http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/operating-system/ Recent content in Operating System on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/caperon/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/caperon/ Mobile devices such as smartphones, iPads and tablet computers are rapidly proliferating in society and changing the way information is organised, received and disseminated. Consequently the library world must adopt mobile services which maximise and adapt to these significant technological changes. What do library users want from mobile services? How can libraries adopt new, innovative mobile initiatives? How can libraries use their advantage of being technological intelligence centres to forge and create attractive new mobile services that meet the needs of users effectively, since many such users are now armed with smartphones when commencing their academic experience? 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/tablet-symp-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tablet-symp-rpt/ The Tablet Symposium [1] brought together researchers and practitioners to examine questions about uses of tablet computers and e-readers across many walks of life, including academic, artistic, pedagogical, corporate and everyday contexts. As a co-organiser of the event, I was thrilled by the range of presentations that we were fortunate enough to be able to include in the symposium.  It was fascinating to see such a broad range of perspectives being applied to such a very focused object of study. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/kelly-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/kelly-et-al/ The idea that if we could only improve how we communicate, there would be less misunderstanding among people is as old as the hills. Historically, this notion has been expressed through things like school reform, spelling reform, publication of communication manuals, etc. The most radical expression of the desire for better understanding is the invention of a whole new artificial language with the intention of providing a universal language for humanity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in  15 different countries across 4 continents. My colleague Monica Duke and I attended the most recent conference in Taipei both to represent the Digital Curation Centre – CODATA's national member for the UK – and to participate in a track of talks on data publication and citation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ CURATEcamp is ‘A series of unconference-style events focused on connecting practitioners and technologists interested in digital curation.’ [1] The first CURATEcamp was held in the summer of 2010, and there have been just over 10 Camps since then. The activity at CURATEcamps is driven by the attendees; in other words, ‘There are no spectators at CURATEcamp, only participants.’ [2] Camps follow the ‘open agenda’ model: while organisers will typically build the activity around a particular theme within the field of digital curation, and sometimes (but not always) collect topics for discussion, there is no preset agenda. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/online-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/online-2012-rpt/ Online Information [1] is an interesting conference as it brings together information professionals from both the public and the private sector. The opportunity to share experiences from these differing perspectives doesn’t happen that often and brings real benefits, such as highly productive networking. This year’s Online Information, held between 20 - 21  November, felt like a slightly different event to previous years. The conference had condensed down to 2 days from 3, dropped its exhibition and free workshops and found a new home at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel, London. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Although the move from print to electronic journals over the last two decades has been enormously beneficial to academic libraries and their users, the shift from owning material outright to renting access has restricted the autonomy of librarians to grant access to these journals. The ProblemLicence restrictions imposed by publishers define and limit access rights and librarians have increasingly taken on the role of restricting access on behalf of the publisher, rather than granting access on behalf of their institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/jones-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/jones-et-al/ [toc hidden:1] The MyMobileBristol Project is managed and developed by the Web Futures group at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol [1]. The project has a number of broad and ambitious aims and objectives, including collaboration with Bristol City Council on the development or adoption of standards with regard to the exchange of time- and location-sensitive data within the Bristol region, with particular emphasis on transport, the environment and sustainability. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/prior-salter/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/prior-salter/ In the current fiscal climate faced by educational institutions in the UK, elearning tools and technologies that promise efficiency savings as well as enhancing the quality and quantity of course offerings are gaining popularity. One such technology is Web conferencing where lectures, seminars, meetings or presentations take place online and allow for remote participation and collaboration via audio, video, instant chat and a virtual ‘whiteboard.’[1]. Web conferencing also has the potential to provide a sustainable and economic alternative to face-to-face professional development conferences [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/rafiq-rvw/ Open source (OS) usually refers to an application whose source code is made available for use or modification in line with users’ needs and requirements. OS projects usually develop in the public domain where contributors participate in a collaborative manner and update or refine the product. OS offers more flexibility and freedom than software purchased with licence restrictions. Both the OS community and the library world share many common principles. They share and promote open standards and believe in sharing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago. Thus it was that the sixth conference in the series [3], entitled ‘Participation and Practice: Growing the Curation Community through the Data Decade’, came to be held jointly by the DCC, UIUC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/boot/ Large amounts of money are spent building scholarly resources on the web. Unlike online retailers, large publishers and banks, scholarly institutions tend not to monitor very closely the way visitors use their web sites. In this article I would like to show that a look at the traces users leave behind in the Web servers’ log files can teach us much about our sites’ usability and about the way visitors use them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/gramstadt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/gramstadt/ This article presents data gathered through a University for the Creative Arts Learning and Teaching Research Grant (2009-2010); including a study of existing image presentation tools, both digital and non-digital; and analysis of data from four interviews and an online questionnaire. The aim of the research was to look afresh at available technology from the point of view of a lecturer in the visual arts, and to use the information gathered to look more critically at the available technology. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ The Eduserv Symposium 2010 on the mobile university brought together colleagues from academia and practice to discuss the impact of the growth in mobile technologies on Higher Education: for example, on the student experience, learning and teaching initiatives, research, libraries, role of the educators, and the computer services support. Stephen Butcher and Andy Powell of Eduserv gave the welcome addresses. Stephen mentioned how this symposium was the largest that Eduserv had hosted and gave a background of Eduserv’s activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/planets-2010-rome-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/planets-2010-rome-rpt/ In far more dramatic circumstances than expected, the Planets Project [1] held its 3-day training event Digital Preservation – The Planets Way in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010. This article reports its proceedings. The venue chosen for this Planets training event, the last of a series of five held over the past 12 months around Europe, was the prestigious Pontifica Universitata Gregoriana – the first Jesuit University, founded over 450 years ago in the heart of Rome and only a few minutes’ walk from the Trevi Fountain. 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/cliff-rvw/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/cliff-rvw/ Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) programming technique enables one to update parts of a Web site without reloading the entire page. So useful is it that AJAX is turning up all over the Web, including on my own Web-based archival interfaces; so it was timely that I should be asked to review Ajax in Oracle JDeveloper. Before diving into the book, I should say a little about Oracle's Integrated Development Environment (IDE) JDeveloper [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/newsline/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/newsline/ JISC Digital Media Course: Introduction to Image MetadataILRT, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1HH Wednesday 9 December 2009 Full-day course: 10.00 - 16.30 http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training/courses/introduction-to-image-metadata/ AimThis course is designed specifically to help you consider how to effectively incorporate metadata into the fabric of your image collection, through explanation, discussion and practical activities. AudienceAnyone new to describing and cataloguing images. Some previous knowledge of metadata will be useful but not essential. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/nsf-2009-03-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/nsf-2009-03-rpt/ I was recently invited to attend a 'Software Sustainability Workshop', organised by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Indiana University at its University Place Conference Center in Indianapolis. The invitation, which included a call for position papers, described the event as follows: The workshop will focus on identifying strategies to create sustainable models for use, support, maintenance, and long-term sustainability of cyberinfrastructure software that is developed and used by research communities working in areas related to the NSF mission. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ The e-Framework for Education and Research was founded in 2005 as a partnership between the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK, and the then Department of Education Science and Technology (DEST) in Australia. Since the foundation of the e-Framework, a major government reorganisation in Australia has replaced DEST with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), and the initial partnership has expanded to include SURF in the Netherlands, and the New Zealand Ministry of Education/Te Tahuhu o te Matauranga. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/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/57/guy/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy/ My previous article A Desk Too Far?: The Case for Remote Working [1] explored the cultural background to remote working, reasons why people might choose to work from home and some of the challenges that face them and their host organisations. This article will consider both the technology that facilitates remote working and the tools that can support remote workers by enabling them to carry out the tasks that they need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/jisc-powr-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/jisc-powr-rpt/ A university’s Web site is typically an honest reflection of the university, which is often an uncomfortable state of affairs for its managers. I was reminded of this as I negotiated my way from Senate House’s cycle bays to the Dr Seng Tee Room at the University of London. Having arrived in time, Reception – one person behind wood and glass – thought I was looking for Dr Seng Tee. A 404 [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/young/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/young/ UKOLN has recently updated its strategy to include a more environmentally sound agenda [1]. Not only does it make ethical sense to save energy it also makes long-term financial sense. UKOLN is based at, and also receives support from, the University of Bath. The University is taking steps to reduce its electricity and gas usage, and is taking part in a scheme called The Big Energy Challenge [2][3] which is intended to help local organisations and businesses to reduce their energy usage by at least 10% in the next 3 years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Information Retrieval Today: An Overview of Issues and MethodsDiscussionDavid Pullinger (UK Cabinet Office), in charge of the pan-government search solution, commented that ordinary people searching for government documents use terms other than the government's argot. Ironically, Google finds these documents effectively, because it picks up words that are associated with links, often written in plainer English. Conrad drew attention to a 2003 paper on e-democracy by Danny Budzak [5], comparing terms used to describe services on local government Web sites to those chosen by users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ecdl-2007-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ecdl-2007-rpt/ This was the first time this event was held in the majestic and architecturally impressive city of Budapest. It was organised by The Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI) [1] and held at the Europa Congress Centre. The event brought together a very mixed group of people from computer scientists, researchers, librarians, professors and managers. There were over 200 participants, from 36 countries. There were a total of 119 full paper submissions of which 36 were accepted after peer review, giving an acceptance rate of 30%. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/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/51/young-thrower/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/young-thrower/ Virtualisation is a hot buzzword in the IT industry right now, with major players including Microsoft and IBM making multi-million pound investments into the technology. In essence the idea of virtualisation is that you allow one server, with one set of hardware to masquerade as a number of separate servers with ‘virtual hardware’, each of which can run its own operating system and set of applications. As you might imagine, the details of this technology are somewhat complex and its potential uses are myriad, but we’ll return to those points later. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/oppenheim-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/oppenheim-et-al/ One of the common dilemmas faced by developers of information communication technology (ICT) initiatives is how to go about identifying potential early adopters of their service. This article outlines background research into this area and details the approaches taken within the JISC-funded Rights and Rewards in Blended Institutional Repositories Project to locate these key individuals within a Higher Education (HE) environment. The concept of an innovation is discussed and the differences between the terms innovation and invention are outlined. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Efforts to archive a large amount of digital material are being developed by many cultural heritage institutions. We have evidence of this in the numerous initiatives aiming to harvest the Web [1-5] together with the impressive burgeoning of institutional repositories [6]. However, getting the material inside the archive is just the beginning for any initiative concerned with the long-term preservation of digital materials. Digital preservation can best be described as the activity or set of activities that enable digital information to be intelligible for long periods of time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/tonkin/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/tonkin/ Despite the stability of many key technologies underlying today's Internet, venerable workhorses such as TCP/IP and HTTP, the rise of new candidate specifications frequently leads to a sort of collaborative manic depression. Every now and then, a new idea comes along and sparks a wave of interest, the first stage in the Internet hype cycle. Transformed with the addition of a series of relatively content-free conceptual buzzwords, the fragile idea is transmitted between and within communities until disillusionment sets in, when the terminology becomes an out-of-date reminder of a slightly embarrassing era that tomorrow's computer industry professionals will laugh about over a pint of beer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/carey/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/carey/ Accessibility and UsabilityBefore embarking on the major strands of my argument it would be as well to consider definitions. There is now a fine old Pharisaic, or perhaps we might better say Scholastic, discussion about the delineation of accessibility - the capability of a system to cater for the needs of disabled people - as a highly specific segment in the usability - the capability of a system to behave in a way which most closely accords with human behaviour - sector as a whole. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ When people get together and talk about open source, there are three things that come into the conversation early on. Firstly, they argue about open source licences; secondly, they ask "but is it really free?"; and thirdly, they state that "it's all about the community". That last one is definitely worth unpacking further. When a new project starts, or an existing project is being assessed, everyone will ask "what sort of community does it have? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Public participation in the Internet has continued to boom, aided in no small measure by the 'weblog' (or, simply, 'blog'), one of the most accessible means of online publication, a term that is rapidly entering common parlance. Blogs are authored by people from many walks of life and are of many kinds: for instance, Penny Garrod has shown how they can support reading groups and community links, such as news from local councillors [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/carpenter/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ In the early days of the shift from paper-based to digital means of holding administrative records, research data, publications and other academic resources, those responsible for its safety tended to breathe a sigh of relief once they had got a category of material into digital form. Reduced to bits and bytes, all they would have to do is make regular backups, perhaps keeping a copy off-site in case of disaster, and all would be well. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/fraser-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/fraser-rvw/ The picture on the cover of Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing by Andrew M. St. Laurent is a 19th century engraving of a shootout at a railway in the American West. What early conclusions should we draw from that less than innocent image? Leaving aside men with guns in the Wild West, Understanding Open Source is an in-depth study of software licences commonly used with the release of open source or free (as in speech) software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/search-engines/ 2004 was a particularly interesting year for Internet search; we saw a lot of new search engines appearing on the scene, a number of purchases and a lot of innovations, particularly in the last quarter, with Microsoft bringing out its Beta MSN Search [1], Google doubling the size of its index [2], releasing Google Scholar [3] and Google Suggest [4]. We also saw a rise in the number of desktop search applications, particularly from Google [5] and Microsoft [6], and an increase in attempts to provide a personalised version of popular search engines. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/metcalfe/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/metcalfe/ Imagine a world where software is free. For the moment, let's not split hairs about this. In this imagined world software costs virtually nothing to obtain. And you are free to do things with this software - free to study how it works (which means getting access to the underlying code, not just the binaries or executables); free to modify that code to suit your needs and/or improve it; free to re-distribute that modified code. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/powell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/powell/ As a child I can remember watching an episode of Tomorrow's World (the BBC's weekly popular science programme of the time) [1] that showed the use of a video phone and how people would soon actually be able to see the person to whom they were talking.  "Wow," I thought, "that is the future." Well, it certainly was the future!  It's probably 30 years since that programme was aired and we still don't see this kind of technology widely deployed in the form of telephone handsets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/oss-watch-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/oss-watch-rpt/ OSS Watch's [1] second national conference focused on an often articulated anxiety concerning how an institution will answer the question of support when considering the deployment of open source software. OSS Watch is a pilot advisory service set up by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to provide UK Higher and Further Education with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software. Whereas OSS Watch's inaugural conference in December 2003 [2] presented an overview of the entire field, this event concentrated on what is sometimes thought to be the single most significant barrier to institutional take-up of open source software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/web-focus/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/web-focus/ The potential for use of television for accessing Web resources has been suggested for a number of years without having any significant impact. However the growth in use of digital TV technologies may provide another opportunity for accessing Web and other networked resources from the comfort of your living room. This article introduces the Netgem i-Player digital TV player and describes the implications for Web developers if such devices grow in popularity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/ndad/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/ndad/ The National Archives has been building up a collection of UK Government datasets since 1997 under a contract with the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) [1]. The archived datasets are available to users free of charge through the World Wide Web and are known as the National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD) [2]. Datasets are one of the earliest types of digital record produced by Government departments, some of those now archived dating back to 1963. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/browning/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/browning/ The Web is over ten years old but it has yet to realise the vision of its founder - '.... it should be possible for grandma to take a photo of grandchildren and put it on the web immediately and without fuss ....'[1]. The Web, for most of its users, remains a read-only medium. The 'Universal Canvas' is a term introduced by Microsoft; two definitions are [2]: It builds upon XML schema to transform the Internet from a read-only environment into a read/write platform, enabling users to interactively create, browse, edit, annotate and analyze informationA surface on which we view, but also create and edit, words and tables and charts and picturesCentral to the concept of the Universal Canvas is the idea of the write-enabled or 'Two-way-Web' [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/phipps/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/phipps/ This article looks at the increasing need for developers of institutional and educational Web sites to develop and follow a strategy for ensuring optimal accessibility of online content. In particular the need is stressed for careful thought about the aims of such a strategy, and to ensure that the strategy meets a balance between ambition, legal responsibility and equitable access to learning and teaching. As an example, the need for a well written public online accessibility statement is discussed, not only as a demonstration of awareness and proactivity, but also as an important factor in its own right in optimising access. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/newsline/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/newsline/ Slide Libraries and The Digital FutureWednesday 24th March, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU. For more information and for booking details contact laura.valentine@royalacademy.org.uk. Booking closes on 3 March 2004. AUDIENCE: UK Slide Librarians in HE and those responsible for visual collections "Higher education in the UK has always needed images, especially in the field of art and design, and institutions have built up their own slide libraries to service that demand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/oss-watch-rpt/ OSS Watch [1] is a pilot advisory service set up by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to provide UK higher and further education with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software and related standards. Although it is rather small, (a staffing of 1.25 full-time equivalent (FTE)), this new service has stakeholders ranging from IT directors and managers developing institutional IT strategies that acknowledge the role that open source software does (and will continue to) play; to IT staff deploying software across universities and colleges; and to software developers seeking advice on how to release their work as open source. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Spam, privacy and the lawAnother year gone and the millennium celebrations and Y2K bug already seem to belong to some dim and distant technological past. As 2003 drew to a close the spotlight was on the use and abuse of Information Technology: never was so much havoc caused by so few. The language employed by the media to describe events in the online world reflected global concerns about warfare and disease. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/search-engines/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/search-engines/ Since 2003 is now drawing to a close, (or at least it is while I'm writing this - I suspect that when you get to read it 2004 will have dawned bright and early), I thought that it might be interesting to take a look back at a few of the things that happened in the search engine industry over the past year. This isn't designed to be an inclusive month by month, blow by blow account, but is just a few of the trends and interesting things that I've noticed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/alexander/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/alexander/ This article reports on a recent study of the accessibility of Australian university Web sites. A selection of key pages from all 45 Australian tertiary education Web sites were analysed to assess their compliance with basic accessibility standards, as required by Australian anti-discrimination legislation. The results–98% of sites failed to comply–suggest that Australian university Web sites are likely to present significant barriers to access for people with disabilities. Web accessibility is poorly understood by university Web publishers, and procedures are not in place to ensure that university Web sites provide equitable access to important online resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/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/garrod/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/garrod/ “I suspect that more words are being published about the ebook phenomenon in print than have actually been placed into ebooks so far.” [1] Clifford Lynch made this observation back in June 2001 in his seminal paper The Battle to define the future of the book in the digital world. At the end of 2003 Lynch’s words still strike a chord here in the UK, as conferences, articles and workshops on the ebook ‘phenomenon’ continue to feature on a regular basis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/anderson/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/anderson/ Many digital versions of texts–whether they be the plays of Aeschylus, or stories from this week’s Times–can now be accessed by a worldwide audience, thanks to the Internet and developments in international standards and the computer industry. But while modern newspapers in English and even the Greek plays of Aeschylus can be viewed on the Internet in their original script, reading articles that cite a line of original text in Egyptian hieroglyphs is more problematic, for this script has not yet been included in the international character encoding standard Unicode. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/nt-explorer/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/nt-explorer/ Microsoft’s Index Server is a service supplied with the Windows NT 4.0 Server and Windows 2000 Server products. The service indexes HTML and other content residing on the file system. These indexed files may be queried using a number of techniques, but of particular relevance to web developers is the ability to build completely customised search facilities based on Active Server Pages (ASP) by making use of Index Server’s Component Object Model (COM) objects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/information-grid/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/information-grid/ Many of the issues faced by the e-Science Programme and the Digital Library community world-wide are generic in nature, in that both require complex metadata in order to create services for users. Both need to process large amounts of distributed data. Recognition of this common interest within both communities resulted in this invitation-only one-day workshop at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh. It brought together interested parties from both the digital library and e-Science communities, and kicked off detailed discussion of the way forward for both. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/maybaum/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/maybaum/ In an article published in this journal last year [1], Editor Philip Hunter observed that the extent of use of web publishing systems in universities is surprisingly low, considering the technical sophistication of most academic environments, and he discussed some reasons that might account for this circumstance. At the University of Michigan (UM), we have developed an infrastructure (UM.SiteMaker) that is aimed at facilitating the use of websites for personal and professional communication by ordinary (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/search-engines/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/search-engines/ As we’re all aware, the world of the search engine is constantly changing; sometimes in my courses I refer to using search engines as being akin to trying to dance on quicksand. However, in the last few months there have been a lot of changes, even more than usual, so rather than concentrate on a particular engine, or specific subject I thought that in this column I’d try and pull together some of the things that have been happening with the major engines for you. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/information-environments/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/information-environments/ The JISC Information EnvironmentThe Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) [1] is a JISC-funded, managed, heterogeneous collection of information resources and services (bibliographic, full-text, image, video, geo-spatial, datasets, etc.) of particular value to the further and higher education communities. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [2] is the set of networked services that allows people to discover, access, use and publish resources within the DNER. The JISC IE technical architecture [3] specifies the standards and protocols that provide interoperability between this network of services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/c4u/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/c4u/ C4U is a personal link checker that will check for changes to web pages according to parameters you set, can access password protected sites and through which you can preview changes to see whether they are significant. As a personal productivity tool I recommend it, though some aspects of its design could be improved. We all want to keep up to date with the minimum of effort. There are quite a few options available: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/ntexplorer/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/ntexplorer/ Previous Windows NT Explorer articles featured in Ariadne have looked at some of the essentials tools and technologies for web development on the Microsoft Windows platform, namely Internet Information Server [1] and Active Server Pages [2]. The focus this issue is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The protocol is a core technology in the provision of web services across the Internet. While SOAP is not a Microsoft specific technology, the protocol is being embraced by the company as it focuses effort on the provision of web services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/web-focus/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/web-focus/ Previous Web Focus articles have provided trip reports on the International World Wide Web conferences [1] [2] [3] and [4]. These reports have commented on the birth of new developments such as XML, RDF and WAP and the mobile Web. So what was hot from WWW10? Well the weather certainly was hot - and very humid. The 1,200+ delegates were very appreciative of the air-conditioning in the Hong Kong Conference Centre, located on Hong Kong island, next to the harbour (see Figure 1). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/search-engines/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/search-engines/ This issue I thought I’d take a look at a subject which is of absolute importance to those of us who use search engines, but is something we know virtually nothing about, and that is how do web pages end up in search engine directories? If you’re short on time, the quick summary is that search engines of the free text variety (rather than the Index/Directory type) employ specialised utilities which visit a site, copy the information they find back to base, and then include this information the next time that they update their index for users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/builder/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/builder/ Developing the Builder Products: InfrastructureThe project plan detailed a number of different products, or technology demonstrators, that BUILDER would develop as part of its researches into an ‘institutional hybrid library’. Initially each of these products was seen as a separate development having a unique set of needs and technological problems to solve. This view soon changed! As we started to look at implementation common strands started to appear. These strands included: authentication, profiled interfaces, secure delivery of files (Adobe Acrobat documents for example) and communication with databases. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-watch/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-watch/ This issue of Ariadne has the theme of eLib Projects. It is therefore timely for the regular WebWatch column to survey eLib project Web sites. The aim of the survey is to use a number of Web-based tools to provide information on the entry points for eLib project Web sites and the Web sites themselves. The findings may be of interest to the eLib projects themselves and users of eLib projects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-focus/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-focus/ “One of the best workshops I’ve ever been at”“Excellent! One of the best workshops I’ve ever been at“ “I return because it is by far the best way for me to find out what I need to do in the coming year at my site“ “The workshop gets better every year and I never fail to learn something new.“ “A good mixture of web/techie people and communications/PR people. Important to have both for this type of event“As can be seen from the quotes given above the Institutional Web Management workshop was very highly regarded by the workshop delegates. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-watch/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-watch/ What Web server software is used within the UK Higher Education community? What trends are there? How can I find out which institutions are using the same software as mine? Am I running a dated version of the software, compared with the rest of the community? This survey aims to provide answers to these questions by surveying the server software used on the main institutional entry point. Using The Netcraft ServiceNetcraft [1] is a company based in Bath which carries out surveys of Web server software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ IntroductionUntil recently, visually impaired people (VIP) were poorly served by the library and information provision that is routinely available to sighted people. They have relied to a great extent on specialist voluntary organisations transcribing a limited range of materials into accessible formats. This situation is changing with advances in technology and recent initiatives on social inclusion. Increasingly visually impaired people will be able to locate and use information independently, as sighted people already do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/convergence/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/convergence/ The pastVideo games have been around for a lot longer than most people realise. Many people can remember playing games on their ZX Spectrum (1982), or even their cartridge-based Atari VCS (1978). However, before these systems came into being there had already been a decade of video game development, mostly based in the US and Japan. The first recognised games console was the Magnavox Odyssey [1] in 1972. This US-produced machine sold around 100,000 units in three years, and at the time was considered to be revolutionary. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/epress/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/epress/ The Electronic Publishing Resource Service (EPRESS)[1] is developing an online database system to aid the administration of electronic journals and make information available to a distributed Editorial team. Having identified labour as the greatest contributing cost toward electronic journal publication, EPRESS aims to reduce the burden by automating many of the functions of the Editorial Assistant and the publisher. This article demonstrates the scope of journal services and illustrates the ways in which the administrative chores are reduced to increase the efficiency of the publishing process. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/checkout-review/stephenson.html Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/checkout-review/stephenson.html In the beginning...was the command line is a non-technical, comparative study of computer operating systems (OSs) from one man's personal viewpoint. That man is science fiction author, Neal Stephenson - styled 'the hacker Hemingway' by Newsweek. Stephenson set out to write an article for Wired magazine and so rich was the material that he ended up with a 150 page paperback, which is also available as a web essay. While it's great to have things available freely on the web, a piece this length on the screen is not easy on the eyes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/web-focus/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/web-focus/ BackgroundUniversity web managers are busy people. University departments seem to have never-ending requirements for new services on the institutional web site. But, as we all know, it can be difficult to get the funding to buy expensive software products or extra staff to install and support free software. But is there an alternative approach to trying to do everything in-house? Nowadays the Web provides not only access to information resources, but also to applications. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/metadata/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/metadata/ In May 1997, the present author produced a short article for this column entitled "Extending metadata for digital preservation" [1]. The article introduced the idea of using metadata-based methods as a means of helping to manage the process of preserving digital information objects. At the time the article was first published, the term 'metadata' was just beginning to be used by the library and information community (and others) to describe 'data about data' that could be used for resource discovery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ The purpose of this article is to introduce The Question Bank contents and situate the resource in the context of its Information Space, that is its relationship to other projects that aim to make social surveys more accessible. I have the subsidiary aim of using this text to present the choices and decisions that need to be identified, preferably before undertaking the introduction of a medium sized web-based information resource. I aim to be decidedly non-technical, however many of the problems the Question bank team has overcome have been solved because of the increasing flexibility that newer software offers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dempsey/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dempsey/ The Information Society Technologies programme within the EU's Framework Programme Five supports access to, and preservation of, digital cultural content. This document describes some common concerns of libraries, archival institutions and museums as they work together to address the issues the Programme raises. This accounts for three major emphases in the document. First, discussion is very much about what brings these organisations together, rather than about what separates them. Second, it describes an area within which a research agenda can be identified; its purpose is not to propose a programme of work or actions, rather a framework within such a programme might be developed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-cache/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-cache/ Service UsageIn May 1998 (the end of the last academic year) the National Caching Service was receiving over 27,000,000 requests and shipping around 250 GBytes of data on a busy day. In recent weeks we have exceeded 40,000,000 requests and shipped over 400GBytes per day and these figures are likely to increase in the coming months. Over 150 institutions currently use the service and this number too is set to increase as Colleges of Further Education and other organisations begin to use us. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-mirror/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-mirror/ On 1st August 1999 the UK Mirror Service [1] replaced HENSA as the JISC [2] funded mirror service for the UK academic community. The new service is run by the same teams at Kent and Lancaster that supported the HENSAs, but it is not merely a revamp of the HENSA sites; there are some fundamental changes. This article takes a look at the implementation of the service and our plans for the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ The "Institutional Web Management: The Next Steps" workshop took place at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9 September 1999. This was the third annual event for institutional web managers which has been organised by UK Web Focus. The first workshop was held over 2 day (16/17 July 1997) at Kings College London. As described in the workshop report published in Ariadne [1] the event attracted a total of 95 participants. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity for web editors to meet their peers at other institutions and compare experiences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/nt-explorer/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/nt-explorer/ IIS has been around for quite some time now. IIS 2.0 can be found on the Windows NT 4.0 Server installation CD-ROM. This version of IIS was pretty basic, and changing advanced settings usually involved messing around with the Windows registry. Version 3.0 was little different from 2.0, but it did see the introduction of server-side scripting through the use of the innovative Active Server Pages [1]. By contrast, version 4. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/editorial/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/editorial/ Welcome to the newly redesigned Ariadne. The new interface was created to improve the appearance of Ariadne both on screen and when printed: the latter is particularly important now that Ariadne is published only in electronic format (since issue 19). The old 1996 design was generally very servicable from the point of view of structure and navigation, but it had a number of features which, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, introduced un-necessary complications to the editorial process: these have now been redesigned. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-mirror/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-mirror/ The National Mirror Service will supersede the HENSA services in August to become the primary mirror service for the academic community. This will be a new, improved and more integrated service brought to you by the Universities of Lancaster and Kent and funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The Director of the new service is Dr Tim Hopkins, Reader in Computer Science at the University of Kent. The service will be based primarily upon the web, although access via FTP will still be available. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/nt/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/nt/ This column is intended to bring users' attention to the value of employing Windows NT server technology within their institution. This issue covers Active Server Pages (ASP) - one of the most useful benefits of having a Windows NT based web server. Most web developers will encounter ASP through its inclusion with Microsoft's Internet Information Server [1] - the most popular Windows NT web server software. Internet Information Server is free, although you have to purchase a licence for Windows NT Server. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/minotaur/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/minotaur/ There are several questions, which have been puzzling me since July 1997. That was the month I started using OSS (Open Source Software) and I have to thank Apple for pushing me in that direction. Apple was not making stable operating system software then. So, along with several thousands of the faithful, I jumped ship. Didn’t move to the evil empire - having already found that by avoiding Microsoft products you did not create too many problems for yourself! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/cedars/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/cedars/ In recent years, libraries have been fortunate to have increasing access to new and innovative digital resources. A number of factors contribute to this trend: advances in networking technology and the growth of the JANET network mean that UK libraries can deliver more information more quickly directly to their end-users; an influx of funding following on from the Follett Report has provided libraries with an opportunity to experiment with and integrate new technologies into the services they provide; the emergence of consortium purchasing (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/down-your-way/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/down-your-way/ The University of Abertay Dundee's new library building is situated in the heart of the city centre. Recently voted Scotland's Best New Building in the Scottish Design Awards 1998, the four story structure of sandstone, steel and glass opened its doors to its users in February this year, and was formally opened by HM Queen on 30th of June. During the 18-month construction period, on billboards, and in the national press during the opening, the University proclaimed its ambition to be a Higher Education Institution 'for the Digital Age', with the library as physical manifestation of this ambition. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/view-hill/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/view-hill/ 50,000 years ago, so archaeological evidence says, Neanderthal Man carved on the tooth of the Woolly Mammoth. In 2600 BCE scribes were employed in Egypt and the oldest existing document written on papyrus is from 2200 BCE. In AD 105 T'sai Lun invented paper and by 600 books were printed in China. By 765 picture books were printed in Japan. By 950 folded books appeared in China and in Europe in 1453 Johannes Gutenberg used moveable type for printing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/knight/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/knight/ Many libraries have collections of CD-ROMs which they must deliver to their patrons in order to provide a well rounded information service. In many academic libraries and some larger public and company libraries some portion of the CD-ROM discs on offer are made available over local area computer networks. These networked CD-ROMs can then be used by the library’s patrons from workstations distributed throughout the library and indeed organisation. In order to provide network access to the CD-ROMs, there must be some form of networked CD-ROM server placed on the network. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/acorn/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/acorn/ The Project ACORN [1] is an eLib [2] funded project looking at the provision of electronic short loan reserves in a University library environment. The project has three main partners; Loughborough University [3], Swets & Zeitlinger b.v. [4] and Leicester University [5]. This paper provides an overview of the ACORN system and a description of the technical implementation of the system in the Pilkington Library at Loughborough University. ACORN System Model The ACORN system model is the abstract model behind the real implementation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-formats/ Every day, subscribers to the the NewJour mailing list [1] receive notification of new Internet-available electronic serials. The NewJour definition of a serial covers everything from journals to magazines and newsletters; from the British Accounting Review to Ariadne, to The (virtual) Baguette and I Love My Nanny. Some days, a dozen or more publications are announced. As of 13th February 1997, the NewJour archive contained 3,240 items. Most of these electronic serials, or e-serials, along with most other electronic publications currently available on the World Wide Web, are stored and represented using one or more of a relatively limited number of document formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/unix-security/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/unix-security/ The eLib Technical Concertation day last November brought together techies from many of the eLib projects. (See Clare McClean’s report in Ariadne issue 6 for more details [1]). A wide range of the technical issues associated with running electronic library services were discussed at the meeting but inevitably, given the time constraints, some of these were not covered in any great detail. However, two issues were clear from the meeting; that server performance and system security were both areas of concern to system administrators and that most eLib projects were using UNIX based machines to make their services available. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ As electronic library initiatives begin to move out of the research phase and into full production, one product is emerging as a dominant force in the presentation of electronic documents. Adobe's Acrobat software [1], which is used for both generating and viewing Portable Document Format (PDF) files, is gaining widespread acceptance in the world of higher education. PDF files allow documents to look like on-screen versions of their print equivalents. The format is based upon Adobe's own PostScript page-description language, which has for years been the industry standard. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/   AbstractThe growth of networking and the Internet has led to more and more information resources being funded centrally by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council) and provided from a single or limited number of locations to the whole of the academic community. Centralised networked services such as these have been a fact of life in commercial organisations for many years and this model is now being adopted by government agencies like the NHS. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/intranets/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/intranets/ If you open a computer magazine today, the chances are you will be confronted by articles and advertisements discussing how to set up a corporate intranet. The term intranet seems to have sprung up as if by magic in the last year or so and now many products are “intranet ready” or “intranet enabled”. But what exactly is an intranet and should libraries be making use of them? If one is being cynical (and being cynical when it comes to advertising is always a good idea! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/open-journal/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/open-journal/ I recently visited the ELib Open Journal Project at Southampton University (see <URL:http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/>). My hosts were Leslie Carr (the project manager) and Steve Hitchcock (one of the OJ researchers). The Open Journal project is part of the ELib electronic journals strand, but they have developed technology which may be of use to some of the Access to Network Resources projects. This trip report details some of the work that they showed me and also outlines some possible ways in which the Open Journal Project, ROADS and the other ANR services may be able to cooperate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/croatia/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/croatia/ I am going to speak about Croatia and the new information technologies implemented in the Croatian libraries. How are Croatian librarians coping with the consequences of the terrible war we had from 1991 to 1995? What can be done in the situation when the whole country is being restructured and where the priority list is so long? What makes the Croatian libraries so special? Croatia is the new state, established in 1990, recognised by the United Nations in 1992. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/formations/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/formations/ Among the facilities available from the scholar's workstation of the future will be access to pre-prints collections with added value. Precisely what form such 'added value' will take remains to be seen, but it will address the current tendency for on-line pre-print depositories to become largely untamed wildernesses of relatively unstructured material, with wheat and chaff mixed in frustratingly unpredictable proportions. This is not universally the case, but pre-print collections can become dumping grounds for all manner of stuff and the bigger they get the more unreliable they often become as sources of efficiently accessed and valuable material. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/ahds/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/ahds/ Increasing scholarly use of computers and electronic resources raises a number of related challenges. Computer-based research produces digital data with significant secondary use value. Yet that value cannot fully be realised unless the data are created and described according to relevant standards, systematically collected, preserved, and reported to the widest possible community. The outpouring of digital resources which make up a growing share of our cultural heritage makes digital preservation an urgent cause. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/wire/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW I edit and maintain the Internet Parallel Computing Archive (IPCA) based at HENSA Unix, both of which are funded by JISC ISSC and I work at the Computing Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury. The IPCA is a large and popular archive of High Performance and Parallel Computing materials which has over 500M of files, serves around 3,000 of them each day and has four mirror sites in Paris, Athens, Osaka and Canberra. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/knight/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/knight/ If you work in a library systems unit, it can sometimes be a bit depressing reading the computer press. At a time when budgets are often fixed or falling and the expectations of patrons and other library staff are constantly rising, the last thing that the system team need is for the latest and greatest operating systems and applications to arrive demanding the latest hardware if they are to be usable. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/brian/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/brian/ In the beginning was Tim Berners-Lee's WWW (World Wide Web) browser for the NeXT. Then came the CERN WWW line browser and the Viola graphical browser for X. However the first widely- used WWW browser was NCSA Mosaic which was developed initially for X, and then for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh environments. NCSA Mosaic was developed by a group led by Marc Andreessen at the National Center For Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.