for a conference. What were you doing there? I attended the conference in my role as UK Web Focus and the JISC representative on the World Wide Web Consortium. Attendenance at the World Wide Web conference provides me with an opportunity to monitor the latest Web developments and keep the community informed. What were the highlights of the conference? In a three letter acronym - RDF! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/eddis/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/eddis/ The eLib programme categorises EDDIS as a document delivery project, but the concept is broader. EDDIS is an acronym for electronic document delivery, the integrated solution meaning the integration of document discovery, location, request and receipt into a seamless operation for the end user. It also means integration with library mediation and management work flow in which requests may be supplied as electronic documents or hard copy either for retention or return. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/catriona/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/catriona/ Key questions The CATRIONA II eLib-funded project is in the process of examining approaches to the creation and management of electronic research and teaching resources at Scottish universities, looking in particular at the following key questions: To what extent are academics creating electronic RAE-level research material?; To what extent are they creating electronic teaching material of value beyond the local institution? Is the material in deliverable and usable form and is it accessible? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/models/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/models/ This was the first workshop in MODELS Phase II, although it continued to build directly on the results of the five workshops in Phase I. A Distributed National Electronic Resource? involved the largest number of participants to date. Around 50 people gathered at the Stakis Hotel in Bath on 5-6 February 1998, to discuss management and access approaches to the growing mass of currently unconnected national resources provided by libraries, data centres, archives, subject gateways, electronic journals, clumps and others. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ National Networking Demonstrator Project for archives launchThe Archives Sub-Committee is organising a meeting to launch the NNDP which it has instigated and funded through the Non Formula Funding of Specialised Research Collections monitoring programme on 18 March. The Meeting is open to archivists and interested parties and is intended to be a platform for public review of the project’s developments. The NNDP aims to implement cross-searching of multi-level archival data, originating from numerous sources, primarily but not exclusively in the HE sector, as presented in a wide variety of formats (from EAD, to fielded data in a MODES system, to catalogue entries in Word 6). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/cni-conf/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/cni-conf/ The US Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) held its Fall Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the 26⁄27 of October. As JISC’s International Liaison I had the opportunity to attend and did so despite reports of record low temperatures! Minneapolis is a very cold city (even by the standards of a Canadian) and I was grateful to CNI that they didn’t decide to hold the Fall meeting at the beginning of December as they did in 1996. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/cover/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/cover/ As this issue goes to print, the response to New Library: the People’s Network [1] is awaited. At the same time, David Blunkett has recently made a statement which can only add to the interest in the topics covered by the LIC proposals. The green paper The Learning Age [2] in some ways pulls together a number of issues dealt with in the Dearing [3] and Kennedy [4] reports and in New Library: the People’s Network. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/cover/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/cover/ The Dearing Report (1) represents a most serious attempt to square a circle. It takes as its raison d’etre the need for expansion in higher education in the UK, and chooses Information Technology as one of the engines of expansion; one of the most irresistible and compelling engines of all and yet expensive and unpredictable. This is not where the contradictions of the report end for information professionals. Communications and IT are linked to organisational change, management, decision making, research, estates and so on, but only in passing to libraries, and I don’t believe that the phrase “information services” is used at all. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/public-libraries/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/public-libraries/ New Library: the People’s Network has had an overwhelmingly positive reception. Caveat and qualification may exist but they have been submerged in enthusiasm, gratitude even, for the vision the report presents of a renovated public library service and the specific recommendations by which it might be achieved. Its content succeeds in making its readers feel positive about the future of a strong social institution, committed to the communication and preservation of knowledge, imagination and learning in all their manifestations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/main/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/main/ Charles Handy, the management guru, tells us: Thirty years ago most people thought that change would mean more of the same, only better. That was incremental change and to be welcomed. Today we know that in many areas of life we cannot guarantee more of the same … [we] cannot even predict with confidence what will be happening in our own lives [1]. The sense of uncertainty engendered by rapid and unpredictable change is as evident in Higher Education (HE) as in politics, the National Health Service, the media, or in business and commerce. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/knight/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/knight/ Automation and electronic information services are not newcomers to the library world. Back in the 1960s the early library automation systems were already beginning to prove their worth and the development of the MARC record format was well underway. The intervening thirty years have seen the power and features provided by library automation systems improve tremendously, the advent of online services, CD-ROM databases, the rise and growth of the Internet and its associated World Wide Web and beginnings of a truly digital virtual library appear. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/web-focus/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/web-focus/ About The Workshop Excellent; good opportunity to update knowledge and meet other, A much needed workshop. Very useful to hear from speakers and finding out about other sites from discussion groups. Same again next year please! , Extremely useful and timely . Just three of the comments received from participants of the workshop on Running An Institutional Web Service. The workshop was held at King’s College London from lunchtime on Wednesday, 16th July until lunchtime the following day. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/sunsite/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/sunsite/ Few topics in librarianship seem as "hot" these days as digital libraries, and yet for all the heat being generated there is little light. What are digital libraries? How are they built? How are they maintained and preserved? How will they be funded? These questions and more abound, while answers are few and far between. We don't have all the answers, but we're a great place to start looking for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/acorn/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/acorn/ The Project ACORN [1] is an eLib [2] funded project looking at the provision of electronic short loan reserves in a University library environment. The project has three main partners; Loughborough University [3], Swets & Zeitlinger b.v. [4] and Leicester University [5]. This paper provides an overview of the ACORN system and a description of the technical implementation of the system in the Pilkington Library at Loughborough University. ACORN System Model The ACORN system model is the abstract model behind the real implementation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Z39.50 has been around for a long time, now - why do you think it has not been assimilated into networked retrieval applications and technologies to the extent of e.g. CD-ROMs, the Web? I think that Z39.50 is now well established for large, if you will, mainframe or server-based systems. Certainly, those folks who wonder what real Z39.50 systems are in use could look at institutions like the University of California, where we have had it in production for a number of years, and we're using it every day to provide access to our community of close to a quarter of a million people, to resources mounted at places like OCLC and RLG. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/kelly-press/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/kelly-press/ Following the recent international conference on the Global Digital Library held in London 16⁄17 June, representatives from the UK Joint Information Systems Committee met with colleagues from the Council of Australian University Librarians to consolidate an agreement for co-operation which was initiated in the autumn of 1996. JISC/CAUL collaboration began in October 1996 when it was agreed that the current technological and economic climate made collaborative work possible, attractive and increasingly necessary. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/captives/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/captives/ Every generation believes that it is at a seminal point on the time-line of technological progress. It is either the age of iron, the age of the train, the age of flight or, in our case, the information age. We can thus always say that we stand at an interesting moment in the development of technology. Nowhere does this ‘interesting moment’ look more intriguing than our current location on the map of rapidly evolving information technology, particularly networking technology. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/elvira/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/elvira/ As regular readers of ‘Ariadne’ will know, the fourth annual ELVIRA conference has just taken place at Milton Keynes. The following article is based on my general impressions of the event. A more detailed and complete account can be found in the collected papers, which have been published by Aslib [1] . The ‘extended abstracts’ originally submitted for review are online at the ELVIRA Web site [2]. In the keynote address to the conference, Brian Cook (Griffith University, Queensland, Australia) identified the issues facing people working in the electronic (aka digital/virtual) library field. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/ocean-rim/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/ocean-rim/ The Indian Ocean Rim Web Site [1] advances the scope of development studies researchers by providing access to material which has been difficult to obtain, and by offering a forum for researchers around the world, especially in the region, to network. The Virtual Library is fully searchable, containing documents (free from copyright) in full text, research abstracts, subscription details for journals and reports from countries within the region. The Indian Ocean Rim Region Site also provides researchers and students with a directory of Researchers and includes the opportunity to register their work, thus promoting the vast body of research currently within the region. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/interface/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/interface/ The School of Information and Media at the Robert Gordon University (RGU) [1] in Aberdeen recently hosted Dr Isola Ajiferuke, a visiting researcher from the Africa Regional Centre for Information Science (ARCIS) at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Ajiferuke’s background is in statistics. He spent the four years from 1986 to 1989 in London, Ontario, studying for the degrees of MLIS and PhD. On his return to Nigeria he taught for a year at Ibadan Library School and then transferred to the Centre for Information Science. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/pics/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/pics/ A recent Ariadne article by Anagnostelis, Cooke and McNab ended with a reference to the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) [1] and added that while PICS controls neither the publication nor the distribution of information, it offers “individuals and organisations the option of filtering out or filtering in selected views of networked information”. There follows a reference to the Centre for Information Quality Management (CIQM) and its proposal to use PICS filtering in order to allow users to set constraints on the minimum quality of resources retrieved [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/minotaur/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/minotaur/ John MacColl, in the cover article of Issue 6 [1], suggests that some managers in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are questioning the usefulness of the concept of an ‘Information Strategy’. Indeed, we would argue that some are now returning to the development of what are primarily Information Technology strategies. In the current climate of national and global competition in the world of higher education, many of these strategies are being developed with a clear competitive focus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/planet-sosig/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/planet-sosig/ The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) [1], is asking librarians across Europe to consider their role in Internet information provision. SOSIG is proposing a model that offers both short and long term methods for libraries to increase their involvement in Internet information provision. In the short term, SOSIG would like to invite academic librarians to become SOSIG Correspondents. The Correspondents will form a pan-European team of information professionals and academics, working remotely from their workplace to select resources for the gateway. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/scope/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/scope/ The Scottish Collaborative On-demand Publishing Enterprise (SCOPE) [1] is investigating some of the copyright and logistical issues raised by on-demand publishing in academic libraries. We are producing course packs from digital files and developing an electronic resource bank of teaching and learning materials to be transmitted over the Internet and delivered online to staff and students at a consortium of 13 Scottish Higher Education Institutions. The Project team seeks to establish whether an electronic resource bank of journal articles and book chapters is more effective than traditional means of delivering teaching and learning materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/hypertext/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/hypertext/ “ The reaction of the hypertext research community to the World Wide Web is like finding out that you have a fully grown child. And it’s a delinquent. ” With this, Ted Nelson, who coined the term ‘hypertext’ in the early 60’s, summed up the reaction of one particular academic community to the explosive growth of the Web. The occasion was HyperText 97 [1], the Eighth ACM Conference on Hypertext, the place was Southampton, the date was April 6-11th 1997. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/digitising/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/digitising/ The State Library of Victoria has dedicated itself to becoming a Library of the Future. It has embraced the possibilities that Multimedia has to offer and is working towards developing an on- line collection of digitised materials for the world to access. The establishment of the Multimedia Source Project is evidence of this and reflects the main role of the State Library which is to preserve the cultural heritage of the State of Victoria. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/digitisation/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/digitisation/ The Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project, 1840-45 [1] (ACDP) is a collaborative project between the University of Sydney Library, the State Library of New South Wales, the National Library of Australia and Monash University Library funded through a Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Infrastructure (Facilities and Equipment) Program grant. This funding, unlike the Elib [2] projects or projects in the US sponsored under the auspices of the Commission for Preservation and Access or the National Digital Library Federation [3] is not directed to the funding of digital library initiatives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/cover/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/cover/ The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] this month releases a circular inviting higher education librarians and information staff to propose ways of developing the electronic library infrastructure of the UK. The document begins by retracing the creation of ‘the successful eLib programme [2]’, starting with the Follett Report of 1993, and moving forward to the present time with 60 funded projects across the UK. JISC’s five-year strategy document of last year described a new structure, including the creation of a Committee for Electronic Information (CEI) which has responsibility for developing the work eLib has begun. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/down-your-way/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/down-your-way/   Based in Kensington, London, the Natural History Museum [1] is housed in a building of palatial size and architecture. The museum houses one of the largest collections of naturally- occurring objects in the world, its holdings running to 68 million objects, a collection so large that less than a tenth of one percent is on display at any one time. Every conceivable type of animal, plant and mineral is represented, as well as a surprisingly large collection of books, art (one of the largest collections of art on paper in the UK), journals and other literature. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/netskills-corner/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/netskills-corner/ We all know that the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are wonderful. However there are still major problems to be overcome in making them easier and more efficient to use. The European Union, as part of its fourth framework programme (1994 - 1998), is trying to address some of these problems in its Telematics Applications Programme. Within the Telematics Applications Programme there are 13 project areas, these include Telematics for Transport, Education, Health Care, Libraries and the Environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/web-focus/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/web-focus/ I first saw the Web in December 1992 at a meeting of the Information Exchange Special Interest Group at Leeds University. At that time, as Information Officer in the Computing Service, I was looking for software which could be used to develop a Campus Wide Information System (CWIS). Quite a number of institutions in the UK were running CWISes, mainly based on home-grown software, but some were beginning to make use of Internet tools, such as Gopher. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/jedds/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/jedds/ JEDDS is the Joint Electronic Document Delivery Software [1] project. The project aims to develop electronic document delivery to the desktop based on MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). It also seeks to improve the efficiency of document delivery services by providing links between document delivery systems and interlibrary loan management systems, and to foster the adoption of document delivery standards. JEDDS is partly funded under the eLib [2] Programme. Why is someone from the Antipodes managing an eLib project? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/print-edit/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/print-edit/ The impact of the eLib programme [1], now two years old, is becoming increasingly apparent in the electronic library infrastructure of the UK and beyond. The significance of the work of the MODELS [2] project in designing a national system of resource discovery, is recognised by the new Call for proposals from JISC’s Committee for Electronic Information. As our cover article [3] indicates, with physical and virtual ‘clumps’ of the national metadata resource actively being sought, the electronic catalogue infrastructure of the UK, begun several years ago when the first university library OPACs were connected to the JANET network, appears to be coming of age. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/web-edit/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/web-edit/ Welcome to issue 8 of the Web version of Ariadne. As John mentions in the editorial [1] for the Print version of Ariadne, the eLib programme [2] is no longer a youngster; some projects are approaching the end of their funding; some projects have already produced significant deliverables, or contributions, towards the building of this elusive, shimmering, Electronic Library. Overall, the programme is now gearing up towards a more concerted dissemination push [3] , at the level of individual projects, groups of projects, and the programme as whole, aimed at our target community - those people in the UK Higher Education community who will build, use, or be influenced by Electronic Library resources, infrastructure and practises. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/   AbstractThe growth of networking and the Internet has led to more and more information resources being funded centrally by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council) and provided from a single or limited number of locations to the whole of the academic community. Centralised networked services such as these have been a fact of life in commercial organisations for many years and this model is now being adopted by government agencies like the NHS. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ AbstractThis paper provides a background to the development and ongoing activities of data archives in general and The Data Archive (formerly known as the ESRC Data Archive) at the University of Essex in particular. It describes the main activities involved in running the Archive and explores the benefits for both data producers and data users of a central repository of data. It touches on the growth of The Data Archive in recent years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/multimedia/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/multimedia/ The JISC Strategy [1] states: "The JISC recognises the growing importance of multimedia data and will promote measures to ensure such data is appropriately available and transmitted electronically." As part of this consideration, a meeting was organised by the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) [2] which is now funded through JISC. This consultation meeting was held at the National Film Theatre on 18 December and was attended by about 220 people. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/omni-seminar/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/omni-seminar/ Over 150 people gathered at the Wellcome Institute in London on the 23 January to attend the 2nd Annual OMNI [1] Seminar. This brought together a range of participants including medical academics, library and information professionals and practitioners; a good indication of the impact OMNI has had during its first two years. The keynote address was given by Lynne Brindley, the chair of the new JISC Committee for Electronic Information (CEI). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/scran/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/scran/ The images that the year 2001 bring up are either seductively utopian or dimly dystopian from an information and technology point of view. Visionaries either see an information rich world with constant online access - built into your clothes in some scenarios - or HAL 9000 calmly saying, "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave." There is probably no doubt that we will have the technology, but can we build a bionic information system? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lund/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lund/     On 11-13 October 1996 I was fortunate to be invited to participate in the 10th annual Anglo-Nordic Seminar, held in Lund, Sweden. This annual event is co-organised by the British Library and their Nordic colleagues at NORDINFO. Each year the seminar is based on a particular theme and this year it was Networking. The event was preceded by an all day session called a "Metadata Information Day" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/british-library/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/british-library/ Further details on the call for proposals mentioned in this article can be found at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/papers/bl/callforproposal.html The British Library Research and Innovation Centre has initiated a process of discussion and debate among those working in the field of digital library research. This discussion is intended to help gain some idea of which issues need to be addressed and to establish how the research programmes and funding agencies in the field might set their own priorities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/catriona/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/catriona/ This is an exciting period of growth in the development of electronic resources for teaching and research. Many examples of electronic resources for teaching and research such as lectures, slides and research papers are now readily available on the Web. However, a large proportion of the research and teaching material that is being created on computers is not yet available to the wider academic community. It is often only available to the creator and perhaps to local students. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/ilrt/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/ilrt/ The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol is host to more than seventeen funded projects at the forefront of learning and research technology, including four eLib projects ranging across the subject divide, from medicine to business to social science and beyond into generic issues. In this article we describe these four projects, SOSIG, ROADS, biz/ed and MIDRIB, as well as providing an overview of the Institute and its other projects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Jeremy Bentham coined the term 'panopticon' in his proposal for a circular prison, whose cells were exposed to a central well in which the warders were located, allowing the prisoners to see all other prisoners and to be observed at all times without ever knowing when they were being watched. Bentham also promoted the idea of political economy as the greatest good for the greatest number. Drawing on his terminology as the basis for this article, I therefore propose the new term 'infopolecon' to describe the political economy of information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/tilburg/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/tilburg/ For two weeks, from 4 - 16 August 1996 at Tilburg University in The Netherlands,  a group of 60 librarians and information specialists from around the world was introduced to the strategic and practical issues relating to digital library developments. Participants came from as far afield as Japan and Costa Rica, but mostly from Western Europe, with a significant representation from the Netherlands itself. I was the only UK delegate, however three of the lecturers were from the UK including one from Ireland. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/croatia/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/croatia/ I am going to speak about Croatia and the new information technologies implemented in the Croatian libraries. How are Croatian librarians coping with the consequences of the terrible war we had from 1991 to 1995? What can be done in the situation when the whole country is being restructured and where the priority list is so long? What makes the Croatian libraries so special? Croatia is the new state, established in 1990, recognised by the United Nations in 1992. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/dlib/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/dlib/ Shortly, D-Lib Magazine will go to press with our fourteenth monthly issue - and it is remarkable that even after a year, we are still using the language of print to describe something that only exists on the web. D-Lib is funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on behalf of the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA) Working Group of the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/desire/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/desire/ Desire is a large, pan- European co-operative development project to promote the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the European research community. The project has attracted substantial funding from the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme. The project is co-ordinated by SURFnet bv, the academic network provider in the Netherlands and has a total of 23 partners in 8 countries. Other major contractors are the University of Bristol,Lund University Library, Netlab (Sweden), UNINETT/AS (Norway), Origin bv (the Netherlands), the University of Newcastle upon Tyne,the Queen's University of Belfast and the Joint Research Centre of the European Union (Italy). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/interface/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/interface/ Project EARL was established in 1995 with funding from the British Library, the Library Association and participating libraries, with the objective of developing 'the role of public libraries in a networked environment, within a collaborative framework'. The coordinating partner is the London and South Eastern Library Region (LASER). Frances Hendrix, Director of LASER, and Catherine Hume of EARL, were happy to fill me in on what public libraries are doing on the Internet at present. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Metadata. The word is increasingly to be found bandied about amongst the Web cognoscenti, but what exactly is it, and is it something that can be of value to you and your work? This article aims to explore some of the issues involved in metadata and then, concentrating specifically upon the Dublin Core, move on to show in a non-technical fashion how metadata may be used by anyone to make their material more accessible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ De Montfort University is one of the largest universities in Britain, with 29,000 students based on 10 campuses in eastern and central England. Major city locations are Leicester, Lincoln, Bedford and Milton Keynes. Given the distributed nature of the University, much use has to be made of the latest information and communication technologies: video-conferencing is used extensively in teaching, and in enabling teachers and researchers to meet and talk without leaving their own campus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/surf/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/surf/   The SURF Foundation was established in 1987 to co-ordinate the implementation of a multi-year plan for the improvement of the application of information technology (IT) in Dutch universities, schools for higher vocational education and research institutes. In the course of its activities SURF has become a nationwide supplier of services. These services are primarily provided through its operating subsidiaries: SURFnet bv and SURFdiensten bv. SURFnet manages the computer network of the same name. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Preparing to write this article, I sought inspiration in the form of a recurring question. How can we improve our knowledge of users and their use of networked information services? What should we be doing to develop our understanding in the context of emerging digital library developments? And how might we make progress? My starting point came from a recent reading of the executive summary of the TULIP project final report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/caching/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/caching/ The Internet is obviously the current buzzword in many organisations and libraries are no exception. Academic libraries have long valued online access to their OPACs and the ability to provide search services of large scale remote databases. However the phenomenal growth in the World Wide Web (WWW) and the demands from an increasing number of people to get easy access to the wealth of information now available has meant that library network provisions are currently undergoing a rapid period of evolution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/netlinks/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/netlinks/ <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN”> International Symposium 1st International Symposium on Networked Learner Support Sarah Ashton describes the presentations at the 1st International Symposium on Networked Learner Support, held in mid-June in Sheffield. Sarah is an MA in Librarianship student in the Department of Information Studies, at the University of Sheffield. The European Championships were well under way when 59 delegates descended on Sheffield for the 1st International Symposium on Networked Learner Support (17th and 18th June 1996). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/reside/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/reside/ The aim of ResIDe is to pilot an electronic reserve system or short loan collection aimed at students in the Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE). UWE Library Services and Faculty of Built Environment are working with the ESRC Data Archive, Museum of London, Institute of Housing and Ordnance Survey on this project. Why develop an electronic reserve system?Changes in patterns of teaching and learning have led to a decrease in academic staff/student contact hours and a greater reliance upon student centred learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/tapin/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/tapin/ The TAPin project is a project which aims to deliver early in the eLib programme. The first deliverable was the Interim Report featuring the six partner universities, each representing a unique segment of the HE community. TAPin includes new and old universities with a variety of IT infrastructures and network readiness. The Infrastructure Audit, IT Strategy Survey, and Academic Staff Audit touched the heart of information provision from a variety of perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/tltp/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/tltp/ The Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest technology based initiative of its kind across the world within higher education. As a centrally funded initiative it provides us with an excellent example of the advantages of collaboration compared to the efforts of many individuals working in isolation. The programme is jointly funded by the four higher education funding bodies, HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW and DENI, who allocated 22. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/acts/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/acts/ ACTS is an acronym for Advanced Communications Technologies and Services, a programme under the European Community 4th Framework R &TD Programme (collaborative research and technology development in Europe). ACTS is one of the biggest European R&TD investments with around 120 projects in place. The DTI/EPSRC High Performance Interfaces & Protocols (HPIP) LINK programme is the complementary UK initiative. In the words of the Commissions overview: "ACTS is part of a new agenda - outlined in the European Union's White Paper on 'Growth, Competitiveness and Employment' - aimed at making direct contribution to Europe's economic and social development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/wire/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW? Since October 1995 I've been the Senior Trainer for the Netskills project, based at the University of Newcastle. Over the past 9 months I've been involved in developing our HTML Authoring kit and delivering training courses throughout the UK. I am also responsible for the quality control procedures for the Netskills training materials. In addition I have been keeping abreast with network developments, which has included developing a Web Futures talk, using collaborative features of the Web (as described in my Netskills Corner article in Ariadne edition 2). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copac/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copac/ The Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) has for some years maintained a database of machine-readable catalogue records contributed by member libraries to enable the costs of cataloguing to be kept down, to members' mutual benefit. Hitherto, these records have only been made available to librarians, but with funding from the Higher Education Funding Councils' Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the database is being turned into an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) known as COPAC (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elvira/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elvira/ Hurrah! Users enter the Metaverse.......in their anoraks? The third Electronic Library and Visual Information Research (ELVIRA) conference opened on 30th April. The conference was truly international with delegates and speakers from Japan, Australia and throughout Europe. The conference was as usual very well organised and in extremely comfortable surroundings. ELVIRA is held in Milton Keynes and as De Montfort University is one of the leading UK electronic library research Universities (they have just established the Institute of Electronic Library Research) the venue is wholly appropriate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Current public library Internet activity can be divided into four main types: Initial Experimentation and ExplorationPublic AccessCivic InformationCooperationThis is a relatively small range of topics and gives an indication of the lack of resources available to libraries with which to undertake research. Whereas the eLib programme has allowed academic libraries to explore a whole range of topics ranging from electronic documentary delivery to digitization to on demand publishing, public libraries are concentrating on much more fundamental issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/copyright/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/copyright/ The owner of a copyright has the right to prevent others from selling, hiring out or renting, copying it in any form, performing the work in public, broadcasting the work on radio or TV, or amending ("adapting") it. These acts are the so-called restricted acts. Anyone who does any of these acts without permission is deemed to have infringed the copyright and can be sued for damages. Infringement is subject to the requirement that either all the work, or at least a " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/elib/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/elib/ The Electronic Libraries Programme, funded by JISC as a consequence of the Follett Report into UK academic libraries, is now properly underway. The UK Higher Education funding councils have committed £15 million to the programme, which will aim to pave the way towards the fully electronic library of the future. The Electronic Libraries Programme, funded by JISC as a consequence of the Follett Report into UK academic libraries, is now properly underway.