http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/open-access/ Recent content in Open Access on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/maclellan-rvw/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/maclellan-rvw/ Collection development is a key skill taught in library schools around the world, it represents one of the business as usual elements in most librarians' roles, certainly in any I have undertaken. Getting your collection development right is a skill that takes lots of practice: like knowing which items to add to enhance your library stock; and which ones to remove to ensure that breadth of collection is not damaged; whilst making the collection inviting and easy to navigate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/editorial/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/editorial/ The requirement to make a business case to maintain or establish a service or a project is a familiar process for many of us working in Libraries.  Many libraries are asked to justify their very existence on a regular basis.  Some succeed, others unfortunately do not. We all seem to be doing more with less, and 'lean' is how we normally describe our staffing level. 14 months ago we made a case to top level University administration for an initiative around citations improvement, seeking funds for investment in a service to improve publication performance and citations analysis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/ili-2014-rpt/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/ili-2014-rpt/ Zoë reports from day one of the conference and Garth reports from day two. Day 1 : 21 October 2014I attended day one[1] of Internet Librarian International 2014 as I was sharing the conference with my colleague, Garth Bradshaw. This was the first large conference I had attended since returning to the profession following a break from librarianship; my review reflects my thoughts following an absence of eight years from the profession, a long time in our fast moving world. 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/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/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/72/editorial/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/editorial/ Change Is the Only ConstantIssue 72 is the product of a long period of almost constant change. In the last issue, Richard Waller waved adieu as the outgoing editor, explaining the circumstances around the change in the Editorial for Issue 71 [1]. Richard has left some very large shoes to fill in terms of the quality of articles and the guidance for authors in producing readable and relevant material.  The change is apparent when we look at the context in which Ariadne is now operating: the University of Bath Library has taken the reins, well aware of the regard in which the publication is held by its readers - a wide community with the unifying theme of information use, management and dissemination at its heart. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Brisbane, Queensland, Australia was the host location for the second Open Access and Research 2013 conference [1]. The conference was held at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point campus over 31 October – 1 November 2013. QUT has over 45,000 students and has a wide range of specialist research areas. There are two research institutes: The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) which is a collaborative institute devoted to improving the health of individuals; and the Institute for Future Environments (IFE) which is a multidisciplinary institute focusing on our natural, built and virtual environments, and how to find ways to make them more sustainable, secure and resilient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/liu-adie/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/liu-adie/ The concept of alternative metrics as indicators of non-traditional forms of research impact – better known as ‘altmetrics’ – has been gaining significant attention and support from both the scholarly publishing and academic communities. After being adopted by many publishing platforms and institutional repositories within the past year, altmetrics have entered into the scholarly mainstream, emerging as a relevant topic for academic consideration amidst mounting opposition to misuse of the Journal Impact Factor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ The ShaRe Project (Shared Repository Project 2008-2009), which aimed to promote the concept of consortial repositories and facilitate their implementation, has made a significant contribution to the rapid growth of institutional repositories (IRs) in Japan. Following precedents including White Rose Research Online (UK) and SHERPA-LEAP (UK), 14 regional consortial repositories have been set up on a prefectoral basis across Japan*. Their success is demonstrated by the fact that as many as 92 bodies have set up IRs despite having no institutional hardware of their own. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ As I depart this chair after the preparation of what I thought would be the last issue of Ariadne [1], I make no apology for the fact that I did my best to include as much material  to her ‘swan song’ as possible. With the instruction to produce only one more issue this year, I felt it was important to publish as much of the content in the pipeline as I could. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ Mon, 15 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ In Japan, Chiba University established the country's first institutional repository, CURATOR [1] in 2003. Since then, over the last 10 years or so, more than 300 universities and research institutions have set up repositories and the number of full-text items on repositories has exceeded one million [2]. All the contents are available on Japanese Institutional Repositories Online (JAIRO) [3] operated by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) [4] in Japan. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/robinson-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/robinson-rvw/ McClure and Purdy bring together a mix of perspectives, from librarians and lecturers to professors and programmers, to give voice to the very timely concern in Information Literacy (IL) teaching, that we are not equipping our students for the future as we hoped. So-called NextGen students are engaging with information online in their personal, social and educational lives in ways that are shaping new approaches to and conceptions of research. At the same time, those teaching IL, whether librarians or writing instructors, are basing lesson plans and interventions on traditional pedagogies, arguably unfit for a research landscape so altered by the pace and change of information technologies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/rumsey-jefferies/ In 2012 the University of Oxford Research Committee endorsed a university ‘Policy on the management of research data and records’ [1]. Much of the infrastructure to support this policy is being developed under the Jisc-funded Damaro Project [2]. The nascent services that underpin the University’s RDM (research data management) infrastructure have been divided into four themes: RDM planning;managing live data;discovery and location; andaccess, reuse and curation.The data outputs catalogue falls into the third theme, and will result in metadata and interfaces that support discovery, location, citation and business reporting for Oxford research datasets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/stone-collins/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/stone-collins/ This article explores whether an online learning course can help academic researchers to become more familiar with social media tools, and seeks to understand how they can put them to use within their research and teaching activities. It does so by considering the development, implementation and evaluation of a pilot Web 2.0 course, 25 Research Things, an innovative online learning programme developed at the University of Huddersfield, which gives researchers a structured way to engage with selected Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/jabes-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/jabes-rpt/ In what has now become something of a tradition, the ‘Corum’ Congress Centre in Montpellier, France, hosted the twelfth in the series of the Journées de l’Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur (ABES - Higher Education Bibliographic Agency) [1]. The main objectives of ABES are the development and maintainance of the shared catalogue of French academic libraries (Système Universitaire de Documentation, SUDOC) [2], the management of the theses processes and the administrative and financial support for group purchasing of e-resources for Higher Education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/garrett-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/garrett-et-al/ KAPTUR (2011-13) [1], funded by Jisc and led by the Visual Arts Data Service, was a collaborative project involving four institutional partners: the Glasgow School of Arts; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and the University of the Arts London. Research data have in recent years become regarded as a valuable institutional resource and their appropriate collection, curation, publication and preservation as essential. This has been driven by a number of internal and external forces, and all UK Research Councils now require it as a condition of funding [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ On Friday, 8 March 2013, I attended the fifth in the series of DataCite workshops run by the British Library [1]. The British Library Conference Centre was the venue for this workshop on the theme 'Making Citation Work: Practical Issues for Institutions'. I counted myself lucky to get a place: the organisers had had so much interest they had started a reserve list for the event.  I could believe it as it was standing room only at one point, though an awkwardly placed pillar may have contributed to that. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/eriksson/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/eriksson/ The introduction of Performance-based Research Funding Systems (PRFS) models has helped to set the focus on scientific publishing since this is one of the major indicators for measuring research output. As a secondary result, it has also forced the countries that have introduced a model that is not solely based on citations to create a new form of research database; the national portal for scientific literature. Even in countries that have not adapted a PRFS model, these forms of portals are common. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Wikipedia, the world’s fifth most-used Web site [1], is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, “Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptance” [2], Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology. He concluded that ‘If Wikipedia is the first port of call, as it already seems to be, for information requirement traffic, then there is a commitment to build on Open Educational Resources (OERs) of various kinds and improve their quality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in  15 different countries across 4 continents. My colleague Monica Duke and I attended the most recent conference in Taipei both to represent the Digital Curation Centre – CODATA's national member for the UK – and to participate in a track of talks on data publication and citation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/oppenheim-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/oppenheim-rvw/ Paul Pedley is a name that needs no introduction to aficionados of copyright textbooks, being the author of several such books published by Facet Publishing in the past (and reviewed by Ariadne [1][2][3][4][5]).  His latest effort, The E-copyright Handbook, attempts to cover the fast-moving and complex world of electronic copyright, using an interesting approach.  Rather than the traditional way of such books, describing the media and describing the rights granted to copyright owners, the way the law applies to each media type, exceptions to copyright and so on, his approach is a mixture but with some emphasis on activities, as a glance at the chapter titles shows: Introduction, Content Types, Activities, Copyright Exceptions, Licences, the Digital Economy Act, Enforcement and The Hargreaves Review. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/aytac-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/aytac-rvw/ User Studies for Digital Library Development provides a concise overview of a variety of digital library projects and examines major research trends relating to digital libraries. While there are many books on user studies and digital library development, this work operates at the junction of these two domains and stands out for its insights, balance, and quality of its case-based investigations. The book brings together points of view from different professional communities, including practitioners as well as researchers. 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/andrew/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/andrew/ Research Councils UK (RCUK) have recently announced a significant amendment to their open access (OA)  policy which requires all research papers that result from research partly or wholly funded by RCUK to be made open access [1]. To comply with this policy, researchers must either; a) publish in an open access journal, termed Gold OA, which often incurs an article processing charge (APC); or, b) ensure that a copy of the post-print is deposited in an appropriate repository, also known as Green OA. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white/ My career has spanned 42 years in the information business. It has encompassed 10,000-hole optical coincidence cards, online database services, videotext, laser discs, and CD-ROMs, the World Wide Web, mobile services and big data solutions. I find the historical development of information resource management absolutely fascinating, yet feel that in general it is poorly documented from an analytical perspective even though there are some excellent archives. These archives include the back issues of Ariadne from January 1996. 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/70/cox-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/cox-et-al/ For many UK HEIs, especially research-intensive institutions, Research Data Management (RDM) is rising rapidly up the agenda. Working closely with other professional services, and with researchers themselves, libraries will probably have a key role to play in supporting RDM. This role might include signposting institutional expertise in RDM; inclusion of the topic in information literacy sessions for PhD students and other researchers; advocacy for open data sharing; or contributing to the management of an institutional data repository. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/eurocris-2012-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/eurocris-2012-11-rpt/ euroCRIS membership meetings [1] are held twice a year, providing members and invited participants with updates on strategic and Task Group progress and plans, as well as the opportunity to share experience of Current Research Information System (CRIS)-related developments and seek feedback. A CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) tutorial is usually included on the first morning for those new to the standard, and the host country reports on local CRIS initiatives in the ‘national’ session. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/coetsee/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/coetsee/ The Phytomedicine Programme is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa.  The programme was started in 1995 and was transferred to the Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria in 2002. In 2007 it was designated as a National Research Foundation Developed Research Niche Area [1]. The Faculty Plan (2007-2011) of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria lists Phytomedicine and ethno-veterinary medicine as one of the six research focus themes that will contribute to the realisation of the Faculty’s newly formulated vision statement relevant to its research programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ A workshop on Research Information Management (RIM) and CERIF was held in Bristol on 27-28 June 2012, organised by the Innovation Support Centre [1] at UKOLN, together with the JISC RIM and RCSI (Repositories and Curation Shared Infrastructure) Programmes. It was a follow-up to the CERIF Tutorial and UK Data Surgery [2] held in Bath in February. Workshop Scope and AimsThe aim was to bring together people working on the various elements of the UK RIM jigsaw to share experience of using CERIF and explore ways of working together more closely. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/milloy/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/milloy/ JISC eCollections is a set of e-resource platforms launched in November 2011 by JISC Collections, in partnership with the JISC data centres EDINA and Mimas. The platforms (Figure 1) are JISC MediaHub, JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives; together, they are intended to provide a sustainable, value-for-money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms, by consolidating and hosting the broad range of historical book, journal archive and multimedia content purchased by JISC Collections on behalf of the UK education community. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ I’ve been working with repositories in various ways for over five years, so I have, of course, attended the major international conference Open Repositories before. I have never actually presented anything or represented a specific project at the event, though. This year was different. This year I had a mission -  to present a poster on the DataFlow Project [1] and to talk to people about the work we had been doing for the past 12 months and (I hoped) to interest them in using the Open Source (OS) systems we had developed during that period. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley/ Wikipedia has become internationally known as an online encyclopaedia ('The Free Encyclopedia'). Developed by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and launched in 2001 it has, to date, editions in 285 languages. Wikipedia is but one subset of the Web-based applications known as 'wikis'. The original wiki (as wikiwikiweb) was developed by Ward Cunningham in the 1990s as the least complex way of rapidly sharing and communicating 'information'. Wiki is Hawaiian for 'quick'; repeating the word is equivalent to adding 'very'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/cw12-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/cw12-rpt/ On the 21 and 22 March 2012 I attended a workshop which was unlike the stolid conferences I was used to. In the space of two sunny days I found I had spoken to more people and learnt more about them than I usually managed in an entire week. Presentations were short and focused, discussions were varied and fascinating, and the relaxed, open format was very effective in bringing people from differing disciplines together to consider a common theme. 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/gramstadt/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/gramstadt/ Funded by the Deposit strand [1] JISC Information Environment programme and led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), a Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts, Kultivate will increase arts research deposit in UK institutional repositories. Through community engagement with the Kultur II Group [2] and technical enhancements to EPrints, Kultivate is sharing and supporting the application of best practice in the development of institutional repositories that are appropriate to the specific needs and behaviours of creative and visual arts researchers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Early writing which first appeared as cuneiform protocols and then emerged in manuscript form and as printed materials is currently entering a new stage in its development – in the form of electronic publications. The Internet has drastically changed our understanding of access to library resources, to publication schemas, and has introduced brand new ways of information delivery. And as a result, the present situation could be described as a continuous increase in the amount of material being published only in electronic form, together with wide-scale conversion of paper-based material to digital formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lis-rc-dream-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lis-rc-dream-rpt/ The DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) Conference [1] was held at the British Library Conference Centre in London in July 2011. The conference was attended by 86 delegates, and consisted of an overview of the DREaM Project, two keynote papers, a one-minute madness session, and four parallel breakout sessions. I had the opportunity to attend as a sponsored delegate, thanks to Glen Recruitment, Sue Hill Recruitment and TFPL. Welcome AddressProfessor Hazel Hall, Edinburgh Napier UniversityThe welcome address was given by Professor Hazel Hall. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Research libraries have traditionally supported the scholarly research and communication process, largely through supporting access to and preservation of its published outputs. The library cornerstones have been positioned around a long-established publication process tailored to deliver the peer-reviewed scholarly article or monograph; but now the research landscape is dramatically changing. The application of computational science and growth of data-intensive research, combined with a veritable explosion of social media tools and Web technologies, are reshaping research practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rin-foi-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rin-foi-rpt/ Since 2008 the Research Information Network (RIN) has organised a series of workshops dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge about the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) 2000. In previous years these workshops have centred on how the legislation could be used as a research tool [1]. In response to a growing media focus on the Higher Education (HE) sector, this year’s workshops (held at Manchester, UCL and Strathclyde universities respectively) sought not only to continue to raise awareness but also to address the potential impact of the legislation on universities in their capacity as ‘public bodies’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/azzolini-rvw/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/azzolini-rvw/ Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous. 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/stone-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/stone-et-al/ In 2010, the University of Huddersfield shared results from its analysis of anonymised library usage data [1]. Data was analysed for over 700 courses over four years - 2005⁄6 — 2008⁄9; this included the number of e-resources accessed, the number of book loans and the number of accesses to the University Library. This investigation suggested a strong correlation between library usage and degree results, and also significant underuse of expensive library resources at both School and course level. 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/67/rinaldo-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rinaldo-et-al/ The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) [1] is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that co-operate to digitise and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global ‘biodiversity commons.’ [2] The participating libraries hold more than two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/ronson/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/ronson/ Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Zetoc [1] provides quality-assured, comprehensive journal table of contents data for resource discovery that users can search and have delivered straight to their in-box or desktop. In a nutshell, Zetoc is all about convenience, current awareness and comprehensive coverage. In a recent survey, one academic commented: 'This is a "one-stop shop" for relevant literature'. What is Zetoc, what has it achieved and where is it going? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/beyond-pdf-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/beyond-pdf-rpt/ 'Beyond the PDF' brought together around 80 people to the University of California San Diego to discuss scholarly communication, primarily in the sciences. The main topic: How can we apply emergent technologies to improve measurably the way that scholarship is conveyed and comprehended? The group included domain scientists, researchers and software developers, librarians, funders, publishers, journal editors - a mix which organiser Phil Bourne described as 'visionaries, developers, consumers, and conveyors' of scholarship. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/hitchcock-tarrant/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/hitchcock-tarrant/ Preservation: The Effect of Going Digital Preservation of scholarly content seemed more straightforward when it was only available in printed form. Production, dissemination and archiving of print are performed by distinctly separate, specialist organisations, from publishers to national libraries and archives. Preservation of publications established as having cultural significance - printed literature, books and, in the academic world, journals fall into this category - is self-selecting and systematic in a way that has not yet been fully established for digital content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/editorial/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/editorial/ With institutions searching to increase the impact of the work they do, and conscious of the immediate impact of any event they organise, many will be interested to read of 10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event in which Marieke Guy provides a raft of suggestions to enhance the participants' experience of and involvement in, the event they are attending. For the unconvinced, they will be pleased to hear it is all Lorcan Dempsey's fault when in 2007 he made reference to the 'amplified conference', but as Marieke points out, the suggestions in her article do not amount to a dismissal of professional events teams but, rather, constitute a range of strategies they might wish to adopt in an environment where the expectation is of doing more with fewer resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago. Thus it was that the sixth conference in the series [3], entitled ‘Participation and Practice: Growing the Curation Community through the Data Decade’, came to be held jointly by the DCC, UIUC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/mackay-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/mackay-rvw/ In Acquisitions in the new information universe, Jesse Holden provides a comprehensive introduction to fundamental acquisitions concepts, and strategies for translating these into practice in the twenty-first century. Jesse Holden has worked in acquisitions for many years, and is currently an instructor for the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) online course 'Fundamentals of electronic resource acquisitions'. As such he is well positioned to give guidance on the day-to-day work of acquisitions departments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/oppenheim-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/oppenheim-rvw/ With a title like that, one would expect a primer, introducing all the key concepts of information science to someone studying the topic for the first time at undergraduate or Masters' level, and possibly for the interested layman. Such a book would be a worthy successor to Chris Hanson's Introduction to Science Information Work, and Roger Meetham's Information Retrieval, both of which were first published about 40 years ago. Sadly, however, this book does not fulfil the promise of its title. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ The University of Oxford began to consider research data management infrastructure in earnest in 2008, with the ‘Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data’ Project [1]. Two further JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded pilot projects followed this initial study, and the approaches taken by these projects, and their findings, form the bulk of this article. Oxford’s decision to do something about its data management infrastructure was timely. A subject that had previously attracted relatively little interest amongst senior decision makers within the UK university sector, let alone amongst the public at large, was about to acquire a new-found prominence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/open-culture-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/open-culture-rpt/ The Europeana Conference is a free annual event which highlights current challenges for libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual archives and which looks for practical solutions for the future. It connects the main actors in cultural and scientific heritage in order to build networks and establish future collaborations. The Europeana Open Culture 2010 Conference [1] was the third annual conference and the biggest so far. It focused on how the cultural institutions can create public value by making digital, cultural and scientific information openly available. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Thursday 14 OctoberTrack A: Looking Ahead to ValueA102: Future of Academic LibrariesMal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus. As this new building should be able to respond to demands for many years to come, Mal emphasised how important it is to consider the future users as well as library and technology developments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wolski-richardson/ In 1999 Sir John Taylor [1], then Director General of the UK Research Councils, talked about e-Science, i.e. global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will support it. It encompasses computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments or that uses immense datasets that require grid computing. In the US the term cyberinfrastructure has been used to describe the new research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualisation and other computing and information processing services over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ 2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team. 2 September 2010Opening the event proper on Thursday morning, Sheila Cannell, Director of Library Services, University of Edinburgh, used the imminent Edinburgh festival fireworks as a metaphor for the repository development endeavour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ On Thursday 6 May 2010 an historic event took place. The event allowed people to express their opinions on potential future action in a highly significant area. No, not the British general election, and I'm sure the concurrence of dates was unintentional! This event was the Blue Ribbon Task Force Symposium on sustainable digital preservation and access, held at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre in London [1]. The symposium, companion event to the national conversation which took place in Washington DC in April 2010 [2], provided an opportunity for stakeholders to respond to the recent Blue Ribbon Task Force report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/rafiq-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/rafiq-rvw/ Digital Information offers an overview of the digital landscape based on the heterogeneous perspectives of multiple stakeholders contributed by the experts from Higher Education, publishers' community, information professionals, and legal experts. This overview presents seven well written chapters by an international team of experts who have contributed well to the debate of digital information in the context of order or anarchy. The book seems to answer the million-dollar question of today's information world: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Computational science and raw and derivative scientific data are increasingly important to the research enterprise of higher education institutions. Academic libraries are beginning to examine what the expansion of data-intensive e-science means to scholarly communication and information services, and some are reshaping their own programmes to support the digital curation needs of research staff. These changes in libraries may involve repurposing or leveraging existing services, and the development or acquisition of new skills, roles, and organisational structures [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/wrn-repos-2010-05-rpt/ More than 60 delegates convened at the Rose Bowl in Leeds on 7 May 2010 for this event to explore the developing relationship and overlap between Open Access research repositories and so called 'CRISs' – Current Research Information Systems – that are increasingly being implemented at universities. The Welsh Repository Network (WRN) [1], a collaborative venture between the Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in Wales, funded by JISC, had clearly hit upon an engaging topic du jour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Over 7-8 June 2010 DataCite held its First Summer Meeting in Hannover, Germany. More than 100 information specialists, researchers, and publishers came together to focus on making datasets visible and accessible [1]. Uwe Rosemann, German Technical Library (TIB), welcomed delegates and handed over to the current President of DataCite, Adam Farquhar, British Library. Adam gave an overview of DataCite, an international association which aims to support researchers by enabling them to locate, identify, and cite research datasets with confidence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/or-10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/or-10-rpt/ The air temperature in Madrid was around 37ºC when the Edinburgh contingent arrived in mid-afternoon on 5 July. The excellent air-conditioned Metro took us all the way into town - about 14km - for only 2 Euros. We were told later that the temperature during the preceding week had been about 21ºC, but by the end of the conference week we were enjoying 39ºC. The conference venue turned out to be opposite the Santiago Bernabeu stadium (home of Real Madrid), in Paseo de la Castellana. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Digital collections at LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science)[1] are significant and growing, as are the requirements of their users. LSE Library collects materials relevant to research and teaching in the social sciences, crossing the boundaries between personal and organisational archives, rare and unique printed collections and institutional research outputs. Digital preservation is an increasing concern alongside our commitment to continue to develop innovative digital services for researchers and students. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/day-rvw/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/day-rvw/ Until it joined with the Library Association in 2002 to form the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the Institute of Information Scientists was a professional organisation for those primarily working in scientific and technical information work. The chapters in this volume were first published in 2008 as a special issue of the Journal of Information Science to commemorate the founding of the institute in 1958. In accordance with this, many of the chapters provide a retrospective - sometimes even anecdotal - overview of developments in information science in the UK since the 1950s. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ At the end of November 2009, JISC launched a year-long suite of activities under the heading Research 3.0: driving the knowledge economy. A series of events, publications and Web activity are stimulating discussion about how advanced digital technologies are creating a revolution in research and the way researchers work. With a central role in making these technologies available, JISC is also hoping to learn more about the concerns, views and requirements of researchers and the institutions that support them, especially given the financial constraints they are now under. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/cliff-rvw/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/cliff-rvw/ In the past the storage and recall of information (the act of remembering) was limited. If people wanted to keep a record, it had to be written down (at great expense in the days before printing) or they had to rely on (notoriously error-prone) human memory. As time moved on, more and more could be recorded, but recall in the analogue world remained difficult - the raison d’être of information science. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ It seems fair to say that the lion’s share of work on developing online tools for reference and citation management by students and researchers has focused on familiar types of publication. They generally comprise resources that can be neatly and discretely bound in the covers of a book or journal, or their electronic analogues, like the Portable Document Format (PDF): objects in established library or database systems, with ISBNs and ISSNs underwritten by the authority of formal publication and legal deposit. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform – February 2010UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform: A chance to see one of the world's top 10 best intranets Free informal Intranets Forum meeting for UKeiG members ERM, 2/F Exchequer Court, 33 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AA Friday 26 February 2010, 4.00 - 5.30 p.m. http://www.ukeig.org.uk/ Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the world's leading environmental consultancy firm was recognized in a recent survey by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) as having one of the world's top 10 best intranets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/bl-subject-repos-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/bl-subject-repos-rpt/ Institutional repositories are now common in Higher Education, but successful examples of subject repositories, which cater to an entire discipline, are much rarer. The Subject Repositories conference taught some key lessons about the role of transnational collaboration in setting up a subject repository. The conference drew on the expertise of renowned specialists in the field and the two and a half-year-long development process of Economists Online [1]. Economists Online was created by the Network of European Economists Online (NEEO) [2], which consists of 24 European and international partners (disclosure: the author was a work package leader for this project and one of the conference organisers). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/chaudhri-et-al/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/chaudhri-et-al/ The development of the Dublin Core Application Profiles (DCAPs) has been closely focussed on the construction of metadata standards targeted at specific resource types, on the implicit assumption that such a metadata solution would be immediately and usefully implementable in software environments that deal with such resources. The success of an application profile would thus be an inevitable consequence of correctly describing the generalised characteristics of those resources. Yet despite the earlier success of application profiles, more recent growth in usage of the DCAPs funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has been slow by comparison [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Due in large part to the appearance since mid-2006 of increasingly affordable devices making use of e-Ink technology (a monochrome display supporting a high-resolution image despite low battery use, since the screen consumes power only during page refreshes, which in the case of ebooks generally represent page turns), the ebook has gone from a somewhat limited market into a real, although presently still niche, contender. Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in 2008 [1]; Sony sold 300,000 of its Reader Digital Book model between October 2006 and October 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/editorial/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/editorial/ Perhaps one of the current benchmarks for gauging when a Web technology has migrated from the cluttered desks of the technorati to the dining tables of the chatterati is if it becomes a topic for BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze [1]. More accustomed to discussing matters such as child-rearing or a controversial pronouncement of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the panel members who, over the years have ranged from the liberal to the harrumphing illiberal (and in one case, both at the same time), recently did battle over Twitter [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/hogenaar/ The Internet has caused a revolution in the way scientists and scholars have access to scholarly output. Only 15 years ago, the (university) library decided what sources should be offered to the staff and individual scientists could only hope the librarian would listen to their wishes. In this system scientists frequently had no instantaneous access to the information they wanted. In such instances they had to rely on the Interlibrary Loan System. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/callaghan-et-al/ The previous article about the Overlay Journal Infrastructure for Meteorological Sciences (OJIMS) Project [1] dealt with an introduction to the concept of overlay journals and their potential impact on the meteorological sciences. It also discussed the business cases and requirements that must be met for overlay journals to become operational as data publications. There is significant interest in data journals at this time as they could provide a framework to allow the peer-review and citation of datasets, thereby encouraging data scientists to ensure their data and metadata are complete and valid, and granting them academic credit for this work. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ 5th International Digital Curation Conference – Moving to Multi-Scale Science: Managing Complexity and DiversityMillennium Gloucester Hotel, Kensington, London 2-4 December 2009 http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2009/ The International Digital Curation Conference is an established annual event reaching out to individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains involved in curating data for e-science and e-research. The Digital Curation Centre, which is responsible for organising the Conference, will be hosting a full day of workshops on 2 December including Disciplinary Dimensions of Digital Curation: New Perspectives on Research Data; Digital Curation 101 Lite Training; Citability of Research Data; and Repository Preservation Infrastructure (REPRISE). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Institutional repositories are a major element of the Open Access movement. More specifically in research and education, the main purpose is to make available as much of the research output of an institution as possible. However, a simple search box and a long list of returned (keyword) artefacts derived from either an individual institutional repository (IR) or a federated search that would generate an even longer list, is no longer sufficient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/gray/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/gray/ Those involved in Higher Education (HE) may have started to sense the approach of Institutional Repositories (IRs). Leaving aside the unfortunate nomenclature, IRs are becoming a fact of life in many educational institutions. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has invested £14million in the Repositories and Preservation Programme [1] and the recent Repositories and Preservation Programme Meeting in Birmingham [2] celebrated the end of over 40 individual repository projects under the Start Up and Enhancement [3] strand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ In the bucolic setting of the Cotswolds, on one of the hottest weeks of the summer, 200 delegates gathered to discuss the future of online content and to examine why UK universities need a sustainable digital content strategy to deliver successfully accessible learning and research materials for the future. Over two days, the delegates heard from a series of keynote speakers in plenary sessions and attended breakout ‘strand sessions’ on five different themes: Managing Content; Content Development Strategies; Content in Education; User Engagement; and Looking into the Future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/callaghan-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/callaghan-et-al/ Historically speaking, scientific publishing has focused on publicising the methodology that the scientist uses to analyse a dataset, and the conclusions that the scientist can draw from that analysis, as this is the information that can be easily published in text format with supporting diagrams. Datasets do not lend themselves easily to normal hard copy publication, even if the size of the dataset were small enough to allow this, and datasets are more useful stored in digital media. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/allinson-harbord/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/allinson-harbord/ The University Library & Archives' first venture into digital repositories was as part of the White Rose partnership in the original SHERPA Project [1]. Leeds, Sheffield and York universities have had a research partnership for some years and the library services became a consortial partner in SHERPA in 2002 to set up a joint e-prints repository called White Rose Research Online (WRRO) [2] . During the project which ran from 2002-2006, advocacy about Open Access and the need for wider dissemination of research outputs got underway at York. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/why-pay-for-content-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/why-pay-for-content-rpt/ This widely publicised half-day event [1] was held at the famous lecture theatre in the Royal Institution that is used for the Royal Institution’s Christmas lectures for children. I remember going to the lectures in 1962; I can’t remember what the topic was, but I remember thinking how large the lecture theatre was. Well, 47 years later, it seems to have shrunk in size. At this point, I must declare an interest: I was one of the speakers; readers should bear this fact in mind when evaluating the objectivity of my report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/russell/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/russell/ EThOS 1 opened up access to UK doctoral theses in January 2009. It is a service by and for the research community. Although EThOS is still in beta version, it is already changing the way theses are accessed and is helping to raise the visibility of UK research. BackgroundDoctoral theses represent a special category of research writing and are the culmination of several years of intensive work. Traditionally difficult to access, they have as a result remained underused; so modernising access to research theses has been on the Higher Education agenda for many years in line with the changing characteristics of the working environment: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/editorial/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/editorial/ I am grateful to Marieke Guy not least since she still manages to write for Ariadne when she has her own blog [1] on remote working to maintain. Having begun her series of articles with A Desk Too Far?: The Case for Remote Working, a treatment of the organisational issues surrounding the suitability of remote working as a business case, which she followed with a wealth of information on supportive technologies entitled Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke returns, not exactly full circle, but back to an organisational perspective in her third contribution A Support Framework for Remote Workers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/morris/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/morris/ The University of Southampton has around 22,000 students across six campuses: five in the city of Southampton and one in Winchester. It is a broad-based, research-intensive institution, a member of the Russell Group of UK Universities. The University comprises three Faculties: Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths; Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, and the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences. Within the three Faculties, there are currently 21 academic Schools which are responsible for the delivery of education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/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/newsline/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/newsline/ Digital Preservation – The Planets WayRoyal Library Copenhagen, Denmark 22-24 June 2009 http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/ Does your organisation know what to preserve digitally for the future? Do you want to discuss your strategies for digital preservation with colleagues and experts? Do you know how to preserve your collections for the future? Do you know which tools and services to use for this? There has been an explosion in the volume of information world-wide which will grow to 180 exabytes by 2011. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/waaijers/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/waaijers/ Now that publications are increasingly being enriched with databases and audio-visual elements, the need for non-proprietary review systems – that is, peer review systems that do not require the assignment of copyright to the organiser of the peer review i.e. the publisher - is becoming ever-more pressing. Although there is a steadily growing number of peer-reviewed Open Access journals [1] and an active Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association [2], the supply fails to keep pace with the demand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Since 2006, the EU-sponsored DRIVER Project has aimed to build an interoperable, trusted and long-term repository infrastructure. As part of the DRIVER Project, a survey was carried out in order to obtain an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union in 2006 [1]. This study was updated by an expanded survey in 2008, in which 178 institutional research repositories [2] from 22 European countries participated. In this article we will present the most important results [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/dplta-hep-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/dplta-hep-rpt/ High-energy physics (HEP) experiments acquire huge datasets that may not be superseded by new and better measurements for decades or centuries. Nevertheless, the cost and difficulty of preserving both the data and the understanding of how to use them are daunting. The small number of cases in which data over ten years old have been reanalysed has only served to underline that such analyses are currently very close to impossible. The recent termination of data taking by the H1 and ZEUS experiments at DESY’s HERA collider, and by the BaBar experiment at SLAC, plus the imminent termination of other major experiments, prompted the organisation of this workshop. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/newsline/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/newsline/ JISC Digital Media (formerly TASI) Training ScheduleFour brand new courses are on offer for the 2009 season dealing with: Finding free images onlineEditing and managing images using Photoshop Lightroom 2Audio Production (recording lectures, seminars, interviews and podcasts)Digitising analogue video recordings.Courses are already filling up fast and several courses now have multiple dates to accommodate demand. Spring 2009 Programme:10 March 2009 Introduction to Photoshop Lightroom 2 http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/training-photoshop-lightroom.html 19 March 2009 Copyright and Digital Images http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ I had managed to miss the previous two PASIG (Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group)[1] meetings, so was delighted to find myself finally able to participate by attending the Fall meeting. Conveniently the event was arranged to follow immediately the SPARC Digital Repositories meeting [2], also held in Baltimore, and which I also attended. PASIG is a group sponsored by and centred on Sun Microsystems (Sun) which is a prominent vendor of data storage hardware and which is building a new business around systems to support digital preservation and archiving. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/waaijers-et-al/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/waaijers-et-al/ The view that the results of publicly financed research should also be publicly accessible enjoys broad support in the academic community. Where their own articles are concerned, however, many authors hesitate to circulate them openly, for example by publishing them in Open Access journals or placing them in their institution’s repository. They ask themselves whether that will not be at odds with the copyright rules and whether they will gain – or perhaps even lose – prestige. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ In her second Get Tooled Up article on the subject of remote working Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke Guy takes a look at the many technologies that support remote working, from broadband to Web 2.0 social networking tools. Readers may also be interested to read her blog on remote working which I am definitely finding interesting [1]. I am greatly indebted to Marieke, who as many IWMW delegates will attest, is indisputably one of Life's finishers and who, in her delivery of both this article and its predecessor 'A Desk Too Far? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/davies/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/davies/ Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive - is a two-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a service giving users direct access initially to some two million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers, rising to a target of 10 million by 2010. The development of the Europeana service is a flagship activity of the European Digital Libraries Initiative [1] [2], designed to increase access to digital content across four identified key domains (libraries, museums, archives and audio/visual archives) is now gaining momentum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ TASI Courses for Remainder of 2008TASI (the JISC Advisory Service for still images, moving images and sound) has a few places left on its autumn/winter training programme. http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/training.html 14 November 2008 Optimising your Images using Adobe Photoshop21 November 2008 Introduction to Image Metadata27 November 2008 Essential Techniques in Digital Image Capture28 November 2008 Advanced Techniques in Digital Image Capture03 December 2008 Digital Photography - Taking Control of your SLR11 December 2008 Scanning with the CLA Licence12 December 2008 Copyright and Digital ImagesThe following newly released course has just been added to the programme: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/eresearch-australasia-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/eresearch-australasia-rpt/ The following overview of eResearch Australasia 2008 by Ann Borda is intended to give a sense of the diversity of the programme and key themes of the Conference at a glance. A selection of workshops and themes are explored in more detail by fellow contributing authors in the sections below: Bridget Soulsby on the 'Data Deluge', Gaby Bright on 'Uptake of eResearch' and Tobias Blanke on 'Arts & Humanities eResearch'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of ‘Web 2.0’ and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Minding the Skills Gap: A Workshop for Key Training ProvidersLeeds University Business School 3 September 2008 Over the last few years, researchers have enthusiastically embraced new technologies and services that allow them to discover, locate, gain access to and create information resources on their desktops. Yet there is evidence to suggest that their research information skills and competencies have not kept up with the rapid pace of change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/or-08-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/or-08-rpt/ This was the third international Open Repositories Conference, the previous two being held in 2007, San Antonio, Texas [1] and in 2006, Sydney [2], so Europe was the third continent to host the event. Southampton was gloriously sunny for the five days of the conference (1-4 April), so there was no need to use the disposable plastic macs that were provided in the delegate bags. The event tends to attract people who have either already set up digital repositories in their institutions, are thinking about it or are interested in various aspects of repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ The third meeting of Sun's Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group took place in San Francisco in May. The event, the third PASIG meeting in the last year, drew around 180 participants from Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America to discuss a broad range of issues surrounding digital repositories. Presentations ranged from geographically or community-themed high-level perspectives of repository- related activity, through to detailed technical analysis and reports of development activity at an institutional or project level. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/henty/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/henty/ The growing capacity of ICT to contribute to research of all kinds has excited researchers the world over as they invent new ways of conducting research and enjoy the benefits of bigger and more sophisticated computers and communications systems to support measurement, analysis, collaboration and publishing. The expanding rate of ICT development is matched by the numbers of people wanting to join in this funfest, by growth in the amount of data being generated, and by demands for new and improved hardware, software, networks, and data storage. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/editorial/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/editorial/ As far back as a work reviewed in Ariadne Issue 41 [1], the notion of personal collections was not exactly novel, but as Pete Williams, Katrina Dean, Ian Rowlands and Jeremy Leighton John remark in Digital Lives: Report of Interviews with the Creators of Personal Digital Collections 'the inexorable march of technological innovation' has served to encourage people to amass increasingly large and diverse personal collections of information about themselves and the people and issues that matter to them [2][3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lewis/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lewis/ At the University of East Anglia (UEA), we have been taking part in the Primo Charter Programme in which various libraries in the Europe and the US have been able to work with Ex Libris on version 1 of their Primo product. We have learned a great deal from the process and there is interest throughout the library sector in the potential benefits of separating or decoupling the search and retrieval interface layer from the database layer when presenting library resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ As part of its new Libraries of the Future programme [1], JISC held three events during its annual conference in Birmingham to explore some of the questions facing libraries today: in an information world in which Google apparently offers us everything, what place is there for the traditional, and even the digital, library? In a library environment which is increasingly moving to the delivery of online rather than print resources, what of the academic library’s traditional place at the heart of campus life? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/newsline/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/newsline/ UKeiG Courses over May – October 2008Searching the Internet: Google and BeyondKaren Blakeman Friday 16 May 2008 University of Liverpool http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2008/May/beyondgoogle.html Searching the Internet: Google and BeyondKaren Blakeman Wednesday 11 June 2008 King’s College London, Guy’s Campus http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2008/June/beyondgoogle.html UKeiG Annual SeminarWeb 2 in action - making social networking tools work to enhance organisational efficiency Thursday 12 June SOAS, London Understanding metadata and controlled vocabularies - the key to integrated networkingStella Dextre Clarke http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/maccoll/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/maccoll/ RLG Programs became part of OCLC in the summer of 2006. In November of last year, RLG Programs announced the appointment of a European Director, John MacColl. This article explains the rationale behind the combination of RLG with the OCLC Office of Research, and describes the work programme of the new Programs and Research Group. It argues for co-operation as the necessary response to the challenges presented to research libraries as the Web changes the way researchers work, and it lays out a new programme dedicated to research outputs, which will have significant European Partner involvement. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vandeventer-pienaar/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vandeventer-pienaar/ Knowledge exchange is critical for development. 'Bridging the knowledge divide' does not only refer to the North-South divide. It also refers to the divide between richer and poorer countries within the same region as well as to the divide between larger and smaller organisations within one country. Lastly it refers to the divide between those individuals who have access to an environment that allows for rapid knowledge creation and those less fortunate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vif-wrkshp-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/vif-wrkshp-rpt/ The Version Identification Framework Project (VIF) [1] is a project partly funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is in partnership with the Science & Technology Facilities Council, the University of Leeds and Erasmus University, Rotterdam. The project was undertaken in order to investigate the growing issues surrounding the identification of revised or related materials being deposited in repositories, with the aim of providing a framework for consistent identification. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/civallero/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/civallero/ Cultural HeritageHeritage can be defined as a heterogeneous ensemble of environmental and cultural elements - material or otherwise - that are transmitted from generation to generation, creating the foundations on which people build and orientate their identity and vision of the world. According to the definition reached during the UNESCO Experts´ Round Table in Turin (Italy, 2001), heritage includes: ’… peoples’ learned processes along with the knowledge, skills and creativity that inform and are developed by them, the products they create, and the resources, spaces and other aspects of the social and natural context necessary to their sustainability’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/hannabuss-rvw/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/hannabuss-rvw/ The second edition of Digital Copyright is the print-book counterpart of the original e-book and, as such, will sell particularly well to libraries where training (and self-updating) is taken seriously and to educational establishments where people are trained for 'the profession' (this is so hybrid now that perhaps no one book on information law can satisfy everyone - think of electronic communications law, Internet law, computing law, and the like, and specialist authors like Ian Lloyd on IT law). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/heath-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/heath-et-al/ In most of the discussions about e-publications and open access (OA) in recent years, the focus of attention has tended to be on the interests and needs of researchers in the sciences, and of the libraries that seek to serve them. Significantly less attention has been paid to the needs and interests of researchers in the arts and humanities; and indeed e-publication and open access initiatives, and general awareness of the key issues and debates, are much less advanced in the arts and humanities than in the sciences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/grl2020-rpt/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/grl2020-rpt/ Welcome to the Future and Day OneResearch, scholarship, science, and discovery have been transformed by the Internet and communication technologies across all sectors on a global basis. In order for research libraries to play a central role in this increasingly multi-institutional and cross-sector environment, we must find new approaches for how they operate and add value to research and discovery on a global basis. This was a rare opportunity to make a start on thinking longer term with invitees from across sectors and across countries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/mcn-rpt/ The Museum Computer Network (MCN) celebrated its 40th anniversary during its annual meeting, this year held at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza. In 1967, museum professionals in New York City gathered to discuss the utility of computers in museum settings. This initial meeting provided the seed for what would become the Museum Computer Network [1]. 40 years later, 310 delegates from 14 countries and 32 states in the US gathered to take stock of successes and issues in the networked museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ UkeiG Course: Information Law for Information ProfessionalsInformation Law for Information Professionals: What you need to know about Copyright, Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Accessibility and Disability Discrimination Laws CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE 19 February 2008, 9.30-16.30 Course outline In particular, four key legal areas currently affect the work of many information professionals in the digital environment - copyright, data protection, freedom of information, and disability discrimination and accessibility. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ In the spring of 2005, the University of Hull embarked on the RepoMMan Project [1], a two-year JISC-funded [2] endeavour to investigate a number of aspects of user interaction with an institutional repository. The vision at Hull was, and is, of a repository placed at the heart of a Web services architecture: a key component of a university's information management. In this vision the institutional repository provides not only a showcase for finished digital output, but also a workspace in which members of the University can, if they wish, develop those same materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/allinson-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/allinson-et-al/ This article offers a twofold introduction to the JISC-funded SWORD [1] Project which ran for eight months in mid-2007. Firstly it presents an overview of the methods and madness that led us to where we currently are, including a timeline of how this work moved through an informal working group to a lightweight, distributed project. Secondly, it offers an explanation of the outputs produced for the SWORD Project and their potential benefits for the repositories community. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/puplett/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/puplett/ The problem of version identification in institutional repositories is multifaceted and growing. It affects most types of digital object now being deposited, and will continue to grow if left unaddressed as the proliferation of repositories continues and as they are populated with more and more content. The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) has consequently funded the VIF Project as part of the Repositories and Preservation Programme, running from June 2007 to May 2008. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/editorial/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/editorial/ In his article Ancient Cultures Inside Modern Universes Edgardo Civallero teases out for us the relationship between notions such as cultural heritage, cultural identity and what he terms intangible cultural heritage, in the context of indigenous peoples. What becomes immediately apparent for those of us concerned for fellow citizens on the wrong side of the Digital Divide [1][2] is the degree to which even they are fortunate when compared with the indigenous minorities across Latin America [3]. 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/editorial/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/editorial/ Given Ariadne's recent attempts to gather in contributions in the field of digital cultural heritage, which once upon a time would have found a home in Cultivate Interactive, I am particularly pleased, after some enquiries and kind offers of help along the way, to secure an article entitled The Video Active Consortium: Europe's Television History Online by Johan Ooman and Vassilis Tzouvaras. There will come a time when our civilisation will be assessed as much upon its cultural development as its historical path or scientific progress. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/manuel-oppenheim/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/manuel-oppenheim/ The development of an increasing array of tools for storing, organising, managing, and searching electronic resources poses some interesting questions for those in the Higher Education sector, not least of which are: what role do repositories have in this new information environment? What effect is Google having on the information-seeking strategies of students, researchers and teachers? Where do libraries fit within the information continuum? And ultimately, what services should they look to provide for their users? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ TASI Workshops in November & DecemberThere are currently places available on the following Nov/Dec workshops: 14 November 2007: Image Capture - Level 3, Bristol15 November 2007: Introduction to Image Metadata, Bristol23 November 2007: Image Optimisation - Correcting and Preparing Images, Bristol30 November 2007: Building a Departmental Image Collection, Bristol4 December 2007: Colour Management, Bristol13 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 1, Bristol14 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 2, BristolFull details of these and all TASI workshops are available from the Training page http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/waaijers/ While Cream of Science (Keur der Wetenschap), Promise of Science and the HBO Knowledge Bank (HBO Kennisbank) are among the inspiring results of the DARE Programme for the period 2003-06, what is more important in the long run is the new infrastructure that enables Dutch Higher Education and research institutions to provide easy and reliable open access to research results and teaching material as quickly as possible. Such open access ought to be the standard in a knowledge-driven society, certainly if the material and data have been generated with public funding. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ One of the defining challenges of e-Science is dealing with the data deluge [1] information overload and information overlook. More than 8,000 scientific papers are published every week (on Google Scholar, for example). Without sophisticated new tools, researchers will be unable to keep abreast of developments in their field and valuable new sources of research data will be under-exploited. The capability of text mining (TM) to find knowledge hidden in text and to present it in a concise form makes it an essential part of any strategy for addressing these problems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/alpsp-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/alpsp-rpt/ The provision of scholarly information is undergoing well-documented change, affecting libraries, publishers and researchers. The Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) presented a one-day seminar to discuss these changes and their impact, with perspectives on the near future from an academic librarian, society publishers, a scientific researcher and library technology providers. The seminar looked ‘at what the library will look like in the future, and how publishers will need to adapt to keep pace with rapid change, not only to the online content that they provide to their scholarly users, but to the way they retrieve and deliver it’ [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/kirsop-et-al/ The term ‘sustainable development’ was first coined by the Brundtland Commission, convened by the United Nations in 1983 [1]. It denotes ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Although defined originally to meet the concerns relating to environmental damage, it has since been used to encompass the broader needs of society through economic, social and political sustainability. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/wallace-et-al/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/wallace-et-al/ At Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) the Spoken Word [1], a project in the JISC / NSF Digital Libraries in the Classroom (DLiC) programme [2], was conceived in 2001-2002 in response to a set of pedagogical and institutional imperatives. A small group of social scientists had, since the 1990s, been promoting the idea of using 'an information technology-intensive learning environment' to recapture some of the traditional aspirations of Scottish Higher Education, in particular independent, critical and co-operative learning [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/vandergraf/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/vandergraf/ What is the current state of digital repositories for research output in the European Union? What should be the next steps to stimulate an infrastructure for digital repositories at a European level? To address these key questions, an inventory study into the digital repositories for research output in the European Union was carried out as part of the EU-financed DRIVER Project [1]. In this article the main results of the inventory study [2] are presented and used to formulate a European agenda for the further establishment of an infrastructure for digital repositories for research output. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/digital-deluge-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/digital-deluge-rpt/ It was that rare thing, a sunny morning in Manchester, and it was almost with regret that I entered the dark entrance hall of the Manchester Conference Centre in search of coffee and the start of the JISC conference Digital Repositories: Dealing with the Digital Deluge [1]. Day One Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundation [2], and co-author of the JISC Digital Repositories Roadmap [3] kicked off by suggesting that ‘roadmap’ documents in this domain should be treated like satellite navigation systems rather than a traditional paper-based route planners [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ EThOSnet is a project funded by JISC, CURL and the project partners, to bring the UK to the forefront of international e-theses provision. It is a highly practical and participative project to turn the prototype e-theses infrastructure that was developed by EThOS, into a live service that will revolutionise the document supply arrangements for theses and greatly increase the visibility of UK research. The Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) Project arose after several earlier initiatives in the UK had articulated an urgent need to improve on the present methods for giving researchers access to PhD and other higher-level theses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ We are frequently reminded that, in a globalised market place, industrialised countries must ever look to a developing knowledge-based economy to ensure the green shoots of competitive innovation keep sprouting. Whether all governments have been as quick to invest whole-heartedly in the research that sustains that knowledge-based economy remains to be seen. However, if the industrialised nations think they have got their problems, then, like Barbara Kirsop, Leslie Chan and Subbiah Arunachalam, they would do well to consider the situation of the developing countries which must not only compete in a ferocious global market but do so without the depth of infrastructure and investment which the Western Hemisphere takes for granted. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ If institutional repositories (IRs) were all that their proponents could have hoped, they would be providing researchers with better access to research, improving institutional prestige, and assisting with formal research assessment [1][2][3]. The reality, though, is that IRs are less frequently implemented, harder to fill, and less visible than their advocates would hope or expect [4][5][6]. While technical platforms for IRs, such as DSpace [7] and ePrints [8] have seen an abundance of research, little is known about the users of IRs, neither how they use IR software, nor how usable it is for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/newsline/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/newsline/ Building Trust in Digital Repositories Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit Pre-SOA Conference Workshop: Building Trust in Digital Repositories Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit 27 August 2007, 11.00-16.00 The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/drambora-belfast-2007/ Running from 11.00am to 4.00pm, this practical tutorial will provide a contextual overview of the need for an evidence-based evaluation of digital repositories and offer an overview of the DCC pilot audits to date. The tutorial will then move on to demonstrate how institutions can make use of the DRAMBORA toolkit to design, develop, evaluate, and refine new or existing trusted digital repository systems and workflows. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/manuel-oppenheim/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/manuel-oppenheim/ Much can be learned from looking back and reflecting on events in the repository arena over the past few years. Repository systems, institutional managers, repository managers, advisory organisations and repository users have all come a long way in this short time. Looking back acts as a way of grounding prior activity in the present context. It can also provide invaluable insights into where repositories are headed. The activity of deliberating on past events may be of value to a range of individuals engaged in repository activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/treloar-groenewegen/ This paper describes three inter-related repository projects. These projects were all funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government through the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative as part of the Commonwealth Government’s Backing Australia’s Ability - An Innovation Action Plan for the Future. The article will describe the background to all three projects and the way in which their development has been inter-related and co-ordinated. The article will conclude by examining how Monash University (the lead institution in all three projects) is re-conceiving the relationship between its different repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/hitchcock/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/hitchcock/ Does anyone remember the first popular music video (emphasis on popular)? Now, does anyone remember the first JISC project video (emphasis on, er, project)? That is, a video about the project rather than about the subject of the project. If not then the Preserv video [1] produced to tell the story of the JISC Preserv Project [2] might claim the prize. If you are stunned to learn of a project with this degree of bravado, vanity or sheer recklessness to commit to this format, then it’s probably as nothing until you have seen the video. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Introduction to Federated Searching Technology & DevelopmentsDate: 11 May 2007 Venue: Conference Room, Southport College, Mornington Road, Southport, PR9 0TT Delegate Fee: £50.00 This one day conference is aimed at further education library and information. As electronic content and sources of information, provided by academic libraries, become greater and vaster, the need for federated searching technologies has increased. This seminar will introduce delegates to the concepts of federated searching (also known as meta-searching) of library content, and will illustrate some of the current developments and initiatives within this field. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Opening Keynote AddressThe 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham. JISC Chairman Professor Sir Ron Cooke outlined JISC’s achievements over the last year, including the launch of the UK Access Management Federation [1], the launch of JISC Collections [2] as a mutual trading company and the launch of SuperJANET5 [3], the upgrade to the JANET network which quadruples its capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/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/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference is held annually by the Digital Curation Centre [1] to bring together researchers in the field and promote discussion of policy and strategy. The second conference in this series [2], with the theme 'digital data curation in practice', was held between 21-22 November 2006 in Glasgow. Day OneOpening Keynote AddressHans Hoffman of CERN gave the opening keynote address. The e-Science 'revolution' is being both pushed by advances in technology and pulled by demands from researchers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/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/hannabuss-rvw/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/hannabuss-rvw/ When you see a retail centre in a town, it is natural to wonder how central it really is : is it merely a claim? So when words like 'essential' appear in book titles, we again wonder whether it is really so. Years of publishers' blurbs and puffs induce irony, especially as we look along shelves of books with similar titles (and claims), above all for students and young professionals - essential psychology, essential statistics, essentials for Continuing Professional Development, essential law. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/gierveld/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/gierveld/ Institutional Repositories (IR) are a result of the vision to collect, secure, and provide access to scholarly publications in a novel, digital way, mostly initiated by the institutional library. Various factors have contributed to the emergence of these repositories, including technological innovations which allow a new form of collection management of a university's output, the desire to counteract the 'serials crisis', and the opportunity of promoting wide dissemination and quick access to publications. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/korn-oppenheim/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/korn-oppenheim/ Creative Commons [1] is helping to instigate cultural change: it is empowering rights holders with the knowledge and tools to decide under what terms they wish third parties to use their creations, whilst permitting users easy and user-friendly means to use content lawfully without the necessity of requesting permission. The release of the Creative Commons licences has inspired a global revolution, supported by a sub-culture with its own identity, ideology, activities and membership [2] and the spawning of other model licences developed with a similar philosophy, such as Science Commons [3], Patent Commons [4] and Creative Archive [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/dc-2006-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/dc-2006-rpt/ DC-2006 [1], the annual conference of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), took place this year in the city of Manzanillo, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, with a subtitle of ‘Metadata for Knowledge and Learning’. The four-day conference was organised by the University of Colima [2], and the venue for the event was the Karmina Palace Hotel, a large hotel set within its own complex of restaurants, bars, shops and swimming pools. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/suzuki-sugita/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/suzuki-sugita/ Hokkaido University launched its project to construct an institutional repository in early 2004. After a year of discussion, planning and preparation, we started soliciting content in July 2005. Within a year of that start, we had assembled a depository of approximately 9,000 documents. It is named the Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers (HUSCAP)[1]. Eight thousand of these documents are digitised collections of faculty journal back issues that have been published over the many years of Hokkaido University's history. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Digital Data Curation in Practice: The Second International Digital Curation ConferenceThe second International Digital Curation Conference will take place over 21-22 November 2006 at the City Centre Hilton in Glasgow. The theme of the conference will be Digital Data Curation in Practice. The programme comprises a series of peer-reviewed papers covering a range of disciplines from social sciences and neurosciences to astronomy. The programme will also focus on a number of different aspects of the curation life cycle including the management of repositories, educating the data scientist and the role of policy and strategy. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/guy/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/guy/ In February of this year an article was published by Steven Andrew Mathieson in Guardian Unlimited on public sector wikis [1]. Mathieson proclaimed the rise in creation and use of wikis by UK state sector organisations. This article will look objectively at this apparent rise and will consider whether wikimania has truly hit the public sector. Setting the Scene In the Web 2.0 world those of us working with the Web now live, there is an increasing awareness of changing audiences and expectations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ A growing and significant part of the record and culture of the UK is now in digital form. The lives of staff working in our institutions, current students, and private individuals will be increasingly influenced by these trends and the growing demand for professionals to curate digital assets. The School of Library, Archives and Information Studies (SLAIS) at University College London aims to raise awareness of digital stewardship. Following the highly successful inaugural series of C21st Curation public lectures last year, SLAIS organised a second series of public lectures by eight leading speakers, open to students, professionals and general public during April and May 2006. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/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/jisc-cni-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Encapsulating the events of such an information-rich event as the JISC / CNI conference can be a tricky task, but the next few lines will, we hope, deliver a flavour of the occasion as well as a summary of a few significant themes. No single overarching theme dominated the event and indeed everyone we spoke to over the two-day event expressed a different opinion as to what they thought were the really important issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/47/dpm-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dpm-rpt/ Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is commonly portrayed as a mechanism for restricting access to and use of digital content. On the contrary, a properly implemented Digital Policy Management infrastructure will facilitate the widest possible use of digital content, supporting the interests of library users, libraries and rights owners. 'Access and use policies' are a traditional element in the management of every library collection. There are many reasons why every item in a library collection may not be accessible to every library user; and the uses to which different items may be put are frequently not uniform across the complete collection. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/newsline/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/newsline/ Oxford Journals to report on its open access experiments Oxford Journals is to stage a one-day conference to report new results from its open access experiments. Conference details: Monday 5 June 10.30-16.30 76 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NT Preliminary programme: Martin Richardson and Claire Saxby, Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press Oxford Journals and Open Access Claire Creaser and Eric Davies, LISU, Loughborough University: Counting on Open Access - Preliminary Outcomes of an Experiment in Evaluating Scholarly Journal Open Access Models 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-conf-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ On 14 March 2006 we found ourselves back at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) for the 2006 JISC Conference. The annual conference [1] is both an opportunity for JISC to platform the variety of activities it funds and for delegates to learn about the full range of JISC's work by participating in seminars, debates, workshops and demonstrations. This report tries to capture the air of the event through a series of session snapshots. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond. These clusters seek to encompass many of the diverse issues being considered across the Digital Repositories Programme, including the different repository types (e-Learning and Scientific data), the infrastructural and technical issues (Integrating infrastructure and Machine services) and the social, cultural and legal topics (Legal and policy, Personal resource management strategies and Preservation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mchugh-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mchugh-rvw/ The sub-title of this book provides a broader explanation for those who may be puzzled by the use of the term "e-metrics". The book suggests that to reach a real understanding of how digital and virtual library collections are used and who is using them, generating data on a local level as well as employing vendor-generated data which conforms, or otherwise, to emerging standards, is important for libraries. Content OverviewThe book starts with a preface which summarises its contents, allowing the reader to choose between 3 sections - What e-metrics are; Why they are required by libraries; How libraries can build local collections of e-metrics data. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/law/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/law/ Training as a mediaeval historian encourages one to look backwards before looking forwards. In doing so it is difficult to overestimate the impact of technology push. The combination of increased speed, increased power and increased storage has transformed the opportunities available to the community at large and academics in particular. Twenty years ago we saw the first CD-ROMs with 650Mb capacity; today a standard entry-level PC will have 80Gb of storage, while 200-1000Gb is not uncommon. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/e-theses-rpt/ Doctoral theses contain some of the most current and valuable research produced within universities, but are underused as research resources. Where electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are open access, they are used many times more often than paper theses that are available only via inter-library loan. Many universities and other organisations across Europe are now working hard to make ETDs more openly available and useful. In an attempt to co-ordinate this activity, an invitation-only workshop was held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in January, to see what could be learned from existing examples of best practice and to see how the participants might work together in the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Web Tools for EU Research Projects Tuesday 7 February 2006 - Cambridge, UK EU research projects share lots of information and involve joint working amongst organisations from many different countries. There are many software tools which can support them, from shared workspaces to resource planning and reporting tools, from electronic meetings to web content management. But which tools are effective for EU research projects? Management tools for coordinating a construction project are rarely suitable for the more uncertain world of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/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/higgins-rvw/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/higgins-rvw/ The title of this book will be bewitching for any library struggling with integrating the myriad of digital resources, to which they provide access, into its organisational and cataloguing workflows. However, the manual has a very narrow focus and gives an unscalable solution, which fails to address the problems faced by hybrid libraries, with a wide range of complex digital resources requiring lifecycle control. ContentAs a simple manual the book will be very helpful for libraries which are starting to provide access to licensed online resources for the first time. 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/editorial/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/editorial/ While as a fully paid-up cynic I could be forgiven for fingering the metaphorical revolver on sighting a technology evangelist, the evangelist in question has an excellent track record as Ariadne readers will know. Paul Miller in his article Web 2.0: Building the New Library would seem to lift our eyes above the merely technological and in a series of 'Principles' underpinning Web 2.0 provides us with a set of aims with which relatively few might argue violently - on the face of it. 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/45/thomas-rothery/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/thomas-rothery/ Much of the work around institutional repositories explores one specific function of repositories: to store and/or catalogue scholarly content such as research papers, journal articles, preprints and so on. Ariadne has reported on many of these developments [1] [2] [3]. However, as stressed by the JISC senior management briefing papers [4] for Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE), repositories can be a tool for managing the institution's learning and teaching assets too. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/hoorn/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/hoorn/ Intellectual Property Rights have become increasingly powerful and far-reaching. This has grown to be the standard opening line of papers in the field of law addressing issues of copyright for scientific research and scholarly publishing [1]. Concerns are expressed about the likelihood of preserving the public domain in the Internet era [2]. Currently new ways to safeguard the values and the entire potential of scholarly publishing and communication are being explored within the framework of existing copyright law. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ The 2005 JISC Conference took place on 12 April at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) which this year - inexplicably - had a giant Ferris wheel thirty yards from the main entrance, entirely unconnected with the main event. The annual conference [1] is a chance for JISC to showcase the breadth of its activities [2] in providing support for the use of ICT in education and research, and as usual it was a bustle of networking and learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ TASI Offers Workshops over Summer and Autumn Months The JISC-funded Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) is offering a number of workshops in the coming months, of which two below are given as examples. Building a departmental resource 11 August 2005 This workshop aims to demonstrate the steps for creating, maintaining and delivering an image collection. Through a range of hands-on activities, attendees will investigate suitable Image Management Systems (IMS), be introduced to Metadata, and consider its practical application. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/martinez/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/martinez/ This article will report on existing local data support infrastructures within the UK tertiary education community. It will discuss briefly early methods and traditions of data collection within UK territories. In addition it will focus on the current UK data landscape with particular reference to specialised national data centres which provide access to large-scale government surveys, macro socio-economic data, population censuses and spatial data. It will outline examples of local data support services, their organisational role and areas of expertise in addition to the origins of the Data Information Specialist Committee UK, DISC-UK. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Virtual research environments (VREs), as one hopes the name suggests, comprise digital infrastructure and services which enable research to take place. The idea of a VRE, which in this context includes cyberinfrastructure and e-infrastructure, arises from and remains intrinsically linked with, the development of e-science. The VRE helps to broaden the popular definition of e-science from grid-based distributed computing for scientists with huge amounts of data to the development of online tools, content, and middleware within a coherent framework for all disciplines and all types of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/pearson-rvw/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/pearson-rvw/ The 2nd edition of this practical guide to building and delivering electronic resource collections is, like the 1st edition, a compact guide (5 chapters with145 pages excluding bibliography and glossary), with an intended audience of students, new professionals, experienced practitioners and publishers. To address a subject of this scale and complexity with such a wide audience is, to say the least, a challenge. However, I found on reading this work that the authors have succeeded in this entirely. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/prudlo/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/prudlo/ In recent years initiatives to create software packages for electronic repository management have mushroomed all over the world. Some institutions engage in these activities in order to preserve content that might otherwise be lost, others in order to provide greater access to material that might otherwise be too obscure to be widely used such as grey literature. The open access movement has also been an important factor in this development. Digital initiatives such as pre-print, post-print, and document servers are being created to come up with new ways of publishing. 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/newsline/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/newsline/ Netskills Workshops in May 2005Web: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ Netskills will be running the following workshops at North Herts College in Letchworth Garden City in May 2005: 10 May : e-Assessment: Tools & TechniquesFocuses on the tools available for creating e-assessment and the practical techniques required to use them effectively. The tools are considered both in terms of their functionality as well as their interoperability with other systems. 11 May: Design Solutions for e-LearningThis workshop examines how to design pedagogically effective e-learning to enhance traditional forms of teaching and learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ In the early days of the shift from paper-based to digital means of holding administrative records, research data, publications and other academic resources, those responsible for its safety tended to breathe a sigh of relief once they had got a category of material into digital form. Reduced to bits and bytes, all they would have to do is make regular backups, perhaps keeping a copy off-site in case of disaster, and all would be well. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/panteli/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/panteli/ During the last few years there has been an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of trust in business interactions within the management and organisational literatures [1][2]. Trust enables cooperation and becomes the means for complexity reduction even in situations where individuals must act with uncertainty because they are in possession of ambiguous and incomplete information. It is not therefore surprising that in the current age of global and digital economy and virtuality [3] there has been an enormous interest in trust. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/uksg2005-rpt/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/uksg2005-rpt/ IntroductionDoes More Access Mean Less Library?Commercial Scholarly Publishing in the World of Open AccessWalking Away from the Big Deal: the Consequences and AchievementsAll or Nothing: Towards an Orderly Retreat from the Big DealsThe IReL Experience: Irish Research Electronic LibraryExperimenting with Open Access PublishingThe Impact of Open Access Publishing on Research LibrariesPublic Access, Open Archives: A Funder's PerspectiveVLEs: Setting the SceneThe Implementation of a VLE: Not So Virtual After AllHow Usage Statistics Can Inform National Negotiations and StrategiesThe Library View of Usage MetricsChange and Continuity in a World of InformationSnap, Crackle and Ultimately Pop? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/editorial/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/editorial/ Tomorrow, 31 January 2005 will be the moment of truth for those institutions among some 100,000 public authorities which received a request for information on the first operative day of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United Kingdom. For by tomorrow they must have responded to the request within 20 working days. No doubt many senior administrators in HE and FE institutions up and down the country will be wondering how many requests their institution has really received, as opposed to the number that have actually been reported - at least one aspect of the legislation that will not have endeared itself to them, quite understandably. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/harnad/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/harnad/ This article is a critique of: The "Green" and "Gold" Roads to Open Access: The Case for Mixing and Matching by Jean-Claude Guédon [1]. Open Access (OA) means: free online access to all peer-reviewed journal articles. Jean-Claude Guédon (J-CG) argues against the efficacy of author self-archiving of peer-reviewed journal articles -- the "Green" road to OA -- on the grounds (1) that far too few authors self-archive, (2) that self-archiving can only generate incomplete and inconvenient access, and (3) that maximizing access and impact is the wrong reason for seeking OA (and only favours elite authors). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/newsline/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/newsline/ Digital Cultural Content Forum 200511-13 February 2005, Oxford, UK The Digital Cultural Content Forum (DCCF) is an annual international gathering of key stakeholders in the digitisation and delivery of our global cultural assets. The focus of the meeting is to explore how public institutions that steward cultural content, the agencies responsible for public policy, and organisations in the public broadcast sectors can collaborate to deliver services to public audiences. The meeting is organised by UKOLN on behalf of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council of the UK (MLA), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). 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/ecdl2004-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/ecdl2004-rpt/ This year it was the turn of the UK to host this major European conference and researchers and librarians took the opportunity to recharge and hear about and debate the latest research and technology advances in digital libraries. There were 47 peer-reviewed papers - a 32% acceptance rate. Remarkably papers were received from 27 countries. There was something for everyone: from digital library architectures through innovative technologies and techniques and particular kinds of libraries - personal and music - and I was particularly pleased to attend several sessions more focussed towards the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been able to achieve new business practices such as digitising its collections and hosting federated search services by exploiting recent standards including the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), handles for persistent identification, and metadata schemas for new types of content. Each instantiation of the OAI-PMH opens up new ways of creating and managing our digital libraries while making them more accessible for learning, teaching and research purposes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/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/godby/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/godby/ A Metadata Standard for Learning ObjectsAs learning objects grow in number and importance, institutions are faced with the daunting task of managing them. Like familiar items in library collections, learning objects need to be organised by subject and registered in searchable repositories. But they also introduce special problems. As computer files, they are dependent on a particular hardware and software environment. And as materials with a pedagogical intent, they are associated with metrics such as learning objectives, reading levels and methods for evaluating student performance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/erpanet-ids-rpt/ Day OneIntroductionWelcome and KeynoteOverview of Persistent Identifier initiativesURNOpenURL - The Rough GuideInfo URIsThe DCMI Persistent Identifier Working GroupThe CENDI ReportARKPURLsOverview of the Handle SystemDOIDay TwoIdentifiers at the Coal FaceEPICURThe National Digital Data Archive (NDA)NBN:URN Generator and ResolverDIVAThe Publisher’s PerspectiveDigital Object Identifiers for Publishing and the e-Learning CommunitiesPublication and Citation of Scientific and Primary DataInformation and the Government of CanadaConclusion This event, organised by ERPANET [1], brought together around 40 key players with an interest in the topic of persistent identifiers in order to synthesize the current state of play, debate the issues and consider what lies on the horizon in this field of activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Seminar Invitation from DEF - Danish Electronic Research LibraryThe DEF XML Web Services project invites you to participate in the seminar: Building Digital Libraries with XML Web Services on Friday 27 August 2004 from 9:30 to 16:00 at the Technical University of Denmark, Building 303, DK-2800 Lyngby. The headlines of the seminar are: § Setting the scene: XML - tools, visions, initiatives - Introduction to XML and Open Source Web Services http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/pals-conf-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/pals-conf-rpt/ PALS [1] is the ongoing collaboration between UK publishers (ALPSP [2] and the Publishers Association [3]), and Higher/Further Education (JISC). PALS aims to foster mutual understanding and work collaboratively towards the solution of issues arising from electronic publication. This was a 'hot issue' conference [4], on a topic - institutional repositories - that has seen much interest, lots of activity and experiment. The general direction of the concept is not yet clear, but at least some of the issues are being exposed and are beginning to be clarified. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/coyle/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/coyle/ It is common to hear members of the digital library community debating the relative merits of the two most common rights expression languages (RELs) - the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) and the rights language developed for the Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) and recently adopted by the International Organization for Standardization [1] - and which is preferable for digital library systems. Such debates are, in my opinion, premature and should be postponed until this community has developed a clear set of requirements for rights management in its environment, including rights expression, the encoding of license terms, and file protection. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hey/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hey/ The University of Southampton has been one of the pioneers of open access to academic research, particularly, in the tireless advocacy of Professor Stevan Harnad and in the creation of the EPrints software [1], as a vehicle for creating open access archives (or repositories) for research. These activities have been supported by a long-standing programme of research into digital libraries, hypermedia, and scholarly communication. In the early days, before the vocabulary of open access issues was so well developed, we talked of the 'esoteric literature' - the 'not-for-profit' academic literature - and the Faustian bargain that the authors made with the publishers [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/eprints-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/eprints-rpt/ The workshop was aimed at those interested in setting up institutional e-print servers where the outputs of their organisation (journal articles, papers, reports etc) could be published, stored and searched via a central institutional server. The event was fully booked which perhaps indicates that universities, colleges, academics and librarians are increasingly recognising the value of the e-print publishing model. The day was run by ePrints UK [1] (in conjunction with SOSIG), an RDN [2] project which aims to offer a new national e-print subject service by pulling together information from institutional servers and presenting it by subject discipline (via the RDN hubs). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/teruggi/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/teruggi/ Memory is our major link to the past; it has greatly influenced the evolution of humankind. Since the beginning of humanity, we have sought to preserve memories through the creation of artefacts that will transcend our own lifetime and so assure ourselves some form of posterity, perhaps even eternity. For some time writing has been the major complex medium of preserved reality. Not only does writing record human actions, beliefs and emotions, but it is an intellectual tool in itself, giving a temporal perspective on our thought as well as providing increasing levels of abstraction. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/erpanet-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/erpanet-rpt/ On 15-17 December 2003, the ERPANET Project [1] and the ICSU (International Council for Science) Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) [2] held a joint workshop on the selection, appraisal and retention of digital scientific data at the National Library of Portugal (Biblioteca Nacional) in Lisbon. The workshop brought together around 80 participants, a mix of scientists, archivists and data specialists. Day OneAfter the opening introductions, the first presentation was an overview of CODATA data archiving activities given by Bill Anderson, co-chair of the CODATA Task Group on Preservation and Archiving of Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/mackie/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/mackie/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three-year project based at the University of Glasgow funded under the JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2]. The main focus of the project has been developing institutional repositories to hold content ranging from peer-reviewed published papers to theses and working papers. Separate repositories have been developed for published material [3] and other material [4]. This article will detail some of the strategies we have adopted in gathering existing content for the institutional repositories we have developed at Glasgow. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) - 24-26 June, TorontoThe Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) is the international meeting for organisations and individuals involved in the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials. This year, JTS is scheduled to be held in Toronto, Canada, June 24-26, 2004. Preliminary program information is now available on the JTS 2004 website. See: http://www.jts2004.org/english/program.htm For more information please see the website or contact the organization responsible for coordinating the event on behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA): http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/espoo-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/espoo-rpt/ The National Library of Finland led the organisation of this conference to bring together librarians and researchers from around the world to discuss progress with digital libraries. The aims were to explore how users were responding to digital services and to examine how services could be made more 'user-centred'. The conference was attended by 200 delegates from 23 countries. The Powerpoint presentations of speakers have been placed on the finelib Web site [1] and some of the papers have been published in the electronic journal Information Research [2]. 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/ecdl2003-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/ecdl2003-rpt/ ECDL2003 was the seventh in the annual series of European Digital Library conferences, this year hosted in Trondheim, Norway. The unusual move from September to August does not carry through to next year’s conference at the University of Bath, UK, which returns to the ‘normal’ September slot (12-16 September). My interests in digital library applications, user perspectives and service management obviously influence my ‘take’ on the conference experience and the sessions I attend. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/newsline/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/newsline/ Reveal[September 2003] The Reveal Web site, launched on 16 September 2003, brings together information about services and resources for visually impaired people from organisations across the United Kingdom. Reveal is an information resource where you will be able to find books in Braille and Moon, audio books and digital talking books, tactile diagrams and other accessible format materials, find out who produces, loans or sells accessible materials, and find information about the different accessible materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Welcome and IntroductionRachel Heery, UKOLN, University of BathDelegates were welcomed and reminded that this was the fourth and final in a series of workshops which have been organised by the Open Archives Forum Project. Rachel Heery explained that the project was a supporting action funded by the European Commission to bring together EU researchers and implementers working in the area of open access to archives. Fourth Open Archives Forum Technical Validation Report Birgit Matthaei, HU Berlin Technical validation based on Resource Database http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/andrew/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/andrew/ With the rapid uptake of digital media changing the way scholarly communication is perceived, we are in a privileged position to be part of a movement whose decisions now will help to decide ultimately future courses of action. A number of strategies have recently emerged to facilitate greatly enhanced access to traditional scholarly content, e.g. open access journals and institutional repositories. In this spirit of promoting access to scholarly resources, JISC has funded a number of projects under the banner of its Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/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/34/nixon/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three year JISC funded project under the FAIR Programme [2] which will build a range of Open Archives Compliant (OAI) 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 will include 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 SHERPA project [3]. 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/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/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/eprint-archives/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eprint-archives/ This article outlines some of the main stages in setting up an institutional e-print archive. It is based on experiences at the universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham which have both recently developed pilot e-print servers(1). It is not the intention here to present arguments in favour of open access e-print archives – this has been done elsewhere(2). Rather, it is hoped to present give an account of some of the practical issues that arise in the early stages of establishing an archive in a higher education institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Although the World Wide Web is less than a decade old, it already has had a profound impact on scientific publishing and scholarly communication. In particular, open standards and low-cost networking tools are opening many possibilities for reducing and even eliminating entirely the cost barriers to scientific publications. (1) One development that has great potential value for poorly-resourced countries is “open archiving”, or the deposition of scholarly research papers into networked servers accessible over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/planet-sosig/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/planet-sosig/ Social Science Business and Law HubWe are pleased to announce that as of August 1999 SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway), the UK’s number one place to find social science information on the Internet will be expanding its service. SOSIG provides a browsable and searchable database of thousands of high quality Internet resources of relevance to social science researchers, academics and practitioners. The gateway will draw on the expertise of a number of specialist organisations within the social sciences to help build its database of resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/revill/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/revill/ Having read recent government reports, and returning now to the position of being a mere user contemplating a forty four year career in education for librarianship, libraries and (one must now add) information services, it strikes me that little has changed over the years. The problems the profession faced in the 50s and 60s are still with us. There are still many politically-charged questions that we are unable to answer convincingly, including how much it costs to provide library services for each successfully educated chemist, physicist, sociologist, geographer …… and how big the book (materials) fund should be, other than, of course, by asking “How much have you got? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/main/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/main/ This article does not tackle its subject from the theoretical perspectives and careful evaluation of the merits and demerits of different organisational models, such as one might find in a textbook on management. Rather does it seek to introduce some of the basic issues and concepts by drawing on the experience of organisational change at the University of Birmingham, where a fully converged Information Services has been in operation since October 1995, with an annual turnover of £12 million and 270 fte staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/view-hill/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/view-hill/ Birkbeck CollegeAn institution owing its origins to a 19th Century Mechanics’ Institute, yet with 40% of its work at postgraduate level, a high research rating and only 5% of its fte drawn from full time students is a place where you might reasonably expect a pragmatic mix of the old and the new in its attitude to widening access. You would not be disappointed as Philippa Dolphin begins to describe her approach to the issue. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/down-your-way/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/down-your-way/ Sunday 6 July, the Royal Ulster Constabulary was under attack on the Lower Ormeau Road, Belfast. The following day, less than a mile away, the RUC band was playing at the Graduation Garden Party at The Queen’s University of Belfast. The contrast between the conservation area of the Victorian university and the squat red-brick terraces of the Lower Ormeau Road could not be greater, yet they are both typical, in their own way, of life in the province. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ AbstractThis paper provides a background to the development and ongoing activities of data archives in general and The Data Archive (formerly known as the ESRC Data Archive) at the University of Essex in particular. It describes the main activities involved in running the Archive and explores the benefits for both data producers and data users of a central repository of data. It touches on the growth of The Data Archive in recent years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Preparing to write this article, I sought inspiration in the form of a recurring question. How can we improve our knowledge of users and their use of networked information services? What should we be doing to develop our understanding in the context of emerging digital library developments? And how might we make progress? My starting point came from a recent reading of the executive summary of the TULIP project final report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/jilt/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/jilt/ The Journal of Information, Law and Technology is the first journal to be launched under the banner of the Electronic Law Journals project. The Electronic Law Journals project brings together the Law Technology Centre at the University of Warwick and the Centre for Law, Computers and Technology at the University of Strathclyde in partnership. The goal of this partnership is simply to revolutionise legal publishing. The underlying aim of the project is to present suitable articles that are heightened by hyperlinks and accompanying demonstrations where possible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/reside/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/reside/ The aim of ResIDe is to pilot an electronic reserve system or short loan collection aimed at students in the Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE). UWE Library Services and Faculty of Built Environment are working with the ESRC Data Archive, Museum of London, Institute of Housing and Ordnance Survey on this project. Why develop an electronic reserve system?Changes in patterns of teaching and learning have led to a decrease in academic staff/student contact hours and a greater reliance upon student centred learning.