http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/internet-explorer/ Recent content in Internet Explorer on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/jenkins/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/jenkins/ 2013 marked the 10th anniversary of SUNCAT. Back in 2003, SUNCAT (Serials Union CATalogue) started as a project undertaken by EDINA [1] in response to an observed need for better journals information in the UK, which was identified in the UKNUC report [2]. In August 2006, SUNCAT became a full service, and is now an established resource that contains serials records, including more and more e-journals information, of an ever-increasing number of libraries. 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/73/brewerton-cooper/ Wed, 09 Jul 2014 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/brewerton-cooper/ 1980 the Pilkington Library (the Library) was opened to support the current and future information needs of students, researchers and staff at Loughborough University. The building had four floors, the lower three forming the Library Service and the top floor hosting the Department of Library and Information Studies. Entry to the building was via the third floor (having been built against a hill) and there was a turnstile gate to count the number of visitors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/sanders-rvw/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/sanders-rvw/ Following a body of work that includes The University of Google: Education in the (post) Information Age (2007) [1] and Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching (2002), Brabazon has developed a central position within the debate surrounding technology and pedagogy, although there is very little that is centrist about Brabazon's writing. Developing Contextual ThemesWith Digital Dieting: From Information Obesity to Intellectual Fitness (2013) Brabazon’s primary research interests in media, information and digital literacies are extended even further into the core issues binding contemporary Higher Education (HE) and learning in a world surrounded by an excess of online information, and the political framework that surrounds it. 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/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/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/murphy-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/murphy-rvw/ Despite the economic adversity faced by many academic bodies and their libraries, there are still some institutions lucky enough to be in a position to refurbish, extend or commission a new building. University Libraries and Space in the Digital World is undoubtedly for the many people involved in such projects, but is quite clearly designed for a wider readership too. This is a good thing, as it would be hard to think of a library user or staff member who is not affected by the issue of library space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/eclap-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/eclap-rpt/ The beautiful city of Porto was the host location for ECLAP 2013 [1], the 2nd International Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access and Entertainment.  Porto is the second largest city in Portugal after Lisbon and home of the Instituto Politécnico do Porto (IPP), the largest polytechnic in the country, with over 18,500 students. IPP has 7 different faculties, the School of Music and Arts - Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo (ESMAE) [2] - is one of the two original schools established when IPP was founded in 1985. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/brewerton/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/brewerton/ This article takes you step by step through the various stages of implementing a Resource or Reading List Management System; from writing the business case to involving stakeholders, selecting a system, implementation planning, advocacy, training and data entry. It recognises the hard work required to embed such a system into your institution both during the implementation process and beyond. Reading lists have long been a feature of Higher Education in the UK. 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/70/kelly-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/kelly-et-al/ The idea that if we could only improve how we communicate, there would be less misunderstanding among people is as old as the hills. Historically, this notion has been expressed through things like school reform, spelling reform, publication of communication manuals, etc. The most radical expression of the desire for better understanding is the invention of a whole new artificial language with the intention of providing a universal language for humanity. 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/editorial/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/editorial/ Welcome to Issue 70 of Ariadne which is full to the brim with feature articles and a wide range of event reports and book reviews. In Gold Open Access: Counting the Costs Theo Andrew explains the significance of the recent RCUK amendment to their Open Access policy requirements of researchers and the importance assumed by the cost of publishing the Gold Open Access route. Unsurprisingly, there is currently a great variability in such costs to research institutions, while, with few exceptions, publishers are as yet slow to impart what effect the move to charging for article processing will have on current institutional subscription costs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ifla-2012-08-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ifla-2012-08-rpt/ The Sunday newcomers session chaired by Buhle Mbambo-Thata provided us with some insight into the sheer magnitude of IFLA (as most people seem to call it) or the World Library and Information Congress (to give the formal name) [1]. This year’s congress had over 4,200 delegates from 120 different countries, though over a thousand of these were Finnish librarians making the most of the locality of this year’s event. IFLA offers hundreds of session covering all aspects of librarianship, from library buildings, equipment, rare books and manuscripts to legal issues and new trends. 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/69/rusbridge-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/rusbridge-rvw/ We are all too familiar with the dire predictions of coming Digital Dark Ages, when All Shall be Lost because of the fragility of our digital files and the transience of the formats. We forget, of course, that loss was always the norm. The wonderful documents in papyrus, parchment and paper that we so admire and wonder at, are the few lucky survivors of their times. Sometimes they have been carefully nurtured, sometimes they have been accidentally preserved. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/editorial/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/editorial/ Never blessed with any sporting acumen, I have to confess to a degree of ambivalence towards the London Olympics unfolding around this issue as it publishes. That does not mean that I do not wish all the participants well in what after all is an enormous achievement just to be able to compete there at all. While I admit to not watching every team walk and wave, I cannot deny that the beginning and end of the Opening Ceremony [1] did grab my attention. 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/fitzgibbon-lau/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/fitzgibbon-lau/ Assessment and feedback practice in Higher Education has long been the major source of student dissatisfaction (National Student Surveys) [1]. While technologies are increasingly being used as a tool to improve the learning experience for students and staff, the use of technologies in improving the assessment experience is still patchy. In particular, in the JISC call for proposals for the assessment and feedback programme, it was suggested that ‘many institutions have yet to put in place well-embedded, supported and sustainable technology-enhanced assessment and feedback practices. 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/tyler/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/tyler/ Librarians are, in general, often quick to pick up and experiment with new technologies, integrating them into their work to improve the library service. Social media are no exception. This article seeks to show how the adoption of social media by different library sectors in Wales is helping to deliver and promote their library services. In Wales, the benefits of a small population (some three million people), good cross-library sector links, and the fact that libraries are a devolved issue (ie, the Welsh Government can create its own library policy), mean that it is possible to do things on an all-Wales scale. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/white-rvw/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/white-rvw/ Information Retrieval and Enterprise SearchFor much of 2011 I worked on a project commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, on a techno-economic study of enterprise search in Europe.  There is no dispute that the volume of information inside organisations is growing very rapidly, though much of this growth is the result of never discarding any digital information.  The scale of the problem is well documented by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in its report on ‘Big Data’ [1]. 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/67/prior-salter/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/prior-salter/ In the current fiscal climate faced by educational institutions in the UK, elearning tools and technologies that promise efficiency savings as well as enhancing the quality and quantity of course offerings are gaining popularity. One such technology is Web conferencing where lectures, seminars, meetings or presentations take place online and allow for remote participation and collaboration via audio, video, instant chat and a virtual ‘whiteboard.’[1]. Web conferencing also has the potential to provide a sustainable and economic alternative to face-to-face professional development conferences [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Open source (OS) usually refers to an application whose source code is made available for use or modification in line with users’ needs and requirements. OS projects usually develop in the public domain where contributors participate in a collaborative manner and update or refine the product. OS offers more flexibility and freedom than software purchased with licence restrictions. Both the OS community and the library world share many common principles. They share and promote open standards and believe in sharing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coelho-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coelho-rvw/ The clue is in the title. This book sets out to dispel the myths about creativity and innovation which you have cherished so dearly. It tells you what 'not to do and what not to think' so that you can free yourself from common misguided notions on the subject. As a special bonus, this new paperback edition includes four new chapters which provide the practical tips you would need to help your ideas take off. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/collmann/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/collmann/ The collapsable, portable electromechanical Virtual 3D (V3D) Object Rig Model 1 (ORm1) (Figures 1, 2, 3) was developed to meet an obvious need found after an important Australian cultural artefact - a nineteenth-century post-mortem plaster head-cast of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly [1] - was Apple QTVR-imaged (QuickTime Virtual Reality) using a large static object rig at the University of Melbourne over 2003/4. The author requested that this moving and hyperlinked image be constructed as a multimedia component of a conjectured cross-disciplinary undergraduate teaching unit. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Large amounts of money are spent building scholarly resources on the web. Unlike online retailers, large publishers and banks, scholarly institutions tend not to monitor very closely the way visitors use their web sites. In this article I would like to show that a look at the traces users leave behind in the Web servers’ log files can teach us much about our sites’ usability and about the way visitors use them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/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/63/thompson/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/thompson/ This article sets out the Wellcome Library's decision not explicitly to specify preferred file formats for long-term preservation. It discusses a pragmatic approach in which technical appraisal of the material is used to assess the Library's likelihood of preserving one format over another. The Library takes as its starting point work done by the Florida Digital Archive in setting a level of 'confidence' in its preferred formats. The Library's approach provides for nine principles to consider as part of appraisal. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/kennedy/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/kennedy/ When I began writing this article, as a paper to a March 2009 conference on Archives 2.0 hosted by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester, Archives 2.0 was unknown territory to me [1]. I am a diplomatic historian, not an archivist, and though I am an end-user of archives, I had not come across the term Archives 2.0 before. The project I head, the Royal Irish Academy's Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series (http://www. 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/or-09-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/or-09-rpt/ I recently attended the annual Open Repositories 2009 Conference [1] in Atlanta, Georgia which hosted 326 delegates from 23 countries. For myself, as the SWORD [2] Project Manager, the event proved to be very worthwhile. My colleague Julie Allinson and I were both able to give a plenary presentation on the first day and a half-day workshop on the final day. Much of the conference addressed developments surrounding the Fedora, DSpace and EPrints systems that have occurred over the last year. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-strelnikov/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-strelnikov/ The IEMSR, a metadata schema registry, exists to support the development and use of metadata standards; in practice, what does this entail? Metadata is not a recent invention. It dates from at least the time of the Library of Alexandria, at which hundreds of thousands of scrolls were described using a series of indexes retaining various characteristics such as line count, subject classification, author name and biography. However, specific metadata standards, schemas and vocabularies are created on a regular basis, falling into and out of favour as time passes and needs change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/robertson-et-al/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/robertson-et-al/ VisionsIn ‘Lost in the IE’, published in the last issue of Ariadne and in subsequent discussion on various blogs [1], [2] there has some thoughtful reflection on the vision of the JISC Information Environment (IE), its architecture and standards, the role of the IE and the role of ‘that diagram’ [3]. It is clear that the development of work on repositories and services in the UK has benefitted from the IE Architecture diagram but it is also clear that such a model does not (and was not intended to) reflect the reality of the ‘messiness’ that inevitably surrounds connecting actual repositories and services [4]. 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/editorial/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/editorial/ I am greatly indebted to Gráinne Conole for a number of reasons. It has been my intention for some time to commission something from the OU in respect of learning technologies given the wealth of expertise that resides there. For a variety of reasons it has taken me a while, but the wait has been more than worthwhile in the light of Gráinne's contribution. In my view her article New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies does much to exchange light for all the ambient heat that surrounds this topic, while refusing, as some are tempted, to reject the whole Web 2. 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/jisc-powr-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/jisc-powr-rpt/ A university’s Web site is typically an honest reflection of the university, which is often an uncomfortable state of affairs for its managers. I was reminded of this as I negotiated my way from Senate House’s cycle bays to the Dr Seng Tee Room at the University of London. Having arrived in time, Reception – one person behind wood and glass – thought I was looking for Dr Seng Tee. A 404 [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lai-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lai-2008-rpt/ 15 April The conference, entitled ‘Future-proofing the Past: 80 years’ commitment to access and cooperation’, was officially opened by the President of the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) who welcomed the delegates and wished them well in their deliberations at this conference which was the 40th joint conference of the LAI and Cilip IRELAND, occurring in the 80th year of the LAI. The conference was attended by 120 delegates. Unless otherwise stated, the sessions described below were all plenary. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/joyce-et-al/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/joyce-et-al/ The evolution of the Web has changed the way that people access information. Web 2.0 technologies have allowed information providers to integrate their services in people's existing online spaces, and users expect to be able to synthesise, edit and customise content for their own specific purposes. Intute, the JISC-funded service that aims to offer the best of the Web for Higher and Further Education, has responded to these changes by developing a variety of integration services which offer flexible ways of delivering its content to users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/51/brack-rvw/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brack-rvw/ Greg Notess has brought together techniques and strategies for Web search training not only from his own experience but also from a number of well known Web search trainers; readers will recognise the names of Joe Barker, Paul Barron, Phil Bradley, John Ferguson, Alice Fulbright, Ran Hock, Jeff Humphrey, Diane Kovacs, Gary Price, Danny Sullivan, Rita Vine, and Sheila Webber. As the author notes, 'Teaching web search engines is complex', and this book is an attempt to recognise the diversity of approaches by offering different styles, techniques and examples. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/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/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/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/49/whalley/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/whalley/ Although they were not called e-books at the time, Michael Hart’s Project Gutenberg started digitising existing print on paper editions for public access in the 1970s. Since then, the term e-book has come to have a variety of meanings and related concepts. Here I want to explore the direction associated with my day job as a researcher and teacher within the UK Higher Education system. My viewpoint may thus be somewhat idiosyncratic compared to Ariadne’s normal clientele but I am particularly interested in the information technologist’s role as an intermediary between academic author and student reader. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collectionsThe UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. Course OutlineThis course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/rumsey-rvw/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/rumsey-rvw/ This timely publication has arrived at a point where a number of UK Higher Education (HE) establishments have set up, have started, or have at least considered setting up their own institutional repository (IR). This is a new area for all involved, many experiences so far have been ground-breaking and there are few (if any) IRs which would describe themselves as mature. Not only is the technology developing rapidly, but user needs are continuing to be determined and institutions are expanding the ways in which an IR can serve their needs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/brophy/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/brophy/ Introduction: The First WaveIt is worth remembering that there is a long history of successful commercialisation of digital library R&D projects in the UK. While there are probably even earlier examples, the obvious instances are the Birmingham Libraries Co-operative Mechanisation Project (BLCMP) and the South-West Academic Libraries Co-operative Automation Project (SWALCAP) from the 1960s. Both were initially funded by grants from the then Office for Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI, a body whose responsibilities were to be taken over by the British Library Research & Development Department (BLRDD) and later dispersed among various funders such as the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA)). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ In a previous issue of Ariadne [1], I gave a brief overview of Mozilla Firefox [2] and introduced a few of its most useful extensions. In this article, we will use one of these extensions, Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar [3], to aid us in a preliminary assessment of a web site's accessibility. Although awareness of web accessibility has steadily increased in recent years, many web developers are still uncertain about how to evaluate their sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/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/43/editorial/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/editorial/ Niki Panteli provides us with an article which clearly indicates that, in our increasingly technology-dominated world, there are times when Trust in Global Virtual Teams cannot be taken for granted. This is particularly true where, as is increasingly the case, projects are being obliged, indeed, actively encouraged, to operate on a distributed working model; a model where the lack of interaction between virtual teams increases the chances of loss of trust. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/johnston/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/johnston/ The JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR) Project [1] is funded by JISC through its Shared Services Programme to develop a metadata schema registry as a pilot shared service for the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE). Partners in the project are UKOLN, University of Bath and the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol. The Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS) and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) are contributing to the project in an advisory capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lohan/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lohan/ University College Dublin is the largest single university institution in Ireland, with a student population of approximately 22,000. The Irish Freedom of Information Acts 1997 and 2003 [1], like all similar legislation worldwide, empower individuals to examine, appraise, and analyse government and public sector accountability and transparency. Applying initially only to departments and offices of central government from 21 April 1998, the legislation was gradually extended over the following years to encompass a range of public sector organisations, designated 'public bodies', with Irish third level educational institutions [2] becoming prescribed public bodies on 21 October 2001. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/rahtz/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/rahtz/ Most Web sites of any size want to offer a facility to perform a free-text search of their content. While we all at least claim to believe in the possibilities of the semantic web, and take care over our navigation aids and sitemaps, we know that sooner or later our readers want to type 'hedgehog' into a search box. Yes, even http://www.microsoft.com [1] returns plenty of hits if you try this. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lauke/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lauke/ Mozilla Firefox [1] is a free, open-source Web browser based on the Mozilla codebase. Version 1.0 was recently released after two years of development, so now may be a good time to evaluate this browser's capabilities. "Out of the box" Mozilla Firefox offers a variety of features catering to both occasional Web surfers and power users. The more advanced functionality can be particularly noted as a real time saver during the Web development process. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ 2004 was a particularly interesting year for Internet search; we saw a lot of new search engines appearing on the scene, a number of purchases and a lot of innovations, particularly in the last quarter, with Microsoft bringing out its Beta MSN Search [1], Google doubling the size of its index [2], releasing Google Scholar [3] and Google Suggest [4]. We also saw a rise in the number of desktop search applications, particularly from Google [5] and Microsoft [6], and an increase in attempts to provide a personalised version of popular search engines. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/ananiadou/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/ananiadou/ In this article we describe the role of the National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM). NaCTeM is operated by a consortium of three Universities: the University of Manchester which leads the consortium, the University of Liverpool and the University of Salford. The service activity is run by the National Centre for Dataset Services (MIMAS), based within Manchester Computing (MC). As part of previous and ongoing collaboration, NaCTeM involves, as self-funded partners, world-leading groups at San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), the University of Geneva and the University of Tokyo. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/search-engines/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/search-engines/ In the last edition of Ariadne, I wrote about a few search engines that had come to my attention. Obviously the summer months are a fruitful period of development for search engine producers, because I've got a new crop to write about again! There are also some useful Web pages about search engines and developments in existing search engines that I've also discovered, so I'll be making mention of those as well. 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/cilip-cig-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/cilip-cig-rpt/ The conference was aimed at information professionals interested in looking at issues that are changing cataloguing and indexing. The latest international developments in metadata standards, cataloguing codes, taxonomies and controlled languages unlock new opportunities for cataloguers' involvement. They also raise complex interoperability issues which go beyond traditional cataloguing and highlight the need for the acquisition of new skills in the digital information environment. The event focused on three interlinked themes: new and emerging standards, collection-level description and professional education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/editorial/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/editorial/ Why it is in this particular issue that I should perceive two forces in ceaseless conflict, I do not know. Nonetheless my very imprecise recollection of Newton's Third Law speaks of every action having an equal and opposite reaction which puts me in mind of something Paul Browning wrote about the timeliness of Through the Web Authoring Tools . As institutions, rightly concerned by hostile attacks over networks, opt to remove telnet and ftp access, either permanently or to behind a firewall, so TTW authoring tools would be able to sidestep these issues in time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/browning/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/browning/ The Web is over ten years old but it has yet to realise the vision of its founder - '.... it should be possible for grandma to take a photo of grandchildren and put it on the web immediately and without fuss ....'[1]. The Web, for most of its users, remains a read-only medium. The 'Universal Canvas' is a term introduced by Microsoft; two definitions are [2]: It builds upon XML schema to transform the Internet from a read-only environment into a read/write platform, enabling users to interactively create, browse, edit, annotate and analyze informationA surface on which we view, but also create and edit, words and tables and charts and picturesCentral to the concept of the Universal Canvas is the idea of the write-enabled or 'Two-way-Web' [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ aquifer nunderground bed or layer yielding ground water for wells and springs etcNisus Thesaurus 1.0.1. All rights reserved. Using the WordNet 1.7 database, © 2001 Princeton University Google [1] is great. Personally, I use it every day, and it is undeniably extremely good at finding stuff in the largely unstructured chaos that is the public Web. However, like most tools, Google cannot do everything. Faced with a focussed request to retrieve richly structured information such as that to be found in the databases of our Memory Institutions [2], hospitals, schools, colleges or universities, Google and others among the current generation of Internet search engines struggle. 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/alexander/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/alexander/ This article reports on a recent study of the accessibility of Australian university Web sites. A selection of key pages from all 45 Australian tertiary education Web sites were analysed to assess their compliance with basic accessibility standards, as required by Australian anti-discrimination legislation. The results–98% of sites failed to comply–suggest that Australian university Web sites are likely to present significant barriers to access for people with disabilities. Web accessibility is poorly understood by university Web publishers, and procedures are not in place to ensure that university Web sites provide equitable access to important online resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/miller/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/miller/ Regular readers of Ariadne and related publications possibly feel more than a little overwhelmed by the current deluge of portal-related literature; a deluge for which my colleagues and I on the PORTAL Project [1] must of course accept some responsibility. Nevertheless, with Gartner and others pointing to continued interest in enterprise portals amongst the business community, the headlong rush to ‘portalise’ everything from the Post Office to the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), and figures from the Campus Computing Project [2] suggesting that over 40% of US universities either had or were building an institutional portal in 2002, the portal in its various forms is clearly going to be with us for a while! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/anderson/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/anderson/ Many digital versions of texts–whether they be the plays of Aeschylus, or stories from this week’s Times–can now be accessed by a worldwide audience, thanks to the Internet and developments in international standards and the computer industry. But while modern newspapers in English and even the Greek plays of Aeschylus can be viewed on the Internet in their original script, reading articles that cite a line of original text in Egyptian hieroglyphs is more problematic, for this script has not yet been included in the international character encoding standard Unicode. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/jisciesr/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/jisciesr/ The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) is a pilot project that has been funded by the JISC for 14 months until December 2003, under its Shared Services Programme. The Information Environment [1] aims to provide users of electronic resources in higher and further education in the UK with easy access to high quality information and learning resources. The JISC already provides numerous resources but these are unfortunately not used to their full extent, as many users are unaware of their existence and the means of access to them. 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/justadist/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/justadist/ The PORTAL Project [1], funded under the JISC’s Focus on Access to Institutional Resources, (FAIR) Programme [2], aims to explore a range of issues relating to the deployment of institutional portals within the UK tertiary education sector [3]. In issue 35 [4], Liz Pearce discussed the ‘Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals’ report [5] which formed Work Package 3 of the project. Building on both the data and the analysis of Work Package 3, the recently published report ‘Stakeholder Requirements for External Content in Institutional Portals’ [6] focuses on the issues surrounding the inclusion of external resources within institutional portals. 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/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/pearce/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/pearce/ The PORTAL Project [1], funded under the JISC's FAIR Programme, aims to explore a range of issues relating to the deployment of institutional portals within the UK tertiary education sector. An introduction to the PORTAL Project was provided by Ian Dolphin, Paul Miller and Robert Sherratt in Ariadne Issue 33 [2]. The project began in September 2002 and work is well underway on the project's diverse work packages. Work Package 6, 'Standards for the Description of Portal Users', is now available [3] and both technical and research work is ongoing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/web-watch/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/web-watch/ It has been said that those who ignore history, are condemned to repeat it. In the Web world we can be so excited by new developments that we may forget approaches we have taken in the past and fail to learn from our mistakes. This article describes how the WayBack Machine [1] was used to look at the history of UK University Web sites. The SurveyThe survey was carried out by entering the URL of the entry point for UK University Web sites, recording details of the availability of the Web site in the Internet Archive (including earliest and most recent dates and numbers of entries) and providing a link to enable readers of this article to obtain the most recent results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/powell/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/powell/ An introduction to the IMS Digital Repositories Working GroupIMS [1] is a global consortium that develops open specifications to support the delivery of e-learning through Learning Management Systems (LMS). (Note: in UK higher and further education we tend to use the term Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in preference to LMS). IMS activities cover a broad range of areas including accessibility, competency definitions, content packaging, digital repositories, integration with ‘enterprise’ systems, learner information, metadata, question & test and simple sequencing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-focus/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-focus/ In the last issue of Ariadne the Web Focus column encouraged Web developers to "get serious about HTML standards" [1]. The article advocated use of XHTML and highlighted the importance of documents complying with standards. Many authors of Web resources would agree with this in principle, but find it difficult to implement in practice: use of validation tools seem to require launching a new application or going to a new location in a Web browser and copying and pasting a URL. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/info-environment/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/info-environment/ This document provides a brief introduction to the JISC Information Environment (JISC-IE) [1], with a particular focus on the technical steps that content providers need to take in order to make their systems interoperable within the JISC-IE technical architecture. The 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/33/editorial/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/editorial/ Welcome to the September/October issue of Ariadne. The concept of the 'Information Environment' is now one which appears often in Digital Library literature. While it is not a vague concept, it is still one which is undergoing development. Implementing an Information Environment is therefore currently a problematic exercise. Those interested in undertaking such an implementation therefore will be interested in a number of articles featured in this issue of Ariadne. 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/33/web-focus/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/web-focus/ If you talk to long-established Web authors or those responsible for managing large Web sites or developing Web applications intended for widespread use in a heterogeneous environment you are likely to find that the need for compliance with Web standards is well-understood. There will be an understanding of the need to avoid a re-occurrence of the "browser wars" and to minimise the development time for an environment in which, especially in the higher education community, end users are likely to use a wide range of platforms (MS Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux, etc. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-watch/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-watch/ A survey of 404 error pages on UK University Web sites was carried in June 1999 and the findings were reported in Ariadne issue 20 [1]. After a period of 2 years the survey has been repeated allowing trends to be identified. The findings are given in this article. Why are 404 pages important? Put simply, 404 error pages are probably one of the most visited pages on a Web site. 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/information-environments/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/information-environments/ The JISC Information EnvironmentThe Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) [1] is a JISC-funded, managed, heterogeneous collection of information resources and services (bibliographic, full-text, image, video, geo-spatial, datasets, etc.) of particular value to the further and higher education communities. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [2] is the set of networked services that allows people to discover, access, use and publish resources within the DNER. The JISC IE technical architecture [3] specifies the standards and protocols that provide interoperability between this network of services. 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/ref-books/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ref-books/ Reference books have been ‘published’ on the web for some years. Several hundred dictionaries are freely available. Many specialist encyclopaedias and subject reference works have been converted to become experimental web services(1).This wave of reference publishing follows no concerted plan. There is no formal market for these services and perhaps there never was an expectation of profit. The early development of the web has been like this. Most of the notable achievements lacked a clear commercial motivation and this has led to the extraordinarily rich and varied choice that the web provides. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/resolver/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/resolver/ This article provides a brief introduction to the deployment and use of the OpenURL [1] [2] by walking through a few simple examples using UKOLN's OpenResolver, a demonstration OpenURL resolution service [3]. The intention is to demonstrate the ability of OpenURL resolvers to provide context-sensitive, extended services based on the metadata embedded in OpenURLs and to describe the construction of simple OpenURL resolver software. The software described here is made available on an opensource basis for those who would like to experiment with the use of OpenURLs in their own services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/graphics/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/graphics/ To view the Scalable Vector Graphics in this article you will need a viewer. The Adobe® SVG Viewer is a plug-in that will allow your Web browser to render SVG and is available free from the Adobe Web site. IntroductonThe early browsers for the Web were predominantly aimed at retrieval of textual information. Whilst Tim Berners-Lee's original browser for the NeXT computer allowed images to be viewed, they appeared in a separate window and were not an integral part of the Web page. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/search-engines/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/search-engines/ In this issues column I thought that I’d take another in-depth look at a search engine to see what it can offer me and my subject, this issues victim is the Ask Jeeves search engine [1]. I chose this engine because it’s one that I use occasionally and also one that is often overlooked by searchers. Ask Jeeves is what I refer to as a ‘natural language’ search engine, in that it your questions can be posed in everyday language, such as ‘What is the tallest mountain in the world’ or ‘Tell me about the UK tax system’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/web-watch/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/web-watch/ Is your University home page big, bold and brassy? Is it colourful and interactive, making use of new technologies in order to stand out from the crowd? Or is it mean and lean, with a simple design providing rapid download times and universal access? This survey of the size of the entry points for UK University and College entry points seeks an answer to these questions. The MethodologyThis report is based on use of two Web-based tools: NetMechanic and Bobby. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/seti/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/seti/ Distributed Solutions to Number Crunching Problems There are many problems that require the large scale number crunching capablilities of supercomputers. For instance calculating Pi to the nth level of precision, attempting to crack the latest encryption algorithm [1], mapping the human genome, or analysing radio waves from space. For some applications, a Supercomputer might not be enough; nor can every project can afford one. However, but with a little bit of clever software engineering applied to the Internet, there is a solution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Sarah Ormes, the UKOLN Public Libraries Focus is taking a short career break. Sarah has been with UKOLN for five years, which makes her positively antidiluvian in terms of web years. During that time both her role and her activities have expanded. Among other things Sarah was instrumental in the setting up of the hugely popular children's web site 'Stories from the Web', and in the last two years has run a very successful conference on Web Management issues for Public Librarians. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/leodis/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/leodis/ Personal BackgroundTo begin with, as this is predominantly a libraries publication I feel an introduction to my background may be helpful in understanding this approach to digitisation. My relationship with the Leodis Database is as technical creator and manager and my background is purely technical. I studied Printing and Photographic Technology for 3 years at Kitson College Leeds and then Computer Science for 3 years at Manchester Metropolitan University followed by 1 years research in Computer Modelling at Manchester Metropilitan University, Department of Mechanical Engineering. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/exam-papers/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/exam-papers/ The George Edwards Library at the University of Surrey is close to completing a project for providing on-line access to the University’s exam papers for members of the University. Although other institutions are already providing electronic access to their exam papers, the system designed for use at Surrey is believed to be innovative in a number of ways. The overall achievements are: Simple and efficient method of delivery of electronic exam papersWill makes papers available to multiple users 24 hours per day from any site with Internet access on or off campusA non Java version for those who require itUse of Adobe Acrobat PDF to view papersAbility to watermark papers if required by SchoolsConforms to Dublin Core metadata standards (for more information see the Dublin Core site at http://purl. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-focus/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-focus/ What's the future for Web browsing? Is it the PC running some flavour of MS Windows?. Will the Linux platform take off on the desktop? Or will the Macintosh come back into fashion? Many statistics on browser usage would suggest that the MS Windows platform has won the battle. The proportion of platforms illustrated in Figure 1 (which shows accesses to the Cultivate Interactive by graphical browsers) is probably not too untypical (information available at [1]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/zope/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/zope/ MotivationI would be surprised if most people don’t feel a sense of achievement when they author their first Web page. It’s the first thing you ever made which potentially the rest of the world can see. Others learn about your new skill and before you know it you’ve become the departmental webperson and are buried in an avalanche of other people’s content to “put on the Web”. The chore of document conversion and the burden of information maintenance quickly dispel the euphoria of your first experience of authoring for the Web. 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/oed-tech/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/oed-tech/ Ariadne has already described the long-term task of revising the Oxford English Dictionary and reviewed OED Online at its launch in March this year, but the editor judged, rightly, that there must be a hidden story on the making of the web site. This article sets out to tell that story, describing what was technically involved in turning a twenty-three volume print work into an online publication, and recording how this generation of publishers benefited from visionary groundwork undertaken fifteen years ago which meant that the hardest part of going online - preparing the content - was three-quarters done before they’d heard of the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ IntroductionUntil recently, visually impaired people (VIP) were poorly served by the library and information provision that is routinely available to sighted people. They have relied to a great extent on specialist voluntary organisations transcribing a limited range of materials into accessible formats. This situation is changing with advances in technology and recent initiatives on social inclusion. Increasingly visually impaired people will be able to locate and use information independently, as sighted people already do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/convergence/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/convergence/ The pastVideo games have been around for a lot longer than most people realise. Many people can remember playing games on their ZX Spectrum (1982), or even their cartridge-based Atari VCS (1978). However, before these systems came into being there had already been a decade of video game development, mostly based in the US and Japan. The first recognised games console was the Magnavox Odyssey [1] in 1972. This US-produced machine sold around 100,000 units in three years, and at the time was considered to be revolutionary. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/editorial/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/editorial/ Ariadne continues to develop and make friends in the the world. Shortly, if all goes well, every word published in Ariadne during the past four years will be available in a US education fulltext database, distributed on a world-wide basis. This is a mark of the significance of Ariadne's contribution to the discussions surrounding digital library initiatives, both in the UK and the US. An Ariadne reader, 'Delivering the Electronic Library' has been put together by Lyndon Pugh, John MacColl and Lorcan Dempsey and published in an edition published principally for distribution to UK institutions of Higher Education. 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/tiny-tv/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/tiny-tv/ Before you will be able to play the resources listed in this article, you should be equipped with the latest versions of at least two pieces of software: the G2 RealPlayer, and the Microsoft Media Player. Some of the resources listed will work with older versions of these applications, but if you have the latest versions, all of them will run properly. Some clips have been encoded by the suppliers with the latest codecs precisely to encourage users to upgrade to these latest versions of streaming media players. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ The "Institutional Web Management: The Next Steps" workshop took place at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9 September 1999. This was the third annual event for institutional web managers which has been organised by UK Web Focus. The first workshop was held over 2 day (16/17 July 1997) at Kings College London. As described in the workshop report published in Ariadne [1] the event attracted a total of 95 participants. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity for web editors to meet their peers at other institutions and compare experiences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/nt-explorer/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/nt-explorer/ IIS has been around for quite some time now. IIS 2.0 can be found on the Windows NT 4.0 Server installation CD-ROM. This version of IIS was pretty basic, and changing advanced settings usually involved messing around with the Windows registry. Version 3.0 was little different from 2.0, but it did see the introduction of server-side scripting through the use of the innovative Active Server Pages [1]. By contrast, version 4. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/tolimac/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/tolimac/ As networked information services continue to expand, libraries need to reinforce their key intermediary role between information providers and end users to achieve a double objective: facilitate user access to electronic services distributed through the Internet and guarantee payment to providers. TOLIMAC (Total Library Management Concept) is designed as a management tool that allows libraries to manage and control user access to electronic information. It enables electronic information providers to agree institutional contracts based on actual use of their services, as it provides guarantees on request authentication and on payment for information delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-mirror/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-mirror/ The National Mirror Service will supersede the HENSA services in August to become the primary mirror service for the academic community. This will be a new, improved and more integrated service brought to you by the Universities of Lancaster and Kent and funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The Director of the new service is Dr Tim Hopkins, Reader in Computer Science at the University of Kent. The service will be based primarily upon the web, although access via FTP will still be available. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/404/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/404/ What are the ten most visited pages on your website? Your main entry point, no doubt. And possibly your search page, a site map or other navigational aids. A greeting from your Vice Chancellor may be a popular page - or is it more likely to be a Student's Union Society page, or a personal home page? All of these are possibilities, but isn't a frequently visited - if not popular - page missing from this list? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/internet-detective/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/internet-detective/ In July 1998 we launched “Internet Detective” - an informal but comprehensive online tutorial designed to teach the skills required to critically evaluate the quality of information found on the Internet. The tutorial includes interactive quizzes, worked examples and practical hint and tips. It can be accessed via the World Wide Web from: http://sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html Who created Internet Detective? The tutorial has been developed by staff at The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ AbstractThe majority of library enquiry systems usually consist of a non-graphical interface linked to a library catalogue (Online Public Access Catalog, or OPAC). Graphics, animation and sound are usually sacrificed to speed up the enquiry process. Some interfaces support the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) and can therefore be accessed on the World Wide Web (Web). Although they allow access using a number of keywords (author, subject, title, etc.), they do not provide any help on how the catalogues are accessed, how to structure or refine a query or how to evaluate the responses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ The National Library of Australia has selected Fretwell-Downing’s OLIB VDX, the same product chosen by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee’s LIDDA (Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration) Project as the heart of the new interlending and document delivery support services for the nation’s libraries. OLIB (Open Library Systems) is Fretwell-Downing Informatics’ library management system, consisting of a family of products of which VDX (Virtual Document eXchange) is the product supporting ILL management. 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/web-focus/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/web-focus/ Since February 1998 HTML 4.0 [1], CSS 2.0[2], the Mathematical Markup Language MathML [3] and the Extensible Markup Language XML [4] have all become W3C Recommendations. These web protocols, all of which are concerned with the way in which information can be represented and displayed, were initially Working Drafts which were developed by the appropriate W3C Working Group. The Working Drafts were then made publicly available as W3C Proposed Recommendations. Following a review period the Proposed Recommendations were voted on by W3C member organisations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/cover/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/cover/ Project PATRON (Performing Arts Teaching Resources ONline) has been designed to deliver digital audio, video, music scores and dance notation across a high speed network to the desktop. The JISC eLib Programme project is based in the Library at the University of Surrey. Many of the resource materials are in the short loan section and one of the aims is to investigate ways of improving access to reserve materials, such as music CDs and dance videos, for staff and students. 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/15/what-is/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/what-is/ About XMLWhat is XML? XML stands for the Extensible Markup Language. XML has been designed to address a number of deficiencies in HTML. Which deficiencies in particular? HTML is not extensible. Submitting proposals for extensions to HTML can be a very lengthy process. Browser software vendors can short-circuit the standardisation process by introducing their own extensions, but this has caused problems, as we have seen with controversial extensions such as Netscape’s <BLINK> and Microsoft’s <MARQUEE> elements. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/end-user/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/end-user/ University librarians are often referred to as ‘end users’ so I’ve sometimes been jokingly introduced as an end-end user - I’m Oliver de Peyer and I’m a biochemistry postgraduate at the University of Reading. Like my fellow students, I use services like Biosis, Medline and BIDS for online literature searches and so on. I am on the committee of the JISC-funded Bibliographic Dataservices User Group, or JIBS UG, where my job is to offer naive comments rather like the ones I’m going to make here - although I hope some may not be so naive after all. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/netskills-corner/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/netskills-corner/ Paul Garrud, Issue 8 of Ariadne, looked at how multimedia might be used online in a medical context (patient education), and started from the premise that “ one shouldn’t neglect the presentation and visual impact of educational packages because they engage the user’s motivation, attention and aesthetic sense”. Paul nicely encapsulates in one sentence the difficulties of designing with multimedia in mind. In Issue 12 of Ariadne Brian Kelly discussed how widely some of the newer Web technologies are being used in UK university and HE college home pages. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/web-focus/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/web-focus/ Background to HTMLHTML was designed primarily to define the basic structure of documents. Documents contained headings (<H1>, <H2>, etc.), paragraphs (<HP>), list items (<LI>), etc. Web browsers, such as Netscape and Internet Explorer could then display the document structure, with headers displayed in a large font, list items with bullets, etc. HTML’s simplicity was instrumental in the Web’s early growth in popularity. Web pages could be produced very easily, since there was no need to master a complicated language. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/what-is/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/what-is/ In a world where things change as fast as the world wide web and the Internet, it is often hard to get a grasp on the exact meanings of buzz-words that suddenly spring up all the time. Some such words appear in newspapers and other publications, are used for a few months and then are never heard again, while others eventually become part of the language we ar all expected to understand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ccc/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ccc/ Questions raised by The Royals Fytton Rowland, Lecturer, and Programme Tutor for Information and Publishing Studies, Department of Information and Library Studies, Loughborough University, asked a series of questions sparked off by the publication of Kitty Kelly’s book about the royal family [Charles] Assuming the UK courts state the book is defamatory, in my view the answers to Fytton’s questions are: 1. If I go to the USA, buy a legitimate copy of the book in a bookshop, and bring it back to the UK in my suitcase, am I infringing any law, and could customs confiscate it? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/minotaur/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/minotaur/ We must not be driven by IT. IT is just a tool. We should be formulating information strategies, not IT strategies. Information Technology (IT) is nowadays such a critical and fundamentally different vehicle for information handling than heretofore that all organisations must have an explicit, coherent and comprehensive strategy for its future use. IT is not simply a tool; it has the power to transform your business. And YES, indeed, if that business especially revolves around information and communication–as does the whole of the education business–that business in the future will and should be driven by IT. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/web-focus/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/web-focus/ In April a former colleague of mine from Leeds University sent a message to me about a strange copyright statement she had come across on the web, and asked for my comments. I was also intrigued by the statement and, on 23 April, sent the following message to the lis-elib Mailbase list   A strange copyright statment (sic) at the URL http://clans.cla.co.uk/www/auths.html has been brought to my attention. It states that readers are not authorised to: 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/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/quality-ratings/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/quality-ratings/ How does the World Health Organization rate compared to Medical Students for Choice (a reproductive health rights group)? How do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention score across a range of review services? As commentators begin to question the value of much of the information currently available on the Internet, how helpful are stars, badges or seals of approval (SOAPs) in identifying quality resources? Is a "Cool site of the moment" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/acorn-training/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/acorn-training/ The JISC-funded eLib project, Project ACORN [1] was set up to explore the mechanisms for establishing an electronic ‘short-loan’ collection of journal articles for undergraduate students. Having received permission to make 236 high-demand journal articles from the reading lists of the departments of Geography, Human Sciences and Information and Library Studies available to registered undergraduates over the University computer network, the next vital step was to prepare students to use the new service prior to its launch on April 21st. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/search-engines/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/search-engines/ The search engine world seems to be becoming an increasingly competitive environment with each major service vying with the others in order to come up with a killer feature which will attract more and more users to their site, and so boost their advertising revenue. Developers are always looking for new features which will increase the functionality of their search engines, and so far the battle has been fought over issues such as the size of the database and the ‘look and feel’ of the user interface. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/web-focus/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/web-focus/ The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference took place from 7-11th April 1997 in Santa Clara, California, USA. I attended the conference in my capacity as the JISC representative on the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). About 1,800 people attended the conference. This figure was down on the last two years, due possibly to the close proximity of other conferences - the Javasoft conference attracted about 8,000 delagates and the Microsoft Hardware Engineering conference about 15,000 delegates. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/wire/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/wire/ So what do you both do? Martin: Couch potato and his trusty sidekick “toast man” - but which is which? Jon: We’re both “techies” on the ROADS project in eLib and the EU DESIRE project (which for us is basically “EuroROADS”). I do two days per week on ROADS and a day per week on DESIRE. ROADS and DESIRE are both concerned with the provision of access to network resources via Subject Based Information Gateways (SBIGs); these are services such as SOSIG, OMNI and ADAM. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Every day, subscribers to the the NewJour mailing list [1] receive notification of new Internet-available electronic serials. The NewJour definition of a serial covers everything from journals to magazines and newsletters; from the British Accounting Review to Ariadne, to The (virtual) Baguette and I Love My Nanny. Some days, a dozen or more publications are announced. As of 13th February 1997, the NewJour archive contained 3,240 items. Most of these electronic serials, or e-serials, along with most other electronic publications currently available on the World Wide Web, are stored and represented using one or more of a relatively limited number of document formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/marc/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/marc/ In the last issue of Ariadne the basic layout of the MAchine Readable Catalogue (MARC) records [1] used by most library systems worldwide was introduced. The article also described the first release of a Perl module that can be used for processing MARC records. Since that article was published, a number of people have been in touch saying that they either were developing similar in-house MARC processing software or were planning on developing something similar for public usage themselves. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/java-telnet/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/java-telnet/ Many remote users of our library catalog [1] have difficulty accessing it via telnet or dial-up for several reasons. It is available via telnet through a URL on our homepage [2]. Some problems using the OPAC include: Wrong terminal emulationTerminal emulation does not include special keysLack of telnet softwareNo technical support from their service providersPossible solutions include providing all remote users with software, provide technical support for multiple packages, or ignore the problem. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/scholarly-electronic/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/scholarly-electronic/ The University of Sydney Library has acquired a large number of primary texts in digital form over the last few years. These texts include numerous versions of The Bible, the works of Shakespeare, Goethe and Kant, more than 700 classical Greek texts in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the enormous Patrologia Latina Database of the Church Fathers, the English Poetry Full-Text Database, and the Intelex Philosophy Texts. To these texts and others like them must be added the texts available from remote sites such as the collection of some 2,000 French literary, scientific and philosophical texts at the Frantext Web site [1], and the many public domain texts available at the University of Virginia Electronic Text Centre [2] and the Oxford Text Archive [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/search-engines/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/search-engines/ Pushing your Luck? Wouldn’t it be great if you no longer had to spend hours trawling through search engines tracking down information on the web? What if the information you needed simply arrived on your PC desktop on a regular basis with almost no effort required on your part? A new crop of Internet applications which offer just such a service are now starting to emerge. All of these products are using a technology known as ‘Push’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wire/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wire/ What do do you? My job title is ‘Computer Officer’, and I do everything connected with computers. I am essentially third line support, as I was not brought up to tolerate fools. How did you get into this job ie what did you do before? I used to work in Electrical Engineering, working on data transmission systems over mobile radio links. Firewalls in Universities - essential security feature or inconvenience to open use of networked technologies? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/minotaur/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/minotaur/ I live in a small housing co-operative in East London. We have more access to electronic information than does the entire Indian university system. Between 15 of us, we have 72 kilobits per second of network connectivity, with more coming soon. The link between the Indian academic network ERNET [1] and the rest of the universe is 64kbps; some of the institutions on ERNET make do with 9600bps. Say it out loud: " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/loughborough/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/loughborough/ I, along with the team of stakeholders whom I report to, have been running this project for ten months now, and we have reached a point where it would be useful to sit back and reflect on what we have achieved thus far and where we go from here. One of the most important aspects of the job in this first year has been to determine the levels of Internet service use among University staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ What are you doing now? I'm studying for a Masters in Knowledge Based Systems at Edinburgh University's Department of Artificial Intelligence. ...and what where you doing before? Before this academic year I was a software engineer working for Nokia Telecommunications in Cambridge on a variety of network management products. Why the jump from the networkie side of a telecoms company to doing a masters degree? Mainly for financial reasons, I think. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sgml/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sgml/ This article discusses a method by which documents marked up using Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML) can be used to generate a database for use in conjunction with the World Wide Web. The tools discussed in this article and those that were used in experiments are all public domain or shareware packages. This demonstrates that the power and flexibilty of SGML can be utilised by the Internet community at little or no cost. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/technical-day/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/technical-day/ This long-awaited and well-attended concertation day had 35 'teccies' (slang for technical / systems / computer-orientated people) in attendance. A wide range of issues were discussed, probably too many for one day and certainty too many to be covered in this article. One of the main outcomes of the day was the identification of major issues, of interest to many projects, which warrant further discussion. It was an informal day allowing for a lot of attendee input and interaction. 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/katharine-sharp/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/katharine-sharp/ I would like to think that library and information science education is preparing students for employment as traditional librarians, information professionals, or even future LIS educators. In each of these areas there is a call for publication as a requirement for tenure or promotion, or perhaps even as a requirement for attaining the position. Thus it would be of some importance if the student has had some sort of experience with the procedures and expectations before arriving in the workplace or interview. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wire/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW? I provide technical support for the SOSIG project and a few other web services. ... and how did you get into this area? I think I am the rare case of someone who got a job via a training course for the unemployed. On this course I learnt a bit of COBOL (!) and C on old 386s and then, highly trained, got a placement here, at Bristol university. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/adam/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/adam/ The ADAM Project is creating a subject-based information gateway service that will provide access to quality-assured Internet resources in the following areas: Fine Art, including painting, prints and drawings, sculpture and other contemporary media including those using technologyDesign, including industrial, product, fashion, graphic, packaging, interior designArchitecture, including town planning and landscape design, but excluding building constructionApplied Arts, including textiles, ceramics, glass, metals, jewellery, furnitureMedia, including film, television, broadcasting, photography, animation,Theory, historical, philosophical and contextual studies relating to any other categoryMuseum studies and conservationProfessional Practice, related to any of the aboveThe 3-year JISC funding for ADAM was awarded to a consortium of 10 institutions, each with a vested interest in the creation of the service, as part of the Access to Network Resources initiative of the Electronic Libraries Programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/intarch/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/intarch/ Internet Archaeology is an electronic journal run by a consortium which includes the British Academy, the Council for British Archaeology and the Universities of York, Durham, Oxford, Glasgow and Southampton. The project is managed by a steering committee chaired by Prof B W Cunliffe, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. The project has two staff, myself (Managing Editor) and Sandra Garside-Neville (Assistant Editor). The choice of archaeology - the study of the past - as a subject for an electronic journal is based on the wide variety of media now being used by archaeologists in their research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/netskills_corner/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/netskills_corner/ About the Conference The CNIT The fifth World Wide Web conference was held at CNIT, La Défense in Paris from 6-10th May 1996. The conference began with a day of tutorials and workshops and concluded with a developer’s day. The technical programme took place on the 7-9th May. In addition a Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) Forum was held on 9-10th May. ImpressionsThe WWW conference has certainly changed since the first conference was held at CERN in May 1994. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/wire/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW I edit and maintain the Internet Parallel Computing Archive (IPCA) based at HENSA Unix, both of which are funded by JISC ISSC and I work at the Computing Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury. The IPCA is a large and popular archive of High Performance and Parallel Computing materials which has over 500M of files, serves around 3,000 of them each day and has four mirror sites in Paris, Athens, Osaka and Canberra. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/wire/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/wire/ I represent JISC at the Advisory Council meetings of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Most of the delegates are representing commercial companies, wheras I am effectively representing the UK Higher Education sector! W3C member companies are given advance information in confidence, and I am currently working with W3C to see how I can involve UK HE in the work of W3C without violating that confidence. This position is funded through the Advisory Group on Computer Graphics (AGOCG) and covers 25% of my time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/brian/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/brian/ In the beginning was Tim Berners-Lee's WWW (World Wide Web) browser for the NeXT. Then came the CERN WWW line browser and the Viola graphical browser for X. However the first widely- used WWW browser was NCSA Mosaic which was developed initially for X, and then for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh environments. NCSA Mosaic was developed by a group led by Marc Andreessen at the National Center For Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.