http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/oai-pmh/ Recent content in Oai Pmh on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/white/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/white/ I was an early starter in the world of metadata. Within hours of arriving at the offices of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in Euston Street, London, in 1970 to start a career as an information scientist I was writing my first abstract. ‘Writing’ is the correct verb as my A3 abstract would be typed up on an IBM golfball typewriter for production. At the bottom of this form was a section called ‘Index Terms’ and it was made very clear at the outset that mistakes in the abstract were regrettable, but mistakes in indexing were unforgivable. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ball-fowler/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ball-fowler/ The Hartley Library at the University of Southampton has in excess of 15,000 bound PhD and MPhil theses on 340 linear metres of shelving. Consultation of the hard-copy version is now restricted to readers making a personal visit to the Library, as no further microfiche copies are being produced by the British Library and no master copies of theses are lent from the Library. Retrieval of theses from storage for readers and their subsequent return requires effort from a large number of staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ In 2012 the University of Oxford Research Committee endorsed a university ‘Policy on the management of research data and records’ [1]. Much of the infrastructure to support this policy is being developed under the Jisc-funded Damaro Project [2]. The nascent services that underpin the University’s RDM (research data management) infrastructure have been divided into four themes: RDM planning;managing live data;discovery and location; andaccess, reuse and curation.The data outputs catalogue falls into the third theme, and will result in metadata and interfaces that support discovery, location, citation and business reporting for Oxford research datasets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lewis-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lewis-et-al/ This article describes the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework. The Framework addresses the need to synchronise resources between Web sites.  Resources cover a wide spectrum of types, such as metadata, digital objects, Web pages, or data files.  There are many scenarios in which the ability to perform some form of synchronisation is required. Examples include aggregators such as Europeana that want to harvest and aggregate collections of resources, or preservation services that wish to archive Web sites as they change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/seaman/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/seaman/ VuFind is an open source discovery system originally created by Villanova University near Philadelphia [1] and now supported by Villanova with the participation in development of libraries around the world. It was one of the first next-generation library discovery systems in the world, made possible by the open source Solr/Lucene text indexing and search system which lies at the heart of VuFind (Solr also underlies several of the current commercial offerings, including Serials Solutions' Summon and ExLibris' Primo). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/scaife/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/scaife/ When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian’s life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still. It is characterised by the decay of a static URL which has, for example, been placed in a library catalogue to reference a relevant Web site resource which has subsequently been moved to a different server or else removed altogether. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ The Open Educational Resources Hack Day event was designed to bring together those interested in rapidly developing tools and prototypes to solve problems related to OER. Whilst there is a growing interest in the potential for learning resources created and shared openly by academics and teachers, a number of technical challenges still exist, including resource retrieval, evaluation and reuse. This event aimed to explore some of these problem areas by partnering developers with the creators and users of OER to identify needs and potential solutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ In 1999 Sir John Taylor [1], then Director General of the UK Research Councils, talked about e-Science, i.e. global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will support it. It encompasses computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments or that uses immense datasets that require grid computing. In the US the term cyberinfrastructure has been used to describe the new research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualisation and other computing and information processing services over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ More than 60 delegates convened at the Rose Bowl in Leeds on 7 May 2010 for this event to explore the developing relationship and overlap between Open Access research repositories and so called 'CRISs' – Current Research Information Systems – that are increasingly being implemented at universities. The Welsh Repository Network (WRN) [1], a collaborative venture between the Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in Wales, funded by JISC, had clearly hit upon an engaging topic du jour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Eager to prove their relevance among scholars leaving print behind, libraries have participated vocally in the last half-decade's conversation about digital research data. On the surface, libraries would seem to have much human and technological infrastructure ready-constructed to repurpose for data: digital library platforms and institutional repositories may appear fit for purpose. However, unless libraries understand the salient characteristics of research data, and how they do and do not fit with library processes and infrastructure, they run the risk of embarrassing missteps as they come to grips with the data challenge. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/niso-d2d-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/niso-d2d-rpt/ A crisp spring day in Atlanta saw a gathering of 50 participants coming from libraries, including many from the GALILEO consortium, from vendors, including sponsors Ex Libris and Innovative Interfaces, Inc., and from content providers such as JSTOR, for a series of presentations at the well-equipped and comfortable Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The agenda [1] was an interesting mix of perspectives on a theme - switching focus from information resource users, particularly students, and how studying and interacting with them can inform our discovery and delivery systems, to details of ‘behind the scenes’ of these systems, technologies and standards such as OpenURL and SSO (Single Sign-on), and improvements needed to deliver more seamlessly what users want, as well as the development of new services such as bX recommender and BookServer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/cetis-stds-2010-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/cetis-stds-2010-rpt/ The stated intention of this working meeting organised by JISC CETIS, and held at the University of Bolton, UK, on 12 January 2010 was to: '[...] bring together participants in a range of standards organisations and communities to look at the future for interoperability standards in the education sector. The key topic for consideration is the relationship between specifications developed in informal communities and formal standards organisations and industry consortia. The meeting will also seek to explore the role of informal specification communities in rapidly developing, implementing and testing specifications in an open process before submission to more formal, possibly closed, standards bodies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ The Internet has caused a revolution in the way scientists and scholars have access to scholarly output. Only 15 years ago, the (university) library decided what sources should be offered to the staff and individual scientists could only hope the librarian would listen to their wishes. In this system scientists frequently had no instantaneous access to the information they wanted. In such instances they had to rely on the Interlibrary Loan System. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ The previous article about the Overlay Journal Infrastructure for Meteorological Sciences (OJIMS) Project [1] dealt with an introduction to the concept of overlay journals and their potential impact on the meteorological sciences. It also discussed the business cases and requirements that must be met for overlay journals to become operational as data publications. There is significant interest in data journals at this time as they could provide a framework to allow the peer-review and citation of datasets, thereby encouraging data scientists to ensure their data and metadata are complete and valid, and granting them academic credit for this work. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/handshake-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/handshake-rpt/ I was a participant in the repository handshake group discussions at the JISC-, SURF- and DRIVER-funded International Repositories Workshop in Amsterdam in March 2009 [1]. Motivation for deposit was widely discussed at the start of the day. It also became apparent after a few hours that the premise of the discussions, i.e. 'repository handshake', was not a universally clear concept. Some felt the term referred to technical protocols, and some to business processes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Since 2006, the EU-sponsored DRIVER Project has aimed to build an interoperable, trusted and long-term repository infrastructure. As part of the DRIVER Project, a survey was carried out in order to obtain an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union in 2006 [1]. This study was updated by an expanded survey in 2008, in which 178 institutional research repositories [2] from 22 European countries participated. In this article we will present the most important results [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/chaudhri/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/chaudhri/ Efforts to create standard metadata records for resources in digital repositories have hitherto relied for the most part on the simple standard schema published by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) [1], the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, more commonly known as 'simple Dublin Core' [2]. While this schema, by and large, met the aim of making metadata interoperable between repositories for purposes such as OAI-PMH [3], the explicit means by which it achieved this, a drastic simplification of the metadata associated with digital objects to only 15 elements, had the side effect of making it difficult or impossible to describe specific types of resources in detail [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/editorial/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/editorial/ Having returned once more to the fray somewhat chastened by the experience of eye surgery, alone and without a general anaesthetic (with apologies to Rumpole and the late lamented John Mortimer [1] ), but hugely impressed by the ministrations of the NHS, I am struck once again by the enormous importance of people, both within the community that Ariadne serves as well as those domains beyond, and in which all are nonetheless increasingly, but quite naturally, dependent on technology for their success. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ The European Film Gateway (EFG) [1] is one in a series of projects funded by the European Commission, under the eContentplus Programme, with the aim of contributing to the development and further enhancement of Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive [2]. Officially launched on 20 November 2008, the prototype Europeana service provides access to about four million digital objects from archives, audio-visual archives, museums and libraries across Europe. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/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/57/davies/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/davies/ Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive - is a two-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a service giving users direct access initially to some two million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers, rising to a target of 10 million by 2010. The development of the Europeana service is a flagship activity of the European Digital Libraries Initiative [1] [2], designed to increase access to digital content across four identified key domains (libraries, museums, archives and audio/visual archives) is now gaining momentum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/voss/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/voss/ In recent years the principle of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown increasingly important in digital library systems. More and more core functionalities are becoming available in the form of Web-based, standardised services which can be combined dynamically to operate across a broader environment [1]. Standard APIs for searching (SRU [2] [3], OpenSearch [4]), harvesting and syndication (OAI-OMH [5], ATOM [6]), copying (unAPI [7] [8]), publishing, editing (AtomPub [9], Jangle [10], SRU Update [11]), and more basic library operations, either already exist or are being developed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ The new framework for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources, OAI-ORE, had its European release in April 2008 [1]. Amongst its practical uses, OAI-ORE has a role to play in digital preservation and continued access to files. This article describes the basic outline of the framework and how it can support the PRESERV2 project digital preservation model of provision of preservation services and interoperability for digital repositories. The PRESERV approach recognises that effective preservation is founded on three fundamental actions on data: copy, move and monitor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/gatenby/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/gatenby/ Libraries’ collections fall into three parts: physical, digital and licensed. These are managed by multiple systems, ILS (Integrated Library System), ERM (Electronic Records Management), digital management, digital repositories, resolvers, inter-library loan and reference. At the same time libraries are increasingly co-operating in collecting and storing resources. This article examines how to identify data that is best located at global, collective and local levels. An example is explored, namely the benefits of moving data from different local systems to the network level to manage acquisition of the total collection as a whole and in combination with consortia members. 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/maccoll/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/maccoll/ RLG Programs became part of OCLC in the summer of 2006. In November of last year, RLG Programs announced the appointment of a European Director, John MacColl. This article explains the rationale behind the combination of RLG with the OCLC Office of Research, and describes the work programme of the new Programs and Research Group. It argues for co-operation as the necessary response to the challenges presented to research libraries as the Web changes the way researchers work, and it lays out a new programme dedicated to research outputs, which will have significant European Partner involvement. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ The Museum Computer Network (MCN) celebrated its 40th anniversary during its annual meeting, this year held at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza. In 1967, museum professionals in New York City gathered to discuss the utility of computers in museum settings. This initial meeting provided the seed for what would become the Museum Computer Network [1]. 40 years later, 310 delegates from 14 countries and 32 states in the US gathered to take stock of successes and issues in the networked museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/feijen-et-al/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/feijen-et-al/ Introduction: Why DRIVER Is NeededOpenDOAR [1] lists over 900 Open Access repositories worldwide. Approximately half of them are based in Europe, most of which are institutional repositories. Across Europe many more repositories are being set up and supported by national and regional initiatives such as the Repositories Support Project [2] in the UK and IREL-Open [3] in Ireland. A recurring challenge for repositories is that of engaging researchers in Open Access and motivating them to deposit their work in OA repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/digitising-culture-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/digitising-culture-rpt/ The idiom of the ‘elephant in the room’ is one often conjured up when an obvious fact or presence is not acknowledged for fear that doing so will radically disturb people’s acceptance of the status quo. The conference in Berlin, Knowledge By Networking, Digitising Culture in Germany and Europe [1], had something of the elephant in the room. In this case the unmentioned presence was not the elephant, but the search engine Google. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ While Cream of Science (Keur der Wetenschap), Promise of Science and the HBO Knowledge Bank (HBO Kennisbank) are among the inspiring results of the DARE Programme for the period 2003-06, what is more important in the long run is the new infrastructure that enables Dutch Higher Education and research institutions to provide easy and reliable open access to research results and teaching material as quickly as possible. Such open access ought to be the standard in a knowledge-driven society, certainly if the material and data have been generated with public funding. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Europe's audiovisual heritage contains both a record and a representation of the past and as such it demonstrates the development of the 'audiovisual culture' we inhabit today. In this article we hope to offer an insight into the development of the Video Active Portal [1] which provides access broadcast heritage material retained by archives across Europe. We will explain how Video Active needed to find solutions for managing intellectual property rights, semantic and linguistic interoperability and the design of a meaningful user experience. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ The term ‘sustainable development’ was first coined by the Brundtland Commission, convened by the United Nations in 1983 [1]. It denotes ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Although defined originally to meet the concerns relating to environmental damage, it has since been used to encompass the broader needs of society through economic, social and political sustainability. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ This paper describes three inter-related repository projects. These projects were all funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government through the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative as part of the Commonwealth Government’s Backing Australia’s Ability - An Innovation Action Plan for the Future. The article will describe the background to all three projects and the way in which their development has been inter-related and co-ordinated. The article will conclude by examining how Monash University (the lead institution in all three projects) is re-conceiving the relationship between its different repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/open-repos-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/open-repos-rpt/ 23-26 January 2007 saw the second Open RepositoriesConference [1], this year hosted at the enormous Marriott Rivercenter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, around the corner from the Alamo. The conference followed on from the inaugural one held last year in Sydney [2], offering the U.S. repositories community an ideal opportunity to gather, together with a generous scattering of attendees from other parts of the world. With the strap-line 'achieving interoperability in an open world', the conference promoted interoperability and openness in various ways, not just between repositories on a technical level, but also between development communities, technical implementers, librarians and repository managers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/allinson-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/allinson-et-al/ In May 2006, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] approached UKOLN [2] and the Eduserv Foundation [3] to collaborate on the development of a metadata specification for describing eprints (alternatively referred to as scholarly works, research papers or scholarly research texts) [4]. A Dublin Core (DC) [5] application profile was chosen as the basis of the specification given the widespread use of DC in existing repositories, the flexibility and extensibility of the DCMI Abstract Model [6] and its compatibility with the Semantic Web [7]. 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/48/cris-2006-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/cris-2006-rpt/ This conference marked the 15th anniversary of euroCRIS. In 1991 current research information systems were housed on mainframe computers and mainly used for administrative report purposes. CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) now supply data for research management and assessment on a local and national scale, and are at the core of optimal presentation of research information itself. In keeping with the Hanseatic traditions of Bergen, research information traders gathered from the known world to share and improve their practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Common Web tools and techniques cannot easily manipulate library resources. While photo sharing, link logging, and Web logging sites make it easy to use and reuse content, barriers still exist that limit the reuse of library resources within new Web services. [1][2] To support the reuse of library information in Web 2.0-style services, we need to allow many types of applications to connect with our information resources more easily. One such connection is a universal method to copy any resource of interest. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collectionsThe UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. Course OutlineThis course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/code4lib-2006-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/code4lib-2006-rpt/ Focused as a highly technical event, the inaugural code4lib conference resulted from the combined efforts of the code4lib community, a loosely connected set of programmers, hackers, librarians, and library technologists who pursue technologies related to libraries and information. Over 80 attendees had the opportunity to learn what their peers were pursuing at other institutions, to share projects, hacks, code, and ideas, and to participate in breakout sessions and give lightning talks. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/editorial/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/editorial/ Perhaps I am not quite so cynical as I suppose when, despite being more than a little aware of the problem confonting us in respect of safeguarding electronic resources, I can nonetheless be shocked by the statistic Eileen Fenton provides us in her article on Preserving Electronic Scholarly Journals: Portico where she reveals the percentage of resources, from impeccable sources, that were no longer retrievable from the original hyperlink a mere 27 months after their appearance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ "I want my browser to recognise information in Web pages and offer me functionality to remix it with relevant information from other services. I want to control which services are offered to me and how they are offered." In this article I discuss the ingredients that enable users to benefit from a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by combining services according to their preferences. This concept can be summarised as a user-accessible machine-readable knowledge base of service descriptions in combination with a user agent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/robertson/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/robertson/ With the wider deployment of repositories, the Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is becoming a common method of supporting interoperability between repositories and services. It provides 'an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting' [1]. Nodes in a network using this protocol are 'data providers' or 'service providers'. Although repository software supporting OAI-PMH is not overly complex [2], without programming skills or access to technical support, implementing and supporting a repository is not an entirely straightforward task. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond. These clusters seek to encompass many of the diverse issues being considered across the Digital Repositories Programme, including the different repository types (e-Learning and Scientific data), the infrastructural and technical issues (Integrating infrastructure and Machine services) and the social, cultural and legal topics (Legal and policy, Personal resource management strategies and Preservation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Doctoral theses contain some of the most current and valuable research produced within universities, but are underused as research resources. Where electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are open access, they are used many times more often than paper theses that are available only via inter-library loan. Many universities and other organisations across Europe are now working hard to make ETDs more openly available and useful. In an attempt to co-ordinate this activity, an invitation-only workshop was held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in January, to see what could be learned from existing examples of best practice and to see how the participants might work together in the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ We have recently come through several decennial celebrations: the W3C, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, D-Lib Magazine, and now Ariadne. What happened clearly in the mid-nineties was the convergence of the Web with more pervasive network connectivity, and this made our sense of the network as a shared space for research and learning, work and play, a more real and apparently achievable goal. What also emerged - at least in the library and research domains - was a sense that it was also a propitious time for digital libraries to move from niche to central role as part of the information infrastructure of this new shared space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/vanderkuil/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/vanderkuil/ ResultsCream of Science: The ChallengeOne of the key challenges of the DARE Programme [1] is to encourage scholars to deposit digital versions of their research output in a university archive (institutional repository) that, in turn, can make this output accessible on the Internet. With this in view, a project called Cream of Science was initiated in the summer of 2004. One of the prime aims of Cream of Science is to unlock top quality content to the scientific community and make it more easily and digitally accessible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] was a three-year project (August 2002-July 2005) based at the University of Glasgow and funded by JISC's Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2]. The project established a number of different services for research material at the University of Glasgow. This approach enabled us to explore an institutional repository model which used different software (ePrints, DSpace and PKP Harvester) for different content, including: Published and peer-reviewed papersPre-prints, grey literature and thesesAdditional services were also developed including an open access e-journal (JeLit) and a subject-based repository for the Erpanet Project (ERPAePRINTS). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/project.html Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/project.html Starting the ChallengeCream of Science is ‘invented’ during a meeting of the DARE partners in the summer of 2004, while discussing different strategies to increase the volume of DARE repositories and to increase the awareness of scientists. August 2004The Cream Project starts with preparatory work done by DARE programme management. This results in a planning document that is sent to the DARE partners who quickly respond with their commentary. It becomes clear that the actual work will be delegated to the university libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ The number of available online digital collections is growing all the time and with this comes the need to discover these collections, both by machine (m2m) and by end-users. There is also a trend towards service-orientated architectures and a likely critical part of this will be service registries to assist with discovering services andtheir associated collections. UKOLN and the JISC Information Environment Services Registry Project (IESR) [1] organised a two-day workshop to look at some of the issues that are likely to be present in building a distributed approach. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/newsline/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/newsline/ PV 2005: Ensuring long-term preservation and adding value to scientific and technical data Royal Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 21-23 November 2005 This conference is the third of a series on long-term preservation and adding value to scientific data. Topics covered include: 1. Ensuring long-term data preservationState of the art of data archiving and access techniques, for example: What standardisation has to offer (in the form of feedback from experience)Adapting archiving techniques to the different categories of information handled, such as scientific data, technical data, documents, sounds and imagesSystem architecture in the context of constant technological developments2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ EEVL Xtra - In a NutshellEEVL Xtra [1] is an exciting new, free service which helps people find articles, books, the best Web sites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing. EEVL Xtra cross-searches (hence the ‘X’ in Xtra) over twenty different collections/ databases relevant to engineering, mathematics and computing, and includes content from over fifty publishers and providers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/chudnov/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/chudnov/ Library users have never before had so many options for finding, collecting and sharing information. Many users abandon old information management tools whenever new tools are easier, faster, more comprehensive, more intuitive, or simply 'cooler.' Many successful new tools adhere to a principle of simplicity - HTML made it simple for anyone to publish on the Web; XML made it simple for anyone to exchange more strictly defined data; and RSS made it simple to extract and repurpose information from any kind of published resource [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/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/41/parkes-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/parkes-rvw/ This is the 5th collection of papers from the biennial Libraries Without Walls Conference (LWW5). Reference to the preceding 4 volumes published in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002 respectively is rewarding to see how discourse and practice has developed. Access collaboration is now commonplace; 135 institutions are members of the UK Libraries plus access scheme, 157 are signed up for Sconul Research Extra. The Peoples Network has put 4000 Internet centres into public libraries, Athens passwords and off-campus access to databases has provided access to a growing collection of electronic content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/editorial/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/editorial/ For someone who is relatively ill at ease with numbers, it comes as no surprise that our lives grow increasingly controlled by them in ways which perhaps Orwell did not 'foresee' in 1984. Winston Smith tries very hard to remain an individual, as I hope do we all; indeed it is most often the great individuals whom we either cherish as a national treasure [1], or loathe most enthusiastically, but to whom we are rarely indifferent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been able to achieve new business practices such as digitising its collections and hosting federated search services by exploiting recent standards including the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), handles for persistent identification, and metadata schemas for new types of content. Each instantiation of the OAI-PMH opens up new ways of creating and managing our digital libraries while making them more accessible for learning, teaching and research purposes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/vanderkuil/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/vanderkuil/ The SURF Programme Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) is a joint initiative of Dutch universities to make their academic output digitally accessible. The KB (National Library of the Netherlands), the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) also cooperate in this unique programme. DARE is being coordinated by the SURF Foundation [1]. The programme will run from January 2003 until December 2006. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ The Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) [1] has been developed at Edinburgh University Library [2] to help provide an E-Thesis service within an institution using DSpace [3]. It has been developed as part of the Theses Alive! [4] Project under funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [5], as part of the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) [6] Programme. This article looks at DSpace, the repository system initially developed by Hewlett-Packard and MIT and subsequently made available as a community-owned package. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/morgan/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/morgan/ This article is an introduction to the "brother and sister" Web Service protocols named Search/Retrieve Web Service (SRW) and Search/Retrieve URL Service (SRU) with an emphasis on the later. More specifically, the article outlines the problems SRW/U are intended to solve, the similarities and differences between SRW and SRU, the complimentary nature of the protocols with OAI-PMH, and how SRU is being employed in a sponsored NSF (National Science Foundation) grant called OCKHAM to facilitate an alerting service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ A Little HistoryCornucopia is a searchable database of collections held by cultural heritage institutions throughout the UK. It is developed and managed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and was initially established in response to the Government’s Treasures in Trust report which called for a way to be found of recognising the richness and diversity of our collections. The original Cornucopia was set up in 1998. MLA, (then the Museums & Galleries Commission (MGC)), contracted Cognitive Applications to develop the site featuring data from the 62 museums in England holding collections which are ‘Designated’ as being of outstanding importance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Day OneIntroductionWelcome and KeynoteOverview of Persistent Identifier initiativesURNOpenURL - The Rough GuideInfo URIsThe DCMI Persistent Identifier Working GroupThe CENDI ReportARKPURLsOverview of the Handle SystemDOIDay TwoIdentifiers at the Coal FaceEPICURThe National Digital Data Archive (NDA)NBN:URN Generator and ResolverDIVAThe Publisher’s PerspectiveDigital Object Identifiers for Publishing and the e-Learning CommunitiesPublication and Citation of Scientific and Primary DataInformation and the Government of CanadaConclusion This event, organised by ERPANET [1], brought together around 40 key players with an interest in the topic of persistent identifiers in order to synthesize the current state of play, debate the issues and consider what lies on the horizon in this field of activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/editorial/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/editorial/ Reading the interesting points Karen Coyle has to make in Rights Management and Digital Library Requirements puts me in mind, not so much of horses actually, as of one of cartoonist Gary Larson's cows. The bovine unfortunate in question, bedecked with shower cap, is being pushed along by the rest of the herd and complaining that no sooner has she stepped into the shower than some fool cries 'Stampede!' Much the same effect may be claimed from the fallout of the Napster affair and the sharing of millions of music files. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ The last ten years have seen a huge investment in the creation of electronic resources for use by researchers, students and teachers. Increasing amounts of money are being spent now on providing portals and virtual learning environments (or learning management systems) for use within institutions and organisations, or for people focusing on particular subject areas. A portal is defined by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as - " - a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/pearce/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/pearce/ Personalisation has become an increasingly salient topic in the UK library and information management sector, yet to date much of the work undertaken has been in the academic and knowledge management sectors [1]. However, the South Yorkshire-based IT for Me Project [2] is looking to bring personalised access to online resources to public libraries. The project, which began in October 2003, will create a Web-based platform to provide access to personalised resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) - 24-26 June, TorontoThe Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) is the international meeting for organisations and individuals involved in the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials. This year, JTS is scheduled to be held in Toronto, Canada, June 24-26, 2004. Preliminary program information is now available on the JTS 2004 website. See: http://www.jts2004.org/english/program.htm For more information please see the website or contact the organization responsible for coordinating the event on behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA): http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/powell/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/powell/ Over the last eighteen months or so, the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has been funding some collaborative work between the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) Hubs [1] and Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) Centres [2]. The primary intention of these subject-based RDN/LTSN partnerships was to: Develop collection policies that clarified the relationships between the two sets of activities.Enable the sharing of records within and beyond partnerships using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/summers/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/summers/ Net::OAI::Harvester is a Perl package for easily interacting with OAI-PMH repositories as a metadata harvester. The article provides examples of how to use Net::OAI::Harvester to write short programs that execute each of the 6 OAI-PMH verbs. Issues related to efficient XML parsing of OAI-PMH responses are discussed, as are specific techniques used by Net::OAI::Harvester. The Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is an increasingly popular protocol for sharing metadata about digital objects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ The Theses Alive! [1] Project, based at Edinburgh University Library and funded under the JISC Fair Programme [2], is aiming to produce, among other things, a software solution for institutions in the UK to implement their own E-theses or Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) online submission system and repository. In order to achieve this it has been necessary to examine existing packages that may provide all or part of the solution we desire before considering what extra development we may need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/editorial/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/editorial/ At a time when long-running institutions such as Ariadne are understandably mindful of their independence [1], the decision not to persist in the editorial inclination to lead on articles slightly at a tangent to the main thrust of Ariadne’s work might be considered craven. However, under any other circumstances it might justifiably have been considered perverse and hence I begin by drawing your attention to the article by Marieke Guy, Andy Powell and Michael Day. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/guy/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/guy/ Throughout the eprints community there is an increasing awareness of the need for improvement in the quality of metadata and in associated quality assurance mechanisms. Some [1] feel that recent discussion of the cultural and institutional barriers to self-archiving, which have so far limited the proliferation of eprint archives in the UK, have meant that anything that is perceived as a barrier between academics and their parent institutions needs to be played down. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ The European Library (TEL) Project [1] completed at the end of January 2004. The key aim of TEL was to investigate the feasibility of establishing a new Pan-European service which would ultimately give access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe [2]. The project was partly funded by the European Commission as an accompanying measure under the cultural heritage applications area of Key Action 3 of the Information Societies Technology (IST) research programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/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/37/nixon/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three-year JISC-funded project under the FAIR Programme [2] which will build a network of open access digital collections at the University of Glasgow. These collections will enable us to unlock access to a wide range of our institutional scholarly output. This output includes not only published and peer-reviewed papers but also administrative documents, research finding aids, pre-prints and theses. DAEDALUS is also a member of the CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) SHERPA Project [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/duke/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/duke/ Subject Gateways act as a main point of access to high-quality resources on the Web. They are resource discovery guides that provide links to information resources which can be whole Web sites, organisational home pages and other collections or services, themed around a specific subject, such as the physical sciences or humanities. At their core is a catalogue of rich metadata records that describe Internet resources - subject specialists identify and select the resources and create the descriptions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Welcome and IntroductionRachel Heery, UKOLN, University of BathDelegates were welcomed and reminded that this was the fourth and final in a series of workshops which have been organised by the Open Archives Forum Project. Rachel Heery explained that the project was a supporting action funded by the European Commission to bring together EU researchers and implementers working in the area of open access to archives. Fourth Open Archives Forum Technical Validation Report Birgit Matthaei, HU Berlin Technical validation based on Resource Database http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/powell/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/powell/ This largely graphical article attempts to explain the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [1] by layering a set of fairly well-known services, projects and software applications over the network architecture diagram [2]. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) technical architecture specifies a set of standards and protocols that support the development and delivery of an integrated set of networked services that allow the end-user to discover, access, use and publish digital and physical resources as part of their learning and research activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/newsline/ The British Library’s ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery ServiceJune 2003 The British Library previewed its new and ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery Service at the SLA 94th Annual Conference in New York in June . Fully available from October 2003, the new service means that almost anything from the Library’s huge collections - whether born digital, in print or in microform - can be securely delivered to a desktop within two hours if needed, with born digital material available for instant delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/iprws-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/iprws-rpt/ The Intellectual Property Rights workshop was organised by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) on behalf of the X4L [1], 5⁄99 [2] and FAIR [3] Programmes and was a well attended and thought-provoking event. It was also timely, as many of our projects, in both higher and further education, begin to deal with the larger IPR issues which we are all facing. Copyright is becoming more complex and there are many unresolved issues about relationships and ownership, whether in the context of Learning and Teaching or of other institutional resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/romeo/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/romeo/ The Open Archives Initiative’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) enables the ‘disclosure’ of metadata by Data Providers and the harvesting of that metadata by Service Providers. Although there is nothing to stop commercial providers from utilising this open-source protocol [1], it has its roots in the open access community and as such is used by many open archives. These include subject-based archives such as ArXiv [2], CogPrints [3], and the increasing number of Institutional Repositories, many of which have been established as a result of funding via the UK JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional Repositories) programme [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ This article presents some new digital library development activities which are predicated on the concept that research and learning processes are cyclical in nature, and that subsequent outputs which contribute to knowledge, are based on the continuous use and reuse of data and information [1]. We can start by examining the creation of original data, (which may be, for example, numerical data generated by an experiment or a survey, or alternatively images captured as part of a clinical study). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/martin/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/martin/ ePrints UK [1] is a two-year JISC-funded project under the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2] which began in July 2002 and is due for completion in July 2004. The lead partner is UKOLN of the University of Bath. The aim of the project is to develop a national service provider repository of e-print records based at the University of Bath derived by harvesting metadata from institutional and subject-based e-prints archives using the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/editorial/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/editorial/ Welcome to the December/January issue of Ariadne. This issue has as its focus the practicalities of resource sharing - not only at a technical level, but also in terms of business models. In Sharing history of science and medicine gateway metadata using OAI-PMH, David Little outlines the resource sharing arrangements between the MedHist gateway and the Humbul hub, using the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, and some of the issues it has raised. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/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/little/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/little/ The MedHist gateway [1] was launched in August 2002, providing access to a searchable and browsable catalogue of high quality, evaluated history of medicine Internet resources. MedHist has been funded and developed by the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine [2], but is hosted by the BIOME health and life sciences hub [3], and as such is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). MedHist was developed principally to fill the gaps left in the coverage of the history of medicine by existing resource discovery services within and outside the RDN. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is the world’s largest particle physics centre. It is located just outside of Geneva on the French-Swiss border. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. About the ConferenceThe workshop was organized by LIBER, SPARC-Europe and CERN Library and sponsored by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), OSI (Open Society Institute), and ESF (European Science Foundation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/sherpa/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/sherpa/   JISC announced its FAIR Programme (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) in January of this year. The central objective of the Programme is to test ways of releasing institutionally-produced content onto the web. FAIR describes its scope as: “to support access to and sharing of institutional content within Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and to allow intelligence to be gathered about the technical, organisational and cultural challenges of these processes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/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/32/theses-dissertations/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ ‘ETDs’ is the acronym widely used in the US to stand for ‘Electronic Theses and Dissertations’. The father of the ETD movement, Professor Ed Fox of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), explains the acronym as containing an implicit Boolean ‘OR’: ‘ETs’ OR ‘EDs’ equals ‘ETDs’. This makes for a very convenient shorthand, whereby a digital object which is either an electronic thesis or an electronic dissertation can be referred to as ‘an ETD’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/open-archives-forum/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/open-archives-forum/ Pisa is small medieval Italian town, and, as is well-known, it features some extraordinary architecture, both religious and secular, some of which dates back to the Roman period. The Square of Miracles is in a class by itself, but there are several notable buildings as you move towards the river Arno. Including the Scuola Normale Superiore, where Enrico Fermi studied, a medieval building refaced by the artist and art historian Vasari much later. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/eprint-archives/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/eprint-archives/ This article outlines the aims of the e-prints archive at the University of Glasgow and recounts our initial experiences in setting up an institutional e-prints archive using the eprints.org software. It follows on from the recent article by Stephen Pinfield, John MacColl and Mike Gardner in the last issue of Ariadne [1]. The Open Archives Initiative [2] and the arguments for e-prints services [3] need little introduction here and have been ably covered by previous articles in Ariadne and elsewhere. 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.