http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/search-technology/ Recent content in Search Technology on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/henshaw-et-al/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/henshaw-et-al/ Overview of the UK Medical Heritage Library ProjectThe aim of the UK Medical Heritage Library (UK-MHL) Project is to provide free access to a wealth of medical history and related books from UK research libraries. There are already over 50,000 books and journal issues in the Medical Heritage Library drawn from North American research libraries. The UK-MHL Project will expand this collection considerably by digitising a further 15 million pages for inclusion in the collection. 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/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/white/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/white/ I was an early starter in the world of metadata. Within hours of arriving at the offices of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in Euston Street, London, in 1970 to start a career as an information scientist I was writing my first abstract. ‘Writing’ is the correct verb as my A3 abstract would be typed up on an IBM golfball typewriter for production. At the bottom of this form was a section called ‘Index Terms’ and it was made very clear at the outset that mistakes in the abstract were regrettable, but mistakes in indexing were unforgivable. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/guy-et-al/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/guy-et-al/ In the past, discussions around Open Education have tended to focus on content and primarily Open Educational Resources (OER), freely accessible, openly licensed resources that are used for teaching, learning, assessment and research purposes. However Open Education is a complex beast made up of many aspects, of which the opening up of data is one important element. When one mentions open data in education a multitude of questions arise: from the technical (what is open data? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/oar-2013-rpt/ Brisbane, Queensland, Australia was the host location for the second Open Access and Research 2013 conference [1]. The conference was held at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point campus over 31 October – 1 November 2013. QUT has over 45,000 students and has a wide range of specialist research areas. There are two research institutes: The Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI) which is a collaborative institute devoted to improving the health of individuals; and the Institute for Future Environments (IFE) which is a multidisciplinary institute focusing on our natural, built and virtual environments, and how to find ways to make them more sustainable, secure and resilient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ozono-et-al/ The ShaRe Project (Shared Repository Project 2008-2009), which aimed to promote the concept of consortial repositories and facilitate their implementation, has made a significant contribution to the rapid growth of institutional repositories (IRs) in Japan. Following precedents including White Rose Research Online (UK) and SHERPA-LEAP (UK), 14 regional consortial repositories have been set up on a prefectoral basis across Japan*. Their success is demonstrated by the fact that as many as 92 bodies have set up IRs despite having no institutional hardware of their own. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ Tue, 16 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/editorial2/ As I depart this chair after the preparation of what I thought would be the last issue of Ariadne [1], I make no apology for the fact that I did my best to include as much material  to her ‘swan song’ as possible. With the instruction to produce only one more issue this year, I felt it was important to publish as much of the content in the pipeline as I could. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ Mon, 15 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tsuchide-et-al/ In Japan, Chiba University established the country's first institutional repository, CURATOR [1] in 2003. Since then, over the last 10 years or so, more than 300 universities and research institutions have set up repositories and the number of full-text items on repositories has exceeded one million [2]. All the contents are available on Japanese Institutional Repositories Online (JAIRO) [3] operated by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) [4] in Japan. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/skilton-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/skilton-et-al/  Augmented reality, a capability that has been around for decades, is shifting from what was once seen as a gimmick to a bona fide game-changer. [1] Augmented Reality (AR) has been listed in the Horizon Reports, key predictors of the potential impact of new technology on education. The 2011 Report [1] sparked the idea for an innovative project - SCARLET: Special Collections using Augmented Reality to Enhance Learning and Teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tonkin-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/tonkin-rvw/ In her introduction to this collection, Hagar [1] – who coined the term ‘crisis informatics’ [2] - begins by providing the following definition of the term ‘crisis’ (taken from Johnston, The Dictionary of Human Geography,  2002 [3]) - ‘an interruption in the reproduction of economic, cultural, social and/or political life’. This book discusses crises as diverse as wartime disruption, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, viruses and terrorist activity. As a central theme, the concept of crisis is broad. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/white-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/white-rvw/ I’ve been working in information consultancy for over 35 years and not regretted for a moment my choice of career. It’s taken me to over 30 countries and the opportunity to work with an amazing array of organisations in temperatures ranging from 47C to minus 25C. I’ve had project meetings on the top floor of the United Nations building, on a boat anchored in the harbour at Cannes, a luxury hotel in Oman and in a London convent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/will-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/will-rvw/ Powering Search is a comprehensive review and synthesis of work that has been done over the past 50 years on the use of thesauri to make searching for information more effective. The book does not discuss the principles and practice of construction of information retrieval thesauri in any detail, but concentrates on the search process and on the user interface through which a searcher interacts with a body of information resources. 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/white/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/white/ My definition of being rich is being able to buy a book without looking at the price. I have long since lost count of the number of books in my house. The reality is that if I did carry out a stock-take I might be seriously concerned about both the total number and the last known time I can remember reading a particular book. Nevertheless I have few greater pleasures than being asked a question and knowing in which of our two lofts one or more books will be found with the answer. 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/71/charlton-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/charlton-et-al/  ‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.’ Attributed to Albert Einstein In the last decade we have had access to data that opens up a new world of potential evidence ranging from indicating how children might learn their first word to the use of millions of mathematical models to predict outbreaks of flu. We explore the potential impact of learning analytics and big data for the future of learning and teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/henshaw-kiley/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/henshaw-kiley/ Online access is now the norm for many spheres of discovery and learning. What benefits bricks-and-mortar libraries have to offer in this digital age is a subject of much debate and concern, and will continue to be so as learning resources and environments shift ever more from the physical to the virtual. In order to maintain a place in this dual environment, most research libraries strive to replicate their traditional offerings in the digital world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/kehoe-gee/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/kehoe-gee/ In the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) at Birmingham City University, our main research field is Corpus Linguistics: the compilation and analysis of large text collections in order to extract new knowledge about language. We have previously developed the WebCorp [1] suite of software tools, designed to extract language examples from the Web and to uncover frequent and changing usage patterns automatically. eMargin, with its emphasis on manual annotation and analysis, was therefore somewhat of a departure for us. 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/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/dobreva-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/dobreva-rvw/ Writing about information and the changes in the models of its production, distribution and consumption is no simple task. Besides the long-standing debate on what information and knowledge really mean, the world of current technologies is changing at a pace which inevitably influences all spheres of human activity. But the first of those spheres to tackle is perhaps that of information – how we create, disseminate, and use it. This book looks into the core of the changes in the last years, and is very much about the interplay of new technologies and how we humans deal with information in this changing technological world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/azzolini-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/azzolini-rvw/ Librarianship as a profession is confronting a growing demand to prove its worth. Library patrons expect utility. The organisations that fund them pre-suppose a contribution to their bottom lines. The calls for this proof come from librarians themselves as much as from their employers. And the tone of the questioning is persistent if not redundant. It can be distilled to a fundamental query: Can the library sustain its basic mission of effectively and efficiently fulfilling its users' information needs given the technological, social, and economic developments that are transforming how people interact with data, documents, and each other? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white-rvw/ I have been a member of the information profession for almost 60 years, but then I started at a very young age.   Indeed I was a library assistant at the age of four.  My grandfather was the volunteer librarian for the small library in Clanfield, Hampshire, which opened up for a couple of afternoons each week.  My job was to stack the books up, and help him put them back on the shelves. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/turner/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/turner/ At the moment organisations often make significant investments in producing Web-based material, often funded through public money, for example from JISC. But what happens when some of those organisations are closed or there  is no longer any money or resources to host the site? We are seeing cuts in funding or changes in governmental policy, which is resulting in the closure of some of these organisations. What happens to those Web resources when the organisations are no longer in existence? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/emtacl12-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/emtacl12-rpt/ The three-day conference consisted of eight keynote presentations by invited speakers and a number of parallel sessions. The main themes set out for this year’s conference were supporting research, organisational change within the library, linked open data and other semantic web applications in the library, new literacies, and new services/old services in new clothes, along with other relevant perspectives on emerging technologies. We attended the conference to gain an overview of organisational changes happening across the sector in relation to technological developments and to gather opinion on the relevance of the academic library within a digital society. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/editorial/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/editorial/ Welcome to Issue 70 of Ariadne which is full to the brim with feature articles and a wide range of event reports and book reviews. In Gold Open Access: Counting the Costs Theo Andrew explains the significance of the recent RCUK amendment to their Open Access policy requirements of researchers and the importance assumed by the cost of publishing the Gold Open Access route. Unsurprisingly, there is currently a great variability in such costs to research institutions, while, with few exceptions, publishers are as yet slow to impart what effect the move to charging for article processing will have on current institutional subscription costs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/hydra-2012-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/hydra-2012-11-rpt/ Hydra, as described in the opening presentation of this event, is a project initiated in 2008 by the University of Hull, Stanford University, University of Virginia, and DuraSpace to work towards a reusable framework for multi-purpose, multi-functional, multi-institutional repository-enabled solutions for the management of digital content collections [1]. An initial timeframe for the project of three years had seen all founding institutional partners successfully implement a repository demonstrating these characteristics.  Key to the aims of the project has always been to generate wider interest outside the partners to foster not only sustainability in the technology, but also sustainability of the community around this open source development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/tpdl-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/tpdl-2012-rpt/ The 16th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012 [1] was another successful event in the series of ECDL/TPDL conferences which has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 15 years. Across these years, the conference has brought together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries by addressing issues in the area where theoretical and applied research meet, such as digital library models, architectures, functionality, users, and quality. 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/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/white-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/white-rvw/ I will admit to having read very little in the way of fiction writing over the last half-century though perhaps as a chemist by training I do enjoy science fiction from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle. All were distinguished scientists, none more so than Fred Hoyle, who was Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. On Clouds and Crystal BallsHoyle came to fame as the author of A for Andromeda, but in my opinion his best work is The Black Cloud. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley-rvw/ The front cover tells you succinctly what this book is about; 'A theory Connecting  - Information Search – to – Knowledge Formation.'  Equally bluntly, I shall set out my credentials for this review. I am not a library/informational professional but I have an interest in delivering digital and information skills to students. I have read and reviewed this book to further my own knowledge of the subject, as well as to see what (new? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/maclellan-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/maclellan-rvw/ The unconference phenomenon is something that I have heard lots about and have previously tried to read information about; however what this basic research has never been able to do is convince me of the necessity for the unconference or camp environment.  Michelle Boule in this concise and easy-to-read book has managed to go at least part way to achieving this.  Through use of case study, interview and example, the book provides an overview of the history of the unconference alongside the benefits it may represent to individuals and organisations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/editorial/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/editorial/ Never blessed with any sporting acumen, I have to confess to a degree of ambivalence towards the London Olympics unfolding around this issue as it publishes. That does not mean that I do not wish all the participants well in what after all is an enormous achievement just to be able to compete there at all. While I admit to not watching every team walk and wave, I cannot deny that the beginning and end of the Opening Ceremony [1] did grab my attention. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/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/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/bunting/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/bunting/ Tools and strategies for content management are a perennial topic in Ariadne. With more than one hundred articles touching on content management system (CMS) technologies or techniques since this online magazine commenced publication in 1996, Ariadne attests to continuing interest in this topic. Authors have discussed this topic within various contexts, from intranets to repositories and Web 2.0,  with some notable surges in references to 'content management' between 2000 and 2005 (see Figure 1 below).  Although levels of discussion are by no means trending, over recent years it is clear that Ariadne authors have taken note of and written about content management tools and techniques on a regular basis. 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/seaman/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/seaman/ VuFind is an open source discovery system originally created by Villanova University near Philadelphia [1] and now supported by Villanova with the participation in development of libraries around the world. It was one of the first next-generation library discovery systems in the world, made possible by the open source Solr/Lucene text indexing and search system which lies at the heart of VuFind (Solr also underlies several of the current commercial offerings, including Serials Solutions' Summon and ExLibris' Primo). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/darlington/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/darlington/ A great deal of information is accessible on the World Wide Web which might be useful to both students and teachers. This material, however, is of variable quality and usefulness and is aimed at a wide spectrum of users. Moreover, such material rarely appears accompanied by guidance on how it may be most effectively used by potential users. To make information more usable it must be made more readily discoverable and there should be clear – and preferably machine-readable – indications of its provenance and quality and the legitimate uses to which it may be put. 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/elbert-et-al/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/elbert-et-al/ This article presents a summary of some results of the study Perceptions of Public Libraries in Africa [1] which was conducted to research perceptions of stakeholders and the public towards public libraries in six African countries. The study is closely linked with the EIFL Public Library Innovation Programme [2], which awarded grants to public libraries in developing and transition countries to address a range of socio-economic issues facing their communities, including projects in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/green-et-al/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/green-et-al/ At the heart of meeting institutional requirements for managing digital content is the need to understand the different operations through which content goes, from planning and creation through to disposal or preservation.  Digital content is created using a variety of authoring tools.  Once created, the content is often stored somewhere different, made accessible in possibly more than one way, altered as required, and then moved for deletion or preservation at an appropriate point. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/white-rvw/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/white-rvw/ Information Retrieval and Enterprise SearchFor much of 2011 I worked on a project commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, on a techno-economic study of enterprise search in Europe.  There is no dispute that the volume of information inside organisations is growing very rapidly, though much of this growth is the result of never discarding any digital information.  The scale of the problem is well documented by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in its report on ‘Big Data’ [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lafortune-rvw/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lafortune-rvw/ This book examines how academic libraries are realigning themselves with the university of the 21st century, which is increasingly becoming a digital learning environment. The expectations of the Google generation, the interdependence of teaching and research, and the changing roles of library staff  and technology all play a fundamental part in this environment–and to lead the discussions in this book, the editors have called on 18 experts and practitioners. The result is 16 chapters that provide a range of viewpoints on how academic libraries will participate in and support digital learning environments. 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/editorial2/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/editorial2/ I am pleased to introduce you to the content of Issue 68, and to have the opportunity to remind you that you have a far larger number of channels into the publication’s content. You can do so by using the Archive (for back issues), Authors or Articles tabs on the front page to search for material or information (in addition to the general search field top right) or you can casually browse the material offered by Today’s Choice, view the passing articles in the Gallery block to the right, or drill down into the Gallery from its tab. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/impact-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/impact-rpt/ The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs. The final conference was a 2-day event held over 24 - 25 October 2011 at the British Library in London where it demonstrated findings, showcased tools and presented related research in the field of OCR and language technology. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/fpw11-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/fpw11-rpt/ We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/edui-2011-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/edui-2011-rpt/ The third annual edUi Conference [1] was held October 13-14, 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The sold-out event saw 225 ‘Web professionals serving colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and beyond’ join together to discuss the latest and greatest in Web trends and technologies. The all-volunteer conference was presented by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and major sponsors included Microsoft, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University. The two-day event consisted of four tracks [2]: 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/cope-jones/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/cope-jones/ The Connected Researcher initiative is a response to both local and sector-wide events. At the University of Bath groups of postgraduate research students from Chemistry and Social Sciences separately expressed an interest in finding out how to profile their own research and establish links with other researchers in their fields. Nationally there has been a growing wave of interest in the potential offered by social media for supporting all aspects of the research cycle as exemplified by the recent Digital Researcher events sponsored by Vitae [1] and the Research Information Network (RIN) publication Social media: A guide for researchers [2]. 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/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/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/oer-hackday-2011-03-rpt/ The Open Educational Resources Hack Day event was designed to bring together those interested in rapidly developing tools and prototypes to solve problems related to OER. Whilst there is a growing interest in the potential for learning resources created and shared openly by academics and teachers, a number of technical challenges still exist, including resource retrieval, evaluation and reuse. This event aimed to explore some of these problem areas by partnering developers with the creators and users of OER to identify needs and potential solutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/ananiadou-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/ananiadou-et-al/ A core component of the European Union is a common market with a single information space that works with around two dozen national languages and many regional languages. This wide variety of languages presents linguistic barriers that can severely limit the free flow of goods, information and services throughout Europe. In this article, we provide an overview of the META-NET Network of Excellence [1]. This is an ambitious initiative, consisting of 44 centres from 31 countries in Europe, aiming to improve significantly on the number of language technologies that can assist European citizens, by supporting enhanced communication and co-operation across languages. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/guy/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/guy/ In 2007 Lorcan Dempsey coined the phrase ‘the amplified conference’ [1]. He used the term to refer to how event outputs (such as talks and presentations) were being amplified ‘through a variety of network tools and collateral communications’. The term ‘amplified event’ is now fairly well recognised within the academic and cultural heritage sectors and is used as an umbrella expression for many practices and technologies that allow not only those external to an event to participate but also those who are actually there to get more out of the event. 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/cope-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/cope-rvw/ Michael P. Sauers is a trainer in Internet technologies and this book is intended for librarians who have heard of blogging and RSS and want to start using these tools as soon as possible, but who may not have the expertise or confidence in their ability to start by themselves. The book provides a practical, how-to guide for those librarians thinking about starting a blog, whether for personal interest, professional development or for their institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/clifford-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/clifford-rvw/ The world of information description and retrieval is one of constant change and RDA (Resource Description and Access) is often touted as being one of the most radical changes on the horizon. Early discussions were often couched very much in terms of the principles behind the move from AACR2 (Anglo American Cataloguing Rules) and the principles of a FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records)-based system. We gradually move closer to the Library of Congress’ decision on whether to adopt RDA or not, raising questions of what adoption will mean in terms not just of day-to-day cataloguing but the wider retrieval world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coelho-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coelho-rvw/ The clue is in the title. This book sets out to dispel the myths about creativity and innovation which you have cherished so dearly. It tells you what 'not to do and what not to think' so that you can free yourself from common misguided notions on the subject. As a special bonus, this new paperback edition includes four new chapters which provide the practical tips you would need to help your ideas take off. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/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/66/cetis-2010-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/cetis-2010-rpt/ 'I get a feeling that we are on a...' [The hands make a gesture to show the stern of a sinking ship]. The Monty Phytonesque images on my inner eye from the title of the CETIS 2010 Conference fade and the jolly music of the ship's band starts chiming in my inner ear as I see them move towards the forward half of the boat deck. The CETIS conference is always an upbeat event, even when the prospects for higher education in UK at the moment are not that bright. 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/66/coetsee/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/coetsee/ The Phytomedicine Programme of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa [1]. The programme investigates problems in the wide area of infections, especially microbial and parasitic infections in the process of training postgraduate students. They co-operate with many specialists in other areas in the application of extracts and isolated compounds to improve the health and productivity of plants, animals and humans. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/pennock-clark/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/pennock-clark/ The impact of the digital age upon libraries has been profound, changing not only the back office, services, and the range of materials available to users, but also the public face of libraries and the relationship between the library and its users. Within this changed relationship, collaboration, participation, and online social networks play an increasingly important role in the user experience, especially in large university and national libraries. At the same time, a shift is taking place in the type of collection items held in libraries, and the percentage of born-digital materials acquired is increasing on a daily basis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/chapman/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/chapman/ Earlier this year UKOLN received an email informing us that the server hosting the Tap into Bath collection description database was due to be decommissioned towards the end of 2010. Although there had been some previous discussion over the future of the database, the email was the trigger for a formal review of the project. This article describes the preservation strategy that was developed and the steps that were taken to preserve information about the database and the software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/tonkin-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/tonkin-rvw/ DefinitionsTAXON”OMY, n. [Gr. order, and law.] Classification; a term used by a French author to denote the classification of plants. Webster’s Revised Dictionary (1828 Edition) [1] Tax*on”omy (?), n. [Gr. an arrangement, order + a law.] That division of the natural sciences which treats of the classification of animals and plants; the laws or principles of classification. Webster’s Revised Dictionary (1913 Edition) [1] Taxonomy Classification, esp. in relation to its general laws or principles; that department of science, or of a particular science or subject, which consists in or relates to classification; esp. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/cig-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/cig-2010-rpt/ The focus of this conference was initiatives to get through the current economic climate. Cataloguing departments are under threat of cutbacks as never before. Papers on streamlining, collaborative enterprises, shared catalogues and services, recycling and repurposing of content using metadata extraction techniques combined to give a flavour of the new thrift driving management. The continuing progress of the long awaited Resource Description and Access (RDA)[1][2] towards becoming the new international cataloguing standard was another hot topic. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/wilson-et-al/ The University of Oxford began to consider research data management infrastructure in earnest in 2008, with the ‘Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data’ Project [1]. Two further JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)-funded pilot projects followed this initial study, and the approaches taken by these projects, and their findings, form the bulk of this article. Oxford’s decision to do something about its data management infrastructure was timely. A subject that had previously attracted relatively little interest amongst senior decision makers within the UK university sector, let alone amongst the public at large, was about to acquire a new-found prominence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/editorial/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/editorial/ You may have already noted in the editorial section of this issue a link to the Reader Survey which I ask you seriously to consider completing, whether you are a frequent Ariadne reader or are reading the Magazine for the first time. Moves are afoot to give Ariadne some effort towards improvements in your experience of the publication and I cannot emphasise enough the value I place on suggestions and comments from you. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/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/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ 2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team. 2 September 2010Opening the event proper on Thursday morning, Sheila Cannell, Director of Library Services, University of Edinburgh, used the imminent Edinburgh festival fireworks as a metaphor for the repository development endeavour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/survive-thrive-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/survive-thrive-rpt/ Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/thompson-hs/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/thompson-hs/ URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier, the official name for those things you see all the time on the Web that begin 'http:' or 'mailto:', for example http://www.w3.org/, which is the URI for the home page of the World Wide Web Consortium [1]. (These things were called URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) in the early days of the Web, and the change from URL to URI is either hugely significant or completely irrelevant, depending on who is talking—I have nothing to say about this issue in this article. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/leech/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/leech/ Did you know that: Of the Generation Y – the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s – 96% are members of a social networkThere are some 200 million blogs on the World Wide WebOne in eight couples who married in the USA in 2009 met over the InternetIf Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest by population in the world after China, the USA and IndiaAll the statistics emanate from Socialnomics [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/whalley-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/whalley-rvw/ The Missing Manual Series, originally written and published by David Pogue has expanded and is now published by O'Reilly, who deal mainly with computer books. Like many other publishers, they have jumped on the 'ibandwagon'. A quick count on Amazon Books gave a dozen similar offerings (excluding developers' guides). This is a review therefore of just one of these paperbacks, and is not a comparative review – with one exception which I shall come to below. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ This meeting on 11 May 2010, chaired by Anthony Watkinson, was organised by the University College London Department of Information Studies. Some 40 people attended the ‘e-book’ conference with the specific title; ‘Data as Content’. Eight papers were presented with a final panel question and answer session that explored some of the issues that had arisen during the day. Papers Presented Unfortunately, the first billed presentation, by Matthew Day (Nature) on ‘The role of publishers in data management, now and next’, had to be cancelled. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/editorial/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/editorial/ In these cash-strapped times among all the admonitions to save money here, and resources there, I rather hope to hear much about the necessity of protecting and building the knowledge economy if the UK is to make its way in the globalised world, since we cannot pretend to compete easily in other areas of endeavour. Hence research has to be regarded as one of the aces remaining to us, and thus I hope the importance of gathering, managing and preserving for long-term access research outcomes will be widely appreciated and supported. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ The Eduserv Symposium 2010 on the mobile university brought together colleagues from academia and practice to discuss the impact of the growth in mobile technologies on Higher Education: for example, on the student experience, learning and teaching initiatives, research, libraries, role of the educators, and the computer services support. Stephen Butcher and Andy Powell of Eduserv gave the welcome addresses. Stephen mentioned how this symposium was the largest that Eduserv had hosted and gave a background of Eduserv’s activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/emtacl10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/emtacl10-rpt/ The emerging technologies in academic libraries (or emtac10) [1] conference was held from 26 - 28 April 2010 at the Rica Nidelven Hotel in Trondheim – winners of “Norges beste frokost” (Norway’s Best Breakfast) for 5 years running, as the sign proudly states outside the hotel. They certainly fed us copious amounts of fantastic food, and had evening functions including an organ recital in the impressive cathedral, but what about the contents of the conference itself? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/lisrc10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/lisrc10-rpt/ Having been involved in developing the concept of a coalition for research in Library and Information Science (LIS) since 2006, it was with both pride and excitement that I took my place in the British Library's auditorium on Monday 28 June. There was a buzz of anticipation. We were not disappointed. The Coalition was established by a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the five founder members in March 2009 [1]. In August 2009 the Coalition Board was in a position to appoint Hazel Hall as Executive Secretary and to start work. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/taylor-teague/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/taylor-teague/ The Royal National Institute of Blind People National Library Service (RNIB NLS) was formed in 2007 as a result of a merger between the National Library for the Blind (NLB) and the Royal National Institute of Blind People’s Library and Information Service. It is the largest specialist library for readers with sight loss in the UK. RNIB holds the largest collection of books in accessible formats in the UK and provides a postal service to over 44,000 readers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ This was the 13th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1] to be organised by UKOLN [2] held at the University of Sheffield from 12 to 14 July 2010. The theme was 'The Web in Turbulent Times' [3]. As such, there was a healthy balance of glass-half-empty-doom-and-gloom, and glass-half-full-yes-we-can. More detailed reporting, including live blogging by Kirsty McGill of T Consult Ltd [4] and blog posts by presenters, can be found at the IWMW Blog [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/upa-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/upa-2010-rpt/ We were fortunate enough to attend the UPA 2010 International Conference [2] which was recently held in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, a beautiful hotel which has accommodated numerous famous guests in the past ranging from Paris Hilton to the Dalai Lama. The conferences main focus this year was on how UX professionals can create great user experiences across different cultures. Over 700 people who work in the user experience field attended, with a more international crowd than ever, mainly due to the fact that it was the first UPA conference held outside North America. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/joyce-et-al/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/joyce-et-al/ Increasingly, library and information services are under pressure to demonstrate value for money. Against the backdrop of search engine dominance, economic instability, and rapid technological development, Intute, a JISC-funded free national service which delivers the best of the Web for education and research, is facing reduced funding and an uncertain future. This article will share its successes and achievements, put a spotlight on the human expertise of its contributors and partners, and reflect on lessons learnt in the context of the sustainability of library and information services. 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/hammond/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/hammond/ Beginning in the mid 2000s I began keeping an eye on how libraries have been getting involved with social software - I started this haphazardly just out of interest but then I started to be more systematic when I needed to explore online resources for my organisation, the National Railway Museum. When I left to pursue my MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield I took the opportunity to do some serious research into the subject with a focus on UK public libraries as it seemed to me that they were hugely under-represented online. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Digital collections at LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science)[1] are significant and growing, as are the requirements of their users. LSE Library collects materials relevant to research and teaching in the social sciences, crossing the boundaries between personal and organisational archives, rare and unique printed collections and institutional research outputs. Digital preservation is an increasing concern alongside our commitment to continue to develop innovative digital services for researchers and students. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/salo/ Eager to prove their relevance among scholars leaving print behind, libraries have participated vocally in the last half-decade's conversation about digital research data. On the surface, libraries would seem to have much human and technological infrastructure ready-constructed to repurpose for data: digital library platforms and institutional repositories may appear fit for purpose. However, unless libraries understand the salient characteristics of research data, and how they do and do not fit with library processes and infrastructure, they run the risk of embarrassing missteps as they come to grips with the data challenge. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/nogueira/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/nogueira/ Archives are using Web 2.0 applications in a context that allows for new types of interaction, new opportunities regarding institutional promotion, new ways of providing their services and making their heritage known to the community. Applications such as Facebook (online social network), Flickr (online image-sharing community) and YouTube (online video sharing community) are already used by cultural organisations that interact in the informal context of Web 2.0. In this article I aim to describe how Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/lyngdoh-rvw/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/lyngdoh-rvw/ This book is intended for readers who have some knowledge of computers, computer programming and libraries. Many of us may be wondering what this book is all about and some of us may not have heard of the term 'mashups'. In very simple terms according to Engard, a mashup is a way of taking data from one source and combining them with data from another source to create a unique online tool. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Way back in prehistory, when libraries were buildings with books in, identity management was a pretty simple challenge for them. A library was either truly 'public', in which case you did not care who came in (the more people, the more popular you were, which was 'a good thing'). Otherwise, you had to be a member, and the security officer on the door knew your face, or you could show him (it was usually a 'him', then) a card or something to prove you were a member. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/editorial/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/editorial/ For those who can either remember or are battling still to make the technology work, be it coding, integration or test, it is easy and understandable enough if the technology assumes an overwhelming profile on the horizon of one's project and daily work. It is very understandable when they privately grumble that colleagues unburdened with the minutiae of such work display a breath-taking insouciance to the consequences of asking for a change in spec because there has been an unexpected development in the requirements of the users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/massam-et-al/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/massam-et-al/ 'The mobile phone is undoubtedly [a] strong driving force, a behaviour changer…Library users will soon be demanding that every interaction can take place via the cell phone' [1] The move towards mobile technologies in libraries and in the wider educational environment is gathering increasing momentum as we enter a new decade. This is reflected in the huge amount of Web content, research reports and innovative projects devoted to mobile learning and mobile applications in libraries which can be found via a quick search on Google. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/stevenson-ruddock/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/stevenson-ruddock/ The Archives Hub [1] is a JISC-funded service based at Mimas, a National Data Centre supporting world-class learning and research [2]. It brings together descriptions of archives for research and education, enabling users to search across over nearly 200 repositories. It stores descriptions in Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Interoperability is about working together (inter-operating). Whilst the central theme of this article is data interoperability – the ability to exchange or share information and use that information – this also requires individuals and organisations to work together; another form of interoperability. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/newsline/ Engagement, Impact, Value WorkshopUniversity of Manchester Monday 24 May 2010 http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/engagement-impact-value-201005/ UKOLN and Mimas will be jointly running a workshop entitled Engagement, Impact, Value which will be held at the University of Manchester on Monday 24 May. The event will provide an opportunity to share and discuss ways in which service providers can engage with their user communities in order to enhance the impact of their work and maximise the value. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/segbertelbert-fuegi/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/segbertelbert-fuegi/ In November 2008, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant to Stichting eIFL.net to help the National Library of Mongolia (NLM) create a strategic plan in the course of 2009. eIFL.net [1] is an international not-for-profit organisation with a base in Europe and a global network of partners. It works with libraries around the world to enable sustainable access to high-quality digital information for people in developing and transition countries [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rda-briefing-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rda-briefing-rpt/ In June 2010 Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), [1] the cataloguing standard in use for the last thirty years, will be replaced by Resource Description and Access (RDA) [2]. As the biggest change in bibliographic standards since the adoption of MARC21 ten years ago, the new rules have inspired much discussion in the cataloguing community and beyond. This briefing, organised by CILIP, aimed to provide an overview of the new standard as well as addressing the impact on librarians and libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/niso-d2d-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/niso-d2d-rpt/ A crisp spring day in Atlanta saw a gathering of 50 participants coming from libraries, including many from the GALILEO consortium, from vendors, including sponsors Ex Libris and Innovative Interfaces, Inc., and from content providers such as JSTOR, for a series of presentations at the well-equipped and comfortable Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The agenda [1] was an interesting mix of perspectives on a theme - switching focus from information resource users, particularly students, and how studying and interacting with them can inform our discovery and delivery systems, to details of ‘behind the scenes’ of these systems, technologies and standards such as OpenURL and SSO (Single Sign-on), and improvements needed to deliver more seamlessly what users want, as well as the development of new services such as bX recommender and BookServer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paterson-low/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paterson-low/ Demands for improved usability and developments in user experience (UX) have become pertinent due to the increasing complexities of digital libraries (DLs) and user expectations associated with the advances in Web technologies. In particular, usability research and testing are becoming necessary means to assess the current and future breeds of information environments such that they can be better understood, well-formed and validated. Usability studies and digital library development are not often intertwined due to the existing cultural model in system development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/nicholas-et-al/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/nicholas-et-al/ Discussion of digital identifiers, and persistent identifiers in particular, has often been confused by differences in underlying assumptions and approaches. To bring more clarity to such discussions, the PILIN Project has devised an abstract model of identifiers and identifier services, which is presented here in summary. Given such an abstract model, it is possible to compare different identifier schemes, despite variations in terminology; and policies and strategies can be formulated for persistence without committing to particular systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/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/editorial/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/editorial/ Readers of last year's issues will possibly have been aware of a small initiaitive on Ariadne's part to give practitioners with in the archives field the opportunity to voice their views on developments in their airspace. You may recall in Issue 61 an open and sincere investigation by Michael Kennedy into his views of the wider involvement of non-professionals in the generation of information for archival entries. In Cautionary Tales: Archives 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ The Fedora digital repository system 1 is an open source solution for the management of all types of digital content. Its development is managed through DuraSpace [2], the same organisation that now oversees DSpace, and carried out by developers around the world. The developers, alongside the extensive body of Fedora users, form the community that sustains Fedora. Although there have been regular international user group meetings for the Fedora community, hosted in recent years as part of the Open Repositories conference, there have also been a number of more regional initiatives to foster interaction amongst Fedora users and provide assistance to those adopting the software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/grigson-et-al/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/grigson-et-al/ Rarely is software a purely technical issue, though it may be marketed as ‘technology’. Software is embedded in work, and work patterns become moulded around it. Thus the use of a particular package can give rise to an inertia from which it can be hard to break free. Moreover, when this natural inertia is combined with data formats that are opaque or unique to a particular system, the organisation can become locked in to that system, a potential victim of the pricing policies or sluggish adaptability of the software provider. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/white/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/white/ According to Dante in his Divine Comedy the inscription above the door to Hades reads "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". For many this could also be the sign on the home page of their organisation's intranet as, with business-critical decisions to make, they begin the daily hunt for information that they are sure should be somewhere in the application. It could just as easily be the sign on the door of the intranet manager of the organisation, though this door usually also carries a number of other job descriptions, all of which seem to be given more priority by the organisation than the care and development of the intranet. 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/cetis-stds-2010-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/cetis-stds-2010-rpt/ The stated intention of this working meeting organised by JISC CETIS, and held at the University of Bolton, UK, on 12 January 2010 was to: '[...] bring together participants in a range of standards organisations and communities to look at the future for interoperability standards in the education sector. The key topic for consideration is the relationship between specifications developed in informal communities and formal standards organisations and industry consortia. The meeting will also seek to explore the role of informal specification communities in rapidly developing, implementing and testing specifications in an open process before submission to more formal, possibly closed, standards bodies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/loureirokoechlin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/loureirokoechlin/ Competition, complex environments and needs for sophisticated resources and collaborations compel Higher Education institutions (HEIs) to look for innovative ways to support their research processes and improve the quality and dissemination of their research outcomes. Access, management and sharing of information about research activities and researchers (who, what, when and where) lie at the heart of all these needs and driving forces for improvements. The planning of new research needs to consider information about current and previous related activities, and about relevant expertise for collaboration which may cross subject field boundaries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Due in large part to the appearance since mid-2006 of increasingly affordable devices making use of e-Ink technology (a monochrome display supporting a high-resolution image despite low battery use, since the screen consumes power only during page refreshes, which in the case of ebooks generally represent page turns), the ebook has gone from a somewhat limited market into a real, although presently still niche, contender. Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in 2008 [1]; Sony sold 300,000 of its Reader Digital Book model between October 2006 and October 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/kennedy/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/kennedy/ When I began writing this article, as a paper to a March 2009 conference on Archives 2.0 hosted by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester, Archives 2.0 was unknown territory to me [1]. I am a diplomatic historian, not an archivist, and though I am an end-user of archives, I had not come across the term Archives 2.0 before. The project I head, the Royal Irish Academy's Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series (http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/ili-2009-rpt/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/ili-2009-rpt/ Internet Librarian International [1] brought together librarians and information professionals from 33 countries including China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Australia as well as Europe and North America, to discuss and debate the latest developments under the conference theme 'value, versatility and viability'. Conference Chair Marydee Ojala emphasised that today's challenge for libraries and librarians lies in maximising the value of the internet for users, while proving the value of services to communities, and the theme of innovation was common to many speakers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/stracchino-feng/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/stracchino-feng/ An overview of the first phase of developing a digital repository for multimedia resources at York University has recently been outlined by Elizabeth Harbord and Julie Allinson in Ariadne [1]. This article aims to provide a technical companion piece reflecting on a year’s progress in the technical development of the repository infrastructure. As Allinson and Harbord’s earlier article explained, it was decided to build the architecture using Fedora Commons [2] as the underlying repository, with the user interface being provided by Muradora [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ 5th International Digital Curation Conference – Moving to Multi-Scale Science: Managing Complexity and DiversityMillennium Gloucester Hotel, Kensington, London 2-4 December 2009 http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2009/ The International Digital Curation Conference is an established annual event reaching out to individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains involved in curating data for e-science and e-research. The Digital Curation Centre, which is responsible for organising the Conference, will be hosting a full day of workshops on 2 December including Disciplinary Dimensions of Digital Curation: New Perspectives on Research Data; Digital Curation 101 Lite Training; Citability of Research Data; and Repository Preservation Infrastructure (REPRISE). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/search-engines/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/search-engines/ There’s a lot of talk going around at the moment on the subject of ‘real-time search’, so I thought it might be useful to look at the concept in a little more detail, and to explore some of the search engines that say they offer it. This is by no means an attempt at a comprehensive listing, as new search engines are appearing if not daily, then certainly every week. Rather, it’s an attempt to define the area, using examples, and to point to some of the functionality that users can and should expect to find when exploring these engines themselves. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/bevan/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/bevan/ The National Library of Wales has recently published a new Strategy for the Web [1] which integrates Web 2.0 with the existing Web portfolio and seeks to provide an approach to Web 2.0 which is focused on the organisation. Rather than centring on technical developments, this paper outlines a strategic research approach and discusses some of the outcomes which may speak to others seeking to engage with emerging Web technologies and approaches. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/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/61/marchionni/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/marchionni/ Do we know enough about what our users' needs are when creating online digitised scholarly resources? What are the benefits of engaging users? In what way can they be useful to the process? These might sound like rhetorical questions, yet, looking back at the last decade of activity in digitisation and creation of online resources, such questions have been tackled by content providers only in part, and with various degrees of success. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/palmer/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/palmer/ In March 2009, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) based at the University of Manchester collaborated with the Archives Hub to host a small conference of approximately 50 people in Manchester. ‘Archives 2.0’: Shifting Dialogues Between Users and Archivists’ was the final event in a series of CRESC events on archiving and reusing qualitative data. These events aimed to develop new approaches to archiving and reusing data and also to contribute to a recent rethinking of the archive in history, oral history, cultural studies The conference focused on the relationship between archivists, archives and their users, and looked at the emerging phenomenon of so-called ‘Archives 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/rafiq-rvw/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/rafiq-rvw/ This book is a collection of articles by the members of the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER), at University College London (UCL) and associates, such as Dr Tom Dobrowolski of Warsaw University, Professor Michael Moss of the University of Glasgow, Professor Barrie Gunter of the University of Leicester. The book is a result of the exploration of the impact of the digital world on publishing, libraries and information consumers for the past eight years and addresses widespread concerns being felt by information professionals including librarians, publishers, journalists, and archivists. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/chapman-russell/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/chapman-russell/ Although JISC [1] has developed a number of services, (e.g. JORUM [2], JISCmail [3]) specifically for use by the UK Higher Education (HE) sector, people within the sector are increasingly using services developed outside the sector, either in addition to - or in some cases instead of – JISC-provided services. And as well as using such services, people are also engaging in ‘mashups’ where combinations of services and content are used to provide new services or to provide added value to data already held. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ I recently attended the first biennial Conference of the British Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK) [1] entitled ‘Content Architecture: Exploiting and Managing Diverse Resources’. It was organized in co-operation with the Department of Information Studies, University College London. If the intention was to focus on the diversity of resources out there, I also felt that the audience was very diverse in terms of levels of expertise and perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/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/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/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/hawkins-tanner/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/hawkins-tanner/ The Historic Hospitals Admission Records Project (HHARP) is a digitisation and indexing project that covers the Victorian and Edwardian admission registers for the London children's hospitals Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the Evelina Children's Hospital in Southwark and the Alexandra Hip Hospital in Bloomsbury, together with Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow. It represents a collaboration between archivists, academics and volunteers that has resulted in a product that we hope will be of use to all those interested in the records of Victorian and Edwardian child health - from whichever academic discipline - or none [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/takle/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/takle/ The National Library of Norway is in the process of establishing itself as a digital national library and of taking on a key role in the country’s digital library service. The most ambitious outcome of this positioning is that the National Library has comprehensive plans to digitise its entire collection. The digital national library has been given the name NBdigital, and its objective of establishing itself as a digital library is also reflected in the institution’s practices. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/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/morris/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/morris/ The University of Southampton has around 22,000 students across six campuses: five in the city of Southampton and one in Winchester. It is a broad-based, research-intensive institution, a member of the Russell Group of UK Universities. The University comprises three Faculties: Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths; Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, and the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences. Within the three Faculties, there are currently 21 academic Schools which are responsible for the delivery of education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/ifla-3p-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/ifla-3p-rpt/ The IFLA Presidential Meeting ‘Access to Knowledge: Networking Libraries’ [1], was the third and last event in a series of conferences held during the IFLA presidency of Claudia Lux between 2007 and 2009. Intended as international platforms for exchange about the topic of ‘free access to information’, the motto shared by all three meetings, each of the conferences focused on a different cultural/geographical region: Central and Eastern Europe in 2007, Asia in 2008, and Arab and Islamic countries in 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ The first conference of the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) Project was held at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands (KB) in The Hague on 6 and 7 April 2009. A total of 136 participants from over 30 countries attended. The main focus of the event was on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies and their use in supporting the large-scale digitisation of historical text resources. It was also an opportunity to introduce the IMPACT Project to a wider audience and to describe some of its initial results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/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/tonkin-strelnikov/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/tonkin-strelnikov/ The IEMSR, a metadata schema registry, exists to support the development and use of metadata standards; in practice, what does this entail? Metadata is not a recent invention. It dates from at least the time of the Library of Alexandria, at which hundreds of thousands of scrolls were described using a series of indexes retaining various characteristics such as line count, subject classification, author name and biography. However, specific metadata standards, schemas and vocabularies are created on a regular basis, falling into and out of favour as time passes and needs change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/lilac-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/lilac-2009-rpt/ LILAC celebrated its fifth birthday in style in what proved to be a fantastic venue, Cardiff University. This occasion was commemorated with tour t-shirts available for all the delegates. The conference proved more popular than ever with a record number of presentations submitted and over 240 delegates from across the UK and worldwide. There were also seven funded places for Library students to attend, a fantastic investment in the profession for the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/green-awre/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/green-awre/ This article describes the recently completed REMAP Project undertaken at the University of Hull, which has been a key step toward realising a larger vision of the role a repository can play in supporting digital content management for an institution. The first step was the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded RepoMMan Project that the team undertook between 2005 and 2007 [1]. RepoMMan was described at length in Ariadne Issue 54 (January 2008) [2] and will only be dealt with in summary here. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/vernooy-gerritsen-et-al/ Since 2006, the EU-sponsored DRIVER Project has aimed to build an interoperable, trusted and long-term repository infrastructure. As part of the DRIVER Project, a survey was carried out in order to obtain an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union in 2006 [1]. This study was updated by an expanded survey in 2008, in which 178 institutional research repositories [2] from 22 European countries participated. In this article we will present the most important results [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Worldwide, the research paradigm is in the process of expanding into eResearch and open scholarship. This implies new ways of collaboration, dissemination and reuse of research results, specifically via the Web. Developing countries are also able to exploit the opportunity to make their knowledge output more widely known and accessible and to co-operate in research partnerships. Although there are exisiting examples of eResearch activities, the implementation of eResearch is not yet being fully supported in any co-ordinated way within the South African context. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/law/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/law/ By Scottish standards, Strathclyde is a new university, being a mere two hundred years old. It is a large university with 20,000 students, some forty departments covering most disciplines other than medicine and a huge programme of continuing professional development (CPD). Set up as 'a place of useful learning' it has always specialised in the applied disciplines – business, engineering, professional training (teachers, lawyers and social workers) and has set out to be quite different from its better-known competitors. 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/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/sun-pasig-2008-11-rpt/ I had managed to miss the previous two PASIG (Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group)[1] meetings, so was delighted to find myself finally able to participate by attending the Fall meeting. Conveniently the event was arranged to follow immediately the SPARC Digital Repositories meeting [2], also held in Baltimore, and which I also attended. PASIG is a group sponsored by and centred on Sun Microsystems (Sun) which is a prominent vendor of data storage hardware and which is building a new business around systems to support digital preservation and archiving. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/eckes-segbert/ The European Film Gateway (EFG) [1] is one in a series of projects funded by the European Commission, under the eContentplus Programme, with the aim of contributing to the development and further enhancement of Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive [2]. Officially launched on 20 November 2008, the prototype Europeana service provides access to about four million digital objects from archives, audio-visual archives, museums and libraries across Europe. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/brady/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/brady/ MrCute is an acronym of Moodle Repository, Create, Upload, Tag, and Embed and is a repository system for the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It will enable the content uploaded to online course areas on the VLE to be shared with other users and used in more than one location by more than one person. The original MrCute was a JISC-funded project by Worcester College of Technology (United Kingdom) in partnership with Learning Objectivity UK. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/jisc-dev8d-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/jisc-dev8d-rpt/ Firstly some background as to why dev8D came about. David Flanders (JISC) and Ben O'Steen (Oxford University Library Services) over the years have attended many conferences: what they found were that the places and talks from which they benefited most were outside the programmed seminars and presentations. It was during conversations between sessions at these events with other developers, managers, delegates that they felt learned most. For David and Ben the real benefit of these events were derived from the backchannel, the fringe events and random conversations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/search-engines/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/search-engines/ If we are to believe everything that we read about social media and user-created content, it’s reasonable to assume that there’s a lot of it out there. People are busy twittering away, creating bookmarked content, creating their own pagecasts in Pageflakes – to say nothing of writing about anything and everything in their weblogs. Yet at first glance it might appear to the casual observer that very little of this is being indexed, sorted and made available for searching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/mahey-rvw/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/mahey-rvw/ As I spend a large part of my day (as I have for the last 12 years) in front of a computer screen connected to the Internet, I wondered what I was going to learn about a book that examines the effect that this technology has had on our culture, our minds and the way we socialise. Lee Siegel is introduced as a cultural commentator and art critic who has written several books on these subjects as well as popular culture. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy-rvw/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy-rvw/ I'd like to start with a disclaimer: I am not a records manager nor have I ever been a records manager. My only official qualification in the field of records management is that I took a module in it whilst studying for my MSc in Information Management many moons ago. That said, this is not a book just for records managers. The overlaps with those working in other fields such as information management, librarianship, IT services, Web management, teaching, research etc. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/levan-rvw/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/levan-rvw/ Raymond Yee has produced a comprehensive book on how to consume and repurpose Web services, even for Web sites that do not intentionally expose Web services. The book is broken into four sections; understanding how to use Web content, understanding Web services, combining the data from multiple services (mashups) and detailed examples of specific mashup opportunities. Web Services are a complicated topic and this book does an excellent job of describing how to use them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cliff-rvw/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cliff-rvw/ Serendipity can be a wonderful thing. It was a Tuesday, over coffee, that the esteemed editor of this publication presented me with a copy of Website Optimization and asked if I would be interested in reviewing it. Two days later, at a regular team meeting for the Repositories Support Project 1, we discussed (rather generally) how we might boost the search ranking and usage of the RSP Web site. Marvellous, an interesting book to review and a real life problem to which to apply to it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cig-2008-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cig-2008-rpt/ Cataloguers from all over Europe travelled into Glasgow to attend the conference, subtitled “Classification and subject retrieval in the 21st century: you can’t make jelly without a mould”. The conference provided sessions with talks on both wide-ranging and detailed aspects of cataloguing, combined together into seven sessions distributed over the three days. All notes of the presentations are available online. [1] Said the spider to the fly: Identity and authority in the semantic web The keynote address was given by Gordon Dunsire from the Centre for Digital Library Research [2]. 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/voss/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/voss/ In recent years the principle of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown increasingly important in digital library systems. More and more core functionalities are becoming available in the form of Web-based, standardised services which can be combined dynamically to operate across a broader environment [1]. Standard APIs for searching (SRU [2] [3], OpenSearch [4]), harvesting and syndication (OAI-OMH [5], ATOM [6]), copying (unAPI [7] [8]), publishing, editing (AtomPub [9], Jangle [10], SRU Update [11]), and more basic library operations, either already exist or are being developed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/guy/ My previous article A Desk Too Far?: The Case for Remote Working [1] explored the cultural background to remote working, reasons why people might choose to work from home and some of the challenges that face them and their host organisations. This article will consider both the technology that facilitates remote working and the tools that can support remote workers by enabling them to carry out the tasks that they need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/newsline/ TASI Courses for Remainder of 2008TASI (the JISC Advisory Service for still images, moving images and sound) has a few places left on its autumn/winter training programme. http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/training.html 14 November 2008 Optimising your Images using Adobe Photoshop21 November 2008 Introduction to Image Metadata27 November 2008 Essential Techniques in Digital Image Capture28 November 2008 Advanced Techniques in Digital Image Capture03 December 2008 Digital Photography - Taking Control of your SLR11 December 2008 Scanning with the CLA Licence12 December 2008 Copyright and Digital ImagesThe following newly released course has just been added to the programme: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/rumsey-osteen/ The new framework for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources, OAI-ORE, had its European release in April 2008 [1]. Amongst its practical uses, OAI-ORE has a role to play in digital preservation and continued access to files. This article describes the basic outline of the framework and how it can support the PRESERV2 project digital preservation model of provision of preservation services and interoperability for digital repositories. The PRESERV approach recognises that effective preservation is founded on three fundamental actions on data: copy, move and monitor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/stevenson/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/stevenson/ For online services, the importance of developing user-friendly and accessible Web sites is of paramount importance. This article is about user testing recently carried out by the Archives Hub [1], an online service run by Mimas [2], which is a national data centre that provides access to a whole range of online services for research, learning and teaching. The Archives Hub is a JISC-funded service that provides a gateway to search descriptions of archives for education and research, enabling researchers to discover unique archival sources held in repositories across the country. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ In June this year UKOLN hosted an ‘unconference’[1] which was given the title ‘DRY/CRIG’. Jointly funded through the IE Demonstrator Project [2] and the Common Repositories Interfaces Group (CRIG) [3], this event was intended to allow technical representatives of (mainly) JISC-funded ‘Shared-Infrastructure-Services [4] to meet software developers from UK Higher Education institutions (HEIs). The ‘DRY’ part of the name is an acronym standing for ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’, a general principle in software engineering, which was deemed appropriate for an event mostly concerned with reusable shared services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/houghton-jan/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/houghton-jan/ What is information overload? 27 instant messages. 4 text messages. 17 phone calls. 98 work emails. 52 personal emails. 76 email listserv messages. 14 social network messages. 127 social network status updates. 825 RSS feed updates. 30 pages from a book. 5 letters. 11 pieces of junk mail. 1 periodical issue. 3 hours of radio. 1 hour of television. That, my friends, is information overload. It is also my daily average amount of information received, sampled over a two-week period. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/hannabuss-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/hannabuss-rvw/ Books are not mushrooms and do not grow in the dark: we tend to know they're there and we know the frame within which they work. Copyright Compliance is one in a useful line of books about information law from Paul Pedley and others, published by Facet Publishing (which is owned by CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, formerly The Library Association). This in turn is part of a wider interest and trend in legally orientated books for library and information practitioners, one that is very large indeed if we factor in studies of law and ethics in fields like software, patents, Internet, e-commerce, and telecoms. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/white-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/white-rvw/ There are many books on Web accessibility but they tend to come at the subject from quite a narrow area of Web design. This is especially true of books published in the USA, a country which has quite limited Federal legislation on the need to implement accessible Web sites and intranets. It is a subject that should be of passionate interest to our profession in its commitment to providing access to information to all who request it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/editorial/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/editorial/ I am greatly indebted to Gráinne Conole for a number of reasons. It has been my intention for some time to commission something from the OU in respect of learning technologies given the wealth of expertise that resides there. For a variety of reasons it has taken me a while, but the wait has been more than worthwhile in the light of Gráinne's contribution. In my view her article New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies does much to exchange light for all the ambient heat that surrounds this topic, while refusing, as some are tempted, to reject the whole Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/iwmw-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/iwmw-2008-rpt/ 'Aberdeen??!! Make sure you take some woolly jumpers and a sou'wester then.' Friends are always keen to give helpful advice, bless 'em, but as it turned out, it was a good job that I ignored it, as it was t-shirts every day for the 180 or so who had the privilege of attending the Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) in the Granite City this year. Three days of glorious sunshine, mixed with stimulating talks, thought-provoking parallel sessions, lively BarCamps, good food and interesting company made for a combination that's hard to beat, despite the allocated (Hillhead) accommodation crying out for an urgent and intimate encounter with a wrecking ball * and the seagulls being on a mission to wake me up by 4. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/cooper/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/cooper/ When we purchased two collections of journal back files for hosting locally we knew that there would be some work involved in providing them to our patrons as a usable service. The key task we faced was to get our final solution neatly integrated into our existing electronic environment. We did not want our patrons to have to go to a stand-alone search page when they could use our federated search engine. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ross/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ross/ The Resource Discovery iKit [1] is the result of a recently completed project to produce an information kit for tools and reports related to resource discovery created by JISC-funded projects and services. Created by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde, the iKit has exploited the Centre’s expertise in the area of digital libraries to create a dynamic retrieval system which uses multi-faceted control vocabularies to allow researchers and developers a quick and easy interface for the discovery and retrieval of a comprehensive range of quality-assessed resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/conole/ In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of ‘Web 2.0’ and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Minding the Skills Gap: A Workshop for Key Training ProvidersLeeds University Business School 3 September 2008 Over the last few years, researchers have enthusiastically embraced new technologies and services that allow them to discover, locate, gain access to and create information resources on their desktops. Yet there is evidence to suggest that their research information skills and competencies have not kept up with the rapid pace of change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/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/tonkin/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/tonkin/ What Is a Persistent Identifier, and Why?Persistent identifiers (PIs) are simply maintainable identifiers that allow us to refer to a digital object – a file or set of files, such as an e-print (article, paper or report), an image or an installation file for a piece of software. The only interesting persistent identifiers are also persistently actionable (that is, you can “click” them); however, unlike a simple hyperlink, persistent identifiers are supposed to continue to provide access to the resource, even when it moves to other servers or even to other organisations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/search-engines/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/search-engines/ Although this is a column about search engines I normally try to avoid Google, simply because it’s well covered everywhere else. However, in the first half of this year there have been a number of changes and dare I say it, improvements to Big G which are worth exploring. Google Continues to Grow In actual fact, it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore Google, simply because everyone else is embracing it, seemingly with no reservations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ukmw08-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ukmw08-rpt/ Following the success of the inaugural event last year [1], the Mashed Museum day was again held the day before the Museums Computer Group UK Museums on the Web Conference. The theme of the conference was 'connecting collections online', and the Mashed Museum day was a chance for museum ICT staff to put this into practice. The Mashed Museum DayEarlier this year I received an email that read: You are invited to a day of coding, thinking and idea sharing with a select group of museum colleagues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/gatenby/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/gatenby/ Libraries’ collections fall into three parts: physical, digital and licensed. These are managed by multiple systems, ILS (Integrated Library System), ERM (Electronic Records Management), digital management, digital repositories, resolvers, inter-library loan and reference. At the same time libraries are increasingly co-operating in collecting and storing resources. This article examines how to identify data that is best located at global, collective and local levels. An example is explored, namely the benefits of moving data from different local systems to the network level to manage acquisition of the total collection as a whole and in combination with consortia members. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/brace/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/brace/ The VIF ProjectThe Version Identification Framework (VIF) [1] Project ran between July 2007 and May 2008 and was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, (JISC) under the Repositories and Preservation Programme [2] in order to help develop versioning best practice in repositories. The project was run by partners, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) [3], the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) [4], the University of Leeds [5] and Erasmus University Rotterdam [6]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/taylor-rvw/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/taylor-rvw/ Information is often linked to the scientific domain and perceived as a known and measured quantity, a fixed point. Terms such as 'information science', and 'information management' contribute to the view of information as an objective tool. Information behaviour research, though, takes a different view, by exploring the relationship between the emotions and personal experiences of users and the information they find and use. For any library and information professional, the study of information behaviour offers many valuable insights into the inner workings of that most elusive of subjects, the mind of the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/coelho-rvw/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/coelho-rvw/ This is a book about public libraries. I might sound disappointed in saying that, in fact I was surprised. Having spent my working life in specialist libraries, I know little about the public library sector and was slightly afraid that what I would find would be irrelevant or uninteresting. But I soon discovered that this was to be one of the most exciting professional texts I'd read for some time. It turns out that you can learn a lot about good practice from any successful library, irrespective of who its users are because what matters is dreams, commitment and courage. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/search-engines/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/search-engines/ I’ve mentioned custom-built search engines a couple of times in the past in my Ariadne columns, so it would seem to make sense actually to spend a little time looking at exactly what they are and how you might use them. This article will cover the major contenders and provide an overview of how to create and use them, as well as answering the basic question of why you should. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/williams-et-al/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/williams-et-al/ Personal collections such as those kept in the British Library have long documented diverse careers and lives, and include a wide variety of document (and artefact) types, formats and relationships. In recent years these collections have become ever more ‘digital’. Not surprisingly, given the inexorable march of technological innovation, individuals are capturing and storing an ever-increasing amount of digital information about or for themselves, including documents, articles, portfolios of work, digital images, and audio and video recordings [1]. 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/lai-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lai-2008-rpt/ 15 April The conference, entitled ‘Future-proofing the Past: 80 years’ commitment to access and cooperation’, was officially opened by the President of the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) who welcomed the delegates and wished them well in their deliberations at this conference which was the 40th joint conference of the LAI and Cilip IRELAND, occurring in the 80th year of the LAI. The conference was attended by 120 delegates. Unless otherwise stated, the sessions described below were all plenary. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/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/joyce-et-al/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/joyce-et-al/ The evolution of the Web has changed the way that people access information. Web 2.0 technologies have allowed information providers to integrate their services in people's existing online spaces, and users expect to be able to synthesise, edit and customise content for their own specific purposes. Intute, the JISC-funded service that aims to offer the best of the Web for Higher and Further Education, has responded to these changes by developing a variety of integration services which offer flexible ways of delivering its content to users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/jisc-debates-rpt/ As part of its new Libraries of the Future programme [1], JISC held three events during its annual conference in Birmingham to explore some of the questions facing libraries today: in an information world in which Google apparently offers us everything, what place is there for the traditional, and even the digital, library? In a library environment which is increasingly moving to the delivery of online rather than print resources, what of the academic library’s traditional place at the heart of campus life? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/lilac-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lilac-2008-rpt/ The LILAC 2008 has already received plenty of Web coverage, notably in Sheila Webber’s IL blog [1], where lots of other weblog posts on the event have been collected. I also produced an official blog [2] myself, as part of the conditions of my student award conference bursary. As a newcomer to the information and library profession, and a postgraduate masters student, I hope to offer a different perspective on this event, focussing on the highlights and my personal impressions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/eadie/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/eadie/ Following on from the project to develop an application profile for scholarly works (SWAP)[1], the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has recently funded through its Repositories and Preservation Programme, a series of projects to establish Application Profiles in the areas of images, time-based media, geospatial data and learning objects [2]. The work on the Images Application Profile (IAP) has been carried out for the six-month period from September 2007 to March 2008, and while the substantive project work is now complete and a draft Images Application Profile is in circulation, the ongoing job of promoting the profile to, and consulting with, the image, repository and metadata communities continues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/reading-rvw/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/reading-rvw/ This book has generated a lot of discussion on the Internet which seems mostly to focus on Tara Brabazon's comments such as: 'Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.' [1]. It is easy to find this discussion – just Google the author and/or title! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Social tagging, which is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, and social indexing, allows ordinary users to assign keywords, or tags, to items. Typically these items are Web-based resources and the tags become immediately available for others to see and use. Unlike traditional classification, social tagging keywords are typically freely chosen instead of using a controlled vocabulary. Social tagging is of interest to researchers because it is possible that with a sufficiently large number of tags, useful folksonomies will emerge that can either augment or even replace traditional ontologies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/search-engines/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/search-engines/ ‘Human-powered search engines’ is perhaps a slightly unfortunate term, since it makes me think of lots of people running around on treadmills providing the energy to keep the servers powered up! However, it’s the term in general use, so we’ll go with it. Essentially it means a search engine which can, and will have its results (or at least the position of its results) affected by human intervention, usually by people rating individual results further up or further down the rankings. 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/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/54/aharony/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/aharony/ Library and information science (LIS) programmes prepare students for performing traditional information tasks such as indexing, retrieval and library management [1][2][3]. The increased importance and centrality of information has moved LIS schools to offer new curricula that combine traditional librarianship and archiving with technological and social aspects of information. As the author has a considerable interest in both LIS education and in Web 2.0 applications, and because she found out that in her own country (Israel) only a limited emphasis is given to adapting Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/tonkin-tourte-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/tonkin-tourte-rvw/ Introduction: Needles, Haystacks and MagnetsSince the early days of metadata, powerful textual search methods have been, as Wodehouse’s Wooster might have put it, ‘of the essence’. Effective use of search engines is all about understanding the use of the rich query syntax supported by that particular software. Examples include the use of Boolean logic (AND, OR and NOT), and wildcards, such as and ?. Search engines such as Google naturally include their own selection of rich functionality and usage tricks, and O’Reilly has a book out to cover that, too (see Phil Bradley’s review of ‘Google Hacks’ in Ariadne [1]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ First, a note about this reviewer. I am not a library historian although I am interested in our professional and institutional development. I received my library education in Ireland, although I have worked for much of my career in the UK and am now in the US. I observed the developments discussed in the latter parts of this volume and have contributed to the literature about them. I have met many of the contributors and am familiar with the writings of others. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/taylor-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/taylor-rvw/ Before I begin this review, I should declare my interests and publicly acknowledge that I not only work with social networking tools and technologies professionally, but I actually like many aspects of Web 2.0. But I do not embrace Web 2.0 without reservations, and knowing I have a tendency occasionally to be ever so slightly blinded by my enthusiasms, I have been eager to investigate the more sceptical viewpoint and so, I hope, develop a more rounded view of the subject. 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/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/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/kidmm-rpt/snomed-ct.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/snomed-ct.html SNOMED-CT is updated more frequantly than the alternatives, so responds quickly to changes in medical knowledge and practice. Thirty years ago, there was no classification for HIV/AIDS. Administrative terminology changes all the time; and individual specialists often ask for new terms to be added. Free text is valuable in medical records and there will always be a role for it, but it has two major drawbacks. Meaning may be ambiguous; and meaning is not available for computation. 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/digitising-culture-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/digitising-culture-rpt/ The idiom of the ‘elephant in the room’ is one often conjured up when an obvious fact or presence is not acknowledged for fear that doing so will radically disturb people’s acceptance of the status quo. The conference in Berlin, Knowledge By Networking, Digitising Culture in Germany and Europe [1], had something of the elephant in the room. In this case the unmentioned presence was not the elephant, but the search engine Google. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ TASI Workshops in November & DecemberThere are currently places available on the following Nov/Dec workshops: 14 November 2007: Image Capture - Level 3, Bristol15 November 2007: Introduction to Image Metadata, Bristol23 November 2007: Image Optimisation - Correcting and Preparing Images, Bristol30 November 2007: Building a Departmental Image Collection, Bristol4 December 2007: Colour Management, Bristol13 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 1, Bristol14 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 2, BristolFull details of these and all TASI workshops are available from the Training page http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/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/kidmm-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/ About KIDMMThe British Computer Society [1], which in 2007 celebrates 50 years of existence, has a self-image around engineering, software, and systems design and implementation. However, within the BCS there are over fifty Specialist Groups (SGs); among these, some have a major focus on ‘informatics’, or the content of information systems. At a BCS SG Assembly in 2005, a workshop discussed shared-interest topics around which SGs could collaborate. Knowledge, information and data management was identified as a candidate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ananiadou/ One of the defining challenges of e-Science is dealing with the data deluge [1] information overload and information overlook. More than 8,000 scientific papers are published every week (on Google Scholar, for example). Without sophisticated new tools, researchers will be unable to keep abreast of developments in their field and valuable new sources of research data will be under-exploited. The capability of text mining (TM) to find knowledge hidden in text and to present it in a concise form makes it an essential part of any strategy for addressing these problems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kirriemuir/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kirriemuir/ Introduction: Second Life Second Life (SL) [1] is an Internet-based virtual world developed by Linden Research Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab) and launched in 2003. A downloadable client program called the ‘Second Life Viewer’ enables its users (‘residents’) to interact with each other through avatars, providing an advanced level of social networking in the setting of a virtual world. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialise, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items (virtual property) and services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/ooman-tzouvaras/ Europe's audiovisual heritage contains both a record and a representation of the past and as such it demonstrates the development of the 'audiovisual culture' we inhabit today. In this article we hope to offer an insight into the development of the Video Active Portal [1] which provides access broadcast heritage material retained by archives across Europe. We will explain how Video Active needed to find solutions for managing intellectual property rights, semantic and linguistic interoperability and the design of a meaningful user experience. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pratty/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pratty/ 24 Hour Museum [1] is a successful and sustainable cultural Web site. Type the word 'museum' into Google UK and up it pops as a top five search result. Unlike the other top sites, all national museums or galleries, 24HM's remit covers the whole country, in eclectic subject areas, reaching a wide variety of audiences with simple and accessible content. In 2006 24HM reached ten million visits in the year. 2007 sees the site reaching a million visitors a month, from home to office, schoolroom to museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/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/blogging-backroom-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/blogging-backroom-rpt/ Blogging and the use of wikis and RSS feeds can seem daunting to many library and information professionals who are now encountering them for the first time. People think ‘Surely blogs are just online diaries?’ and ‘What use are wikis and RSS feeds really, aren’t they just for the ‘techies’?’ Then there’s the ‘I’m scared, it’s all too technical for me.’ And finally ‘Is it really ‘work’?’ and ‘Will my employer see it as ‘work’? 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/pope-beresford/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pope-beresford/ The British Library is adopting the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Toolset [1] - comprising the Web Curator Tool (WCT), NutchWax and the Open Source Wayback Machine (OSWM) for its evolving Web archiving operations, in anticipation of Legal Deposit legislation being introduced within the next few years. The aim of this performance-testing stage was to evaluate what hardware would be required to run the toolset in a production environment. This article summarises the results of that testing with recommendations for the hardware platform for a production system. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Torrential rain, thunder and lightening provided the backdrop to the Institutional Web Management Workshop [1], held this year at the University of York. Dramatic as they were, the conditions did not in any way dampen the enthusiasm of the delegates over the three days. The programme this year consisted of plenary sessions, discussion groups, parallel sessions and the famed social events. New this year was the IWMW Innovation Competition, where participants were invited to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies as well as the IWMW logo. 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/knight/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/knight/ Background: Identifying a Need SPP phase I [1] was largely devoted to considering how five Resource Discovery Network (RDN) hubs might be turned into subject portals, but at this stage did not include the development of portlets. During the course of phase I it became clear that many potential users of these portals would choose to access content from within their local institutional portal or a virtual learning environment (VLE). The choice of functionality for these portlets was in part determined by the results of user testing on users of the BIOME Web site, which gathered feedback about various potential portlets and the ways in which they might deliver information [2]. 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/doyle-rvw/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/doyle-rvw/ Information architecture helps people find the information they want, whether it's a prospective student looking for a course, or staff using the intranet. It is mostly concerned with how people browse and search the institutional Web site, and with how knowledge is shared. People working in information architecture are likely to be responsible for institutional Web strategy; global links on the corporate template; the institutional search engine, site map and index; institutional analytics; portals and primary stakeholder home pages; content management and content management systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brack-rvw/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brack-rvw/ Greg Notess has brought together techniques and strategies for Web search training not only from his own experience but also from a number of well known Web search trainers; readers will recognise the names of Joe Barker, Paul Barron, Phil Bradley, John Ferguson, Alice Fulbright, Ran Hock, Jeff Humphrey, Diane Kovacs, Gary Price, Danny Sullivan, Rita Vine, and Sheila Webber. As the author notes, 'Teaching web search engines is complex', and this book is an attempt to recognise the diversity of approaches by offering different styles, techniques and examples. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/emamy-cameron/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/emamy-cameron/ This article describes Citeulike, a fusion of Web-based social bookmarking services and traditional bibliographic management tools. It discusses how Citeulike turns the linear ‘gather, collect, share’ process inherent in academic research into a circular ‘gather, collect, share and network’ process, enabling the sharing and discovery of academic literature and research papers. What is Citeulike?Citeulike is a Web-based tool to help scientists, researchers and academics store, organise, share and discover links to academic research papers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Researchers in all disciplines increasingly expect to be able to undertake a variety of research-associated tasks online. These range from collaborative activities with colleagues around the globe through to information-seeking activities in an electronic library environment. Many of the tools which enable these activities to take place are already available within the local IT infrastructure. However, in many cases, the tools are provided through discrete, bespoke interfaces with few links between them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/editorial/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/editorial/ Having emerged from the political arguments of the 1990s about what culture could be funded and whether it was better to fund soccer or opera, we have moved into an age where, in the UK at least, there are arguments as to what actually constitutes British culture. Fortunately more people are deciding to do culture for themselves than remain passive witnesses to the pundits' debate. The place where they are doing it is online and they are not waiting to see whether their offering attracts the experts' approval - and sometimes, admittedly, one might argue more's the pity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/kim-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/kim-conf-rpt/ The KIM Project [1], known in full as Immortal Information and Through Life Knowledge Management: Strategies and Tools for the Emerging Product-Service Paradigm, is a £5.5 million research programme funded primarily by the EPSRC [2] and ESRC [3] and involving eleven UK universities. The purpose of the project is to find robust ways of handling information and knowledge — for example, product models and documentation of design processes and rationale — over the lifetime of project-services such as PFI hospitals, schools and military equipment, as well as enterprise-level strategies for this new way of working. 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/search-engines/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/search-engines/ Since I spend the majority of my time looking at new search engines it’s very easy to ignore what’s happening with the existing ones, and particularly those engines that sometimes seem to have been around forever. For this column I thought that I’d try and correct that imbalance, and take a look in a little more detail at one of the ‘big four’ - Ask [1], and see what’s been happening with it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brophy-et-al/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/brophy-et-al/ Cultural heritage has an important role to play in today’s society. Not only does it help us to understand our past but it also has an impact on social development, the economy and education. Developments in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have provided new opportunities for the manipulation of cultural heritage. Digitisation of cultural material has widened access beyond the boundaries of traditional memory institutions and has provided scope for adding value to collections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Opening Keynote AddressThe 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham. JISC Chairman Professor Sir Ron Cooke outlined JISC’s achievements over the last year, including the launch of the UK Access Management Federation [1], the launch of JISC Collections [2] as a mutual trading company and the launch of SuperJANET5 [3], the upgrade to the JANET network which quadruples its capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/thompson/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/thompson/ Background: The W3C and Its Process The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was set up by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 to preserve and enhance the public utility of the Web for everyone, to “lead the Web to its full potential”. It is a consortium of industrial and institutional members (around 450 at the time of writing) who pay on a sliding scale proportional to size. It produces Recommendations which are widely recognised as de facto standards. 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/51/foggo/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/foggo/ This case study shows how students were taught the skills they need to find information relevant to their subject area. As groups of students are generally seen once only, measures to assess the effectiveness of teaching are needed, i.e. to determine the skills the students have acquired. Blogs were used as a tool for formative assessment and were used to measure student expectations before teaching, and their level of satisfaction with the session afterwards. 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/bradley-rvw/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/bradley-rvw/ The subtitle for the book is 'Tips and tools for finding and using the world's information' which does neatly sum up its content. This is the third edition, so it is clearly popular, and has been updated to include information and hacks for Google maps, talk and desktop. As with any O'Reilly title, it is very clearly laid out, easy to read, with extremely good illustrations, small icons to indicate tips or notes of caution, plus an in-depth and thorough index. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/editorial/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/editorial/ With Dyson and parts of Burberry disappearing points east, leaving their design departments behind them [1] [2], there are possible grounds for arguing that the (previously) industrialised countries must live by their wits and the emerging knowledge economy. In Limits to Information Transfer: The Boundary Problem Jon Erland Lervik, Mark Easterby-Smith, Kathryn Fahy and Carole Elliott write that 'the challenge for knowledge management is not only to make knowledge available in repositories for dissemination across the firm' or organisation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/search-engines/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/search-engines/ It’s very easy simply to concentrate on the ‘Big Four’ search engines - Ask, Google, Live and Yahoo, while missing out on what is happening elsewhere. I know that I’m as guilty of that as anyone else and so for this column I thought I would look back over 2006 and see which search engines have come to my attention, what I think of them, and see how well they have actually fared. 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/50/green-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/green-et-al/ With an increasing number of publications being made available digitally, and new supply chains and business models emerging for trading them, an urgent need has been identified for a standard way of expressing and communicating usage terms, and linking those terms to the publications. Reflecting the development pattern of the markets, this need was first identified in the scholarly journals sector. More recently, a similar requirement has been articulated for the communication of usage terms between publishers' digital repositories and search engines such as Google. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/eprints-v3-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/eprints-v3-rpt/ The EPrints 3 unwrapped event at the Congress Centre in London was billed as ‘an early Christmas present’ [1] and was an opportunity for the EPrints community to enjoy a preview of EPrints 3 (hereafter referred to as EP3) scheduled for release at the end of January 2007. The official launch was held at the Open Repositories Conference [2] in San Antonio, Texas on the 24th of January and the software is now in final release. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/beresford/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/beresford/ In September 2006 The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna M?tauranga o Aotearoa, The British Library and Sytec, announced the successful development of a Web harvesting management system. The system, known as Web Curator Tool, is designed to assist curators of digital archives in collecting Web-published material for storage and preservation. The Web Curator Tool is the latest development in the practice of Web site harvesting (using software to 'crawl' through a specified section of the World Wide Web, and gather 'snapshots' of Web sites, including the images and documents posted on them). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tonkin-rvw/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/tonkin-rvw/ Ambient Findability is to all external appearances an O'Reilly book. It boasts the familiar line drawing of an animal, on this occasion a Verreaux's sifaka, a large and engagingly thoughtful-looking lemur. Judging the book by its cover would suggest that it be placed on the shelf together with O'Reilly's classic line of reference books, upon which developers all over the world depend for sparsely presented, accurate information and advice. But this book is of a different breed. 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/editorial/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/editorial/ It was rather pleasantly brought to my attention a little while back that Ariadne has made its own small contribution to the various discussions in respect of institutional repositories when I noticed a very kind acknowledgement of the Magazine from the authors of The Institutional Repository as I set about organising its review. Indeed those readers who have seen the review will have noted the references to related articles, some indeed by the very same authors. 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/yan-han/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/yan-han/ Digital libraries are changing the way that we search for, find and use resources in traditional libraries. In the networked information environment they allow users to access information anywhere and anytime. They are also leading to innovative ways for teaching and learning opportunities. For example, an instructor can develop learning objects based on traditional static text-based materials by using multimedia (images, videos, sounds, and animations) technology. Learners can explore these digital learning objects in dynamic and interactive ways at their own pace, rather than by following textual instructions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/cig-2006-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/cig-2006-rpt/ Restful accommodation and pleasant food prepared the delegates for the carefully balanced mix of social networking sessions and challenging seminars. Everyone was extremely friendly and most proved to be erudite socialites, networking in some cases with great assertiveness and sense of purpose. Cataloguing and classification was revealed as an area of library and information science that has survived years of neglect by most library schools to reveal itself as the much-needed solution to online resource accessibility. 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/chapman/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/chapman/ Cataloguing principles and rules ensure that bibliographic / catalogue records contain structured data about information resources and are created in a consistent manner within the various catalogue and metadata formats. Today ‘catalogues’ (in the widest sense) need to provide access to a wider range of information carriers, with a greater depth and complexity of content. While building on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), the work on Resource Description and Access (RDA) is going back to basic principles and aiming to develop a resource that can be used internationally by a wide range of personnel working in different areas. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/search-engines/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/search-engines/ I’m sure that there must be some sort of wise old saying along the lines of ‘the loudest noise starts with the quietest whisper’. This is something that I’m experiencing a lot at the moment - as I spend time on the Internet, or teaching, or even just talking to people I’m beginning to hear a little whisper along the lines of ‘What’s up with Google these days?’ This is not a line from the experts - it’s just ordinary people who are beginning to wonder if Google is… well - running out of steam. 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/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ This workshop was held at the University of Lancaster Centre for e-Science. The organisers were Rob Crouchley, Rob Allan and Caroline Ingram, there were 17 other attendees. The main aim of this workshop was to explore the relationship between digital repositories, e-Research and Portals in the UK with a view to discovering e-infrastructure gaps and articulating requirements. The hosts had been commissioned by JISC to undertake the ITT: JISC Information Environment Portal activity - supporting the needs of e-Research [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/whalley/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/whalley/ Although they were not called e-books at the time, Michael Hart’s Project Gutenberg started digitising existing print on paper editions for public access in the 1970s. Since then, the term e-book has come to have a variety of meanings and related concepts. Here I want to explore the direction associated with my day job as a researcher and teacher within the UK Higher Education system. My viewpoint may thus be somewhat idiosyncratic compared to Ariadne’s normal clientele but I am particularly interested in the information technologist’s role as an intermediary between academic author and student reader. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/search-engines/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/search-engines/ I thought that it was about time to take an in-depth peek at a specific search engine again, since many of my recent columns have looked rather more broadly at the search engine industry. I decided that I would take a look at Accoona since I have seen a few mentions of it recently, it launched a European version at the end of June 2006, and having played around with it myself for a while I have been rather impressed with it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/coelho-rvw/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/coelho-rvw/ I never read a book twice, but when I was asked to review the second edition of The Librarian's Internet Survival Guide, I welcomed the chance, as I was reminded why I'd loved this book so much when I first reviewed it in 2003. This expanded and updated edition should be at every reference desk as it is not only a useful guide to quality resources but also a motivational tool for librarians everywhere. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/editorial/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/editorial/ While the number of delegates at the Institutional Web Management Workshop did not quite match that of ECDL 2004 [1] when it too was hosted at the University of Bath, it would be fair to say the Workshop gave UKOLN almost as much to do. Inevitably the bulk of the workload fell upon the Workshop's new Chair Marieke Guy and also Natasha Bishop, UKOLN Events and Marketing Manager. There is little doubt there were many opportunities for networking within a workshop in which it was evident very many delegates were known to each other. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/fedora-users-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/fedora-users-rpt/ The Fedora Users Conference 2006, for users of the open source Fedora repository system [1] was the second to be run under the auspices of the core Fedora development team, following an initial conference at Rutgers University in June 2005. It is, though, one among a collection of conferences and meetings that have taken place over the past year based on using Fedora, with venues as diverse as Copenhagen, Aberystwyth, Sydney, and Hull. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/iwmw-2006-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/iwmw-2006-rpt/ The 10th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2006) [1] returned to its spiritual home in Bath this year, headquarters of the workshop organisers UKOLN [2] and the venue of the fourth IWMW workshop held in 2000. It was the first workshop to be chaired by Marieke Guy following nine years with Brian Kelly at the helm from its inception in 1997. This year the workshop theme was 'Quality Matters', reflecting the fact that institutional Web sites have been around for over ten years and are now taken as a given. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/chudnov-et-al/ Common Web tools and techniques cannot easily manipulate library resources. While photo sharing, link logging, and Web logging sites make it easy to use and reuse content, barriers still exist that limit the reuse of library resources within new Web services. [1][2] To support the reuse of library information in Web 2.0-style services, we need to allow many types of applications to connect with our information resources more easily. One such connection is a universal method to copy any resource of interest. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/williams/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/williams/ This article aims to give an overview of Intute [1], the new face of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), in the context of the Internet information environment, and to describe how one JISC service has responded to its changing context. In order to do this it will briefly describe the environment and context for Intute, and will outline the new Intute service, its blueprint, current project activity, and Intute’s aspirations for the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Encapsulating the events of such an information-rich event as the JISC / CNI conference can be a tricky task, but the next few lines will, we hope, deliver a flavour of the occasion as well as a summary of a few significant themes. No single overarching theme dominated the event and indeed everyone we spoke to over the two-day event expressed a different opinion as to what they thought were the really important issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/murray/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/murray/ The role of the integrated library system is, and always has been, to help manage the effective delivery of library services. This has traditionally been anchored on the management of the catalogue and physical collection. The core business and service model could be described as ‘Acquire - Catalogue - Circulate’. This is increasingly no longer the case. While the physical collection remains a critical aspect of the library service, it is just one of a number of ‘atomic’ or ‘granular’ services presented by the library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collectionsThe UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. Course OutlineThis course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dempsey/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dempsey/ The catalogue [Note 1] has always been an important focus of library discussion; its construction and production are a central part of historical library practice and identity. In recent months, the future of the catalogue has become a major topic of debate, prompted by several new initiatives and by a growing sense that it has to evolve to meet user needs [1][2]. Much of the discussion is about improving the catalogue user’s experience, not an unreasonable aspiration. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dunning/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dunning/ An article by Dan Greenstein and Jennifer Trant in an early edition (July 1996) of Ariadne introduced readers to the aims and organisation of the fledging Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) [1]. Exactly ten years on from that, as the AHDS undergoes a systematic review by its funders, it seems appropriate to take stock of how the AHDS has evolved, comparing its current position with that envisaged for it when the organisation commenced work in the 1990s. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/code4lib-2006-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/code4lib-2006-rpt/ Focused as a highly technical event, the inaugural code4lib conference resulted from the combined efforts of the code4lib community, a loosely connected set of programmers, hackers, librarians, and library technologists who pursue technologies related to libraries and information. Over 80 attendees had the opportunity to learn what their peers were pursuing at other institutions, to share projects, hacks, code, and ideas, and to participate in breakout sessions and give lightning talks. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/editorial/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/editorial/ Perhaps I am not quite so cynical as I suppose when, despite being more than a little aware of the problem confonting us in respect of safeguarding electronic resources, I can nonetheless be shocked by the statistic Eileen Fenton provides us in her article on Preserving Electronic Scholarly Journals: Portico where she reveals the percentage of resources, from impeccable sources, that were no longer retrievable from the original hyperlink a mere 27 months after their appearance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/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/47/reese/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/reese/ Surveying the current metasearch tools landscape, it is somewhat surprising to find so few non-commercial implementations available. This is especially true considering that, as a group, the library community has cultivated a very vibrant open source community over the past ten or so years. One wonders then, why this particular service has been ceded to the world of commercial vendors. One can speculate that the creation and management of a metasearch knowledge base has likely played a large role [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/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/krowne/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/krowne/ In this article we present a framework, QMSearch, which improves searching in the context of scholarly digital libraries by taking a 'quality metrics-aware' approach. This means the digital library deployer or end-user can customise how results are presented, including aspects of both ranking and organisation in general, based upon standard metadata attributes and quality indicators derived from the general library information environment. To achieve this, QMSearch is generalised across metadata fields, quality indicators, and user communities, by abstracting all of these notions and rendering them into one or more 'organisation specifications' which are used by the system to determine how to organise results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/hiom/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/hiom/ IntroductionThis article will describe the history of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [1], charting the development of subject gateways in the UK since 1993 to the present day. To help set the history of the gateways in the wider context of the resource discovery landscape in the last decade or so, readers are encouraged to refer to Lorcan Dempsey’s recent article on the development of digital libraries [2]. A timeline of the RDN’s development is also available to serve as a summary of its history. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/search-engines/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/search-engines/ Unfortunately, I was unable to contribute to the decennial issue at the editors' invitation due to a family bereavement, but since it was such a good idea to take a look back at where we were, and then relate it to the present day and beyond, I did not want to miss the opportunity in this issue. Where Were We?When starting any kind of retrospective, the first place to visit is always going to be the Wayback Machine, or the Internet Archive [1] as it is also known. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/vanveen/ "I want my browser to recognise information in Web pages and offer me functionality to remix it with relevant information from other services. I want to control which services are offered to me and how they are offered." In this article I discuss the ingredients that enable users to benefit from a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by combining services according to their preferences. This concept can be summarised as a user-accessible machine-readable knowledge base of service descriptions in combination with a user agent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/robertson/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/robertson/ With the wider deployment of repositories, the Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is becoming a common method of supporting interoperability between repositories and services. It provides 'an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting' [1]. Nodes in a network using this protocol are 'data providers' or 'service providers'. Although repository software supporting OAI-PMH is not overly complex [2], without programming skills or access to technical support, implementing and supporting a repository is not an entirely straightforward task. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ On 14 March 2006 we found ourselves back at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) for the 2006 JISC Conference. The annual conference [1] is both an opportunity for JISC to platform the variety of activities it funds and for delegates to learn about the full range of JISC's work by participating in seminars, debates, workshops and demonstrations. This report tries to capture the air of the event through a series of session snapshots. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-repositories-rpt/ The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond. These clusters seek to encompass many of the diverse issues being considered across the Digital Repositories Programme, including the different repository types (e-Learning and Scientific data), the infrastructural and technical issues (Integrating infrastructure and Machine services) and the social, cultural and legal topics (Legal and policy, Personal resource management strategies and Preservation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Since volume 36 (2002), the editor of ARIST has been Professor Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, Bloomington. Professor Cronin's introduction to the 2004 volume highlighted some of the difficulties with planning a publication like ARIST, noting that it has a habit of not quite turning out as it was initially conceived [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/oppenheim-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/oppenheim-rvw/ This 420-page paperback includes the papers of a 2002 conference on the history of information retrieval systems. It comprises 33 contributed papers (with remarkably little overlap), together with details about the contributors and an excellent index. The papers are organised in five broad sections - interdisciplinary perspectives, organising and managing information, chemical informatics, national developments and developments in international systems (such as INIS and AGRIS). Some of the contributors are old-timers recalling how things were from their own perspectives, but most papers were accounts based on researching and interpreting the (often obscure) old literature. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/royan-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/royan-rvw/ There is no shortage of guides to the delivery of e-services in learning centres, although often their emphasis is on academic rather than local authority institutions [1]. In the public library field, it could be argued that more than enough journal articles and monographs on the topic have already been churned out in the 8 years since the publication of New Library: the People's Network [2]. Is there really room on the shelves for one more? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/editorial/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/editorial/ Ten Years of PathfindingJohn MacColl reflects upon the choice of Ariadne’s name in the light of the publication’s guiding mission. The Follett Report [1] which started everything off, appeared in December 1993. When the subsequent JISC call for proposals for electronic library project activity appeared in the summer of 1994, I was only a few months into my new post as a Depute Librarian at Britain’s newest (and probably smallest) university, the University of Abertay Dundee. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/maccoll/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/maccoll/ Introduction: A ‘Googly’ for Libraries?A googly, or a ‘wrong’un’, is a delivery which looks like a normal leg spinner but actually turns towards the batsmen, like an off break, rather than away from the bat. (BBC Sport Academic Web site [1]. Search result found in Google).How should we understand Google? Libraries still feel like the batsman at whom something has been bowled which looks familiar, but then turns out to be a nasty threat. 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/dcc-fpw-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dcc-fpw-rpt/ This DCC [1] and Wellcome Library [2] workshop sought to provide insight into ways that content creators and curators can ensure ongoing access to reliable Web sites over time. The issue is not merely one of archiving; it is also about designing and managing a Web site so that it is suitable for long-term preservation with minimum intervention by curators to ensure the content remains reliable and understandable through time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Web Tools for EU Research Projects Tuesday 7 February 2006 - Cambridge, UK EU research projects share lots of information and involve joint working amongst organisations from many different countries. There are many software tools which can support them, from shared workspaces to resource planning and reporting tools, from electronic meetings to web content management. But which tools are effective for EU research projects? Management tools for coordinating a construction project are rarely suitable for the more uncertain world of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/lynch/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/lynch/ This brief paper explores changing conceptions of digital libraries and how they fit into the broader information flows and information landscapes in Higher Education and beyond. It includes a few observations comparing how thinking about these questions has evolved within the very different planning, funding and implementation contexts in the United Kingdom and the United States. The central argument here is that, over the past decade in the Higher Education and research sphere, we have seen several large-scale technological shifts, with all of the accompanying organisational, social and cultural changes, proceeding largely independently - the transformations of scholarly practice, of teaching and learning, of scholarly communication, and of 'traditional' research library services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ We have recently come through several decennial celebrations: the W3C, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, D-Lib Magazine, and now Ariadne. What happened clearly in the mid-nineties was the convergence of the Web with more pervasive network connectivity, and this made our sense of the network as a shared space for research and learning, work and play, a more real and apparently achievable goal. What also emerged - at least in the library and research domains - was a sense that it was also a propitious time for digital libraries to move from niche to central role as part of the information infrastructure of this new shared space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/carr/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/carr/ User-focus in the Academic LibraryIt may seem odd to say it but, even in a self-respecting part of the information world like the academic library, users have not always been at the centre of the practitioner’s professional attention. Over thirty years ago, the writer heard a long-serving Head of Reader Services (in a major university library that will remain nameless) announce, after the redecoration of his library’s main catalogue hall had completely obliterated the library’s original hand-painted directional signs, that ‘if our students are bright enough, they should still be able to find their way around the place’! 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/day-rvw/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Since volume 36, the editor of ARIST has been Professor Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, Bloomington. The twelve chapters in volume 38 are divided into three sections, dealing with theory, technology, and policy. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/buildinginfogrid-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/buildinginfogrid-rpt/ The Danish Electronic Research Library (DEFF) [1] offered a two-day event, Building the Info Grid [2], focusing on the recent and upcoming developments in digital information management, more specifically on the possibilites and challenges of providing integrated access to scholarly content and communication, via distributed technological services and infrastructural software. In this report we will not cover all aspects of the conference, but rather focus on the specific topics that were the binding glue throughout the conference: Service-oriented Architecture (SOA); the Grid/Information Grid; Rights Management; Single Sign-on; and Google Scholar [3] development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/greig-nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] was a three-year project (August 2002-July 2005) based at the University of Glasgow and funded by JISC's Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2]. The project established a number of different services for research material at the University of Glasgow. This approach enabled us to explore an institutional repository model which used different software (ePrints, DSpace and PKP Harvester) for different content, including: Published and peer-reviewed papersPre-prints, grey literature and thesesAdditional services were also developed including an open access e-journal (JeLit) and a subject-based repository for the Erpanet Project (ERPAePRINTS). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dsr-rpt/ The number of available online digital collections is growing all the time and with this comes the need to discover these collections, both by machine (m2m) and by end-users. There is also a trend towards service-orientated architectures and a likely critical part of this will be service registries to assist with discovering services andtheir associated collections. UKOLN and the JISC Information Environment Services Registry Project (IESR) [1] organised a two-day workshop to look at some of the issues that are likely to be present in building a distributed approach. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/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/notay/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/notay/ There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that people learn better when visual and sound materials are used in a teaching context. Researchers from a range of disciplines have also suggested that visual materials are of great value either as a core focus or to support the research process. For example, studies looking at the effect of visual materials in education have explored how both short-term and long-term memory is associated with the different hemispheres of the brain, but also which kind of information is best retained through the use of images. 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/awre/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Under the aegis of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) Portals Programme [1] development projects have taken place to investigate the use of portals as the presentation path for a variety of search tools. A major output from these projects has been the development of a portal interface, a Web site that users could come to in order to make use of the functionality that the portal provided, particularly searching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/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/45/search-engines/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/search-engines/ I last looked at image search engines in my column [1] back in September 2000 , which in Internet terms is probably equivalent to several decades, so I decided that it was time to revisit the subject to see what has changed. Having recently become interested in photography, I know that I certainly use a lot of image search engines now that I didn't use then, but there are also one or two old faithfuls still out there. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/miller/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/miller/ 'Web 2.0' is a hot story out on the blogosphere right now, with an army of advocates facing off against those who argue that it is nothing new, and their allies with painful memories of Dot Com hysteria in the 1990s. Even respectable media outlets such as Business Week are getting excited, and an expensive conference in San Francisco at the start of October had to turn people away as it passed over 800 registrations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ The ILI 2005 ConferenceThe ILI (Internet Librarian International) 2005 Conference [1], the seventh in the series, was held in the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London over 10-11 September 2005. This conference is aimed at information professionals and librarians who are using, developing and implementing Internet, Intranet and Web-based services in their daily work. One of the main themes at the conference explored at the conference was the potential for technologies such as Blogs and Wikis within a library context. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/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/white-rvw/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/white-rvw/ As the author of three books, and about to start work on a fourth, I do begin to doubt my own sanity. Last year I wrote The Content Management Handbook in the course of around four months, and even then by the time it was published with great speed by Facet Publishing, several of the comments in the book had been overtaken by events. This is a constant concern for any author, but especially those working on high technology topics. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/gerhardt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/gerhardt/ Last April the BBC, together with Channel 4 Television, the British Film Institute and the Open University, launched the Creative Archive Licence. It was a small act, but it could prove to be a momentous step in how we use moving image and audio in our public and cultural life. Personal MediaTake the example of Jim, who runs a small charity to support patients - and their families - with multiple sclerosis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ EEVL Xtra - In a NutshellEEVL Xtra [1] is an exciting new, free service which helps people find articles, books, the best Web sites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing. EEVL Xtra cross-searches (hence the ‘X’ in Xtra) over twenty different collections/ databases relevant to engineering, mathematics and computing, and includes content from over fifty publishers and providers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lauke/ In a previous issue of Ariadne [1], I gave a brief overview of Mozilla Firefox [2] and introduced a few of its most useful extensions. In this article, we will use one of these extensions, Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar [3], to aid us in a preliminary assessment of a web site's accessibility. Although awareness of web accessibility has steadily increased in recent years, many web developers are still uncertain about how to evaluate their sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/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/craven/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/craven/ The European Union (EU) is increasingly focused on design for all issues and ensuring that access to information and telecommunications meets the needs of all people in order to address the digital divide and create an information society for all. This includes the estimated 37 million people with disabilities in the EU, as well as other groups who could face barriers to e-inclusion such as older people and people with access limitations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/trafford/ Public participation in the Internet has continued to boom, aided in no small measure by the 'weblog' (or, simply, 'blog'), one of the most accessible means of online publication, a term that is rapidly entering common parlance. Blogs are authored by people from many walks of life and are of many kinds: for instance, Penny Garrod has shown how they can support reading groups and community links, such as news from local councillors [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/newsline/ TASI Offers Workshops over Summer and Autumn Months The JISC-funded Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) is offering a number of workshops in the coming months, of which two below are given as examples. Building a departmental resource 11 August 2005 This workshop aims to demonstrate the steps for creating, maintaining and delivering an image collection. Through a range of hands-on activities, attendees will investigate suitable Image Management Systems (IMS), be introduced to Metadata, and consider its practical application. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/planet-sosig/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/planet-sosig/ Academics Look to Improve Their Internet Research SkillsOver 130 academics, librarians and researchers attended the SOSIG “Social Science Online” seminars this year, which aimed to help staff develop their Internet research skills and look at ways of teaching these skills to students. It seems interest in this area is growing, especially as Internet research skills are now recognised as an essential part of the undergraduate curriculum in many subjects according to the Benchmark Statements of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/chapman/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/chapman/ The launch of Revealweb [1] on 16 September 2003 was a big step forward for anyone with visual impairment in the UK. For the first time, they had access to a Web-based union catalogue of resources in accessible formats and information about the producers and suppliers of these materials. Until that point there had been no single place which provided information accessible by everyone; in effect, these people were second-class citizens in the information world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/search-engines/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/search-engines/ If, like me, you spend a lot of your time looking at search engines and search engine technology, you like a little variety in your life. It's always fun to look at new search engines and to see what is happening in the industry. However, while all roads may well lead to Rome, all discussions on search engines eventually return to Google; there is no getting away from the fact that Google is doing more in the search engine industry than anyone else. 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/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/eevl/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/eevl/ Hot TopicsEEVL, the Internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing, provides access to a wide range of information on the three subjects covered through its Internet Resource Catalogue and various additional services. Hot Topics [1], a new feature added recently, gives access to in-depth reports on topical engineering and technology issues. The Hot Topics are freely available, and are provided through CSA [2]. CSA is an information company that specialises in publishing and distributing, in print and electronically, 100 bibliographic and full-text databases and journals in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities, and technology. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/mcleish/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/mcleish/ What and Why Is Shibboleth?One of the major issues that faces all today’s Internet users is identity management: how to prove to a Web site that you are who you claim you are, and do so securely enough to prevent someone else being able to convince the Web site that they are you. There are many initiatives attacking the problem, with approaches both technical and legal. Shibboleth [1] is a relatively new piece of software which concentrates on one specific area: trust management within the Higher Education community and between that community and the academic publishers which service it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/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/chudnov/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/chudnov/ Library users have never before had so many options for finding, collecting and sharing information. Many users abandon old information management tools whenever new tools are easier, faster, more comprehensive, more intuitive, or simply 'cooler.' Many successful new tools adhere to a principle of simplicity - HTML made it simple for anyone to publish on the Web; XML made it simple for anyone to exchange more strictly defined data; and RSS made it simple to extract and repurpose information from any kind of published resource [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/planet-sosig/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/planet-sosig/ ESRC Launches Unique Online Research Resource for Social SciencesA major new Web site offering unrivalled access to high-quality social and economic research is soon to be launched in the UK. Created by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), ESRC Society Today [1] will provide academics, students and researchers with a valuable free digest of social sciences research currently available, planned and in progress. As well as bringing together all ESRC-funded research, the Web site will provide a gateway to other key online resources from the UK such as Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG), the UK Data Archive and the Office of National Statistics - as well as international coverage from services such as Europa and Social Science Research Network (SSRN). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/search-engines/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/search-engines/ My recent articles for Ariadne have tended to focus on specific developments in the field of Internet search, so I thought that it was about time to get back to some basics and have a look at which search engine to use for particular types of query you may have. The idea for this column arose out of my own bookmarks, which I arrange according to particular criteria, and I created a simple Web page on my own site to list them [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/wakingupinbl-rpt/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/wakingupinbl-rpt/ ‘The existence of EEBO has completely transformed my teaching as well as my own scholarly life -both entirely for the better’. Regius Professor Quentin Skinner, University of Cambridge.Delegates may have been surprised to hear about a pamphlet discussing Mary II’s breasts as the subject for academic discussion at the ‘Waking up in the British Library’ event hosted by the John Rylands University Library. But it served only to illustrate the kind of serendipitous discoveries that Early English Books Online (EEBO) [1] facilitates in teaching and research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/johnston/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/johnston/ The JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR) Project [1] is funded by JISC through its Shared Services Programme to develop a metadata schema registry as a pilot shared service for the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE). Partners in the project are UKOLN, University of Bath and the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol. The Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS) and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) are contributing to the project in an advisory capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/brack-rvw/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/brack-rvw/ This book is the result of efforts by the library at the University of Surrey (and the University of Surrey Roehampton) to improve library provision for researchers, and it is also based on the experience of 'front-line' library staff in their day-to-day interaction with academic staff and students. Anyone who has worked on a library help-desk or information point will recognise the content of this book, and will be pleased to find that there is now something that researchers can use to help themselves, all put together in a slim volume. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/eevl/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/eevl/ If the title of this column caused you to anticipate a new blockbuster featuring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, then I apologise. It's far more interesting than that! Four Search EnginesFour new search engines from EEVL make it possible to search the content of over 250 free full-text ejournals in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. EEVL's Ejournal Search Engines (EESE) are divided according to subject content. The Computing ejournal search engine [1] searches the content of 60 freely available full-text ejournals in computing. 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/lohan/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/lohan/ University College Dublin is the largest single university institution in Ireland, with a student population of approximately 22,000. The Irish Freedom of Information Acts 1997 and 2003 [1], like all similar legislation worldwide, empower individuals to examine, appraise, and analyse government and public sector accountability and transparency. Applying initially only to departments and offices of central government from 21 April 1998, the legislation was gradually extended over the following years to encompass a range of public sector organisations, designated 'public bodies', with Irish third level educational institutions [2] becoming prescribed public bodies on 21 October 2001. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/cc-interops-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/cc-interops-rpt/ Introduction Keynote Speech: The Concept of a ‘National Catalogue’ - Jean Sykes Interoperability: Architectures and Connections - John Gilby & Ashley Sanders Making Sense of Hybrid Union Catalogues: Collection Landscaping in Complex Information Environments - Gordon Dunsire Interoperability: The Performance of Institutional Catalogues - Fraser Nicolaides & George Macgregor User Behaviour in Large-scale Resource Discovery Contexts - Dick Hartley Futures and Plenary Question & Answer Session - Jean Sykes & Bob Sharpe http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/rahtz/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/rahtz/ Most Web sites of any size want to offer a facility to perform a free-text search of their content. While we all at least claim to believe in the possibilities of the semantic web, and take care over our navigation aids and sitemaps, we know that sooner or later our readers want to type 'hedgehog' into a search box. Yes, even http://www.microsoft.com [1] returns plenty of hits if you try this. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/tonkin/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/tonkin/ Introduction: What is a Wiki?Software use cases are necessarily incomplete, a failing which seems to intensify in reverse proportion to the degree of simplicity in the software in question. Complex software responds to a given set of requirements, simple software as a partial solution to a much broader problem set. More concisely put, certain ideas just seem to catch on, particularly the simple, brilliant, ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ class of ideas. 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/biome/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/biome/ BIOME Hot TopicsBIOME “Hot Topics” are proving extremely popular with lots of positive feedback. We have received suggestions for particular areas of interest and recent themes have included breast cancer, AIDS, and pet ownership. So check out the new topics at Hot Topics [1]. BIOME Mailing ListAre you interested in finding out more about BIOME? Join the BIOME JISCmail to keep up to date with developments [2]. BIOME Search Plugin for FirefoxUsers of the Mozilla Firefox browser may have noticed that up in the top right corner of Firefox, there is a handy search box that allows you to search various databases and search engines from within the browser. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/digi-histories-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/digi-histories-rpt/ For the last three years the RHS has held a seminar in memory of Gerald Aylmer, the purpose of which is an exchange of ideas between historians and archivists. Digitisation was to be the subject for 2004. The AHC proposing a conference on the same subject, the two bodies came together to present this joint event. The format of the conference was that of four sessions, each with two panels, except for the last. 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/tapintobath-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/tapintobath-rpt/ As Local Studies Librarian for Bath & North East Somerset, UK, I am expected to know the whereabouts of original material and collections relating to the history of the local area. The recently launched Tap Into Bath online database is the ideal format for discovering this. The background to the project and the technicalities of the database were previously reported in Ariadne 40 [1] in July 2004 by Alison Baud and Ann Chapman. 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/42/dunning/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/dunning/ The Web statistics tool which measures hits on the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) Web site [1] provides some telling information. The most common search engine keyword by which users discover the AHDS is not 'computers', 'humanities', 'research' or 'arts', but that old bugbear 'copyright'. Although the Arts and Humanities Data Service advises on a wide range of issues, such as data capture, metadata and funding proposals, copyright is just as popular a reason for users to arrive at the Web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-rvw/ There are two distinct aspects covered by this book: information representation and information retrieval. It is refreshing to see a book seek to address these together, as it is important to recognise how interlinked they are. As the author herself indicates in the preface, ' - two chapters of this book are devoted exclusively to information representation, a step that must be taken before information becomes retrievable'. These two chapters certainly bring a fresh perspective to considerations of information retrieval, coming as they do at the start of the book and influencing later discussion. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/parkes-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/parkes-rvw/ This is the 5th collection of papers from the biennial Libraries Without Walls Conference (LWW5). Reference to the preceding 4 volumes published in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002 respectively is rewarding to see how discourse and practice has developed. Access collaboration is now commonplace; 135 institutions are members of the UK Libraries plus access scheme, 157 are signed up for Sconul Research Extra. The Peoples Network has put 4000 Internet centres into public libraries, Athens passwords and off-campus access to databases has provided access to a growing collection of electronic content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/foster-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/foster-rvw/ In 2000, John Feather concluded the 3rd edition certain that libraries would endure as concrete entities due to the investment of time and money they represent and as bookstores. In this latest edition he is no longer sure, describing the library as no longer a location, but a concept and asking such tough questions as what place do librarians occupy in the context of these new developments and what challenges to our fundamental attitudes and skills must we overcome as we adapt to changing times. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-cree/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-cree/ The JISC-funded PORTAL Project [1] examined and established which services users wished to have made available through an institutional portal. The results of this project have provided firm guidance to institutional portal developers in planning the services they wished to present. In particular, there was common demand amongst users for access to library-based services and resources within a portal environment. Portal technology developments at the time of the PORTAL Project were not, unfortunately, at a stage that allowed full testing of the findings from this research. 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/eevl/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/eevl/ New Sustainable Development section added to the EEVL Catalogue of Engineering ResourcesIt is now tacitly recognised that engineers, across all sectors of engineering, play an important role in shaping our environment and therefore have a professional responsibility towards ensuring sustainable development. Sustainable development, defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) as ‘Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ has been integrated in most engineering curricula throughout the nation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/editorial/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/editorial/ For someone who is relatively ill at ease with numbers, it comes as no surprise that our lives grow increasingly controlled by them in ways which perhaps Orwell did not 'foresee' in 1984. Winston Smith tries very hard to remain an individual, as I hope do we all; indeed it is most often the great individuals whom we either cherish as a national treasure [1], or loathe most enthusiastically, but to whom we are rarely indifferent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/campbell/ The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been able to achieve new business practices such as digitising its collections and hosting federated search services by exploiting recent standards including the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), handles for persistent identification, and metadata schemas for new types of content. Each instantiation of the OAI-PMH opens up new ways of creating and managing our digital libraries while making them more accessible for learning, teaching and research purposes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/chapman/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/chapman/ The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique machine-readable identification number, defined in ISO Standard 2108, which is applied to books. As a result of electronic publishing and other changes in the publishing industry, the numbering capacity of the ISBN system is being consumed at a much faster rate than was originally anticipated when the standard was designed in the late 1960s. While we will not run out of ISBNs tomorrow, it will happen before too long and plans are already in hand to provide a solution before the crisis point is reached. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/davey/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/davey/ JISC currently funds thirty-four services across the UK. These can be divided into Network Services (e.g. JANET), Content Services (e.g. BizEd, BUFVC), Development Services (e.g. TechWatch, UKOLN), Support Services (e.g. Regional Support Centres) and Expert Services (e.g. JISC Legal). The people and communities that they serve are varied, but what unites them is that, through JISC-funding, they all carry out some function which supports the needs of UK Further and Higher Education and research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues...The JISC-funded CC-interop Project completed its work during 2004 and now is holding an event to disseminate the key findings of the project. The project built on the work of the successful eLib Phase 3 "Clumps" projects and investigated three broad areas to inform about interoperability between physical and distributed union catalogues. Find out about: how distributed and large physical union catalogues can interact, including the building of a distributed catalogue capable of accepting remote Z39. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/biome/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/biome/ BIOME Hot TopicsBIOME contains a wealth of information on a wide range of topics in the health and life sciences and we aim to keep introducing new features in line with user needs. As of October 2004 we are trialling a new fortnightly feature - ‘Hot Topics’. Subject experts within the BIOME team will choose an area of interest or a current topic and provide links to key sites in our database for that theme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/planet-sosig/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/planet-sosig/ A Digital Day in BathOn a stormy wet Tuesday, I battled my way through the Bath University campus to attend the 2004 European Conference on Digital Libraries. The keynote address by Neil McLean from IMS Australia was called The Ecology of Repository Services: A Cosmic View and it lived up to its name, being a wide-ranging look at the explosion of interest in digital resources and e-learning. People are just starting to think about the lifecycle of online resources and how to manage them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/search-engines/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/search-engines/ In the last edition of Ariadne, I wrote about a few search engines that had come to my attention. Obviously the summer months are a fruitful period of development for search engine producers, because I've got a new crop to write about again! There are also some useful Web pages about search engines and developments in existing search engines that I've also discovered, so I'll be making mention of those as well. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ The conference on the sustainability of Big Lottery Fund projects was attended by about fifty participants from across the country and there were displays by members of the Sense of the South West Consortium, who organised the event. Approaches to SustainabilityThe first speaker was Chris Anderson, Head of Programmes at the Big Lottery Fund, successor to NOF, (New Opportunities Fund). He described the nof-digitise [1] projects, funded to the tune of £50m, as a great experiment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ The Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) [1] has been developed at Edinburgh University Library [2] to help provide an E-Thesis service within an institution using DSpace [3]. It has been developed as part of the Theses Alive! [4] Project under funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [5], as part of the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) [6] Programme. This article looks at DSpace, the repository system initially developed by Hewlett-Packard and MIT and subsequently made available as a community-owned package. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/edina-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/edina-rpt/ EDINA [1] held its first general information event for the Higher and Further Education communities on Tuesday 11 May 2004. EDINA Exchange took place in the National E-Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh. The day began with an introduction by EDINA Director Peter Burnhill, who took us through the programme for the day, and highlighted some of EDINA's notable recent achievements. The morning session then began with presentations on the various subject and resource type clusters in which EDINA is active. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/morgan/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/morgan/ This article is an introduction to the "brother and sister" Web Service protocols named Search/Retrieve Web Service (SRW) and Search/Retrieve URL Service (SRU) with an emphasis on the later. More specifically, the article outlines the problems SRW/U are intended to solve, the similarities and differences between SRW and SRU, the complimentary nature of the protocols with OAI-PMH, and how SRU is being employed in a sponsored NSF (National Science Foundation) grant called OCKHAM to facilitate an alerting service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/young-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/young-rvw/ Marylaine Block will be well-known to many readers of Ariadne - perhaps chiefly for her 'Neat New Stuff' and ExLibris bulletins. As its name suggests, 'Neat New Stuff' is a weekly compilation of noteworthy sites Block has discovered in her Web crawling. Her other weekly online publication, ExLibris, is an 'e-zine' containing interesting and provocative articles, reviews and tidbits of information from Block and others. If you were setting out to do this kind of current awareness- and consciousness-raising these days, you'd probably choose to set up a blog with RSS feed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ A Little HistoryCornucopia is a searchable database of collections held by cultural heritage institutions throughout the UK. It is developed and managed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and was initially established in response to the Government’s Treasures in Trust report which called for a way to be found of recognising the richness and diversity of our collections. The original Cornucopia was set up in 1998. MLA, (then the Museums & Galleries Commission (MGC)), contracted Cognitive Applications to develop the site featuring data from the 62 museums in England holding collections which are ‘Designated’ as being of outstanding importance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/eevl/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/eevl/ What do the users of EEVL [1], the Internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing, really want from the service? Do they want EEVL to develop more portal services? Do they want more expansion of EEVL's catalogue of Internet resources? Do they want other things? The only way to find out what users of an information service really want is to ask them. This is what EEVL did earlier this year through a Web-based questionnaire. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/editorial/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/editorial/ Reading the interesting points Karen Coyle has to make in Rights Management and Digital Library Requirements puts me in mind, not so much of horses actually, as of one of cartoonist Gary Larson's cows. The bovine unfortunate in question, bedecked with shower cap, is being pushed along by the rest of the herd and complaining that no sooner has she stepped into the shower than some fool cries 'Stampede!' Much the same effect may be claimed from the fallout of the Napster affair and the sharing of millions of music files. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/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/biome/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/biome/ BIOME Database Continues to IncreaseThe BIOME database [1] now contains over 25,000 resources and continues to grow. To see the weekly additions go to BIOME what’s new [2]. BIOME Straight to your DesktopBIOME has been making lots of changes to its Web site. With the help of Vicky Wiseman, our Portal Development Officer, a new feature added to the site is an RSS newsfeed of the latest headlines form BIOME. RSS allows news headlines to be shared between different Web sites; they can be embedded directly into your own or you institutional Web page very simply. 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/public-libraries/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/public-libraries/ Weblogs in EducationWeblogs and weblogging, blogs and blogging - many terms are used to describe this increasingly popular Web-based activity, but is a library Web site the right place to host a weblog? Are weblogs simply another trendy tool for those with time to spare and something to say? Consider this from the BBC news Web site: ‘Weblogs are sometimes criticised for being the self-obsessed ramblings of people who have little to say and too much time on their hands in which to do it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/search-engines/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/search-engines/ People are of course aware that Google isn't the only search engine out there, by any manner or means, and although many people regard it as the biggest and the best, this certainly isn't the case for those organisations who decide that they want a share of the search engine market. This month I'm going to look at some of the new search engines that have appeared, and will see how many of them make the grade. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/baud-chapman/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/baud-chapman/ Since 1999, when it was first proposed to use metadata for collection-level description within the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [1], there has been steadily growing interest in this new method of supporting resource discovery. A number of collection-level description databases have now been created in the UK, funded through national initiatives. However, little documentation is available on how these were designed and created. This project explores setting up a database for a small geographic area, using best practice and with full documentation to support other local projects in this field. 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/40/cilip-cig-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/cilip-cig-rpt/ The conference was aimed at information professionals interested in looking at issues that are changing cataloguing and indexing. The latest international developments in metadata standards, cataloguing codes, taxonomies and controlled languages unlock new opportunities for cataloguers' involvement. They also raise complex interoperability issues which go beyond traditional cataloguing and highlight the need for the acquisition of new skills in the digital information environment. The event focused on three interlinked themes: new and emerging standards, collection-level description and professional education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ The last ten years have seen a huge investment in the creation of electronic resources for use by researchers, students and teachers. Increasing amounts of money are being spent now on providing portals and virtual learning environments (or learning management systems) for use within institutions and organisations, or for people focusing on particular subject areas. A portal is defined by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as - " - a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/chudnov/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/chudnov/ 'Library groupware' - a set of networked tools supporting information management for individuals and for distributed groups - is a new class of service we may choose to provide in our libraries. In its simplest form, library groupware would help people manage information as they move through the diversity of online resources and online communities that make up today's information landscape. Complex implementations might integrate equally well with enterprise-wide systems such as courseware and portals on a university campus, and desktop file storage on private individual computers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/web-watch/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/web-watch/ In order to identify the extent to which visual designs assist users to locate particular elements that might be contained on a Web page (such as search, site-wide navigation, and local navigation), we used a usability testing method described by Tullis [1] to test a set of five Web page design concepts. All text elements on each of the designs were "greeked", or turned into nonsense text. This meant that users had to rely on the communicative aspects of each design in order to perform their tasks. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/www2004-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/www2004-rpt/ WWW2004 [1] was the 13th conference in the series of international World Wide Web conferences organised by the IW3C2 (International World Wide Web Conference Committee). This was the annual gathering of Web researchers and technologists to present the latest work on the Web and Web standardisation at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This conference is very much a networking event in both the technical and personal sense. For the last 3 years it has had pervasive wireless networking ('wi-fi') available, allowing interaction with the sessions and the speakers during the conference. 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/brack-rvw/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/brack-rvw/ The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook has been written aiming to fill the gaps in Internet users' knowledge by providing a better understanding of what is out there, and by illustrating useful starting points, in order to help users find their way to the most useful 'nooks and crannies' in this global information resource. Randolph Hocks' years of experience as an information professional, trainer, and reference librarian have shown him that far too many people rely on a single search tool (currently Google, as research and personal experience have demonstrated [1]) and are unaware of the other possibilities; searchers are in need of guidance and education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/oppenheim-rvw/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/oppenheim-rvw/ This substantial (470-page) paperback is the second edition of one of the few UK-based textbooks on information retrieval (IR). The first edition appeared in 1999, and was criticised for being badly out of date and at times too complex for its intended undergraduate and postgraduate student audience. How does this second edition stack up? The first thing to say is that it is a lot better than the first edition - there are a number of new chapters that are well written and up to date, and some of the chapters that also appeared in the first edition have had errors removed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/eevl/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/eevl/ EEVL is the Internet guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in Higher and Further Education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/terminologies-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/terminologies-rpt/ Co-sponsored by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and UKOLN, the JISC Terminology Services Workshop was held at the CBI Conference Centre in London on 13 February 2004. Terminology services are networked services which use knowledge organisation systems (such as ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and classification systems) that can be accessed at certain stages of the production and use of metadata. Chris Rusbridge, Director of Information Services at the University of Glasgow, welcomed the participants and outlined the primary purposes of the workshop: to give an overview of research and work on networked terminology services in multiple domains and to inform future JISC development activities in this area. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/newsline/ The Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) - 24-26 June, TorontoThe Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) is the international meeting for organisations and individuals involved in the preservation and restoration of original image and sound materials. This year, JTS is scheduled to be held in Toronto, Canada, June 24-26, 2004. Preliminary program information is now available on the JTS 2004 website. See: http://www.jts2004.org/english/program.htm For more information please see the website or contact the organization responsible for coordinating the event on behalf of the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA): http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/planet-sosig/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/planet-sosig/ Getting more from RegardRegard is the online research service of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It is an essential tool for anyone needing to know about UK social science. There have been some major recent developments on Regard. OpenURLsBibliographic information is fine, but users really want to get the actual item, be it a full-text article or a book. Regard is introducing OpenURLs to many of its most popular records, enabling users to go straight to the full text (if it is available online) or, if it is a book, to the appropriate page in Amazon, to read reviews and perhaps order a copy. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/public-libraries/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/public-libraries/ The "wonderfulness of public libraries is inarguable" says Deborah Moggagh on BBC Radio - but are there enough books? --It has been said that people only value that which they fear they are about to lose, and the traditional library and its books are no exception. The library as a quiet place full of books is, in many cases, giving way to the multi-purpose community centre featuring multimedia resources, cybercafés, ranks of computers, and even crèches. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/search-engines/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/search-engines/ When I run my courses on advanced Internet searching I always ask the delegates the question 'Which search engine do you tend to use most often?' A few years ago I could always expect to get half a dozen different answers, ranging from AltaVista to Yahoo! with a few others in between. Now however I can almost guarantee that it will be a single answer, and that's 'Google'. We're all aware of the power of Google, and the way in which, in the last couple of years, it has almost totally dominated the search engine scene. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/awre/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/awre/ When using various Web sites for work or leisure most of us have favourites that we start with and prefer interacting with. The reasons why we prefer one site over another may not be clear to us, but the interface of many Web sites is commonly tested to make using them as easy and straightforward as possible. Making that interface between the user and the functionality of the Web site intuitive and easy to navigate will encourage users and increase traffic. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ aquifer nunderground bed or layer yielding ground water for wells and springs etcNisus Thesaurus 1.0.1. All rights reserved. Using the WordNet 1.7 database, © 2001 Princeton University Google [1] is great. Personally, I use it every day, and it is undeniably extremely good at finding stuff in the largely unstructured chaos that is the public Web. However, like most tools, Google cannot do everything. Faced with a focussed request to retrieve richly structured information such as that to be found in the databases of our Memory Institutions [2], hospitals, schools, colleges or universities, Google and others among the current generation of Internet search engines struggle. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/coelho-rvw/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/coelho-rvw/ If you love Boolean logic, online research and would like to work from home - this book is for you. But before you get carried away - just a reminder that you need more than a computer and a phone line to make it on your own as an independent information professional. This is a collection of interviews with eleven successful 'super searchers' who run their own businesses. They share their secrets, the challenges, the rewards, the big picture and the detail. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ The Theses Alive! [1] Project, based at Edinburgh University Library and funded under the JISC Fair Programme [2], is aiming to produce, among other things, a software solution for institutions in the UK to implement their own E-theses or Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) online submission system and repository. In order to achieve this it has been necessary to examine existing packages that may provide all or part of the solution we desire before considering what extra development we may need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/biome/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/biome/ BIOME is a free service from the Resource Discovery Network that offers free access to an easy-to-use and searchable catalogue of high-quality Internet resources covering the health and life sciences. The Internet holds a plethora of information and is a key source of material to support health and life science teaching and learning in Further Education. It can be, however, difficult to find high-quality and relevant materials. A range of commercial and other search engines can help simplify the process of finding information on the Web, but many have no mechanisms to filter out unreliable information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/altis/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/altis/ Anyone who uses the Internet on a regular basis is only too aware of the problem of finding good quality, reliable information using commercial search engines such as Google and Alta Vista. For students and teachers, short on time to complete assignments or prepare lessons, sifting through thousands of search results to find relevant information can be daunting. Altis [1] is a free, national information service. It aims to provide a trusted source for selected, high quality Internet information for students and lecturers by providing free access to the best hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism information on the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/guy/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/guy/ Throughout the eprints community there is an increasing awareness of the need for improvement in the quality of metadata and in associated quality assurance mechanisms. Some [1] feel that recent discussion of the cultural and institutional barriers to self-archiving, which have so far limited the proliferation of eprint archives in the UK, have meant that anything that is perceived as a barrier between academics and their parent institutions needs to be played down. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/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/talis-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/talis-rpt/ The day's programme [1] started with an introduction by Ken Chad, sales director at Talis who welcomed delegates. Public Libraries and Grids for LearningDavid Cheetham, project manager for the East Midlands Broadband Consortium (EMBC) gave a speech on the role of the broadband consortium, one of 10 regional networks in England established to deliver high-speed network connectivity to all Britain's schools. David gave a speech on the activities of EMBC [2] which was set up in the light of the government's pledge to connect all schools to broadband by 2005/06. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/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/ahds/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/ahds/ Established in 1995, the Arts and Humanities Data Service [1] was created with the objective of developing an infrastructure to manage the growing number of digital resources being created within the arts and humanities. One medium for discussing this initial development was Ariadne, and Daniel Greenstein and Jennifer Trant's 1996 article [2] gave a detailed account of the aims and organisation of the AHDS. Since the publication of that article, there has been little deviation in the key aims of the AHDS - collecting, describing, disseminating and preserving digital resources related to the arts and humanities, and helping develop a culture of common standards to ensure this happens within as wide a framework as possible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/woldering/ The European Library (TEL) Project [1] completed at the end of January 2004. The key aim of TEL was to investigate the feasibility of establishing a new Pan-European service which would ultimately give access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe [2]. The project was partly funded by the European Commission as an accompanying measure under the cultural heritage applications area of Key Action 3 of the Information Societies Technology (IST) research programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ The 5/99 Programme, as it became known, was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] in the year 2000. Quite simply the name, 5/99, refers to the number of a JISC circular letter. It was the fifth circular issued by the JISC in 1999. So the name is pretty meaningless to those outside the JISC or not involved in one of 54 projects that were funded via the circular. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ The Event at a GlanceWelcome - Pat HarrisThe OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services Standard - Eric Van de VeldeThe Promise and History of the OpenURL - Oliver PeschRelated Linking Standards: CrossRef and DOI - Ed PentzWhy Should Publishers Implement the OpenURL Framework? - Andrew PacePanel 1: Link Resolvers ExplainedPanel 2: Practical Perspectives for Librarians Translating Your Needs into Visions for the Future - Herbert Van de SompelQuestionsThis one-day conference, held by NISO (US National Information Standards Organization) on Wednesday 29 October at the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC, USA, attended by 150 people, was so popular it was ‘sold out’ a week before the event. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/portole/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/portole/ Abstract The PORTOLE (Providing Online Resources To Online Learning Environments) Project was a JISC-funded project which sought to produce a range of tools for tutors which could be used to enable them to discover information resources and to embed these into their course modules from within a University Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The VLE in use at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford is the Bodington system. A key deliverable of the project was to produce tools that were designed with the ease of incorporation into other VLE environments in mind. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/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/38/williams/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/williams/ The Further Education sector has put significant resources into the development of managed learning environments to support their learners, but however good the technical infrastructure, the learner experience will only be as good as the resources they can access. This is where the RDN [1] can help. The RDN provides access to leading high-quality Web sites and resources on the Internet for use in learning and teaching. It is a free service, funded by the JISC [2], specifically designed to meet the needs of students and staff in Further and Higher Education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/artifact/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/artifact/ Artifact [1] is the arts and creative industries hub of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [2] providing free searchable access to high-quality resources on the Web in the following subjects: Architecture, Art, Communications and Media, Culture, Design, Fashion and Beauty, Performing Arts and a range of general subjects such as business advice, events and exhibitions, funding, training and employment opportunities, and much more. The Artifact Internet Resource CatalogueArtifact’s core service is the Internet Resource Catalogue containing descriptions of and links to high-quality, evaluated Web sites for the arts and creative industries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/eevl/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/eevl/ "Indispensible, much better than using Google" was a comment about EEVL, the Internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing, from one FE Tutor who attended an RSC (Regional Support Centre) event last year. It is not surprising that he was enthusiastic as there is a great deal of content in EEVL of interest to staff and students in Further Education (FE). In fact, EEVL has a surprisingly wide appeal, as was recognised recently by Schoolzone, a service which features Web sites reviewed by UK teachers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/gesource/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/gesource/ GEsource [1] is the geography and environment hub of the RDN and provides free access to a fully searchable catalogue of high-quality resources on general geography, human geography, physical geography, environment, and techniques and approaches. Below is a selection of resources in GEsource that will be relevant to learning and teaching in FE: Virtual Training TutorialsA wide choice of free tutorials on how to develop Internet information skills in specific geography-related topics is available in the Training Tutorials area [2] of GEsource. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/humbul/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/humbul/ Humbul [1] is the humanities hub of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [2] and represents a sound starting point for finding quality resources in this subject area. Subject specialists have built our catalogue of evaluated resources. And they add to it every day. The goal is to make access as easy as possible to the best of what the Web has to offer in English, Religious Studies, History, Archaeology, Modern Languages and other humanities subjects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/sosig/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/sosig/ The Internet holds great potential for supporting education at FE level, but it can be fraught with difficulty. Lecturers often have very little time to spend surfing the 'Net to find useful resources for course materials and teaching, or to help their students develop Internet skills. Students can lack the skills, confidence or ability to use the Internet effectively for their study, especially given that the Internet is not exclusively about education, containing many materials that are completely inappropriate for coursework or study. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/nixon/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three-year JISC-funded project under the FAIR Programme [2] which will build a network of open access digital collections at the University of Glasgow. These collections will enable us to unlock access to a wide range of our institutional scholarly output. This output includes not only published and peer-reviewed papers but also administrative documents, research finding aids, pre-prints and theses. DAEDALUS is also a member of the CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) SHERPA Project [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/duke/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/duke/ Subject Gateways act as a main point of access to high-quality resources on the Web. They are resource discovery guides that provide links to information resources which can be whole Web sites, organisational home pages and other collections or services, themed around a specific subject, such as the physical sciences or humanities. At their core is a catalogue of rich metadata records that describe Internet resources - subject specialists identify and select the resources and create the descriptions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/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/ecdl-web-archiving-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/ecdl-web-archiving-rpt/ On 21 August 2003, the 3rd ECDL Workshop on Web Archives [1] [2] was held in Trondheim, Norway in association with the 7th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) [3]. This event was the third in a series of annual workshops that have been held in association with the ECDL conferences held in Darmstadt [4] and Rome [5]. These earlier workshops primarily focused on the activities of legal deposit libraries and the collection strategies and technologies being used by Web archiving initiatives [6]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/lindholm/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/lindholm/ The story behind Engine-e [1], a recently created robot-generated Web index, is best told by starting in 1994 with the development and maintenance of EELS (Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden) [2], a manually indexed quality-controlled subject gateway in Engineering. EELS was accompanied by the experimental robot-generated index, “All” Engineering [3], created within the DESIRE framework [4]. The solution used already in “All” Engineering is similar to that of Engine-e, but with some distinct differences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/biome/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/biome/ BIOME is currently participating in a major project to enhance interoperability between the BIOME core database and those being created by our cognate Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) Subject Centres. The partners in the project are the Resource Description Network (RDN) Hubs BIOME and ALTIS and five LTSN centres: Bioscience; Health Sciences and Practice; Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism; Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine; and Psychology. The overall aim of this project is to provide members of the health and life science communities in the UK with richer and easier access to learning and teaching resources and to act as a starting off point for future Hub/LTSN Subject Centre collaborations. 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/search-engines/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/search-engines/ There have been several additions to the world of search engines over the summer, and I thought I’d do a quick round-up of them to see how they perform. ZapMeta | Netnose | Wotbox ZapmetaZapMeta [1] is a multi-/meta-search engine that has been around since 2002, but I must confess that it has only just come to my notice. The home page is very spartan and reminds me of the way in which Google used to look when it first came out. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/miller/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/miller/ Regular readers of Ariadne and related publications possibly feel more than a little overwhelmed by the current deluge of portal-related literature; a deluge for which my colleagues and I on the PORTAL Project [1] must of course accept some responsibility. Nevertheless, with Gartner and others pointing to continued interest in enterprise portals amongst the business community, the headlong rush to ‘portalise’ everything from the Post Office to the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), and figures from the Campus Computing Project [2] suggesting that over 40% of US universities either had or were building an institutional portal in 2002, the portal in its various forms is clearly going to be with us for a while! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/day-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST ) [1] will already be familiar to many readers of Ariadne. It is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) [2]. Volume 36 is the first volume to be edited by Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, in succession to Martha Williams who edited ARIST from volumes 11 to 35. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/jisciesr/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/jisciesr/ The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) is a pilot project that has been funded by the JISC for 14 months until December 2003, under its Shared Services Programme. The Information Environment [1] aims to provide users of electronic resources in higher and further education in the UK with easy access to high quality information and learning resources. The JISC already provides numerous resources but these are unfortunately not used to their full extent, as many users are unaware of their existence and the means of access to them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/tna/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/tna/ OriginsWilliam of Normandy, having conquered England, decided in 1086 to take account of his new territory. The result was the Domesday Book (actually more than one), which now resides in the National Archives [1]. For the BBC, the 900th anniversary in 1986 presented an opportunity to produce a television series, hosted by Michael Wood. A more unusual production was to use the combination of computer and video known as interactive video to produce a kind of modern-day equivalent of William’s survey. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/eevl/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/public-libraries/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/public-libraries/ “Unless public services cooperate, broadband Britain will be going nowhere” [1]. “Libraries are sleepwalking to disaster: it’s time they woke up” [2]. Warnings, predictions of failure or even extinction seem to be a recurring theme on email lists, news alerting services, think-tank reports and in the media. Some refer to public sector failings in general, whilst others attempt to raise the collective public library conscience and consciousness, and galvanise people into action. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/justadist/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/justadist/ The PORTAL Project [1], funded under the JISC’s Focus on Access to Institutional Resources, (FAIR) Programme [2], aims to explore a range of issues relating to the deployment of institutional portals within the UK tertiary education sector [3]. In issue 35 [4], Liz Pearce discussed the ‘Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals’ report [5] which formed Work Package 3 of the project. Building on both the data and the analysis of Work Package 3, the recently published report ‘Stakeholder Requirements for External Content in Institutional Portals’ [6] focuses on the issues surrounding the inclusion of external resources within institutional portals. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ The Joint Information Systems Committee [1] was founded by the Higher Education Funding Councils in 1993. It quickly established its sub-committees, one of which, the Information Systems Sub-committee (ISSC), reflected JISC’s interest in networked information services and datasets. At its May 1993 meeting, the ISSC designated Manchester and Bath as National Data Centres. (EDINA became a JISC-designated national data centre a few years later). Over the last ten years there have been advances to the Information Systems infrastructure within universities enabling new and advanced use of online information within research and teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ This event was organised jointly by UKOLN and the National e-Science Centre (NESC) [1]. Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, gave the introduction, reminding us that this was the second UKOLN-NESC workshop. The first happened about a year ago, bringing together the digital library and Grid computing communities for the first time. The presentations were as follows: Building a Semantic Infrastructure - David De RoureWhy Ontologies? - Jeremy RogersPublishing and Sharing Schemas - Rachel Heery and Pete JohnstonImplementing Ontologies in (my)Grid Environments - Carole GobleKnowledge Organisation Systems - Doug TudhopeConcluding Remarks - Carole GobleBuilding a Semantic InfrastructureIn his introductory talk, Building a Semantic Infrastructure, Professor David De Roure of the University of Southampton, provided a history lesson at a gallop on the Grid and the Semantic Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/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/guy-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/guy-rvw/ Tales of identity theft and computer hacking used to be the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, but in our increasingly techno world they are commonplace. It was only the other month that Bristol pensioner Derek Bond was held at a Durban police station for over two weeks by the FBI after a major fraudster stole his identity. Carole Lane’s research guide Naked in Cyberspace has its roots in our increasing fear of the proliferation of online personal data. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/search-engines/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/search-engines/ Weblogs are becoming increasingly important these days and it’s becoming harder to spend any time on the Web without seeing references to people’s weblogs or being invited to ‘read my weblog’ [1] This is all well and good of course, but there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding not only what these creatures are, but how they can best be used - and of course, how to find them and once you have found them, how to search them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/browning/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/browning/ The JISC-funded programme ‘Building Managed Learning Environments (MLEs) in HE’ [1] was of three years’ duration and concluded in July 2003. The aim of the programme was to explore developments that test, evaluate, and prove (or in some circumstances disprove) the generic deployment of technology in support of improved learning. The programme has developed good practice and shared ideas and experiences across FE and HE sectors. The specific objectives were to: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/bath-profile-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/bath-profile-rpt/ The genesis of the Bath Profile occurred at a meeting in Bath Spa during August 1999. It sought to address a wide range of issues pertaining to the effectiveness of the search and retrieval processes between Z39.50 client and server services. Over the ensuing months, members of the relevant communities created an ISO-recognised profile specifically intended to have international application. In June 2000, Release 1.1 of the Bath Profile gave precise semantic definition to the abstract search types used by Z39. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/web-watch/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/web-watch/ The initial survey of search engines used on UK University Web sites was carried out during July and August 1999 and the findings were reported in Ariadne issue 21 [1]. Since then the survey has been updated approximately every six months, which allows trends to be identified. In this article we review the trends since the initial survey was carried out. Current FindingsThe most recent update to the survey was carried out in June 2003. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/lyon/ This article presents some new digital library development activities which are predicated on the concept that research and learning processes are cyclical in nature, and that subsequent outputs which contribute to knowledge, are based on the continuous use and reuse of data and information [1]. We can start by examining the creation of original data, (which may be, for example, numerical data generated by an experiment or a survey, or alternatively images captured as part of a clinical study). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/pearce/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/pearce/ The PORTAL Project [1], funded under the JISC's FAIR Programme, aims to explore a range of issues relating to the deployment of institutional portals within the UK tertiary education sector. An introduction to the PORTAL Project was provided by Ian Dolphin, Paul Miller and Robert Sherratt in Ariadne Issue 33 [2]. The project began in September 2002 and work is well underway on the project's diverse work packages. Work Package 6, 'Standards for the Description of Portal Users', is now available [3] and both technical and research work is ongoing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/coelho-review/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/coelho-review/ The chapters in this book were first published as columns in "Internet Express" and retain this stand-alone quality. What brings them together is the personality of the author and this comes through in a most engaging way. Her approach is individual, entertaining and fun, unlike so many how-to books on this topic. The book is American in bias but there are a range of sources and what really counts is the enthusiasm which this books encourages in the reader. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ The national Collection Description Focus is based at UKOLN [1] and funded by the British Library [2], the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [3] , the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [4] and Resource [5]. It aims to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. The Showcase EventThere is an increasing emphasis on mapping and managing information resources in a way that will allow users to find, access, use and disseminate resources from a range of diverse collections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/editorial/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/editorial/ Welcome to the March/April issue of Ariadne. This issue of Ariadne focuses on the Portal concept. The term 'portalage' (the making of portals) crept (unforced) into a discussion of the portal concept held on the 25th April at the University of London Library (Gateways to Research and Lifelong Learning: Portals in Perspective). A good question for anyone to ask is: 'What features in a Portal?' since it is an area still lacking in consensus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/eevl/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/waller/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/waller/ Long before the first Roman scrawled (possibly a term such as "detritus") in the margin of something he was reading, people had been making annotations against something they had read or seen, however uncomplimentary. It is more than likely that the first annotation occurred the moment the person making it was able to find a suitable implement with which to scrawl his or her opinion against the original. Annotating may be defined as making or furnishing critical or explanatory notes or comment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/harnad/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/harnad/ Being the only country with a national research assessment exercise [1], the UK is today in a unique position to make a small change that will confer some large benefits. The Funding Councils should mandate that in order to be eligible for Research Assessment and funding, all UK research-active university staff must maintain (I) a standardised online RAE-CV, including all designated RAE performance indicators, chief among them being (II) the full text of every refereed research paper, publicly self-archived in the university's online Eprint Archive and linked to the CV for online harvesting, scientometric analysis and assessment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/newsline/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/newsline/ The 7th Institutional Web Management Workshop :Supporting Our Users[April 2003] The 7th Institutional Web Management Workshop will take place at the University of Kent on 11-13th June 2003. The theme of this year's workshop, the seventh in the series, is Supporting Our Users. The Institutional Web Management Workshop series is organised by UKOLN's UK Web Focus and its aim is to support members of institutional Web management teams within the UK Higher and Further Educational communities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/search-engines/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/search-engines/ The Internet moves quickly, and no more so than when looking at search engines. In the last few months (or even weeks) there's been a lot of movement, with some major changes in the field. Consequently, rather than just look at one search engine in detail, or a particular subject area, I thought it might be useful to play catch-up in this issue of Ariadne; hopefully you'll be aware of all these news stories, but in case you've actually got a life and don't sit glued to your computer screen, some of them may be new to you. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/web-watch/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/web-watch/ It has been said that those who ignore history, are condemned to repeat it. In the Web world we can be so excited by new developments that we may forget approaches we have taken in the past and fail to learn from our mistakes. This article describes how the WayBack Machine [1] was used to look at the history of UK University Web sites. The SurveyThe survey was carried out by entering the URL of the entry point for UK University Web sites, recording details of the availability of the Web site in the Internet Archive (including earliest and most recent dates and numbers of entries) and providing a link to enable readers of this article to obtain the most recent results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/butters/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/butters/ EDNER - the formative evaluation of the UK higher education sector's Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) - is a three-year project being undertaken by the Centre for Research in Library & Information Management (CERLIM) at the Manchester Metropolitan University and the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT) at Lancaster University.  One strand of the project is to undertake an evaluation of the JISC Subject Portals.  As part of that work a systematic investigation of portal features was undertaken in the summer of 2002 to help develop a profile of features of JISC, institutional, and commercial portals. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/martin/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/martin/ ePrints UK [1] is a two-year JISC-funded project under the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [2] which began in July 2002 and is due for completion in July 2004. The lead partner is UKOLN of the University of Bath. The aim of the project is to develop a national service provider repository of e-print records based at the University of Bath derived by harvesting metadata from institutional and subject-based e-prints archives using the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/martin/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/martin/ The last thing I expected a book with a title like The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to Plug-ins and Other Web Browser Tools to be was entertaining. But to my amazement, this book kept me turning the pages for the length of a long train journey, thanks to its illustrated examples of how US libraries and museums have made use of plug-in applications in such things as interactive library tours, 3-dimensional exhibit image display, and virtual enquiry desks. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ The field of classics has a long tradition of electronic editions of both primary and secondary materials for the study of the ancient world. Large electronic corpora of Greek and Latin texts are available from groups such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the Packard Humanities Institute, and the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, and in the Perseus Digital Library [1]. Because such large collections of primary texts have already been digitized, it is now possible to devote concerted effort to developing new computational tools that can transform the way that humanists work with these digitized versions of their primary sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/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/eevl/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/eevl/ BackgroundEEVL is the Internet guide for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/powell/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/powell/ An introduction to the IMS Digital Repositories Working GroupIMS [1] is a global consortium that develops open specifications to support the delivery of e-learning through Learning Management Systems (LMS). (Note: in UK higher and further education we tend to use the term Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in preference to LMS). IMS activities cover a broad range of areas including accessibility, competency definitions, content packaging, digital repositories, integration with ‘enterprise’ systems, learner information, metadata, question & test and simple sequencing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ This conference was set up 'to consider the central importance of moving images and sound to our heritage and present-day culture, the necessity of adequate funding for the archives that preserve such materials, and asks why there is a lack of any coherent infrastructure for moving image and sound archives in the UK'. In fact the real subtext of this conference was the race to save 100 years worth of material. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/planet-sosig/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/planet-sosig/ The RDN has recently launched a set of case studies aimed at supporting the use of the Internet for further education. The project was led by staff at Biz/ed based at The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT). It started in February 2002 and was completed in October this year. The project has resulted in the publication of 106 practical examples that describe the way in which RDN Internet resources can be used to help lecturers in the delivery of particular courses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/public-libraries/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/public-libraries/ Background to the workshopThe third Public Library Web Managers workshop to be organised by UKOLN was held at the University of Bath on the 5th and 6th of November 2002. This year’s event aimed to provide public library web managers with a brief respite from the trials and tribulations of the workplace, and the chance to share networking experiences with colleagues up and down the country. It also aimed to bring together some key speakers on this year’s hot topic –e-government (electronic government). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/little/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/little/ The MedHist gateway [1] was launched in August 2002, providing access to a searchable and browsable catalogue of high quality, evaluated history of medicine Internet resources. MedHist has been funded and developed by the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine [2], but is hosted by the BIOME health and life sciences hub [3], and as such is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). MedHist was developed principally to fill the gaps left in the coverage of the history of medicine by existing resource discovery services within and outside the RDN. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/geneva/ CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is the world’s largest particle physics centre. It is located just outside of Geneva on the French-Swiss border. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. About the ConferenceThe workshop was organized by LIBER, SPARC-Europe and CERN Library and sponsored by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), OSI (Open Society Institute), and ESF (European Science Foundation). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-focus/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-focus/ In the last issue of Ariadne the Web Focus column encouraged Web developers to "get serious about HTML standards" [1]. The article advocated use of XHTML and highlighted the importance of documents complying with standards. Many authors of Web resources would agree with this in principle, but find it difficult to implement in practice: use of validation tools seem to require launching a new application or going to a new location in a Web browser and copying and pasting a URL. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/info-environment/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/info-environment/ This document provides a brief introduction to the JISC Information Environment (JISC-IE) [1], with a particular focus on the technical steps that content providers need to take in order to make their systems interoperable within the JISC-IE technical architecture. The architecture specifies a set of standards and protocols that support the development and delivery of an integrated set of networked services that allow the end-user to discover, access, use and publish digital and physical resources as part of their learning and research activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/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/eevl/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/editorial/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/editorial/ Welcome to the September/October issue of Ariadne. The concept of the 'Information Environment' is now one which appears often in Digital Library literature. While it is not a vague concept, it is still one which is undergoing development. Implementing an Information Environment is therefore currently a problematic exercise. Those interested in undertaking such an implementation therefore will be interested in a number of articles featured in this issue of Ariadne. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/newsline/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/newsline/ Following the success of the previous two Public Library Web Managers Workshops, UKOLN is proud to announce the third workshop to be held at the University of Bath in November 2002. This event offers the chance to step back, look at the bigger picture, and see how public library websites fit into the government's plans to make all services electronically available by 2005. To quote the DTLR consultation paper: e-gov@local, e-Government is about 'putting citizens and customers at the heart of everything we do' . http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/planet-sosig/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/planet-sosig/ The SOSIG collectionThe core of the SOSIG service, the Internet Catalogue, now holds over 21,000 structured metadata records describing Internet resources relevant to social science teaching, learning and research. Established in 1994, SOSIG is one of the longest-running subject gateways in Europe. Our section editors have been seeking out, evaluating and describing social science Internet resources, developing the collection so that it now covers 17 top-level subject headings with over 1000 sub-sections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Judging by the number of articles written and conferences organised around them, portals are undoubtedly a hot topic in higher education, and seem likely to remain so for some time to come. This article reports on two portal-focussed conferences held in Canada and the UK during the summer of 2002. It also introduces some of the work underway at Hull to build an institutional portal, and the way in which a JISC-funded project shared between Hull and UKOLN will demonstrate the role of institutional portals in bringing resources provided by the JISC and others to the attention of those working within an institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/edner/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/edner/ The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Information Environment (IE, a development from the DNER - Distributed National Electronic Resource) is intended to help users in the UK academic sector maximise the value of published information resources by developing a coherent environment out of the confusing array of systems and services currently available. The EDNER Project (Formative Evaluation of the DNER,< http://www.cerlim.ac.uk/edner>) is funded to undertake ongoing evaluation of the developing IE over the full three years of the JISC 5/99 Learning & Teaching and Infrastructure Programme period i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/netlibrary/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/netlibrary/ On January 24, 2002, OCLC Online Computer Library Center acquired netLibrary, a major electronic books (e-books) company. OCLC's acquisition includes the e-book Division of netLibrary, which OCLC has integrated as a division of OCLC, and netLibrary's MetaText eTextbook Division, which has become a for-profit subsidiary of OCLC. This article describes the rationale and background of the acquisition, the overall vision of the information environment that is being pursued, and the benefits that libraries may experience as a result. 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/netlab-history/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/netlab-history/ Actually, that was really the way it was: a cake for the consumption of a group of people interested in the development of digital libraries. It was in 1991, long before this concept had been implanted into the heart of the library community. Indeed long before most people knew about the Internet. At this meeting the first seed for what was going to be NetLab [1] was sown - the multidisciplinary research- and developmental group aimed at digital libraries and global network based information systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/eevl/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/eevl/ BackgroundEEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/editorial/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/editorial/ Issue 32 features a broad range of articles, including a second implementer perspective on setting up an e-prints server, following on from the one which appeared in the last issue. This time the experience at the University of Glasgow is featured (William Nixon). There is a related article by John MacColl on ‘Electronic Theses and Dissertations: a strategy for the UK’, and a brief Ariadne report on the first Open Archives Forum workshop, held in Pisa in May. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ ‘ETDs’ is the acronym widely used in the US to stand for ‘Electronic Theses and Dissertations’. The father of the ETD movement, Professor Ed Fox of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), explains the acronym as containing an implicit Boolean ‘OR’: ‘ETs’ OR ‘EDs’ equals ‘ETDs’. This makes for a very convenient shorthand, whereby a digital object which is either an electronic thesis or an electronic dissertation can be referred to as ‘an ETD’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/metalib/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/metalib/ Since the advent of online databases there have been concerns about the different interfaces and software provided by publishers and suppliers. In recent years, the growth in the number of databases and full-text electronic journal services has made this aspect of electronic resource provision even more challenging, particularly for Higher Education institutions. Just as for the foreseeable future databases are likely to continue to be delivered through a variety of interfaces, it is equally likely that there will be increasing demands from users for simplified access. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/netlab-conference/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/netlab-conference/ Every future must have a pastHow did you celebrate your tenth birthday? Perhaps by making a nice birthday cake with all your favourite ingredients to share with your friends? NetLab [1], the research and development department at Lund University Libraries [2], celebrated its tenth anniversary in April 2002 with a three-day conference in Lund, Sweden [3]. This gâteau consisted of topics on digital library development, divided into five pieces: “Semantic web and knowledge organisation”; “Interoperability and integration of heterogeneous sources”; “Visions, future issues and current development”; “The Nordic situation”; and the surprise session “Tension between visions and reality”. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/oxford-reference-collection/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/oxford-reference-collection/ In March of this year Oxford University Press unveiled their online reference site. Called the core collection, it comprises of around 100 reference works in print, collated into a coherent single body with well-integrated cross-searching facilities. It has been developed as a joint project between the two halves of the OU organisation, in Oxford and in the USA. The range of material covered is vast, the scope is huge. The material on offer covers a wide range of reference titles: dictionaries, subject references, quotations and so forth. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/planet-sosig/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/planet-sosig/ Launch of Citizenship PastThe launch of Citizenship Past took place on the 12th June. This is a NOF (New Opportunities Fund) consortium whose aim is to digitize over a half a million historical papers and images in order to open up access to archival and government papers in the following areas: Unlocking Key British Government Publications, 1801-1995: Full Text Digital Library, led by BOPCRIS, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. British Official Publications (government and parliamentary reports) constitute an immense body of material on the development of British society. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/search-engines/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/search-engines/ I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you that the world of the search engine is constantly in a state of flux – old search engines falling away, only to be replaced by new ones. This can be clearly illustrated this month as two well known favourites, Google and Ixquick are facing up to new competition. This article looks at who is competing with them, and provides some food for thought for those people who automatically go to one or other search engine. 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/32/www2002/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/www2002/ WWW2002 [1] was the 11th annual World Wide Web Conference, held this year in Tourist Hell (Waikiki), Hawaii. WWW2002 ran over three days, with 10 refereed tracks including one on the Semantic Web, and six ‘alternate’ tracks. All the papers from the conference are available online in html [2]. You might also like to look at the RDF Interest group chatlogs and blog pages for the days covering the conference [3] and I also have some photos [4] as does Dave Beckett [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/book-reviews/garrod.html Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/book-reviews/garrod.html This compact text aims to meet the needs of most audiences - from the student, trying to get to grips with the complex topic of electronic resources, to the practitioner, tasked with building an e-collection on a fixed budget. Read and digest this book and you will be equipped to roam the wide plains of the electronic resources landscape. You need have little fear of getting lost - armed with this book you will have all the information you require, presented in an easily digested, and easy to navigate, format. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eevl/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK, lead by Heriot Watt University. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/oxford-reference-collection/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/oxford-reference-collection/ What or who is ‘Ariadne’? She was, of course, the girl who fell in love with Theseus, who gave him the thread by which he found his way out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. Her story was made into an opera by Strauss in which some of the greatest operatic stars have performed. But did you know that it has also inspired other composers like Handel, Dukas, Monteverdi, Haydn, and Musgrave, and many choreographers too? 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/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/31/aim25/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/aim25/ AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25 area), a project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [1], and led by King's College London, provides a single point of networked access to collection descriptions of archives held in 49 higher education (HE) institutions and learned societies in the greater London area. The project has intended, where possible, to be comprehensive in its coverage of holdings by including deposited collections, in a wide range of subject areas, and also the administrative records of the participating institutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ The Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), a £30m initiative funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies, has spawned 53 projects and a number of studies and other activities. This brief overview aims to give a flavour of the Programme. Articles relating to particular projects will appear in future issues of Ariadne. But first, some background: RSLP derives from the deliberations of the Follett Review (1993)1 and the associated Anderson Report (1996). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/information-environments/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/information-environments/ The JISC Information EnvironmentThe Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) [1] is a JISC-funded, managed, heterogeneous collection of information resources and services (bibliographic, full-text, image, video, geo-spatial, datasets, etc.) of particular value to the further and higher education communities. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [2] is the set of networked services that allows people to discover, access, use and publish resources within the DNER. The JISC IE technical architecture [3] specifies the standards and protocols that provide interoperability between this network of services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/open-archives-forum/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/open-archives-forum/ The Open Archives Forum: Mission and GoalsThe Open Archives Forum provides a European focus for the dissemination of information about European activities in Open Archives. A particular focus is on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The Open Archives Forum aims to promote the idea of globally distributed digital archives within Europe, to support the establishment of new digital archives and their related services, and to initiate European special interest groups. It is important to add particular European interests to already existing models such as the Open Archives Initiative. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-focus/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-focus/ “Cool URIs”What are “cool URIs”? This term comes from advice provided by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). The paper “Cool URIs don’t change” [1] begins by saying: What makes a cool URI?A cool URI is one which does not change.What sorts of URI change?URIs don’t change: people change them.All Web users will, sadly, be familiar with the 404 error message. But, as W3C point out, the 404 error message does not point to a technical failure but a human one - hence the warning: “URIs don’t change: people change them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-watch/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-watch/ How many Web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey was published in June 2000 [1] which aimed to provide answers to these questions. The survey has been repeated recently in order to see if there has been any significant changes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/archives/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/archives/ The Access to Archives project is one of the most exciting initiatives in the world of archives in England. It aims at developing a virtual national archival catalogue for the country. At a click of the mouse one will be able to find multilevel descriptions of some of the most important historical records of England. For family historians, school teachers and pupils, academic researchers or just curious life long learners the A2A gateway is a unique facility to pursue their interests and research from a PC terminal any time of the day, anywhere in the world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/invisible-web/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/invisible-web/ Chris Sherman and Gary PriceThe Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can’t seeCyber Age Books, 2001. ISBN 0-910965-51-XPrice: $29.95I first became interested in the Invisible Web after seeing Chris Sherman and Gary Price talking at the Internet Librarian International Conference in March this year. In their words “The Invisible Web consists of material that general purpose search engines cannot or will not include in their collection of Web pages.” If currently available resources from search engines are the tip of an iceberg, the Invisible Web is all that lays beneath the surface of the water. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/rdn-oai/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/rdn-oai/ The RDN is a collaborative network of subject gateways, funded for use by UK Higher and Further Education by the JISC (though it is used much more widely). Each subject gateway, as part of its service, provides the end user with access to databases of descriptions of freely available, high quality, Web resources. As each resource described in the database is hand picked by subject specialists, following well developed guidelines, it is hoped that a resource discovered through the RDN will be of great value to an end-user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/techwatch/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/techwatch/ Content management? That’s what librarians do, right? But we’ve already got a library management system (LMS) – why should we consider a content management system (CMS)? The second initial is perhaps misleading – “manipulation” rather than “management” might better summarise the goals of a CMS. Content creation and content re-purposing are fundamental aspects which tend to lie outside the current LMS domain. Actually, from the point of view of workflow (and to lesser extent content re-purposing), the CMS and LMS have much in common. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ifla/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ifla/ The 2001 IFLA pre-conference SLB took place in Washington with a theme of Digital Libraries for the Blind and the Culture of Learning in the Information Age [1]. Papers delivered at the 2001 conference were from a wide range of subjects relating to digital libraries for the blind. Subject areas included meeting the educational needs of children and youth through libraries for the blind, digital library services and education, creating inclusive models of service and building small digital libraries for the blind. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/digilib/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/digilib/ The notion that we are living through times of great change in the communication of information and the transmission of texts is a truism which will bring a weary look to most professionals with any kind of involvement in the area. The digital age, the information age, the electronic age – we’ve all heard these terms so many times and have sat through innumerable discussions, and seen even more documents, trying to sort out what it all means. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/eevl/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is an award-winning free service, which provides quick and reliable access to the best engineering, mathematics, and computing information available on the Internet. It is created and run by a team of information specialists from a number of universities and institutions in the UK. EEVL helps students, staff and researchers in higher and further education, as well as anyone else working, studying or looking for information in Engineering, Mathematics and Computing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/editorial/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/editorial/ Welcome to the December/January issue of Ariadne. A focus of this issue of Ariadne is the Open Archives Initiative and the wider implications of the techniques and technology associated with it. A major impetus behind the take-up of the OAI idea is the wish to make research available more widely and more quickly than before, and also to counter the problems created by the nature of existing academic publishing. As David Pearson writes in our lead article on digitization strategy, ‘…. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/myhumbul/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/myhumbul/ Humbul helps humanities professionals access relevant online resources. Employing a distributed network of subject specialist cataloguers across the UK, the Humbul Humanities Hub (http://www.humbul.ac.uk/), based at the University of Oxford, is building a catalogue of evaluated online resources that enables teachers, researchers and students to find resources that make a difference. Humbul is a service of the nationally funded Resource Discovery Network (RDN) (http://www.rdn.ac.uk/) which co-ordinates the development of evaluated resource catalogues across the subject spectrum for UK higher and further education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/rdn/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/rdn/ Put the RDN on your Web pagesThe Resource Discovery Network (RDN) has launched a new service called RDN-include[1]. This allows ResourceFinder, the RDN search engine, to be added free of charge to higher and further education institutions’ Web sites. The RDN developed this technology in reponse to requests from users and in recognition of developments underway with Virtual Learning Envornments at many institutions. By including the RDN’s search box and the results it retrieves on an institution’s Web site, students and staff can now use the RDN search facilities and discover high-quality Web resources while remaining within the familiar look-and-feel of their university or college’s Web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/pub-libs/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/pub-libs/ My predecessor, Sarah Ormes, in her final ‘Public Libraries’ column for Ariadne, owned up to having spent five and a half years at UKOLN. Coincidentally, I too have just concluded five and a half years at the University of Plymouth. This led me to speculate, as one does in those brain numbing moments when awaiting yet another delayed train on a drafty platform in grey November (yes, its ‘leaves on the line’ season again folks), whether, after five and a half years in a post, some of us need to regenerate, like ‘Seven of Nine’, the ice maiden in the current Star Trek series -Voyager. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ref-books/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ref-books/ Reference books have been ‘published’ on the web for some years. Several hundred dictionaries are freely available. Many specialist encyclopaedias and subject reference works have been converted to become experimental web services(1).This wave of reference publishing follows no concerted plan. There is no formal market for these services and perhaps there never was an expectation of profit. The early development of the web has been like this. Most of the notable achievements lacked a clear commercial motivation and this has led to the extraordinarily rich and varied choice that the web provides. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/search-engines/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/search-engines/ We all have our own particular favourites, be it football team, car or brand of tea. The same can also be said of search engines, and for many people at the moment it seems to be Google. On the courses that I run I usually ask the question ‘what’s your favourite search engine?’ and the two that are most often mentioned are Google and Yahoo! I also have a little questionnaire on my site [1], and that’s one of the questions I ask there. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/portal/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/portal/   portal[...] a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals. Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/jisc/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/jisc/ The JISC User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (hereafter the Framework) is an ambitious project to design and use a research framework that monitors and maps the development of user behaviour with electronic information resources in higher education. Initially approved for three years, the Framework is currently in its third and final annual cycle. The methodology and findings relating to the first and second cycles are located in the First Cycle and Second Cycle Annual Reports, available through the JISC web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/web-watch/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/web-watch/ In September 1999 we published our first report [1] on the search engines which were used to provide search facilities on UK University Web sites. Since then we have updated our survey at roughly six monthly intervals. Following a recent update, we will now discuss the findings and comment on the trends we have observed. Latest Findings and TrendsThe latest findings have now been published [2] which contain details of the search facilities on UK University Web sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ This report covers a selection of the papers at the above conference, from those which I chose and was able to attend in a three-strand conference held over three days (with two additional days for workshops, which I did not attend). It includes the three keynote papers, as well as the paper which won the Vannevar Bush award for best conference paper. The conference was held in Roanoke, Virginia, in the Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center, which is owned by Virginia Tech (located in Blacksburg, some 40 miles away). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/gardner/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/gardner/ What are Web Services?The term web services has gaining visibility in recent months, there has been a W3C workshop on web services [1] and the big industry players such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun have been announcing their web services strategies. So what’s it all about and should you be involved? This article aims to be a starting point for answering these questions. Well, the term web services is fairly self-explanatory, it refers to accessing services over the web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/miller/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/miller/ In July of this year, Interoperability Focus [1] organised a meeting at the Office of the e–Envoy [2], the Cabinet Office unit responsible for driving forward the UK’s e–Government initiatives. Across an increasing number of initiatives and programmes, there is a growing recognition of the need for common ‘architectures’ within which truly useful applications and services may be constructed. Partly, these architectures form a philosophical basis within which developments may be undertaken. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/robinson/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/robinson/ The UK Collection Description Focus (1) was launched on 1 June 2001. It is a national post, jointly funded for a twelve-month period by the Joint Information Systems Committee/Distributed National Electronic Resource (JISC/DNER) (2) , the Research Support Libraries Program (RSLP) (3) and the British Library (4). The Focus aims to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/search-engines/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/search-engines/ When I run my courses on searching the Internet for information one of the questions that I’m commonly asked is for regional or country based search engine information. Of course, I knew about some of the major sites and search engines that help in this area, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that there was probably a lot more out there than I was aware of. Consequently I thought it was about time I took a look at country and regional based search engines in a little more depth to see what I could come up with, so I started a little list. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/wilson/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/wilson/ Many months after reading and hearing about their introduction in the US, portable electronic books are now becoming available in the UK. Franklin’s eBookMan [1] is available online from bestbuy.com and amazon.com and from some high street retailers, the goReader is available for purchase via their Web site [2], a variety of ebook reading software can be downloaded to PDAs for free via the Internet, and some Pocket PCs are being sold pre-installed with Microsoft Reader [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/patel/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/patel/ “Managing Digital Video Content” [1], a two-day workshop on current and emerging standards for managing digital video content took place on 15-16th August, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop was sponsored by ViDe, the video development initiative [2], the Southeastern Universities Research Association, SURA [3], Internet2 [4] and the Coalition for Networked Information, CNI [5]. Approximately 180 delegates attended, the majority from the States, peppered by one or two from Europe and Australia. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Managing the development and delivery of electronic library services is one of the major current challenges for university library and information services. This article provides a brief overview of some of the key issues facing information professionals working in higher education institutions (HEIs). In doing so, it also picks up some of the real-world lessons which have emerged from the eLib (Electronic Libraries) programme now that it has come to a close. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/camileon/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/camileon/ AimsThis paper is intended to continue the debate on the different uses of migration for the long-term preservation of digital materials. This discussion will hopefully form the basis of future comparisons between migration and emulation as part of the CAMiLEON project’s investigation of emulation as a digital preservation strategy (A look at some of the practical aspects of an emulation preservation strategy can be found in “Emulation, Preservation and Abstraction” [1] by David Holdsworth and Paul Wheatley). 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/clark/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/clark/ The vision that created the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) grew out of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)s history of engagement with Higher and Further Education Institutions and significant research libraries in the UK. The DNER has an ambitious goal - to empower the HE/Post-16 community by providing quick, coherent and reliable access to a managed information environment that is geared to supporting learning and teaching activities. The JISC has established a great number of services that are helping to fulfil this vision of an integrated information environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-focus/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-focus/ The fifth Institutional Web Management Workshop was held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001. This year's workshop, which had the theme "Organising Chaos", was the largest to date with 150 delegates. It was also the longest workshop, lasting from Monday morning until Wednesday lunchtime. The extra half-day compared with the previous three workshops allowed us to run a full day of interactive parallel sessions. The workshop is aimed primarily at members of institutional Web management teams within UK HE and FE institutions, although participants from related communities are also welcome. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-watch/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-watch/ In 1997 UKOLN received funding for a project known as WebWatch [1] . The aim of the WebWatch project was to develop and use automated robot software to analyse Web sites across a number of public sector communities. After the project funding finished UKOLN continued to provide WebWatch surveys across communities such as UK Higher Education Web sites. However once the initial WebWatch software developer left it was decided to adopt a slightly different approach - rather than continuing to develop our own WebWatch robot software, we chose to make use of freely-available Web-based services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/biome/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/biome/ The BIOME Service has been very fortunate in building partnerships with other information providers within the life sciences field. The Service is itself the product of a consortium [1] led by The University of Nottingham. For example, The Natural History Museum is a major contributor to the Service managing the Natural Selection Gateway within BIOME. Through partnerships BIOME has benefited from the subject expertise of many staff as well as being able to participate in related initiatives and increase the range of services available from the BIOME web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/museum/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/museum/ On Friday 20 April 2001, the mda held a one-day colloquium entitled Beyond the Museum: Working with Collections in the Digital Age [1]. The event was jointly organised by the University of Oxford Humanities Computing Unit (HCU) and the mda. It was the most recent in a series of events that include last year's Beyond Control, or Through the Looking Glass? Threats and Liberties in the Electronic Age; 1999's Beyond Art: Digital Culture in the 21st Century; and 1998's Beyond the Hype. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is a free service, and is funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). Service NewsLogo graphic for links to EEVLA small graphic featuring the EEVL eye is now available for those sites who wish to place a link to EEVL. The graphic is shown in the main heading above and can be copied from the EEVL web site [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/inhale/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/inhale/ The Information for Nursing and Health in a Learning Environment (INHALE) Project [1] at the University of Huddersfield is one of forty-four projects supported nationally by the JISC as part of the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) learning and teaching development programme [2]. INHALE is creating portable, interactive learning materials for nursing and health students for use within a virtual learning environment such as Blackboard ©. The two year project, which commenced in September 2000, is using the ubiquity of the web to produce a series of units, each of which will help users to acquire the necessary skills to find and use quality information sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/resolver/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/resolver/ This article provides a brief introduction to the deployment and use of the OpenURL [1] [2] by walking through a few simple examples using UKOLN's OpenResolver, a demonstration OpenURL resolution service [3]. The intention is to demonstrate the ability of OpenURL resolvers to provide context-sensitive, extended services based on the metadata embedded in OpenURLs and to describe the construction of simple OpenURL resolver software. The software described here is made available on an opensource basis for those who would like to experiment with the use of OpenURLs in their own services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/gold/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/gold/ In the BeginningWay back in 1998 the University of Bath’s Centre for the Development of New Technologies in Learning became part of a three institution consortium responsible for the TLTP Phase 3 ‘Project GOLD’ [1]. GOLD stands for Guidance Online for those Learning at a Distance. The lead partner was the Royal College of Nursing Institute (the Higher Education arm of the RCN) supported by the Open Learning Foundation and the University of Bath. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/search-engines/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/search-engines/ In this issues column I thought that I’d take another in-depth look at a search engine to see what it can offer me and my subject, this issues victim is the Ask Jeeves search engine [1]. I chose this engine because it’s one that I use occasionally and also one that is often overlooked by searchers. Ask Jeeves is what I refer to as a ‘natural language’ search engine, in that it your questions can be posed in everyday language, such as ‘What is the tallest mountain in the world’ or ‘Tell me about the UK tax system’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/training/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/training/ Subject librarians will recognise the following situation: you have spent years trying to persuade Department X to let you run some information skills training for their students, but they’ve always said No! Suddenly you get a phone call asking you to provide training next Tuesday afternoon. You know that you’re being asked to “babysit” and in an ideal world you would negotiate a more sensible time that suited the students’ learning experience. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ This seminar brought together experts in the field of linking technology with participants in the four projects which constitute the JOIN-UP programme, for exploration and discussion of recent technical developments in reference linking. The JOIN-UP project cluster forms part of the DNER infrastructure programme supported by the JISC 5⁄99 initiative. Its focus is development of the infrastructure needed to support services that supply users with journal articles and similar resources. The programme addresses the linkage between references found in discovery databases (such as Abstracting and Indexing databases and Table of Contents databases) and the supply of services for the referenced item (typically, a journal article), in printed or electronic form. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl2/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl2/ An initiative of Math-Net [1], the Secondary Homepage is a template that aims to sort the types of information usually found on departmental websites in mathematics into standardised sections and labels. By offering a user-friendly navigation and search, the Secondary Homepage overcomes the problem of significantly differing departmental homepages. As implied by the name, the Secondary Homepage is not meant to replace the department's homepage but rather to offer users another way of accessing information that is available on the department's website. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/hybrid/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/hybrid/ The five Hybrid Library projects – BUILDER [1], AGORA [2], MALIBU [3], HeadLine [4], and HyLife [5] - form part of the eLib Phase 3 developments and they build on the work of the first and second phases of eLib by investigating issues surrounding the integration of digital and traditional library resources. They are very different projects, but they all aim to provide some of the basic building blocks to create new models of library services, in which our users can create and sustain personal information spaces, and libraries can manage these spaces as part of their daily service delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/red/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/red/ In literary criticism and cultural studies more attention is being paid to the reception of the text – who read it, who had access to it, how was it read – partly perhaps due to the interest in reader theory. Such questions are relevant to the study of the development of a literary canon, the study of popular literature, the transmission of ideas through society both today and in the past and the changing relations between the author, editor, producer and reader of the text. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/biome/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/biome/ Since going live last Autumn we have sought and received a great deal of feedback on the BIOME health and life sciences Internet service. The BIOME launch event I reported on in the last issue of Ariadne was particularly important in providing the opportunity to gain users' comments and suggestions about the Service. We are delighted that people view the service - and indeed the entire Resource Discovery Network [1] - as providing a valuable internet tool. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/seti/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/seti/ Distributed Solutions to Number Crunching Problems There are many problems that require the large scale number crunching capablilities of supercomputers. For instance calculating Pi to the nth level of precision, attempting to crack the latest encryption algorithm [1], mapping the human genome, or analysing radio waves from space. For some applications, a Supercomputer might not be enough; nor can every project can afford one. However, but with a little bit of clever software engineering applied to the Internet, there is a solution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/e-books/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/e-books/ Electronic journals are playing an increasing role in the education of students. The ARL Directory of Scholarly Electronic Journals [1] lists nearly 4,000 peer-reviewed journal titles and 4,600 conferences available electronically, and many academic libraries now subscribe to ejournal services such as those provided by MCB Emerald, Omnifile and ingentaJournals. In comparison, electronic books have been slow to impact on Higher Education. Initiatives such as Project Gutenberg [2] and the Electronic Text Centre [3] have, for many years, been digitising out-of-copyright texts and making them available online. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/eevl/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is a free service, and is funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). Marketing on a tight budgetOne of the findings of the Rowley Report on JISC User Behaviour [1] was that subject gateways, although providing very useful services, are underused by academics. Using a variety of methods to gather information, including interviews and questionnaires, the research which led to the Report found that relatively few students and staff in UK higher education were aware of the existence of gateways as Internet retrieval tools. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Sarah Ormes, the UKOLN Public Libraries Focus is taking a short career break. Sarah has been with UKOLN for five years, which makes her positively antidiluvian in terms of web years. During that time both her role and her activities have expanded. Among other things Sarah was instrumental in the setting up of the hugely popular children's web site 'Stories from the Web', and in the last two years has run a very successful conference on Web Management issues for Public Librarians. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/metadata/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/metadata/ This article proposes a mechanism for embedding machine parsable citations into Dublin Core (DC) metadata records [1] based on the OpenURL [2]. It suggests providing partial OpenURLs using the DC Identifier, Source and Relation elements together with an associated 'OpenURL' encoding scheme. It summarises the relevance of this technique to support reference linking and considers mechanisms for providing richer bibliographic citations. A mapping between OpenURL attributes and Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) [3] elements is provided. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/planet-sosig/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/planet-sosig/ Portals Project Work is underway on the RDN Portals Development Project. Three prototype faculty-level subject portals will be developed one at each hub, covering the subject areas of biomedical sciences, engineering and social sciences. The portals will enable end-users to extend their searches to include an enhanced range of databases from amongst the JISC’s current content collection. This project will add value to the UK’s learning, teaching and research resources by improving the way these resources are presented to the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Christine L. Borgman, From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure: access to information in the networked world. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, 2000. xviii, 324 pp. £27.95. ISBN 0-262-02473-X. Christine Borgman’s book From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure was published in March 2000 in the Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing series edited by William Arms. The book is an excellent introduction to a wide range of issues related to the development of digital libraries and to what is called here a ‘global information infrastructure. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/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/27/paschoud/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/paschoud/  This article explains the concepts of representation and use of metadata describing library information resource collections in the Resource Data Model (RDM) that has been developed by the HeadLine project [http://www.headline.ac.uk/]. It is based on documentation originally intended for library staff who may become involved in maintenance of metadata in the RDM, as the deliverables of the project are handed-over into mainstream use. An earlier published article [Graham] was based on the first (un-released) version of the HeadLine RDM, to which this is intended to be an update. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/maccoll/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/maccoll/ This 1-day conference was the third in a series of events organised by the Hybrid Libraries projects funded by JISC via the eLib Programme, and supported by the DNER. The prior two events had been held at the British Library, in November 2000, and Manchester Metropolitan University, in the previous week. The event was late in starting due to heavy snow having delayed several of the delegates. Indeed, many of those who had intended being in Edinburgh had to call off altogether. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/leodis/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/leodis/ Personal BackgroundTo begin with, as this is predominantly a libraries publication I feel an introduction to my background may be helpful in understanding this approach to digitisation. My relationship with the Leodis Database is as technical creator and manager and my background is purely technical. I studied Printing and Photographic Technology for 3 years at Kitson College Leeds and then Computer Science for 3 years at Manchester Metropolitan University followed by 1 years research in Computer Modelling at Manchester Metropilitan University, Department of Mechanical Engineering. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/web-watch/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/web-watch/ Netscape’s What’s Related ServiceOne possibly underused facility in the Netscape browser is its What’s Related feature. When viewing a Web page, clicking on the What’s Related button in the Netscape toolbar (shown in Figure 1) will display related information about the page being viewing. The information displayed by use of the What’s Related service is illustrated in Figure 2. As can be seen a number of related Web sites will be displayed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/case-studies/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/case-studies/ Agora is one of the five Hybrid Library Projects that began in January 1998, forming part of phase 3 of the elib programme investigating issues surrounding the integration of digital and traditional library resources. It is a consortium-based project, led by the University of East Anglia; partners are UKOLN [1], Fretwell Downing Informatics and CERLIM (the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management). The project also works with several associate groups: libraries, service providers and systems developers. 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/clumps26/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/clumps26/ This article is an end of project review of the Large Scale Resource Discovery strand of the eLib Phase 3 Programme. Four ‘clump’ [1] projects were funded, CAIRNS, M25 Link, and RIDING are regionally based, and Music Libraries Online (MLO) is subject based. One question that this article aims to answer is ‘Have the clumps projects been a success?’ The following sections highlight some of the many issues that the four projects have looked at and the progress that has been made. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/bach/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/bach/ For the majority of musicologists, bibliography is not their main subject of research, but a tool for research, an essential tool to gain quick access to the information with which to pursue their own subject of interest. Bibliography concerns everyone; it is crucially important that we find successfully the most relevant literatures at the earliest possible opportunity, and that we do not miss out any significant research works carried out by other scholars in the field, so that we can get on confidently with the work of our main research interest. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/eevl/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is a free service, and is funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). New profileIn previous Ariadne columns I have introduced EEVL as "the UK guide to quality engineering information on the Internet". From the background information above, you will see that it is now referred to as the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. Why the change, and, for those who may have heard of it, what has happened to 'EMC'? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/e-book/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/e-book/ For years we’ve dreamed of the paperless office and foretold the death of the printed book, but my desk stubbornly remains cluttered with paper, my home full of books and my bag weighed down with reports. But finally these electronic dreams seem to be about to come true - e-books have arrived and are available at a Web site near you. What is an e-book?The term ‘e-book’ actually has several meanings. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/nt-explorer/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/nt-explorer/ Microsoft were late to realise the potential of the Internet, so many of their Internet products came about through the acquisition of other companies. In order to advance Windows NT Server as a viable platform for e-commerce, in 1996 Microsoft acquired e-Shop Inc., a small company specialising in e-commerce software. e-Shop's software was integrated into Microsoft Merchant Server 1.0, which subsequently evolved into Microsoft Commerce Server 2.0. Version 3.0 was released in early 1998, and added support for Internet Information Server (IIS) 4. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/planet-sosig/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/planet-sosig/ Grapevine is the 'people oriented' side of SOSIG, offering the social science community a place to look at and publicise information about events, career development opportunities and professional colleagues. Grapevine began life in 1998 as an ESRC funded pilot project and was brought under the auspices of SOSIG in February 2000 with the launch of the new interface and associated services of the gateway. You can use Grapevine to find: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/pub-libs/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/pub-libs/ The Public Library Web Managers workshop is a relatively new event for UKOLN. Held for the first time in 1999 [1] it aims to provide an annual opportunity for public library web managers to share their expertise, learn from each other's experiences and keep abreast of the latest Web technology developments. The emphasis of the event is always on the practical aspects of developing and managing a public library web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/dner/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/dner/ What is the relationship between the hybrid library and the DNER (the Distributed National Electronic Resource)? This paper discusses that question and suggests a number of ways in which DNER strategy and thinking can be informed by hybrid library developments. ‘Suggests’ is the word, since there is currently an investigation underway that is dealing with this question which is still to report. This is being coordinated by Stephen Pinfield, one of the authors of this article. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/malibu/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/malibu/ The MALIBU Project has as its main goal to develop examples of hybrid libraries, focusing specifically on the humanities, at each of three major partner institutions (King’s College London, University of Oxford and University of Southampton). The research and outcomes of the project have reinforced generally held ideas about issues such as what users want, and how they go about obtaining what they want. However, it has also highlighted some important distinctions about the process of providing hybrid services to the user and the impact on the hybrid library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/craven/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/craven/ Background to the NoVA projectIt is recognised that in order to participate fully in today’s society it is vital that citizens are not excluded for any reason, whether by virtue of birth, belief, aptitude or circumstance. Exclusion takes many forms and must be countered in many different ways. Funded by Resource and undertaken by the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) at Manchester Metropolitan University, the NoVA project is concerned with countering the exclusion from access to information which can all too easily occur when individuals do not have so-called ‘normal’ vision. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-focus/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/web-focus/ What's the future for Web browsing? Is it the PC running some flavour of MS Windows?. Will the Linux platform take off on the desktop? Or will the Macintosh come back into fashion? Many statistics on browser usage would suggest that the MS Windows platform has won the battle. The proportion of platforms illustrated in Figure 1 (which shows accesses to the Cultivate Interactive by graphical browsers) is probably not too untypical (information available at [1]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/app-profiles/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/app-profiles/ BackgroundThis paper introduces application profiles as a type of metadata schema. We use application profiles as a way of making sense of the differing relationship that implementors and namespace managers have towards metadata schema, and the different ways they use and develop schema. The idea of application profiles grew out of UKOLN’s work on the DESIRE project (1), and since then has proved so helpful to us in our discussions of schemas and registries that we want to throw it out for wider discussion in the run-up to the DC8 Workshop in Ottawa in October. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/decomate-ii/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/decomate-ii/ The Decomate II project produced a working demonstrator system and service providing access to distributed, heterogeneous Economics information sources. The conference was held at the Casa de Convalescència, part of The Hospital Santa Pau, one of Barcelona’s great "Modernista" architectural monuments. Following a warm welcome from Carme Picallo, Vice-Rector for Research of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Hans Geleijnse of Tilburg University and Decomate II Project Director, gave the keynote speech. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/eevl/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/eevl/ EEVL: is the UK guide to quality engineering information on the Internet. It is a free service, and is funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). Happy birthday!This column is an excellent forum for alerting the online community to the progress being made by EEVL, and in the next issue I hope to bring news of some particularly significant developments to the service. In the meantime, some recent news nuggets are detailed below. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/editorial/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/editorial/ The Higher Education (HE) community interest in information technology remains very much the same as it was when the web first appeared: networked access to high quality (and quality assured) information resources. Current activities in the UK (the RDN, the DNER, HERO, etc) are logical developments of these core interests. But in the few years which have passed, the concept of how such information ought to be accessed and what the nature of the interface might be (at both superficial and deep levels) has been discussed in various digital library forums and refined into a number of practical demonstrator applications and projects (the various hybrid library projects, the Agora project, etc). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/mueller/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/mueller/ Introduction and summaryIn the following pages I look at reading Homer in Greek as a paradigm of “reading with a dictionary” and other forms of “look-up” reading for which a digital environment offers distinct advantages. I take as my point of departure the activity of reading Homer in a print environment with a text, dictionary, and commentary, and then consider the added value of three electronic tools: the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), a virtually complete archive of all ancient Greek textsthe Perseus Project, a bilingual text-and-dictionary web site that provides access to a large chunk of classical and Hellenistic Greek textsthe Chicago Homer, a specialized bilingual web site of Early Greek epic that will be published by the University of Chicago Press late in 2000 [1]What can you do with any electronic tool that you cannot do with a printed text and a dictionary? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/cimi/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/cimi/ Like libraries, museums face the daunting task of preserving our cultural heritage, whilst also striving with the often conflicting need to make that cultural heritage available to us today. Perhaps differently from libraries, interpretation plays an important part in the work of museums, where exhibitions are often designed around the telling of one or more stories about the past in order to place objects within their historical context. Possibly even more so than in the library sector, the information revolution has had a profound effect upon the ways in which museums manage information, whether for internal use within their rich collection management systems, or externally in the content made available on web sites, in 'exhiblets', or in data exchanged between institutions or embedded within various educational resources such as CD–ROMs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/planet-sosig/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/planet-sosig/ RDN Virtual Training SuiteSOSIG is pleased to announce the launch of the RDN (Resource Discovery Network) Virtual Training Suite - a set of free, interactive, web-based tutorials for students, lecturers and researchers who want to discover what the Internet can offer in their subject area. Each tutorial has been written by an academic or librarian with specialist knowledge of both their subject area and the Internet. There are 11 tutorials available in phase one of the project (with another 27 in production). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/search-engines/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/search-engines/ In one of my earlier columns I looked at the different ways in which it was possible to find information about individuals on the Internet. I thought that for this issue I'd revisit the concept of finding a particular type of information, but instead of looking for people, I'd look for images instead. When I refer to 'images' here, I'm not really talking about small icons, coloured balls or page dividers that web designers like to use on their websites; there are thousands of such libraries available for this purpose, and they can easily be located - simply go to one of the many Yahoo! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/zope/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/zope/ MotivationI would be surprised if most people don’t feel a sense of achievement when they author their first Web page. It’s the first thing you ever made which potentially the rest of the world can see. Others learn about your new skill and before you know it you’ve become the departmental webperson and are buried in an avalanche of other people’s content to “put on the Web”. The chore of document conversion and the burden of information maintenance quickly dispel the euphoria of your first experience of authoring for the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/sellic/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/sellic/ The Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information Centre (SELLIC) [1] Project at the University of Edinburgh has seen rapid changes in the context in which it operates. The project itself has therefore changed its emphasis in response to some of the challenges of the rapidly-evolving education environment. Staff at SELLIC are engaged in a number of projects, all of which are directed at some aspect of hybrid library development and aim to bring together library and academic interests in determining how new developments should be applied within the institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/agora/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/agora/ Agora is one of the five elib hybrid Library projects which began in January 1998 and are all due for completion at various times this year. They form part of Phase 3 of the elib Programme that is investigating issues of digital library implementation and integration. The word Agora comes from the Greek word meaning meeting place or assembly point. On further investigation the Perseus project, part of the Department of Classics, Tufts University)[1] describes an agora as: - http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/biome/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/biome/ The new BIOME Internet site will go live this summer and we are looking forward to seeing the months of background work become an operational service. Since Lisa Gray, the BIOME Team Manager reported the outline for the Service in the December issue of Ariadne, we have been busy building content in our databases as well as designing a new website, developing new catalogue software and establishing links with other health & life sciences Internet services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/eevl/eevlnuggets1.html Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/eevl/eevlnuggets1.html BackgroundEEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, is the UK-based, free guide to engineering information on the Internet. Recent newsIn the last issue of Ariadne I reported on a number of recent EEVL developments.   Once again, I am very pleased to use this forum to announce some more new features. We are conscious of the need to constantly review the EEVL services, and make improvements wherever possible.  Sometimes the changes are minor, and sometimes they are more substantial. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/oed-tech/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/oed-tech/ Ariadne has already described the long-term task of revising the Oxford English Dictionary and reviewed OED Online at its launch in March this year, but the editor judged, rightly, that there must be a hidden story on the making of the web site. This article sets out to tell that story, describing what was technically involved in turning a twenty-three volume print work into an online publication, and recording how this generation of publishers benefited from visionary groundwork undertaken fifteen years ago which meant that the hardest part of going online - preparing the content - was three-quarters done before they’d heard of the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ IntroductionUntil recently, visually impaired people (VIP) were poorly served by the library and information provision that is routinely available to sighted people. They have relied to a great extent on specialist voluntary organisations transcribing a limited range of materials into accessible formats. This situation is changing with advances in technology and recent initiatives on social inclusion. Increasingly visually impaired people will be able to locate and use information independently, as sighted people already do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/interoperability/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/interoperability/ Together with terms like "metadata" and "joined-up thinking", this word is increasingly being used within the information management discourse across all of our memory institutions. Its meaning, though, remains somewhat ambiguous, as do many of the benefits of "being interoperable". This paper is an attempt, written from the doubtless biased perspective of someone with the word in their job title, to explain some of what interoperability means, and to begin stating the case for more active efforts towards being truly interoperable across a range of services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jstor/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jstor/ JSTOR (Journal STORage) is a unique digital archive of over 100 core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues. The collection covers material from the 1800s up to a ‘moving wall’ of between 1 and 8 years before current publication. It covers 15 subjects at present, mainly in the Humanities and Social Sciences. JSTOR is made available to academic institutions around the world on a site-licence basis. Users at participating institutions can search, browse, print and save any article from the collection. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ This article is supplementary to the issue 23 report on the CLUMPS event at Goldsmiths College in March this year, and perhaps should be read in conjunction with both that report and Peter Stubley’s article on ‘What have the CLUMPS ever done for us?’ in the same issue. Details of presentations which were broadly similar to those given at Goldsmiths are not repeated here, but can be found in the Ariadne 23 report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/search-engines/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/search-engines/ In the courses that I run on Internet searching people often express concern, surprise or plain puzzlement at the way in which search engines relevance rank the results that they return. Consequently, I thought that it might be interesting to cover this subject in the column. Why rank pages? The search engines that are what I call 'free text' search engines will, in general terms, be much more comprehensive than those that provide access to websites via a directory or index. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/tei/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/tei/ The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) was originally established in 1987 with the goal of creating a community-based standard for text encoding and interchange. It came into being as the result of a perception in many different parts of the academic research community that the rising tide of digitized media (largely known, in those distant days, as "electronic" or even "machine-readable" texts) threatened to engulf everything in a war of competing formats and encoding systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-focus/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-focus/ The Ninth International World Wide Web conference (WWW9) was held at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam. The main part of the conference took place from Tuesday 16th till Thursday 18th May. A day of tutorial and workshops was held on Monday 15th May with the Developer's Day on Friday 19th May. About 1,400 delegates attended the conference. It was pleasing to note the large numbers of delegates from the UK - about 100 in total, with about 50% from the Higher Education community (and about 9 people from Southampton University and another 9 from Bristol University). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-watch/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-watch/ How many web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey has been carried out recently in an attempt to answer these questions. The Tools AvailableNetcraft [1] is a company based in Bath which carries out surveys of Web server software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/honduras/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/honduras/ Christmas eve we wrapped up a few simple presents, a couple of polystyrene aeroplanes, some puppets, an alphabet colouring book and a kite. We also wrapped up a clockwork Torch. Very useful around here. In the morning we were picked up by motor boat and driven over to the house. We left the hotel and passed through the village. Here the islanders all live on the coast. Since the tide doesn't rise much more than a few feet the houses are safely built on stilts, actually over the sea. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/at-the-event/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/at-the-event/ Last year’s CLUMPS meeting took place in a large purpose built lecture theatre in the new British Library building at St Pancras. This was very handy for those of us arriving from Bath, since it is only 3 tube stops or so from Paddington to St Pancras/Kings Cross. This year the meeting is split into two events, and the first of these was arranged to happen at Goldsmiths College at New Cross in South East London. 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/eevl/ariadne2.html Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/eevl/ariadne2.html BackgroundEEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, is the UK-based, free gateway to engineering information on the Internet.  It is part of the EMC Hub, which in turn is part of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a national initiative to provide effective access to high quality Internet resources for the UK learning and research communities..  EEVL is a JISC funded service. Recent newsThere seems to be quite a lot of news to report from the EEVL camp. 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/metadata/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/metadata/ "Interoperability is easy. It’s a piece of cake. Simply digitise (or create in digital form) a load of content and stick it on a web site. To let people find it, use this cool stuff called metadata. Basically, that means describing your stuff by writing a description of it inside some <META> tags." Erm… Wrong!!! The prevalence of this view — or views remarkably akin to it — is truly scary, even amongst the ranks of those such as readers of Ariadne, from whom we might reasonably expect better. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/planet-sosig/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/planet-sosig/ New Millennium, New SOSIGOn the 25th February 2000 SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway) officially launched its brand new service at a successful one-day event in central London. Speakers at the event included Annabel Colley, website producer for BBC’s Panorama and Chair of the Association for UK Media Librarians who spoke of the enormous contribution SOSIG has made to research, since its inception. “Used incorrectly, the Internet can be a huge time waster. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/eevl/railway.html Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/eevl/railway.html The rail industry has been an enthusiastic adopter of the Internet with organisations initially developing their web pages to promote their products, services and technologies, and provide copies of annual reports and press releases. More recently, staff recruitment and e-commerce applications have started to appear. This review concentrates on English language sites and describes several key pages which can be used by surfers to explore the sector in more depth. The links discussed here form a part of my own collection of rail industry web addresses, which is recommended as first stop for an industry search [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/checkout-review/online-searching.html Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/checkout-review/online-searching.html To match the growing trend towards electronic resources and rapid resource discovery, librarians, perhaps the most traditional of resource discovery methods, need to embrace the world of online searching. A correctly executed search or series of searches can yield a number of useful results. But what is the correct way to perform an online search? It is this question that Forrester and Rowlands hope to answer in The Online Searcher’s Companion. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/oed-review/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/oed-review/ Cultural history, encyclopaedia, etymological record of the English language, spelling aid… The Oxford English Dictionary is a number of things, and now it is a web site. What was once evocative of dusty tomes, thumbed by wizened professors of English in the recesses of University libraries is embracing the information age and going online. But how can this, the most traditional of traditional works of literature, benefit from modern technology? An initial answer, in a word, is “revision”. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/search-engines/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/search-engines/ Ixquick and Multi search enginesBy now I’m sure that we’re all aware that just using one single search engine on its own isn’t a particularly effective way of searching the Web. Even the large search engines which index 200-300,000,000 pages hardly scratch the surface of the one billion or more pages that are currently publicly available. If you do find what you need with a single search engine, all well and good, but in many cases people are very often dissatisfied with that they get, and finish their search wondering if they have done all that they can to get everything possible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/dovey/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/dovey/ In the not so distant past, if a group of libraries wished to offer a single online catalogue to their collections, they had to adopt a physical union catalogue model: i.e. they would have placed their catalogue records into a single searchable database. More recently there has been much work in virtual union catalogues, whereby the user interface offers integrated access to multiple catalogues as if they were a single catalogue. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/oed-online/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/oed-online/ On 14 March 2000 the Oxford English Dictionary Online will be launched on the world-wide web at www.oed.com. On view will be the full text of the 20-volume hardcover dictionary - 60 million words describing nearly three-quarters of a million terms used in English over the past thousand years, illustrated by more than 2.4 million quotations - in a format developed for maximum accessibility. The arrival of what many have called ‘the world’s greatest dictionary’ on the world-wide web is important news for scholars and researchers working in universities and libraries throughout the world. 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/23/web-watch/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/web-watch/ BackgroundOn 10 February Phillip Simons sent the following query to the web-support Mailbase list: “Can anyone tell me if there is any way of detecting who is linking to a particular URL? We want to see who still has our old URL on their links pages.” [1]. The replies suggested a couple of approaches: looking at referer (sic) fields in server log files and using the link feature provided by a number of search engines to report on pages containing a link to a resource or web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/stubley/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/stubley/   Terminology appears to have played a large part in the work associated with virtual union catalogues. We have had three years of dealing with new and slightly odd terms and only time will tell whether or not the curious word ‘clump’ becomes established in the library lexicon or whether it is simply a minor blip in cataloguing, networking and service history. Rather like the term UKLDS.   Many readers will be too young to remember the UKLDS – United Kingdom Library Database System – an initiative begun in 1981 under the auspices of the CAG (Co-operative Automation Group) to consider the possibility of creating a centralised bibliographic database – a National Union Catalogue – for the UK. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/distributed/distukcat.html Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/distributed/distukcat.html This article presents a clumps-oriented perspective on the idea of a UK national catalogue for HE, arguing that a distributed approach based on Z39.50 has a number of attractive features when compared with the alternative physical union catalogue model, but also noting that the many difficulties currently associated with the distributed approach must be resolved before it can itself be regarded as a practical proposition. Dealing with these difficulties requires a mix of further research, some of which is scheduled to take place within existing projects, and - particularly in respect of data-based interoperability problems - additional local and national resourcing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/distributed/distukcat2.html Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/distributed/distukcat2.html If the concept of parallel searching of catalogues via Z39.50 is stimulating, the initial manifestation is truly exciting. Maybe not exactly Alexander Graham Bell or Archimedes territory but life-enhancing nevertheless: to have been working on the implementation of an idea for over twelve months, as the UK eLib clumps projects have, and suddenly see bibliographic records returned simultaneously from a search across multiple library catalogues, makes it seem that all the arguments, stress and technical tinkerings have finally been worthwhile. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/eevl/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/eevl/ South Africa may have been cut off from the rest of the world during the years of the Apartheid era, but it is now very much a part of the networked world, and is trying hard to make up for lost time. South Africa has a wired population of over 1 million, and awareness of the commercial possibilities of the internet is relatively high. South Africans have for some time been heavy users of modern communications systems and especially mobile phones, the international cricketer Alan Lamb being one of the best-known advocates in recent years, and many were quick to see the possibilities of the internet in breaking their isolation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/planet-sosig/ The purpose of this article is to introduce The Question Bank contents and situate the resource in the context of its Information Space, that is its relationship to other projects that aim to make social surveys more accessible. I have the subsidiary aim of using this text to present the choices and decisions that need to be identified, preferably before undertaking the introduction of a medium sized web-based information resource. I aim to be decidedly non-technical, however many of the problems the Question bank team has overcome have been solved because of the increasing flexibility that newer software offers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/das/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/das/ Public libraries serve their communities by fulfilling seven basic roles, including knowledge archival, the preservation and maintenance of culture, knowledge dissemination, knowledge sharing, information retrieval, education, and social interaction [1]. Each of these roles offers the general public the opportunity to recognize and view libraries as an integral part of a democratic society where access to free information has been (and still is) both expected and demanded. By comparison, community networks also have similar ideals for serving the public. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dunning/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dunning/ Picture, just for a moment, a scholar wise in the books of the world but new to technology. Having heard about this 'Internet' business she goes to one of these search engines to try and find some resources relevant to her field of study. She offers the phrase 'medical ethics' (that being her field of study) to one rather garish and excitable search engine, but, after a delay of a few seconds, is proffered seemingly random links and enigmatic descriptions. 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/search-engines/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/search-engines/ AltaVista relaunchI don’t know how many of you were aware that AltaVista [1]was going to relaunch, so it may have come as something of a surprise if you visited after October 25th only to find the general appearance had changed. It was even a surprise for those of us who use it regularly! The re-launch has led to lots of confusion, many unhappy people and lots of comments, so before continuing with the rest of the column this month I’ll do my best to set the record straight about what is happening with the engine. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/reside/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/reside/ The ResIDe Electronic Library (http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/itdev/reside) was first developed as the ResIDe Electronic Reserve at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE) in 1996. Originally funded under the eLib Programme (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib), the Electronic Reserve was created as a research tool to explore such issues surrounding the implementation of an electronic reserve as copyright and collection management control mechanisms. Uniquely, in the electronic reserve strand, lead partners were the library and a faculty (the Faculty of the Built Environment) of the same academic institution and ResIDe sought, specifically, to examine issues relating to the mounting of multi-media documents supporting Built Environment studies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-focus/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-focus/ Many readers of this article will be involved in setting up new web sites, possibly for European or nationally-funded projects, for internal, institutional projects or perhaps for community projects. As the size of the web grows there is an increasing awareness of the need to be pro-active in promoting web sites - we can no longer simply sit back and expect visitors to arrive at our new site. This article describes a variety of approaches which can be taken to the promotion of a web site. 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/22/web-watch/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/web-watch/ In September 1999 the author ran a 90 minutes hands-on session on Managing Your Institutional Web Gateway [1] at the JANET User Support Workshop which was held at the University of Plymouth. The materials for included a series of exercises in which the participants were asked to go to their own institutional home page, find the main page which contains links to external web resources and comment on the resource. After reviewing their own web site, they were then asked to look at a number of other university web sites and repeat the exercise. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/subject-gateways/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/subject-gateways/ This information paper was written by the National Library of Australia to describe the scope and intent of four of Australia's national subject gateways: Agrigate [2], the Australian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL) [3], EdNA Online - the website of the Education Network of Australia (EdNA) [4], and MetaChem [5]. The four criteria shaping subject gateway development were identified as an operational framework, standards & guidelines, quality of service delivery, and scope. They have been mapped to the characteristics of the Australian subject gateways as described below. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/bized/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/bized/ The HubFrom 1 August Biz/ed is continuing resource discovery for the subject areas business, economics and management under the auspices of the Social Science, Business and Law Hub funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network Centre [1]. SOSIG [2] will act as an umbrella to a number of catalogues including Biz/ed’s. Biz/ed will continue to have its own interface and look and feel, and Biz/ed’s records will continue to form the economics and business sections of the SOSIG hub. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/at-the-event/bath-profile.html Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/at-the-event/bath-profile.html The Bath Profile: An International Z39.50 Specification for Library Applications and Resource DiscoveryA meeting [1] was held in Bath from 15-17 August in order to progress work on the evolving international Z39.50 Profile to improve semantic interoperability when searching across diverse systems. For further information on Z39.50, see a separate article in this issue of Ariadne [2] Discussion of this Profile began on a listserv (ZIP-PIZ-L) and was continued through teleconferences involving a small group of librarians, vendors and others prior to this meeting. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/digiwilf/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/digiwilf/ PH How did the WWW1 JTAP seminars get started? SL A long time ago we did a set of Hypercard stacks on Isaac Rosenberg, which I converted for the web in January ‘95, and then when the JTAP call came out I thought that we could expand the tutorial and make four tutorials. And then we had all the archive nearby: we thought we would tackle the idea of creating both online tutorials and a digital archive which lecturers could use. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/ecms/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/ecms/ Technology issues are of utmost importance in Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMS). In fact, these technologies can in part determine the success or failure of these systems. In a traditional environment, consumers enjoy buying with efficient systems and security. This is even truer in the Internet. Thus the need to develop and deploy technologies that are efficient and can assure security. This work covers these technology issues, illustrating the following points in an objective way: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/eevl/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/eevl/ It is fairly common practice for anyone writing about a service or project with which they are involved to emphasise its benefits, popularity and plus points, and so perhaps the title of this article EEVL ‘not a success’ may seem a little abstruse and may even have grabbed your attention. If that’s the case, let me explain what I mean by “EEVL ‘not a success’”. I do not mean that EEVL [01] has been unsuccessful. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/editorial/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/editorial/ This is the twenty first issue of Ariadne. Our first issue was published in January 1996, under the editorship of John Kirriemuir. Twenty one issues is not exactly a birthday, but nevertheless a significant milestone: I'm reasonably sure that when the idea of a web magazine was first floated in 1995, it was not imagined that it would still be around five years later. There are five main articles in this issue, each covering aspects of library networking which have to be synthesised effectively if we are to achieve the kind of seamlessly interconnected and useful electronic resources which the community is aiming at. 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/21/search-engines/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/search-engines/ FAST - new but better?FAST - Fast Search and Transfer ASA was established on July 16th 1997 and the search engine (1) arose out of a project initiated at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim. Their system is powered by Dell Systems and they have an impressive grouping of partners, such as 3Com, CompuServe, Corbis, Lycos, and almost inevitably, Microsoft and Sun. The aim of FAST is to index the entire web by the end of this year; they expect to be able to index one billion documents and beyond. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/pubmed/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/pubmed/ In my opinion, there is no real question that completely paperless systems will emerge in science and in other fields. The only real question is “when will it happen?” We can reasonably expect, I feel, that a rather fully developed electronic information system … will exist by the year 2000, although it could conceivably come earlier. F. Wilfrid Lancaster (1978) [1] Predicting the future is very dangerous. Wilfrid Lancaster’s 21 year old comment may seem unduly optimistic when it mentions the arrival of ‘completely paperless’ systems, but the Internet and the World Wide Web would appear (almost) to be his ‘fully developed electronic information system’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-editor/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-editor/ I work in a discipline where scholars are as likely to be interested in a three-quarter-century-old article written in an obscure journal with a circulation of a thousand copies as they are in a lavish and masterly new publication of an international exhibition of never-before-seen artifacts. The archaeologies of scholarship on the ancient Near East are complex and arcane. The skills required to interpret them are taken for granted on the assumption that university students should already know how to use a library (as any schoolboy knows. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/unix/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/unix/ mod_perl [1] has to be one of the most useful and powerful of the Apache modules. Beneath the inconspicuous name, this module marries two of the most successful and widely acclaimed products of OSS, the Apache Webserver [2] and Perl [3]. The result is a kind of Web developers Utopia, with Perl providing easy access to, and control of, the formidable Apache API. Powerful applications can be rapidly created and deployed as solutions to anything from an office Intranet to Enterprise level Web requirements. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-cache/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-cache/ Why are UK universities using Web caches?Whenever a student or academic tries to connect to a Web page, there is a significant chance that another person has already viewed the same Web page in the not too distant past. If a Web page is based on a US machine, it can be slow and expensive to load directly from the US, so it is worth saving a copy of the Web page on a UK-based ‘Web cache’ (which is sometimes called a ‘proxy cache’, to distinguish it from the cache on the user’s hard drive). 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/webwatch/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/webwatch/ In the previous issue of Ariadne an analysis of 404 error messages provided on UK University web sites was carried out [1]. In this issue an analysis of indexing software used to provide searches on UK University web sites is given. Although the WebWatch project [2] has finished, UKOLN will continue to carry out occasional surveys across UK HE web sites and publish reports in Ariadne. This will enable trends to be observed and documented. 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/21/z3950/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/z3950/ Z39.50. Despite certain nominative similarities, it's not a robot from that other blockbuster of the summer, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but rather the cuddly and approachable name for an important standard of relevance to many working with information resources in a distributed environment. In this particular summer blockbuster (Ariadne, to which I'm sure many readers frequently refer in the same paragraph as Star Wars), I'll attempt to remove some of the mystique surrounding this much-maligned standard, and illustrate some of what it can be used for. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bized/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bized/ Introducing the Advice and Answers Section of the CTI Economics Web siteThe CTI centre for Economics [1]is part of a national initiative encouraging and promoting the appropriate use of learning technologies in UK Higher Education. It is based at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT)[2]at the University of Bristol. The CTI Economics Web site has long provided academic Economists with resource catalogues that give value-added information on topics such as where to find on-line data, what software exists to teach Macroeconomics and how Java is being used in online tutorials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/clumps-workshop/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/clumps-workshop/ In attempting to establish the requirements of users in the context of the four e-Lib Clump Projects we decided to take a two-pronged approach. Firstly we tried to look at some typical user profiles and see what their search requirements were likely to be. Then we related this to what we found when we did some actual searches. This article will provide the reader with some pointers to the relative merits or otherwise of the projects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/eevl/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/eevl/ Following the success of the subject gateways, developed as part of the eLib programme, JISC will fund a three-year programme which will expand the subject gateways model to cover all subject areas on a broadly faculty-hub basis. As part of this Resource Discovery Network (RDN), EEVL [01] and Heriot-Watt University successfully bid to establish an Engineering, Mathematics and Computing (EMC) 'Hub' (a focused collection of gateways). The EMC Hub, which will be funded from 1st August 1999, will develop services in these three subjects, expanding existing services and bringing online new ones. 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/ims/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/ims/ “IMS is a global coalition of academic, commercial and government organizations, working together to define the Internet architecture for learning.” Excerpt from the IMS project website [1]. IMS was originally a US-based organisation but now wishes to be seen as an international effort. In the UK, the JISC is an investment partner and a UK IMS centre has been set up [2]. Recently, I attended two UK IMS events: the IMS Developer Workshop (March 23 - 24 1999, Bath) and the IMS/eLib Concertation Day (May 4 1999, London). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/omni/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/omni/ This article describes some of the findings of an informal study of access to the Internet for information professionals working within the UK public funded health sector e.g. hospital libraries, NHS trusts, and other public funded medical libraries. The problemThe OMNI service [1] receives a steady number of inquiries from a large and diverse number of people. Many of these inquiries are from members of the public requiring medical and health information; in these cases, as we are not medically qualified or legally covered, we have to politely point out that services such as OMNI are meant to complement their General Practitioner, not to replace him or her. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bopac/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bopac/ This article attempts to draw some practical lessons for those involved with clumps (or thinking about them) from our experiences on the BOPAC2 project [1]. BOPAC2 was a British Library funded project, that was investigating the problems of large and complex retrievals from Z39.50 [2] searches especially from multiple targets. Although the funded stage of BOPAC2 is over the system is still under development and available on the web and I would urge people to try the sort of examples I will mention below (and give us feedback). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/search-engines/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/search-engines/ Finding peopleThe Internet is about a great many different things, but when it really comes down to it, the Internet is about people. People creating websites, putting up content, writing emails, posting to newsgroups and interacting with each other. Since that the basis on which the whole of the Internet works, I thought it might be quite interesting to have a look at ways we have of being able to find all of these people, using a variety of different types of search engines. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-editor/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-editor/ Information Science & Web ManagementWhen web services began in Higher Education institutions, the majority of those employed to manage them were technical people. Experience in UNIX, CGI programming and Apache were prerequisites. But as web sites have grown into huge vortexes of information, those with the skills to help identify & satisfy the information needs of client groups have become increasingly valued. Recent adverts in the national press for web administrators/editors/masters have emphasised skills in ‘the gathering, analysis and presentation of information’ [1] ‘effective communication’, ‘team leadership’ and ‘information management’; skills either directly taught in or fostered by courses such as Information and Library Science (ILS). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/tolimac/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/tolimac/ As networked information services continue to expand, libraries need to reinforce their key intermediary role between information providers and end users to achieve a double objective: facilitate user access to electronic services distributed through the Internet and guarantee payment to providers. TOLIMAC (Total Library Management Concept) is designed as a management tool that allows libraries to manage and control user access to electronic information. It enables electronic information providers to agree institutional contracts based on actual use of their services, as it provides guarantees on request authentication and on payment for information delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ The Eighth World Wide Web Conference (WWW8) was on a smaller scale than in the past few years. The numbers of delegates seemed to be down, and there was no accompanying exhibition. The conference appeared to be refocussing on the web research community, with delegates from commercial companies more likely to be software developers than marketing types. This refocussing also seemed to be reflected in the conference papers, which, as a number of people commented, seemed to be of a higher quality this year. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/404/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/404/ What are the ten most visited pages on your website? Your main entry point, no doubt. And possibly your search page, a site map or other navigational aids. A greeting from your Vice Chancellor may be a popular page - or is it more likely to be a Student's Union Society page, or a personal home page? All of these are possibilities, but isn't a frequently visited - if not popular - page missing from this list? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/bized/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/bized/ Biz/edIntroducing Biz/edBiz/ed [1] is a free, subject-based information gateway service providing access to quality-assured Internet resources in business and economics. It is managed from the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) [2] based at the University of Bristol. The core service was originally targeted at the needs of staff and students up to first year undergraduate level. However, funding under the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) [3] has enabled Biz/ed to encompass research users and those developing and using materials for more advanced courses in the HE sector. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/eevl/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/eevl/ Here are four updates relevant to the EEVL project. EEVL UpdateLinda Kerr, EEVL The Offshore Engineering Information Service [1] hosted by EEVL[2], provides details of meetings and conferences in petroleum and offshore engineering, and a bibliography of recent accessions in those areas to Heriot-Watt University Library. The Web pages were previously free only to UK academics, and are now free to all users. An article on engineering resources in Petroleum appears in this column, written by Arnold Myers, who runs the Offshore Engineering Information Service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/editorials/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/editorials/ This is the first issue of a purely electronic Ariadne, which has been produced without the assistance of a print editor (Lyndon Pugh) and production manager (John MacColl), both of whom contributed substantially to the commissioning side of the operation. In addition, UKOLN is this month launching a second electronic magazine, Exploit Interactive. We are therefore grateful to Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) for a good deal of editorial assistance for this issue, in addition to his usual contribution, and also to the many contributors who supplied material well ahead of the deadline. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/ims/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/ims/ Background At the University of Edinburgh, the Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information Centre (SELLIC)[1] combines a physical learning resource centre development with the introduction of a learning management system for the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The new building, which will meet the demand for a science library for the University of Edinburgh which was first expressed over forty years ago, and has grown more insistent every since, will open its first phase for the beginning of session 2001⁄2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/metadata/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/metadata/ IntroductionImage-based information is a key component of human progress in a number of distinct subject domains and digital image retrieval is a fast-growing research area with regard to both still and moving images. In order to address some relevant issues the Second UK Conference on Image Retrieval - the Challenge of Image Retrieval (CIR 99) was held in Newcastle upon Tyne on the 25 and 26 February 1999 [1]. Participants included both researchers and practitioners in the area of image retrieval. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/omni/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/omni/ Defining the subjectsHere at OMNI, our subject gateway essentially covers all of the health studies subjects in scope (basically medicine and health), and various biomedical aspects of the life sciences, such as molecular biology research, clinical psychology and sports medicines. Of late, it has struck us that most of the national controversies that tend to fill the tabloids (and other newspapers) are sprung directly from these subject areas. In this section, we outline six examples most applicable to the UK; for countries such as the US, there would be a similar array of issues, including abortion as an issue of high public profile. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ SEAMLESS is a two year research project, funded by the British Library, which aims to develop a new model for citizens’ information - one which is distributed, and based on partnerships and common standards. The objectives of the SEAMLESS project are to: build strong and sustainable partnerships between the various information providers operating in the regiondevelop and implement common standards (technical and informational) so as to achieve interoperability between their systems and datadevelop a SEAMLESS interface which will allow simultaneous querying of distributed information sources (whether stored in a database, made available on a website, or in word processed documents) and return all the information back to the user in a unified listfacilitate electronic communication between the information providers and their customers, and between the various participating agenciesdevelop a current awareness/alerting service for users (second phase)Currently the project team (Essex Libraries, Fretwell Downing Data Systems Ltd. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/search-engines/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/search-engines/ Internet Sleuth It’s always an interesting challenge writing a new column for a magazine, be it an electronic or hardcopy publication, particularly if the column itself isn’t new, as is the case here. I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader of the things that Tracy Stanley (previous regular contributor to this column - Editor) has written, and I’ll do my best to also bring you something of interest. I’d like to begin by pointing you towards a search engine that I use on a regular basis, called the Internet Sleuth (to be found at http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/web-research/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/web-research/ Interactive Media-rich Web Content - Using VideoOne of the major problems experienced by Web users is the amount of time needed to download data. As the speed and power of desktop computer has increased it has become possible for almost anyone with access to a PC to produce interactive web content using images, audio, and particularly video. Therefore, even though the available bandwidth of the Internet is increasing, the bandwidth requirements of the media available through it, and the number of users trying to access that information are also increasing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/what-is/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/what-is/ Apache is the name of the software that allows you to run a web service on a UNIX server. Apache is very popular and provides access to most web sites on the internet. A recent Netcraft survey of Web Servers around the world placed Apache Powered sites at over 50 percent of the total. Part of the reason for this maybe that it is freely available, reliable and simple to set up and configure, and it can provide most of the requirements for a web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/nt/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/nt/ In this new column, I hope to bring users' attention to the value of employing Windows NT server technology within their institution. While Windows NT has its fair share of problems, there is no denying that the quality of server-side software available for this platform has improved enormously in the last 12 months. Kicking off, this article examines the use of Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 [1] to provide a sophisticated web based search solution for your institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/bids-ingenta/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/bids-ingenta/ On 21st September 1998, primary responsibility for the BIDS collection of services was transferred from the University of Bath to a newly formed company known as ingenta ltd. This was the culmination of a period of exploration and negotiation while the University sought a suitable partner to take over most of the financial responsibility for the growing organisation. A Little History BIDS has been in existence since 1990, and started running its first public service, providing access to the collection of files supplied by ISI® known as the Citation Indexes in February 1991. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/catriona/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/catriona/ Background to the Survey The CATRIONA II project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) through its Electronic Libraries (eLib) programme. The main objective of the project is to investigate approaches to the creation and management of electronic resources at Scottish universities. In the first phase of the project, an in-depth survey was conducted into electronic resource creation at six institutions. This ‘Resource Creation’ survey found that high volumes of quality electronic teaching and research material exist within institutions (90% of staff report that they have created such material), but that it is not generally available (only 31% say they have some accessible material). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/dilis/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/dilis/ -- The University of Surrey Library and Information Services has launched a new Distance Learners Information Service (DiLIS). The DiLIS initiative is a twelve month Continuing Vocational Education (CVE) funded project that encourages both library staff and distance learning students to use a wide range of information services and resources. DiLIS provides access to a mixture of paper and Internet-based facilities that utilise both academic and commercial information services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/main/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/main/ Hybrids and Clumps Stephen Pinfield What is a hybrid library? And clumps? What has eLib got to do with it? What are the clumps projects doing? What are the hybrid library projects doing? What will the impact be? Acknowledgements--    What is a hybrid library?A hybrid library is not just a traditional library (only containing paper-based resources) or just a virtual library (only containing electronic resources), but somewhere between the two. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/internet-detective/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/internet-detective/ In July 1998 we launched “Internet Detective” - an informal but comprehensive online tutorial designed to teach the skills required to critically evaluate the quality of information found on the Internet. The tutorial includes interactive quizzes, worked examples and practical hint and tips. It can be accessed via the World Wide Web from: http://sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html Who created Internet Detective? The tutorial has been developed by staff at The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/jstor/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/jstor/ In August I was fortunate enough to spend a week visiting the JSTOR offices in the United States. This invaluable experience provided me with the opportunity to discuss the progress being made since the launch of the UK JSTOR Mirror Service [1] at Manchester Information Datasets and Associated Services (MIDAS) [2] and to plan future developments. History and Background If you have not heard of JSTOR before: it is an electronic journal collection of core research titles. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Over the last twelve months Knowledge Management (KM) has become the latest hot topic in the business world. There has been a phenomenal growth in interest and activity, as seen in many new publications, conferences, IT products, and job advertisements (including a post advertised by HEFCE). Various professional groups, notably HR professionals, IT specialists, and librarians, are staking their claims, seeing KM as an opportunity to move centre stage. People often used to describe librarianship as the organisation of recorded knowledge, so perhaps our time has come? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-magazine/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-magazine/ As a partner in the Exploit Project, funded under the EU Telematics for Libraries program, UKOLN will be delivering the first issue of ‘Exploit Interactive’ early in the new year. We took the opportunity to review a wide variety of electronic publications as part of the research phase for the development of a prototype. These publications included journals, magazines and newspapers in the UK, US and the EU. The aim of the review was to identify any value-added features and services for both users and publishers that could be delivered or used in an electronic magazine; though not necessarily for inclusion in Exploit Interactive. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadata/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadata/ Introduction: cataloguing and the Internet Modern descriptive cataloguing theory and practice has developed over the past 150 years as a means of organising information for retrieval in libraries. Library catalogues typically consist of a collection of bibliographic records that describe published materials, usually - as the name implies - in the form of printed books but also including cartographic materials, music scores and manuscripts. The standards and cataloguing codes originally developed to support this activity have expanded to include a range of newer publishing media, typically: sound recordings, microforms, video recordings, films and computer files. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadiversity/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadiversity/ Introduction and contextFirst, we simply need to be moving faster to coordinate the information that already exists, on file cards and computers, scattered around the world’s major and minor museums and other collections. … Second these databases must be widely available and ‘customer friendly’. We need to accelerate current efforts for international cooperation and coordination, so that common formats are increasingly agreed and used. Robert M. May (1994) [1].  Biodiversity information managementThe management and exchange of information is an important part of the ongoing management of biodiversity and ecosystems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/search-engines/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/search-engines/ In issue 16 of Ariadne Dave Beckett wrote an interesting article on search engines. In that article he refers to lots of examples of UK-based and other searching services, and, albeit with some trepidation in view of the fact that Dave is normally the one doing the reviewing rather than being on the spot himself, I couldn’t resist the temptation of having a look at some of the resources he mentions in his excellent “Where in the World… is that ‘UK’ search engine/directory? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/examnet/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/examnet/ Abstract The ExamNet project offers access to past De Montfort University examination papers in electronic form. Exam papers from the past three semesters have been scanned and indexed and are available to all students, members of staff and researchers within De Montfort University via the World Wide Web. This article discusses why and how the system was implemented and offers guidelines for library and information systems developers at other educational institutions who may be considering setting up a similar service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/tasi/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/tasi/ The Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) was established by the Joint Information Systems Council (JISC) to advise and support the Higher Education community on the digital creation, storage and delivery of image based information. The objectives of TASI are to: share and promote technical expertise and standards within the academic and public sectors enable the academic community to develop digital archives of good quality image-related materials to support effective teaching and research by providing comprehensive information and advice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/bandwidth/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/bandwidth/ The big news this year was the implementation of charging for transatlantic bandwidth from August 1st. Universities have had to reorganise their policy on Internet use and think about ways that they can save money whilst still providing the resources that students and lecturers need. The charging for all incoming traffic through the transatlantic gateway means that costs will be incurred when getting information from not just North American sites but almost all overseas destinations outside Europe. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/editorials/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/editorials/ This is sadly the last of the parallel print and web publication of Ariadne - for the moment, at least. Ariadne will however continue as a web magazine. The print edition has finished in some style, with a publication twice the size of all earlier copies. Attendees at the eLib "Information Ecologies" conference in York earlier this month already know this, since we arranged for advance copies to be available for that event. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-focus/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-focus/ The national workshops on Institutional Web Management held at the University of Newcastle in September 1998 [1] and King’s College London in July 1997 [2] attracted a variety of people involved in running institutional web services. Damon Querry, the WWW Trainer & Enabler at Newcastle University ran a discussion group session at the KCL workshop on The Trials and Tribulations of a Web Editor [3]. That session, together with informal discussions at the workshops and on mailing lists such as the website-info-mgt Mailbase list have shown that there is much interest in the role and responsibilities of such posts. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/alac98/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/alac98/ "I pressed F1, but you didn’t come over to help." "If they are clicking they are looking for information. If they are typing we tell them to stop because they are using Hotmail." "The most important issue in electronic delivery is printing." …Just a few quotes from the American Library Association conference in Washington DC at the end of June. Why was I at ALA? Well, like a lot of you who go to the Online Exhibition in December I entered various free draws without much thought for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/planet-sosig/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/planet-sosig/ (Planet SOSIG continues its review of the main SOSIG subject sections, highlighting the resources that the Internet can offer to those working in the different fields of the social sciences. In this edition, we describe two sections of SOSIG: 1) the Law Section and 2) the Statistics and Demography Section. Sue Pettit is a law librarian at the University of Bristol and is the Law section editor for SOSIG. Her article gives an overview of the resources likely to be found in the law section and a glimpse at the selection criteria she employs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/info-ecosys/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/info-ecosys/ The third UKOLN international conference devoted to Networking and the future of libraries was the place where decontextualisation met rechaoticisation. Inhabiting a world of URLs, it seems, has given us a taste for lengthy character strings. The conference was held in Bath, which triumphed as always as a venue, from 29 June - 1 July. In the report which follows, shortage of space requires that not every paper from this fascinating conference can be discussed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/search-engines/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/search-engines/ Search engines are getting more sophisticated all the time. It’s likely that we’ll soon be seeing the rapid emergence of more ‘intelligent’ search tools which offer features for personalisation and tailoring, more effective searching synatax and more effective methods of tracking down information on large databases. Such tools are already starting to emerge in the search engine market in response to users’ needs for more sophisticated tools to help them make sense of the growing morass of information on the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/teleworking/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/teleworking/ Teleworking involves working at a distance from a usual place of work, often passing work between locations through the Internet. Work may be sent from one office building to another, from a worker’s home to a central location, from a telecottage, or from a mobile location such as a salesman’s car [1]. Home working is working from one’s own home, and can involve anything from hand-knitting jumpers to installing a high technology workshop in your garage. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/ukolug/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/ukolug/ Celebrating a significant birthday, this conference featured retrospection as well as prediction and picked up on some of the repeating patterns inherent in electronic information and retrieval systems. Charles Oppenheim began with a retrospective on the birth and development of UKOLUG (Birth of a Generation), commenting on the importance of archives despite having been there himself - his memory and the official record differing somewhat alarmingly. He conveyed the sense of frantic activity during the early years of online and the ability that UKOLUG had to shape the emergent industry - a theme picked up the next day by John December who was to challenge librarians to shape the web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ AbstractThe majority of library enquiry systems usually consist of a non-graphical interface linked to a library catalogue (Online Public Access Catalog, or OPAC). Graphics, animation and sound are usually sacrificed to speed up the enquiry process. Some interfaces support the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) and can therefore be accessed on the World Wide Web (Web). Although they allow access using a number of keywords (author, subject, title, etc.), they do not provide any help on how the catalogues are accessed, how to structure or refine a query or how to evaluate the responses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/editorials/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/editorials/ We would like to thank all of the readers who participated in the Ariadne Web Survey, part of an evaluation of the Ariadne project being carried out by Dr. Anne L. Barker, Department of Information and Library Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. The results of the survey will be of particular interest to those of us involved with the development and delivery of upcoming electronic publications. One such publication will be 'Exploit Interactive', the UKOLN deliverable in the Exploit project, funded under the EC Telematics for Libraries programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/cover/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/cover/ The Internet comes wrapped up with so much hype and vested interest that it is difficult to gauge whether it is changing much in the libraries, workplaces, and industries around the country. This makes it fertile ground for researchers. The Media was chosen as the area to study the phenomenon because it seemed likely that it would be hit very hard, one way or another. Furthermore, it seemed from the statements pouring out of the industry that nobody really had a clue about the outcome. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ The National Library of Australia has selected Fretwell-Downing’s OLIB VDX, the same product chosen by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee’s LIDDA (Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration) Project as the heart of the new interlending and document delivery support services for the nation’s libraries. OLIB (Open Library Systems) is Fretwell-Downing Informatics’ library management system, consisting of a family of products of which VDX (Virtual Document eXchange) is the product supporting ILL management. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/landscapes/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/landscapes/ The third UKOLN conference in the series Networking and the future of libraries was held at the University of Bath, 29 June-1 July. There were around 240 delegates, nearly a third of whom were from overseas. Its central theme was the construction of information and learning landscapes. The programme ranged from the exploration of distributed library architectures now being developed, to future gazing with the help of some visionary speakers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/planet-sosig/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/planet-sosig/ Browsing the Environment SectionSOSIG has chosen to use the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) scheme to produce the browsable sub-sections for its database. The sections from this scheme that I selected from the general class of Environmental Sciences [1] were: Social and socio-economic aspects of human impact on the environment (social ecology); Adverse effects of human activity on the environment; and Protection of the environment, Management of environmental quality. (For convenience these have been shortened to Social ecology, Adverse effects of human activity, and Protection of the environment respectively). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/search-engines/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/search-engines/ Are you trying to search for something difficult and end up with enormous and completely useless results? The query in the table below is rather contrived but indicates the problem. In this article I hope to help you with these kinds of situation by pointing you in the right place, showing you the best of the search engine (SE) features and giving tips on managing the output that you get when a query returns thousands of answers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/digital/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/digital/ The latest estimate of the number of Web sites worldwide is almost 2.25 million [1]. It is part of the job of many of us - librarians or information managers - to select what our users will find useful from this mass of information. How do we decide whether or not to add details of an Internet site to our resource guide or Web page? What criteria should we use when recommending Internet resources to an individual or class? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/editorials/webeditorial.html Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/editorials/webeditorial.html Ariadne welcomes Bernadette Daly, who has joined UKOLN as Information Officer, and will be co-editing the web version of the magazine. Bernadette comes to us from Canada, and will be fielding much of the general UKOLN web service, in addition to work on Ariadne. On the 30th of July, a web form will be inserted into this issue of the Web version of Ariadne, linked from the contents page, as well as this editorial page. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/planet-sosig/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/planet-sosig/ Planet SOSIG has a new satellite: the Social Science Research Grapevine. Grapevine provides an interesting compliment to the range of social science Web services hosted at the ILRT at Bristol, including SOSIG, REGARD and Biz/ed. The service is now also included in social science workshop modules offered by the ILRT joint services Internet training team. What does Grapevine offer? Grapevine is a new and unique online source of career development opportunities for social science researchers which was officially launched at the (IRISS’98) conference in March. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/routes/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/routes/ ROUTES is a gateway developed by the Open University Library as part of the Network Access Project (NAP). The project is funded by the Open University’s Office for Technology Development, and will run until April 2000, whereupon the work will be integrated into normal Library functions. ROUTES is part of the OU Library’s strategy to develop electronic library services, and is one of several Library research projects which aim to exploit new technologies and applications. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/search-engines/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/search-engines/ <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL PRO 4.0::19971010::extensions to HTML 4.0//EN” “hmpro4.dtd”> New search engines appear all the time on the web. Usually there is little to choose between the tools available other than the largely cosmetic differences of interface design However, every so often a new search engine comes along which seems to promise to take us to the ‘next level’ of web searching in terms of capability and functionality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/robots/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/robots/ What is Robots Exclusion Protocol?The robot exclusion protocol (REP) is a method implemented on web servers to control access to server resources for robots that crawl the web. Ultimately, it is up to the designer or user of robot-software to decide whether or not these protocols will be respected. However, the criteria defining an ethical robot includes stipulation that a robot should support REP. This article refers to the established REP[1] acredited to Martijn Koster [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/main/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/main/ Libraries are developing the access model of information provision and questions are raised regarding the method by which users discover the resources to which they have access. The traditional holdings model depended wholly upon the traditional catalogue. Conceptually it was a simple task to catalogue a library’s physical stock. It is clear, with the access model, that even when limited to traditional scholarly information the task of informing users of the resources to which they have access is huge. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/editorials/webeditorial.html Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/editorials/webeditorial.html This issue of Ariadne features the reappearance of “Get Tooled Up” - a section focussing on technical matters. Ian Peacock’s article on the Robot Exclusion Protocol explains the importance of, and how to write, the simple files which prevent web robots from trampling all over your server - provided of course that they have been given some elementary house training before being let loose. Showing Robots the Door also features a fully operational parsing tool for exclusion files. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/web-focus/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/web-focus/ Australia is a long way to go for a conference. What were you doing there? I attended the conference in my role as UK Web Focus and the JISC representative on the World Wide Web Consortium. Attendenance at the World Wide Web conference provides me with an opportunity to monitor the latest Web developments and keep the community informed. What were the highlights of the conference? In a three letter acronym - RDF! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/what-is/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/what-is/ About XMLWhat is XML? XML stands for the Extensible Markup Language. XML has been designed to address a number of deficiencies in HTML. Which deficiencies in particular? HTML is not extensible. Submitting proposals for extensions to HTML can be a very lengthy process. Browser software vendors can short-circuit the standardisation process by introducing their own extensions, but this has caused problems, as we have seen with controversial extensions such as Netscape’s <BLINK> and Microsoft’s <MARQUEE> elements. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/end-user/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/end-user/ University librarians are often referred to as ‘end users’ so I’ve sometimes been jokingly introduced as an end-end user - I’m Oliver de Peyer and I’m a biochemistry postgraduate at the University of Reading. Like my fellow students, I use services like Biosis, Medline and BIDS for online literature searches and so on. I am on the committee of the JISC-funded Bibliographic Dataservices User Group, or JIBS UG, where my job is to offer naive comments rather like the ones I’m going to make here - although I hope some may not be so naive after all. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/eddis/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/eddis/ The eLib programme categorises EDDIS as a document delivery project, but the concept is broader. EDDIS is an acronym for electronic document delivery, the integrated solution meaning the integration of document discovery, location, request and receipt into a seamless operation for the end user. It also means integration with library mediation and management work flow in which requests may be supplied as electronic documents or hard copy either for retention or return. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/catriona/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/catriona/ Key questions The CATRIONA II eLib-funded project is in the process of examining approaches to the creation and management of electronic research and teaching resources at Scottish universities, looking in particular at the following key questions: To what extent are academics creating electronic RAE-level research material?; To what extent are they creating electronic teaching material of value beyond the local institution? Is the material in deliverable and usable form and is it accessible? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/older-people/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/older-people/ The number of older people in the UK is growing. At the same time, use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. A recent BLRIC report [1] brought together material concerning these trends in an attempt to explore the possible contribution the Internet could make to the lives of older people. After looking at information and older people from a library and information perspective, it considered questions of access to the Internet, Internet resources, and the current use of the Internet by older people. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/models/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/models/ This was the first workshop in MODELS Phase II, although it continued to build directly on the results of the five workshops in Phase I. A Distributed National Electronic Resource? involved the largest number of participants to date. Around 50 people gathered at the Stakis Hotel in Bath on 5-6 February 1998, to discuss management and access approaches to the growing mass of currently unconnected national resources provided by libraries, data centres, archives, subject gateways, electronic journals, clumps and others. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/metadata/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/metadata/ The third phase of the ROADS eLib project [1] puts service interoperability at centre stage. The project, which provides software to a number of subject services within eLib and beyond, is now working in an environment where interoperability is a requirement. There is a ‘strand’ within the project where we are investigating a variety of tools and protocols that might contribute inter-working functionality to the ROADS ‘toolkit’. This account attempts to give some brief notes by way of context to this work and to provide a sketch of work in progress. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ National Networking Demonstrator Project for archives launchThe Archives Sub-Committee is organising a meeting to launch the NNDP which it has instigated and funded through the Non Formula Funding of Specialised Research Collections monitoring programme on 18 March. The Meeting is open to archivists and interested parties and is intended to be a platform for public review of the project’s developments. The NNDP aims to implement cross-searching of multi-level archival data, originating from numerous sources, primarily but not exclusively in the HE sector, as presented in a wide variety of formats (from EAD, to fielded data in a MODES system, to catalogue entries in Word 6). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/planet-sosig/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/planet-sosig/   IntroductionREGARD [1] is a fully functional bibliographic database of ESRC [2] (Economic and Social Research Council) research awards and all associated publications and products. It is publicly available on the World Wide Web without subscription and uses keyword searching, available at two levels. BackgroundSince the mid-1980s the ESRC have provided access to their research award information, initially through the RAPID database service run by the University of Edinburgh. REGARD has now replaced RAPID and is available on the World Wide Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/search-engines/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/search-engines/ When I first started using search engines on the Web a few years ago, I had a choice between a fairly small number of available tools. In the early days of search engines, choosing an engine was really pretty much a matter of finding one where the host was available when you needed to use it, and which would process your query fairly quickly. The searching facilities which were available were all quite unsophisticated, and the databases behind the engines were generally small, when compared to the huge databases available from services like Alta Vista and Excite today. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/superjournal/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/superjournal/ SuperJournal [1] is studying the factors that will make electronic journals successful. What features and functionalities should be present in electronic journals to deliver real value to the academic community, and what are the implications for publishers and libraries? This article gives a brief update on the project research and the early results. Overall Approach The objective of the research is to answer the question: What do readers really want from electronic journals? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/editorials/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/editorials/ In addition to the articles mentioned by Lyndon Pugh in the print editorial, Ariadne, the web version has several articles and features to interest even the most world weary. Oliver de Peyer reminds us all what it is like to be on the receiving end of the ‘end-user’ revolution whereas Brian Kelly looks forward to the latest dynamic HTML. Also on offer is timely advice from Jon Knight on the problems encountered when using networked CD ROM redirectors with Windows 95 or NT, Walter Scales looks at bad and good web design and Rachel Heery explains RDF. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/down-your-way/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/down-your-way/ THE VIEW, DOWN THE VALLEY and towards the mouth of the River Bann, from the Central Library of the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster, is seriously distracting. However, I was not here to be distracted, but to learn about the University of Ulster’s Library Services[1]. The Ulster Polytechnic and New University of Ulster (NUU) were merged in the mid- 1980’s as part of a rationalisation of higher education in Northern Ireland. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/headline/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/headline/ HEADLINE (HYBRID Electronic Access and Delivery in the Library Networked Environment) is one of the Hybrid Libraries projects funded under the eLib Phase 3 programme. Starting in January 1998 and running for three years, the project aims to develop and implement a working model of the hybrid library in a range of real-life academic situations. The project partners are the London School of Economics, the London Business School and the University of Hertfordshire. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/m25/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/m25/ M25 LINK AIMS to establish a pilot virtual clump to provide single search access to the OPACs of a subset of six members of the M25 Consortium of Higher Education Libraries. Using the Z39.50 protocol, the six OPACs, which between them cover the five most prominent library systems featured across the full 38-member Consortium, will be linked seamlessly together. Moreover, there will be a strong focus on serials holding information and an attempt to create virtual searching for serials across the pilot clump. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/planet-sosig/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/planet-sosig/ During 1997 the indexing and cataloguing of resources for the SOSIG database was reorganised with the creation of a committee of section editors based in a number of UK university libraries. The purpose of this article is to give some insight into the role of the Section Editor with reference to my own work on the Politics section. SOSIG (The Social Science Information Gateway)[1] was founded in 1994 as a result of funding from the ESRC. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/online/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/online/ The day didn’t start off quite as planned - a late taxi led to a missed train, and 40 minutes of sitting at a very cold station! But my day trip as OMNI Project Officer to the Online Exhibition at Olympia in London did however get better. It was the first day of the exhibition, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. The hall was packed with stands - on two floors, an impressive display of the information world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/view-hill/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/view-hill/ Ruth Jenkins BOWKER SAUR HAS RECENTLY introduced a new service which is designed to appeal to the increasingly catholic profession of library and information service professionals. BIPEx is the Bowker Information Professionals’ Exchange. Ruth Jenkins went to talk to the UK-European Sales Manager Fiona Leslie, and Commissioning Editor for LIS Lists Linda Hajdukiewicz, who is the prime mover behind the service. From January 1998 subscriptions to the electronic versions of the main Bowker Saur LIS journals will include BIPEx. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/main/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/main/ A few years ago, Southampton University’s Librarian, Bernard Naylor, sent round an email to his University Librarian colleagues, asking by which year each one thought he or she would be subscribing to just 20% of their periodicals as print rather than electronic journals. The replies duly rolled in, revealing that the consensus within this particular subset of the UK library profession was that 80% of journal subscriptions would be in electronic format by somewhere between 2005 and 2010. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/niss-review/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/niss-review/ Do we like it? Yes, I, for one, do. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. I love the NISS logo - very elegant. A bit like the “tick” beloved of all educationalists (or, of course, the Nike “swish” symbol). The new NISS page is much nicer and more modern-looking than the old NISS page, and its pleasingly simple and minimalist look makes it easy for the eye to see the various sections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/cover/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/cover/ The last two years have witnessed an explosion in the number of journals available online. At the end of 1995 there were just over 100 . By the end of 1997 The Open Journal Project estimates over 3000 will be produced in the UK alone[1]. This massive increase is causing libraries and readers some practical difficulty. Libraries are faced with an increasing burden of administration and concern over archiving. For the user, a multiplicity of access points and search interfaces can cause uncertainty and confusion. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/metadata/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/metadata/ Largely in recognition of the sterling work of the Nordic Metadata Project [1], invited representatives of the informal Dublin Core community set off to Finland’s lovely capital for the fifth Dublin Core workshop [2]. Following the success of their exploits Down Under [3], the authors once more fearlessly packed their rucksacks and embarked on a long and arduous voyage for the sake of Ariadne readers, selflessly braving outrageous Scandinavian beer prices and over-zealous representatives of Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise in their efforts to bring the latest news on Dublin Core to an anxiously waiting readership. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/planet-sosig/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/planet-sosig/ Subject gateways like SOSIG [1] have already proved that librarians can play a critical role in the development of Internet catalogues and collections [2]. The next challenge for subject-specific gateways is to develop systems for distributed and collaborative cataloguing of Internet resources in the same way that collaborative systems are used for print resources with many libraries feeding records into shared databases. This paper discusses some of the work being done by the DESIRE project [3] within the European Union to develop the systems and methods required for collaborative distributed cataloguing of Internet resources and at some of the training issues involved for those responsible for managing such systems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/search-engines/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/search-engines/ Previous articles in this column have concentrated on how you can get the best out of search engines when trying to track down information on the web. However, it is also possible to use search engines as tools to promote your own web sites and pages to a wider audience; ensuring that others can effectively find their way to your information. A recent survey from the Georgia Institute of Technology claimed that some 86% of web users use find web sites using search engines as their main tool [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/niss/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/niss/ The unerring ability of sites to change their appearance completely between one visit and the next must surely be a feature of life on the Web that all but the most novice surfers have experienced. NISS's electronic residency over the years provides ample qualification for a 'new look' every now and then in terms of Web 'fashion', but it is hoped that the changes in 'form' that were introduced recently alongside a new visual appearance have helped to make the NISS site easier to navigate, and also created scope for future expansion in the range and value of NISS services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ihr-info/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ihr-info/ In the early modern era of computing the first server and gateway to the humanities in Europe was established in London, UK. It was the product of the Academic Secretary of the Institute of Historical Research looking over the shoulder of a member of the Institute who had used Lynx, a text-based browser, to establish a personal list of addresses and search engines. “Could we do that for the subject of history? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/eevl/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/eevl/ Many of Ariadne’s readers will already be familiar with the main EEVL (Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library)[1] database of quality engineering resources, now containing over 2,400 searchable descriptions of, and links to, engineering e-journals, research projects, companies, mailing lists, directories, software, recruitment agencies, and so on. Many may also know that EEVL provides a number of additional services. There are plans to significantly extend the range and number of these additional services over the next year or so in order that EEVL becomes more of a gateway to networked engineering information, rather than simply a finding tool. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/editorials/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/editorials/ It’s new faces all round, as we welcome both Philip Hunter at UKOLN and Lyndon Pugh to the Ariadne team. We hope you find us all, and more particularly the articles, to your liking. This issue of the web version has its usual crop of features in addition to all the material that you can read in your printed copy. Charles Oppenhiem answers even more copyright queries and Lorcan Dempsey looks at the latest report on networking public libraries, while the Librarians’ Resources section takes a look at the all new NISS service. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/web-focus/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/web-focus/ About WebWatchWebWatch is a one year project funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) [1]. The main aim of WebWatch is to develop and use robot software to analyse the use of web technologies with various UK communities and to report on the findings to various interested communities. Other aims of WebWatch include: Evaluation of robot technologies and making recommendations on appropriate technologies.Analysis of the results obtained, and liaising with the relevant communities in interpreting the analyses and making recommendations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/bulisc97/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/bulisc97/ The Bournemouth University Library & Information Services Conference, 1997, was organised and hosted by David Ball at the Talbot Campus between 27th and 29th August. The title of “New Tricks 2” reflected the interesting in new developments in library automation and digital resources. The theme of comparing eLib and Telematics funded projects was a very interesting and useful one with a surprising amount of synergy. The three days were organised in the familiar format of a half day for registration, introduction and conference dinner; a second day for the bulk of presentations structured in a two-tier manner with general themes for the individual sessions; and a final half day for summing up and debate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/main/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/main/ Charles Handy, the management guru, tells us: Thirty years ago most people thought that change would mean more of the same, only better. That was incremental change and to be welcomed. Today we know that in many areas of life we cannot guarantee more of the same … [we] cannot even predict with confidence what will be happening in our own lives [1]. The sense of uncertainty engendered by rapid and unpredictable change is as evident in Higher Education (HE) as in politics, the National Health Service, the media, or in business and commerce. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/dl97/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/dl97/ The ACM conference on Digital Libraries is, despite its short life, the premier conference for the field. This year the computer scientists, librarians and all those in-between travelled to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania for ACM Digital Libraries ‘97 [1]. The conference, from 23-26 July, took place in the Doubletree Hotel [2] in downtown Philly and was co-located with the more technical SIGIR ‘97 [3]. All of the usual conference elements were present with 28 papers, 2 invited talks, tutorials, workshops and a session for posters/demonstrations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/edd/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/edd/ Following the original Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) trial using Blackwell’s Uncover Service, a number of recommendations were made which led to an investigation into other document delivery services available on the market. The criteria used to decide which services would best suit the needs of the user, and the University of Bath Library staff who would be carrying out the trial are outlined in the first article of this two-part series (Williams). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/knight/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/knight/ Automation and electronic information services are not newcomers to the library world. Back in the 1960s the early library automation systems were already beginning to prove their worth and the development of the MARC record format was well underway. The intervening thirty years have seen the power and features provided by library automation systems improve tremendously, the advent of online services, CD-ROM databases, the rise and growth of the Internet and its associated World Wide Web and beginnings of a truly digital virtual library appear. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/metadata/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/metadata/ To-day’s information user may well have access to a range of resources, and these resources will be described in more diverse resource description formats than traditional MARC. During the search process a user will encounter systems based on several different resource description formats, for example, their local OPAC, an internet subject gateway, an electronic text archive, each of which will manipulate a different variety of metadata. Although the promise of an increase in ‘seamless searching’ across interoperable systems will mean the end user will not themselves be aware of these diverse formats, there are other people, and indeed software, that will need to understand and manage these formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/minotaur/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/minotaur/ We had a telephone call from a reader recently. “I’ve got a blackbird feeding a cuckoo in a nest in my garden - is it legal?” she asked. Public librarians perhaps encounter this sort of inquiry with greater frequency than academic librarians, but we all grow adept at the mental gymnastics required to guide the searcher to the information which will put their mind at ease. Similarly, when it comes to Internet provision there is little point in setting up a few machines and letting the public loose on them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/planet-sosig/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/planet-sosig/ First call for papers for IRISS’98 An international conference on social science research and information on the Internet is planned for the 25-27 March 1998. The conference will be held in Bristol in the UK and is being hosted by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT)[1], home to SOSIG[2] and a number of other social science and Internet related projects. The conference is aimed at social science researchers, practitioners and information professionals who are interested in the role and impact of the Internet on the social sciences and society in general. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/public-libraries/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/public-libraries/ The increasing volume, not to mention variable quality of resources available on the Internet can make searching for that useful resource time consuming and frustrating. Popular search engines such as Yahoo and Alta Vista can deliver hundreds of sources in response to an enquiry, but refined, sophisticated searching is difficult to achieve. Enabling effective and efficient searching is particularly important when you are providing public access to the Internet, where people are often using the Internet for the first time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/sigir97/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/sigir97/ SIGIR is a well established technical conference and a little daunting for those hangers-on from Digital Libraries ‘97 who did not have a background in information retrieval. It was good, therefore, that the opening Salton Award lecture by Tefko Saracevic of Rutgers University made us feel at home with a talk entitled Users Lost. He described the history of the field and, what he felt, was a split in the early 80s between the technical algorithm-based side and the user-oriented side. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/search-engines/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/search-engines/ When searching the web, many people are keen to find ways of restricting their search to material based in the UK or Europe. The advantages of being able to get hold of such material can include the possible greater relevance to UK needs of material with a UK or European focus, speed of access to the information, and greater ability to focus a search on local topics such as news. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/babel/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/babel/ Welcome once more to the Library of Babel. [1] At today’s lunch we will be discussing some of the economic issues raised by our uniquely comprehensive acquisitions programme, and a possible solution. First, the problem. This Library’s goal, as those who have visited previously will know, is to acquire or otherwise collect and (eventually) to catalogue all expressions of human knowledge. We have previously discussed questions raised by the huge outpouring of grey and darker material through the new electronic media, and will have to return to these. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/york/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/york/ LibWeb [1] is the University of York Library’s web information service. LibWeb was designed right from the start as a comprehensive site which would provide as much information as possible on library services, staff and collections, and which would include electronic versions of all printed library guides. One of the first questions that arose in designing the site was how to deal with Internet resources. The Computing Service had maintained a campus information service for several years before the Web became the standard method of access to the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/sunsite/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/sunsite/ Few topics in librarianship seem as "hot" these days as digital libraries, and yet for all the heat being generated there is little light. What are digital libraries? How are they built? How are they maintained and preserved? How will they be funded? These questions and more abound, while answers are few and far between. We don't have all the answers, but we're a great place to start looking for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/tnauk/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/tnauk/ Cathy Murtha [1] offers an inspiring vision of how harnessing computer technology and accessible Internet services, could give print impaired people access to newspapers, magazines and library resources generally. This article describes what is already being done to help make this dream a reality. The Talking Newspaper Association of the UK was founded in 1974 to unite local Talking Newspaper groups, the first of which was started by Ronald Sturt in 1969 at the College of Librarianship Wales, Aberystwyth. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/around-table/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/around-table/ For many, love of the world of film can be an all-consuming passion. There are literally thousands of sites to visit. Because of the very nature of this subject, however, many sites will be content-rich and patience in downloading information may be the order of the day. Making a start: the major players A good place to start is the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) [1]. Its primary function is to give information about individual films - cast, crew, production details etc. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/bubl/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/bubl/ BUBL Basics BUBL provides a national information service for two audiences: the higher education community in general, and the library and information science community in particular. The BUBL Information Service was relaunched on 23 March 1997. The new URL is http://bubl.ac.uk/ BUBL is now based entirely at Strathclyde University Library. It moved from UKOLN in Bath during the first quarter of 1997. BUBL is not an acronym. Although it began as the BUlletin Board for Libraries back in 1990, it has been trying to drop this label for the past three years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/disaster/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/disaster/ A disaster control plan for the Pilkington library was created using HTML to link existing documentation. The plan was then evaluated by both students and library staff in order to assess the usefulness of a disaster control plan in this format. It was hoped that using hypertext would create a structured, easily accessible information resource. The resulting hypertext system was called "Pilkplan". In this article, the positive aspects and problems of using HTML in this area of library management are considered as well as feedback from users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Z39.50 has been around for a long time, now - why do you think it has not been assimilated into networked retrieval applications and technologies to the extent of e.g. CD-ROMs, the Web? I think that Z39.50 is now well established for large, if you will, mainframe or server-based systems. Certainly, those folks who wonder what real Z39.50 systems are in use could look at institutions like the University of California, where we have had it in production for a number of years, and we're using it every day to provide access to our community of close to a quarter of a million people, to resources mounted at places like OCLC and RLG. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/dublin/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/dublin/ The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (the Dublin Core) [1] is a 15 element metadata set that is primarily intended to aid resource discovery on the Web. The elements in the Dublin Core are TITLE, SUBJECT, DESCRIPTION, CREATOR, PUBLISHER, CONTRIBUTOR, DATE, TYPE, FORMAT, IDENTIFIER, SOURCE, LANGUAGE, RELATION, COVERAGE and RIGHTS. As we begin to consider some initial implementations using the Dublin Core we need to consider how best to manage large amounts of metadata across a Web-site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/education-line/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/education-line/ Education-line aims to help education professionals to present their work for immediate review and find elusive whole documents on-line. The pilot service was launched in January, and observers have already started to comment on indications of success. Our ambition is to have a fully-functioning, high-value service up and running by the end of February 1998. Some distinct and valuable achievements can already be reported. Document acquisition has been steady. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/edd/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/edd/   The BackgroundIn November 1994 members of the library staff met to discuss the feasibility of setting up an experiment in Electronic Document Delivery (EDD). This was a result of the continued increase of periodical prices above the rate of inflation; the increasing difficulty in subscribing to core journals caused by price increases and the need to create more space in the Library. The Deputy Librarian produced statistics which showed that 102 journals subscribed to by the Library cost over 800 pounds each i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/journals/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/journals/ Most staff and students in UK higher education now have online access to hundreds of academic journals, thanks to the HEFCs Pilot Site Licence scheme. Many more journals are also available in electronic form, access to which must be negotiated separately. The total number of electronic journals is now so large that the most ostrich-like of librarians can no longer ignore them. A recent posting to lis-elib maintained that "There will be 3000+ e-journals based on existing publications alone (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/interface/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/interface/ Dennis Nicholson is the head of Library Systems at the University of Strathclyde, where he has been responsible for the installation of two generations of library systems. In the library community at large he is best known as the driving force behind the BUBL Information Service [1] and is also involved with a number of Scottish collaborative initiatives. BUBL began life as the Bulletin Board for Libraries under Project Jupiter at the University of Glasgow. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/minotaur/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/minotaur/ Metadata [1]: it’s one of those words that rolls off the tongue; I expect Tony Hancock of h-h-h-half hour fame, could have had some fun with it, as in (I think) the Blood donor, where the ‘drinka pinta milka day’ slogan catches his eye - eatametadataday, anyone? What I want to rant about in this column is something close, yet ‘further away’ - metametadata. If metadata is ‘data about data’, then metametadata is ‘data about metadata’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/niss/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/niss/ NISS. What does it mean ? What does it do ? Why ? Answers to these questions will strike different chords for everyone reading this article, depending upon your experience of networked information resources and the type or area of work with which you’re involved. Can NISS help with your work ? NISS provides information services for the education community, and specifically for the UK higher education community. Electronic information services, so you’ll need a computer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/planet-sosig/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/planet-sosig/ On 1 July, the SOSIG Team [1] launched the service’s new Interface [2]. This has been the first major overhaul of the SOSIG service since February 1996 and provides a number of ground-breaking new features and enhancements thanks to the introduction of a new version of ROADS [3] and the expertise of our development team. The new look builds on the successes of the earlier interface, retaining and refining the button bar and providing much more online information about the service as well as extensive help. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/editorials/jm.html Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/editorials/jm.html In the mind of optimists, new computing and communications technologies are hard at work smoothing the path towards an ideal future. For pessimists, they combine to seduce us into activities which will ultimately ruin us because of the prevalence of foolish optimism. In our profession, it is possible to be either optimistic or pessimistic about the changes which are occurring. What we cannot simply assume, however, is that any of the key professional concerns of the last hundred years have simply disappeared from the agenda. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/search-engines/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/search-engines/ In the increasingly market-driven environment that is the web, it is becoming ever more important to ensure that your site gets seen by as many people as possible. In particular, corporate and organisations who are trying to attract advertising revenue to their web sites need to ensure that they can show potential advertisers that placing an advert on their pages is likely to achieve maximum exposure. Under such competitive circumstances, web authors are increasingly beginning to rely on underhand techniques to ensure their sites get seen. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/babel/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/babel/ Good morning, and welcome back to the Library of Babel. Today’s tour will focus on some of the issues raised by our unique acquisitions policy. [1] As you probably know, our Mission statement enjoins us: To make accessible to all the totality of human knowledge and we aim, towards this end, to collect all possible texts. We have been greatly assisted in this by the work of Tim Berners-Lee [2] and Robert Caillau [3] without whom our enterprise might have remained forever a pipe-dream. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/editorials/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/editorials/ This is my last issue as editor of the Web version of Ariadne. In a few weeks time, I will leaving the fluffy bunch of people collectively known as “UKOLN” [1], to join the equally fluffy bunch of people known as the “ILRT” [2]. Just time for a quick look at what is in this issue, and then some thanks to various people who have been useful/groovy/fluffy to Ariadne over the last ooooh, two years or so, now. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/around-table/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/around-table/ The resources references in this article are just a small sample of what is available to social scientists over the Internet. All of the sites mentioned can be accessed through the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) [1] a HE-funded gateway to high quality networked resources in the social sciences. Other subject-based gateways in this area include Biz/ed [2] for economics and business education information. Biz/ed also contains some excellent primary material such as company facts, tutor support pages and searchable datasets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eevl/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eevl/ EEVL [1] is approaching the end of its two-year funding from JISC as part of the eLib Project. We have applied for a further twelve months of precious funding to enable us to carry on providing and developing our services, to tie in with other three-year Subject Based Information Gateway projects such as SOSIG [2] and ADAM [3]. EEVL provides a free gateway to networked engineering resources, primarily for the UK Higher Academic community, however it is peculiarly gratifying to see from the log files that users from Greenland and Swaziland, as well as the USA Military Network have also accessed our site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/elvira/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/elvira/ As regular readers of ‘Ariadne’ will know, the fourth annual ELVIRA conference has just taken place at Milton Keynes. The following article is based on my general impressions of the event. A more detailed and complete account can be found in the collected papers, which have been published by Aslib [1] . The ‘extended abstracts’ originally submitted for review are online at the ELVIRA Web site [2]. In the keynote address to the conference, Brian Cook (Griffith University, Queensland, Australia) identified the issues facing people working in the electronic (aka digital/virtual) library field. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eurotext/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eurotext/ Even in university libraries with a European Documentation Centre (EDC), students frequently experience difficulties in identifying and locating official publications on European Union (EU) policies. Competition between students for a single copy often leads to theft and vandalism. Fewer than half of the universities in the UK have an EDC and a database of the texts of the key documents for each EU policy would be a major contribution to teaching and learning about the European Union. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/metadata/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/metadata/ Metadata for resource discovery and accessWhen the library and information community discuss metadata, the most common analogy given is the library catalogue record. Priscilla Caplan, for example, has defined metadata as a neutral term for cataloguing without the “excess baggage” of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules or the MARC formats [1]. The most well-known metadata initiative, the Dubin Core Metadata Element Set, has the specific aim of supporting resource discovery in a network environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/adam/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/adam/ Library school? What library school? Oh yes, I spent four years there, didn't I? After only eighteen months, I have to confess my memory isn't quite that bad, but immersed in my job with the ADAM Project [1] , library school certainly does seem an age ago. Everything I learned seems to have merged into one large mass of indefinable matter, and when asked to write about it for Ariadne a little wave of unease stirred within me. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/ocean-rim/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/ocean-rim/ The Indian Ocean Rim Web Site [1] advances the scope of development studies researchers by providing access to material which has been difficult to obtain, and by offering a forum for researchers around the world, especially in the region, to network. The Virtual Library is fully searchable, containing documents (free from copyright) in full text, research abstracts, subscription details for journals and reports from countries within the region. The Indian Ocean Rim Region Site also provides researchers and students with a directory of Researchers and includes the opportunity to register their work, thus promoting the vast body of research currently within the region. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/midrib-launch/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/midrib-launch/ A picture paints a thousand words, and in the field of medicine, images are essential. The recent launch of MIDRIB (Medical Images Digitised Reference Information Bank) [1] , and the announcement of the Visible Human Dataset UK Mirror, have demonstrated JISC’s [2] determination to provide high quality content in this area for the UK higher education and research community. Medical images are extremely diverse in both their content and modality, and can range from illustrations of medical equipment, to radiological images, to 3-D objects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/pics/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/pics/ A recent Ariadne article by Anagnostelis, Cooke and McNab ended with a reference to the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) [1] and added that while PICS controls neither the publication nor the distribution of information, it offers “individuals and organisations the option of filtering out or filtering in selected views of networked information”. There follows a reference to the Centre for Information Quality Management (CIQM) and its proposal to use PICS filtering in order to allow users to set constraints on the minimum quality of resources retrieved [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/electronic-resources/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/electronic-resources/ The Electronic Resources Directory [1] of Monash University Library is a tool specifically designed for locating the electronic resources of the Library. As such, it both provides information about these resources, as well as direct links to them where appropriate. Its coverage extends to those resources which are deemed to be “electronic” in format (excluding kits of which the electronic medium is only one part e.g. a disc accompanying a book) and are catalogued by the Library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/quality-ratings/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/quality-ratings/ How does the World Health Organization rate compared to Medical Students for Choice (a reproductive health rights group)? How do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention score across a range of review services? As commentators begin to question the value of much of the information currently available on the Internet, how helpful are stars, badges or seals of approval (SOAPs) in identifying quality resources? Is a "Cool site of the moment" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/omni-corner/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/omni-corner/ One of the most common criticism of the World Wide Web is that much of the information published on it is ephemeral. However, ephemeral isn’t always a bad thing; the World Wide Web has become the ideal place to keep abreast of breaking news stories. The recent General Election on the UK, for example, was the first to really use the World Wide Web as a tool for disseminating campaign information and keeping up to date with analysis and the latest polls, as well as for discussion and publishing electronic manifestos. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/planet-sosig/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/planet-sosig/ The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) [1], is asking librarians across Europe to consider their role in Internet information provision. SOSIG is proposing a model that offers both short and long term methods for libraries to increase their involvement in Internet information provision. In the short term, SOSIG would like to invite academic librarians to become SOSIG Correspondents. The Correspondents will form a pan-European team of information professionals and academics, working remotely from their workplace to select resources for the gateway. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/search-engines/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/search-engines/ The search engine world seems to be becoming an increasingly competitive environment with each major service vying with the others in order to come up with a killer feature which will attract more and more users to their site, and so boost their advertising revenue. Developers are always looking for new features which will increase the functionality of their search engines, and so far the battle has been fought over issues such as the size of the database and the ‘look and feel’ of the user interface. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/museums/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/museums/ Overview To date, the focus has been on creating a working pilot of the Australian Museums On Line web site [1] which now includes: a pilot of Museum Search, a national Searchable Collection Database currently comprising 43 000 item level collection records from 10 museums across Australia the National Directory with 850 Australian museums listed - the most up to date and the only national directory of Australian museums a wide range of information for museum workers, including links to the most important Australian and overseas museum sites a increasingly active discussion list (Australian Museum Forum) on Australian museum issues research into users of the AMOL web site through an on line survey The AMOL team is now working on substantial improvements to the pilot site, to be in place by June 1997. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/digitising/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/digitising/ The State Library of Victoria has dedicated itself to becoming a Library of the Future. It has embraced the possibilities that Multimedia has to offer and is working towards developing an on- line collection of digitised materials for the world to access. The establishment of the Multimedia Source Project is evidence of this and reflects the main role of the State Library which is to preserve the cultural heritage of the State of Victoria. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/babel/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/babel/ Good morning, and welcome to the Library of Babel. Many of you will have heard of this great institution of learning only through the melancholy brochure produced for us by Jorge Luis Borges [1] in 1941. As, however, you will discover in the course of our tours, it is in the nature of this Library that the more closely one searches for the details of its foundation, the more complication one finds. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/web-focus/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/web-focus/ The Sixth International World Wide Web Conference took place from 7-11th April 1997 in Santa Clara, California, USA. I attended the conference in my capacity as the JISC representative on the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). About 1,800 people attended the conference. This figure was down on the last two years, due possibly to the close proximity of other conferences - the Javasoft conference attracted about 8,000 delagates and the Microsoft Hardware Engineering conference about 15,000 delegates. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/wire/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/wire/ So what do you both do? Martin: Couch potato and his trusty sidekick “toast man” - but which is which? Jon: We’re both “techies” on the ROADS project in eLib and the EU DESIRE project (which for us is basically “EuroROADS”). I do two days per week on ROADS and a day per week on DESIRE. ROADS and DESIRE are both concerned with the provision of access to network resources via Subject Based Information Gateways (SBIGs); these are services such as SOSIG, OMNI and ADAM. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/eevl-evaluation/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/eevl-evaluation/ EEVL [1] and the other projects in the Access to Network Resources (ANR) area of the Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme [2] aim to provide gateways to selected quality networked resources within focus subject areas. They attempt this within the relatively immature and turbulent environment of the Internet where there is no clear picture as to the ways users search for, integrate and utilise different networked resources. While a considerable body of information exists relating to engineers use of traditional information resources [3] [4] relatively little is known about their use of the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/copac/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/copac/ 1. IntroductionCOPAC is a new consolidated union catalogue which provides free access to a database of records provided by members of the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL). The CURL database has been in existence since 1987, permitting record exchange between member libraries and providing a reference service to library staff, and it has long been felt that the database would be of value to the wider academic community. COPAC is the product of a JISC funded project to make the CURL database accessible to the research community as a whole. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/down-your-way/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/down-your-way/   Based in Kensington, London, the Natural History Museum [1] is housed in a building of palatial size and architecture. The museum houses one of the largest collections of naturally- occurring objects in the world, its holdings running to 68 million objects, a collection so large that less than a tenth of one percent is on display at any one time. Every conceivable type of animal, plant and mineral is represented, as well as a surprisingly large collection of books, art (one of the largest collections of art on paper in the UK), journals and other literature. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/netskills-corner/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/netskills-corner/ We all know that the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are wonderful. However there are still major problems to be overcome in making them easier and more efficient to use. The European Union, as part of its fourth framework programme (1994 - 1998), is trying to address some of these problems in its Telematics Applications Programme. Within the Telematics Applications Programme there are 13 project areas, these include Telematics for Transport, Education, Health Care, Libraries and the Environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/infomine/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/infomine/   The original need and context for the development of INFOMINE and the academic virtual libraryImmense potential for communicating important information, immense chaos in finding useful scholarly and educational tools as well as what promised to be immense user interest and acceptance, were conditions that characterized the Web in 1993. INFOMINE [1], a virtual library (VL) currently providing organised and annotated links to over 8,500 librarian selected scholarly and educational Internet resources, was created in January of 1994 as a response to this situation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/telegraph/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/telegraph/ 7pm. I take the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf. High up in the tower is The Telegraph Group. The Electronic Telegraph [1] (known as ET, and not the ET I’m told) sits one floor above The Daily Telegraph, which occupies several floors. A small man in a very large foyer hands me a security tag, and a member of staff comes down to collect me, since a swipe card is needed for all internal doors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-reserve/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/electronic-reserve/ Monash University is one of the largest universities in Australia. It has six campuses, five in metropolitan Melbourne, of which the biggest is in the suburb of Clayton, approximately 30 kilometers from the Central Business District and one in the South Eastern region of the State (the La Trobe Valley). Its newest campus is located at Berwick a major population growth centre, south-east of Melbourne. The University obtained government support for establishing the Berwick campus in 1993 and it was decided from the outset that this new campus would rely heavily on electronic delivery of courses and course materials from the University's other campuses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/public-libraries/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/public-libraries/ Methods of locating, obtaining and presenting information continue to increase at an unprecedented rate. The recent review of public libraries published by the Department of National Heritage [1] emphasised the government’s view that public libraries are the logical choice as facilitators of access to information in all its multiplicity of formats. Community librarians, in particular, are expected to assist in the fulfillment of the information needs specific to the community served. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/rudi/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/rudi/ RUDI (Resource for Urban Design Information) [1] began in January 1996 and is run jointly by the Engineering Research and Development Centre at the University of Hertfordshire, and the Library of Oxford Brookes University. RUDI is concerned with all aspects of urban design, but in particular physical design, within the Western cultural context. The project is funded for three years by JISC. The intention is for RUDI to become commercially self- supporting at the end of its grant period by attracting investment, subscription and sponsorship directly from users and contributors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/java-telnet/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/java-telnet/ Many remote users of our library catalog [1] have difficulty accessing it via telnet or dial-up for several reasons. It is available via telnet through a URL on our homepage [2]. Some problems using the OPAC include: Wrong terminal emulationTerminal emulation does not include special keysLack of telnet softwareNo technical support from their service providersPossible solutions include providing all remote users with software, provide technical support for multiple packages, or ignore the problem. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/scholarly-electronic/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/scholarly-electronic/ The University of Sydney Library has acquired a large number of primary texts in digital form over the last few years. These texts include numerous versions of The Bible, the works of Shakespeare, Goethe and Kant, more than 700 classical Greek texts in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the enormous Patrologia Latina Database of the Church Fathers, the English Poetry Full-Text Database, and the Intelex Philosophy Texts. To these texts and others like them must be added the texts available from remote sites such as the collection of some 2,000 French literary, scientific and philosophical texts at the Frantext Web site [1], and the many public domain texts available at the University of Virginia Electronic Text Centre [2] and the Oxford Text Archive [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/search-engines/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/search-engines/ Pushing your Luck? Wouldn’t it be great if you no longer had to spend hours trawling through search engines tracking down information on the web? What if the information you needed simply arrived on your PC desktop on a regular basis with almost no effort required on your part? A new crop of Internet applications which offer just such a service are now starting to emerge. All of these products are using a technology known as ‘Push’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/harnad/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/harnad/ One cannot disagree with most of what Fytton Rowland wrote in his Ariadne article: The four chief functions of the scholarly literature are indeed the ones he listed: quality control, information dissemination, archiving and academic credit. He is quite right about the indispensability of peer review [1], [2], [3], and about how the safety of our bridges and of our very bodies depends on it. Nor can one take issue with his distinction between fact and opinion (in principle, though their disentanglement in practice is not always that straightforward [4], [5]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/resource-discovery/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/resource-discovery/ Resource Discovery at DSTCThe Resource Discovery Project is one of the major research units of the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC). The DSTC is one of over 60 co-operative research centres in Australia and is a Federally and commercially funded non-profit company. The DSTC has over 25 participating organisations which provide resources to the research program, including, direct funding, seconded staff, hardware and software, and importantly, research problems. The Resource Discovery Project was established in mid 1994 after the emerging problem of information discovery on large networks was identified as a crucial research area for Australian data networks. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/unique-identifiers/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/unique-identifiers/ On the afternoon of Friday the 14 March more than 50 people involved in electronic publishing met for a seminar reviewing recent developments in the unique identification of digital objects. Delegates included representatives of publishers, libraries and other organisations. The seminar was organised jointly by Book Industry Communication (BIC) and the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) with support from the eLib programme. A brief report follows: Introduction - Why we need identifiersBrian Green (BIC) and Mark Bide (Mark Bide and Associates) introduced the seminar with an overview of why the publishing industry needs identifiers [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wire/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wire/ What do do you? My job title is ‘Computer Officer’, and I do everything connected with computers. I am essentially third line support, as I was not brought up to tolerate fools. How did you get into this job ie what did you do before? I used to work in Electrical Engineering, working on data transmission systems over mobile radio links. Firewalls in Universities - essential security feature or inconvenience to open use of networked technologies? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wopec/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/wopec/ Back in 1991, when the Internet began to emerge properly, there was a large quantity of computer software available on FTP servers, but few documents. Why? If the academic networks could carry free software, why not free research documents? The economics seemed nonsensical. Why would academics work to produce research without being paid, submit that research to a publisher (often involving payment of a submission fee), referee the work of other academics for free and pay a heavy price to buy the output back from the publishers? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/table/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/table/ The key medical sites described in this article are only the tip of the iceberg. To use the Internet effectively for medical information it is necessary to search the subject-based gateways. These sites do some of the hard work for you, by seeking out, evaluating, describing and indexing resources. OMNI - Organising Medical Networked Information [1], is the eLib funded biomedical gateway. It offers access to more than 1300 resources in health, clinical medicine, allied health and related areas. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/burnside/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/burnside/ With elections approaching, there has been much talk about morality. By morality, I mean the peculiarly British fascination with sex, from Virginia Bottomley's attempts to prevent satellite stations broadcasting explicit sexual material, to a renewed interest in the views of Mary Whitehouse. In one sense a concern with the commodification of sex is A Good Thing - though I, for one, would worry if the power to decide what we may or may not view resided in the hands of a government minister or a self-appointed censor with her own, rather peculiar agenda. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/kairos/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/kairos/ In the fall of 1995 we first encountered the need to help our honors rhetoric students cite Internet sources. We remember well one students first attempt. In her works cited the student created an entry to list something she'd found on the World Wide Web. With elegant simplicity she wrote Internet (1995). Realizing that something was missing, we then began seriously to investigate just how it is that one cites electronic sources with some degree of grace, efficiency, and style. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/essex/ AbstractThis paper provides a background to the development and ongoing activities of data archives in general and The Data Archive (formerly known as the ESRC Data Archive) at the University of Essex in particular. It describes the main activities involved in running the Archive and explores the benefits for both data producers and data users of a central repository of data. It touches on the growth of The Data Archive in recent years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/down-your-way/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/down-your-way/ Spread across four sites within the small historic city of Durham, the University Library caters for a diverse range of staff and student requirements, as well as acting in an important archival role for the surrounding area. The University of Durham [1] is the third oldest university in England, with some 8,300 undergraduate and 1,900 postgraduate students. The library plays a key part in supporting these students - and the large body of research staff - both through the provision of traditional services and through a joint programme with the IT Service to provide training in general information skills. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/marc/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/marc/ The MAchine Readable Catalogue (MARC) format is probably one of the oldest and most widely used metadata formats today. It was developed in the United States during the 1960's as a data interchange format for monographs in the then newly computerised library automation systems. In the following years the MARC format became a standard for export and import of data to library systems in much of the world and various national and vendor enhanced variations on the original MARC format appeared. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/ipl/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/ipl/ The Internet Public Library (IPL) is the first public library created of and for the Internet community and its style and service is similar to any large library. Your experience of the IPL will be different depending upon who you are and your expectations or needs when you visit its homepage. Given your needs, it can be a comforting place to base your explorations of useful material, a place to begin your research, or a place for a child to turn the pages of one of the books in the youth division. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/search-engines/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/search-engines/ What are Intelligent Searching Agents?Many web search engines use the concept of a ‘spider’ - automated software which goes out onto the web and trawls through the contents of each server it encounters, indexing documents as it finds them. This approach results in the kinds of databases maintained by services such as Alta Vista and Excite - huge indexes to a vast chunk of what’s currently available on the web. However, the problems which users can face when using such databases are beginning to be well documented. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/interface/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/interface/ Hypertext links in cyberspace are the subject of fascinating research being undertaken by Steve Hitchcock and Les Carr at Southampton University [2]. They have been funded by [3] to explore, in the Open Journal Project, the use of links within the context of electronic scholarly journals. This work builds upon work being undertaken by the same team in a separate project, the Distributed Link Service (DLS) [4] . This is creating a system which separates the link data from the document and stores it in link databases or 'linkbases'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/mcf/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/mcf/ For many years librarians and computer scientists have been researching and developing metadata standards and technology. Although library OPACs are obviously commercially viable systems for maintaining metadata about hard copy resources, they are something of a niche market still. With the explosion in information provision on the Internet, this niche metadata market is set to explode itself, as an increasing number of companies develop a commercial interest in the provision and support for indexing, cataloging and navigating Internet resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/hardens/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/hardens/ It was joining the BBC Networking Club and wondering what to do with the 500K of web space that came with membership that got us started on filling gaps in the web. A purely personal home page didn't appeal but we were, and still are, fascinated by the prospect of being able to publish something useful for a global audience from our home in London at virtually no cost. We are both librarians with a public library background so that seemed a promising field to explore. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/minotaur/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/minotaur/ I live in a small housing co-operative in East London. We have more access to electronic information than does the entire Indian university system. Between 15 of us, we have 72 kilobits per second of network connectivity, with more coming soon. The link between the Indian academic network ERNET [1] and the rest of the universe is 64kbps; some of the institutions on ERNET make do with 9600bps. Say it out loud: " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/multimedia/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/multimedia/ The JISC Strategy [1] states: "The JISC recognises the growing importance of multimedia data and will promote measures to ensure such data is appropriately available and transmitted electronically." As part of this consideration, a meeting was organised by the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) [2] which is now funded through JISC. This consultation meeting was held at the National Film Theatre on 18 December and was attended by about 220 people. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/omni-seminar/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/omni-seminar/ Over 150 people gathered at the Wellcome Institute in London on the 23 January to attend the 2nd Annual OMNI [1] Seminar. This brought together a range of participants including medical academics, library and information professionals and practitioners; a good indication of the impact OMNI has had during its first two years. The keynote address was given by Lynne Brindley, the chair of the new JISC Committee for Electronic Information (CEI). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/web-access/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/web-access/ If it is true that patience is a virtue, blind people must be the most virtuous people on earth. Waiting is omnipresent in a blind persons life. The simple act of reading a newspaper can be a major undertaking. However this seemingly simple task is accomplished, it requires waiting; waiting for a family member or friend to be available, or waiting for the next scheduled meeting with a paid reader. Now, however, another option is available, this new innovation in the lives of the blind has provided something that is so intriguing that many blind and print impaired individuals have to " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ What are you doing now? I'm studying for a Masters in Knowledge Based Systems at Edinburgh University's Department of Artificial Intelligence. ...and what where you doing before? Before this academic year I was a software engineer working for Nokia Telecommunications in Cambridge on a variety of network management products. Why the jump from the networkie side of a telecoms company to doing a masters degree? Mainly for financial reasons, I think. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lund/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lund/     On 11-13 October 1996 I was fortunate to be invited to participate in the 10th annual Anglo-Nordic Seminar, held in Lund, Sweden. This annual event is co-organised by the British Library and their Nordic colleagues at NORDINFO. Each year the seminar is based on a particular theme and this year it was Networking. The event was preceded by an all day session called a "Metadata Information Day" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/cranfield/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/cranfield/ I can only apologise for the brevity of parts of this report, and offer my excuses in the Sideline column in issue 7 of Ariadne (mid-January 1997). For reasons to be revealed there, I missed the first half of the Access v Holdings seminar, held at Cranfield University on 30th October 1996. [Out of the 38 delegates, I seemed to be the only one to arrive at Cranfield by public transport; perhaps they all knew something that I didn't! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/allerton/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/allerton/ The Allerton Institute is an annual conference series addressing user-centred aspects of library and information science, organised by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. The conference, which this year took place from 27-29 October, is held in the disorientatingly English-stately-home-ish setting of the Robert Allerton House and Park near Monticello, Illinois. This lovely mansion and its landscaped wooded grounds were built around the turn of the century, and were later donated to the university. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/survey/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/survey/ The use of the World Wide Web (WWW) is increasing and is likely to continue to do so for the considerable future. The UK is served with a very good quality internal Internet backbone providing JANET (Joint Academic NETwork) users with a high level of bandwidth, resulting fast communications. Unfortunately, international connections from the UK are poor and it is clear that ways of addressing the limited bandwidth the UK has at its disposal have to be found. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/table/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/table/ Lawyers have a reputation for conservatism. Jokes still abound about the law professors who refuse to switch on the PC on their desk and defiantly handwrite all their work, then shamelessly thank their secretaries in prefaces for "deciphering unintelligible handwriting". Happily, such types are in a minority as the benefits of information technology are increasingly recognised in legal education and practice. The subject matter of law can be as diverse or as traditional as one wishes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/copyright/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/copyright/ On 24 October 1996, Lord Hamilton gave in a Scottish court a preliminary interdict (equivalent to injunction in English law) to prevent the Shetland News, an Internet based newspaper, from offering links from its WWW pages to those of its rival Internet newspaper, the Shetland Times. Right now, the Shetland News is appealing for funds to help fight the case in 1997. The wording of the interdict includes the following key text (I trust I am not infringing copyright by reproducing it): http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sgml/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sgml/ This article discusses a method by which documents marked up using Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML) can be used to generate a database for use in conjunction with the World Wide Web. The tools discussed in this article and those that were used in experiments are all public domain or shareware packages. This demonstrates that the power and flexibilty of SGML can be utilised by the Internet community at little or no cost. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/edina/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/edina/ Why W? Well, a lot has been said and done about W. W clients are cheap (free?) and easy to come by. End users like them, they have point-and-click graphical interfaces. But the problem for the national bibliographic data services is how to provide access to the databases held in text management software, like BasisPlus used by both BIDS and EDINA, in a way that allows users to build queries interactively, across several physical databases. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/editorial/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/editorial/ Ariadne: The compact edition.... Welcome to this, issue 6 of the Web version of Ariadne. Comparisons with the last edition will show a large reduction in the number of articles, features and stories. This is explained in the editorial for the last edition, but to recap, each edition of the Web version of Ariadne is split into two "happenings": An edition to appear at the same time as the parallel paper edition. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/ilrt/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/ilrt/ The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol is host to more than seventeen funded projects at the forefront of learning and research technology, including four eLib projects ranging across the subject divide, from medicine to business to social science and beyond into generic issues. In this article we describe these four projects, SOSIG, ROADS, biz/ed and MIDRIB, as well as providing an overview of the Institute and its other projects. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Jeremy Bentham coined the term 'panopticon' in his proposal for a circular prison, whose cells were exposed to a central well in which the warders were located, allowing the prisoners to see all other prisoners and to be observed at all times without ever knowing when they were being watched. Bentham also promoted the idea of political economy as the greatest good for the greatest number. Drawing on his terminology as the basis for this article, I therefore propose the new term 'infopolecon' to describe the political economy of information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/borges/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/borges/ Although it may appear that it is only recently that we have discovered a need for automatic information filtering, the practice of automatically filtering a flow of information has been in use for over 30 years. The emphasis in systems since the earliest days has been on the speed of the filtering operation, ensuring that it is performed as quickly as possible. Because of the volume of information now being generated and the requirement to have this filtered, issues of quality or the relevance of information filtered for a user, are now becoming increasingly important. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/midrib/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/midrib/ The task of MIDRIB ('Medical Images Digitised Reference Information Bank') is to create a system for the creation, storage and networked delivery of image-related information. This involves a complex chain of events that takes an image from its raw form (such as a slide on a clinician's shelf) to the point where the user can retrieve it individually from a digital networked resource of potentially hundreds of thousands of items. In between it has to be captured in digital form and described so that it can be retrieved. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/mailbase/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/mailbase/ The National Mailbase Service has this month welcomed its 100,000th user! Mailbase is a national service which provides electronic discussion lists community and information sharing facilities for the UK higher education and research. It is based in the Computing Service at the University of Newcastle. Uniquely in the world of Higher Education, Mailbase was founded especially for communities who are relatively new to using the Internet and offers a high level of user support. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/minotaur/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/minotaur/ Nowadays, it seems as though the only people who haven't heard of the Internet and the World Wide Web are technophobic hermits who consider the radio to be a dangerously new invention. Indeed, the media bandwagon seems to have created hype of such a magnitude that the Web cannot possibly live up to the expectations people have been lead to have of it. Both the mainstream and the specialist press continue to laud the Web as the ultimate digital information system, a rather over ambitious claim. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/wild-thing/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/wild-thing/ Becoming a Gatekeeper, or, Creating Where the Wild Things Are: Librarian’s Guide to the Best Information on the Netby Marylaine Block, Associate Director for Public Services, O’Keefe Library, St. Ambrose University “Where the Wild Things Are: Librarians’s Guide to the Best Information on the Net” can be found at: http://www.sau.edu/cwis/internet/wild/index.htm When I first got onto the internet, I started systematically looking through All the Gopher Servers in the World, and it became clear to me immediately that there was so much there that nobody could ever be an expert on it–all anybody would ever know about it was just their own little corner of it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sosig/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/sosig/ Meeting end users’ needsAlthough the ‘bread and butter’ end user workshops in the Internet for Social Scientists portfolio are aimed at less-experienced netusers there are fewer absolute beginners now than there used to be. Libraries and faculties alike are establishing and developing provision of networked machines running WWW client software and some have their own excellent general Internet training programmes. Fewer sites rely on access to the Web via text-based browsers such as Lynx, with the majority of sites visited now running Netscape. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/performance/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/performance/ Performance measurement has been used as a research tool for many years, and as such has been used in some of the studies undertaken by UKOLN and its predecessor bodies (the Centre for Catalogue Research - CCR, and the Centre for Bibliographic Management). In the past few years, however, increasing demands for accountability to the public and to local and central government, combined with the requirements of compulsory competitive tendering, have led to performance measurement becoming an integral part of public sector management. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/irn/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/irn/ The Internet Resources Newsletter which is published by the Internet Resource Centre at Heriot-Watt University and edited by myself and Gordon Andrew is one of a large number of Internet current awareness services, but is different from most in that it concentrates on items of interest to academics, especially those in the UK who specialise in science, engineering, and the social sciences. Its raison d'etre is that it informs students and staff of Heriot-Watt about new and recent Internet resources of potential interest and provides news about developments in various networked resources such as BIDS, NISS, BUBL, EEVL, and SOSIG, but it is also written with an eye to a wider audience in the knowledge that whatever interest academics at Heriot-Watt may also interest academics and others elsewhere. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/tilburg/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/tilburg/ For two weeks, from 4 - 16 August 1996 at Tilburg University in The Netherlands,  a group of 60 librarians and information specialists from around the world was introduced to the strategic and practical issues relating to digital library developments. Participants came from as far afield as Japan and Costa Rica, but mostly from Western Europe, with a significant representation from the Netherlands itself. I was the only UK delegate, however three of the lecturers were from the UK including one from Ireland. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/view/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/view/ Sitting in the comfort of the kitchen in the basement of the Victorian terraced house which doubles as home and workplace, John Hatt explains how he came to be both a writer and publisher of travel books. It happened by accident. "I worked at one time as a publisher's rep, selling books around the country and doing some editing work. At one point I decided to take a sabbatical, and spent some months in Asia, Africa, and the US. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/wire/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW? I’m one of these “Networked Systems Officers” type people. “Technical support,” “System Administrator”, call it what you will, I’m the person that every organization has to fix problems, yell at when the network is down and keep forever occupied with unending lists of minor problems. To anyone who is in my position will know, it is a self sustaining job, for every attempt to fix anything results in two things breaking. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/search-engines/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/search-engines/ The problem with some web search engines is that they try to do everything instead of concentrating on doing a few things very well. There's an obvious advantage, of course, to being able to have all your web searching needs served by one particular tool - you only have to learn to use one interface, remember one particular URL, train users to use one particular tool. But is it realistic to expect that we can use just one particular tool to find everything we need on the web? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/table/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/table/ Homicide - Life on the streets 19/8/96 Episode "Five(2)": Detective - "Where d'ya get so handy at setting fires? " Accused - "Off the Internet." If this exchange had taken place a couple of years ago he would probably have found his information at the "public library". Perhaps if the criminal had found an interactive site the virtual experience of fire-raising would have been enough! The increasing availability of Internet connections gives the potential for immediate access to a wide range of information and learning resources for the sciences and engineering in a variety of formats - moving visual images as well as text with the ability to use then interactively. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/bids/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/bids/ I will come clean straight away, First, after a couple of tries I found the BIDS Telnet interface pretty intuitive and second I am on record as being rather sceptical as to whether a web interface to BIDS could have the same degree of functionality as the Telnet interface. I will probably find, however, if I do a bit of searching in the archives, that similar points were raised at the time of the change from pad to Telnet access of the databases. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/british-library/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/british-library/ This is the text of a paper given at Libtech 96 on 5 September 1996 in a session organised by the British Library's Centre for the Book. The author regards it - in the nature of texts on the Internet - as a "work in progress" and welcomes corrections and comments. He hopes to improve the text on the basis of comments received and will, of course, acknowledge their source! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/cause-effect/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/cause-effect/ Campus executives are beginning to look to information technology as a means to address many of the difficult challenges facing our colleges and universities today. Electronic information resources have become a key strategic resource of the institution in a far broader sense than bibliographic indexes, data processing, or administrative information systems. As articles in CAUSE/EFFECT and other professional publications show, there is growing synergy among the many departments on campus that handle various aspects of the creation, maintenance, and dissemination of information through digital technologies: library/information services, administrative computing, academic computing, networking (voice, data and video) services, distance and continuing education, instructional media, and university presses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/copyright/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/copyright/ Copyright is an exceptionally popular subject on the Web, as a simple search on Alta Vista or one of the Web Crawlers will show. The usual rag bag of articles, advertising announcements, academic sites and so on will be picked up by such searches. In this brief article, I want to draw attention to some of the sites that I find useful when wandering lost in cyberspace. The sites are in no particular order, and many of them are linked to each other. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/desire/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/desire/ Desire is a large, pan- European co-operative development project to promote the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the European research community. The project has attracted substantial funding from the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme. The project is co-ordinated by SURFnet bv, the academic network provider in the Netherlands and has a total of 23 partners in 8 countries. Other major contractors are the University of Bristol,Lund University Library, Netlab (Sweden), UNINETT/AS (Norway), Origin bv (the Netherlands), the University of Newcastle upon Tyne,the Queen's University of Belfast and the Joint Research Centre of the European Union (Italy). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/elvira4/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/elvira4/ Next May, ELVIRA reaches its 4th annual conference. When the conference series started, the concept of the electronic library was still a novelty to many of us; now every self-respecting university, college and library is involved in developments in our field. ELVIRA 4 promises to be the most exciting conference yet, and also the most varied. The organisers are keen to encourage different types of submission and session, to fit the diverse needs of researchers and practitioners in electronic resource provision. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/editorial/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/editorial/ So why is this issue of the Web version of Ariadne so big, then? …was a question asked by several people who have watched this issue being constructed. The answer is, in one word, "awareness" (Ariadne does reside in the Training and Awareness section of the eLib programme). In a possibly noticeable change of direction, the Web version of Ariadne (WVA for short) will have a significantly heavier bias towards making its target audience aware of relevant and useful services and resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/web-searching/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/web-searching/ InfoSeek Ultra: What is it?InfoSeek Ultra (http://ultra.infoseek.com) is a new search engine service from the InfoSeek Corporation, a Californian company with some years experience of developing Web search engines and Internet directories. InfoSeek Ultra is a new development; described as an “innovative new search technology designed to provide users with the easiest, most efficient way to find information on the Internet and the World Wide Web”. The service aims to expand upon InfoSeek’s existing search services and provide new levels of functionality, accuracy and speed. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/academic-media/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/academic-media/ MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship (MCJ) made its debut in April 1992 as a peer-reviewed electronic journal on the Internet. The concept for a peer-reviewed journal in academic media librarianship arose after an extensive literature search revealed very little regard for this specialty. There are several scholarly publications in librarianship, but none in the U.S. focusing exclusively on academic media librarianship. As Head of the Media Resources Center in the Health Sciences Library at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I thought about filling this void with an electronic journal. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Metadata. The word is increasingly to be found bandied about amongst the Web cognoscenti, but what exactly is it, and is it something that can be of value to you and your work? This article aims to explore some of the issues involved in metadata and then, concentrating specifically upon the Dublin Core, move on to show in a non-technical fashion how metadata may be used by anyone to make their material more accessible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/digital-researchers/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/digital-researchers/ Predicting the future is a risky business. On the one hand, the current instantiation of the Internet and the World Wide Web interfaces will one day become obsolete -- perhaps sooner than we think. On the other hand, some configuration of networked digital information technologies is here to stay. Moreover, many of the tools and behaviors that arise to tap the web's potential will migrate as the underlying technologies evolve. Thus, the Internet is far more than a set of data transfer protocols operating over a series of leased lines, packet switches, and servers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/pick/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/pick/ The Electronic Documentation Project is funded by the HEFC (Wales) as part of funding for specialist research collections in the humanities. It is based in Thomas Parry Library (formerly the ILS library) which is closely associated with the internationally respected Department of Information and Library Studies, UWA. The broad purpose of the project is to ‘collect’ (in some sense) Internet Resources in our field; integrate them into the existing collection and promote their use. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/ukolug/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/ukolug/ UKOLUG's State of the Art Conference, held in Warwick in July, attracted nearly 200 delegates including representatives from academia, publishing and commerce. Day OneSir Brian Follett opened the conference with a talk about technology and libraries in 2000. He described the background to the Follett report and the current implementation strategy. In outlining his view of efforts to ensure the success of the libraries review he emphasised the importance of the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) and in particular the potential of the electronic journals in the research environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ De Montfort University is one of the largest universities in Britain, with 29,000 students based on 10 campuses in eastern and central England. Major city locations are Leicester, Lincoln, Bedford and Milton Keynes. Given the distributed nature of the University, much use has to be made of the latest information and communication technologies: video-conferencing is used extensively in teaching, and in enabling teachers and researchers to meet and talk without leaving their own campus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/surf/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/surf/   The SURF Foundation was established in 1987 to co-ordinate the implementation of a multi-year plan for the improvement of the application of information technology (IT) in Dutch universities, schools for higher vocational education and research institutes. In the course of its activities SURF has become a nationwide supplier of services. These services are primarily provided through its operating subsidiaries: SURFnet bv and SURFdiensten bv. SURFnet manages the computer network of the same name. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wire/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wire/ What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW? I provide technical support for the SOSIG project and a few other web services. ... and how did you get into this area? I think I am the rare case of someone who got a job via a training course for the unemployed. On this course I learnt a bit of COBOL (!) and C on old 386s and then, highly trained, got a placement here, at Bristol university. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/table/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/table/ Is the Internet of any use to the study of the humanities? One clearly strong area is in the provision of electronic texts; there are now enough out-of-copyright literary, philosophical and historical works scattered around the Internet for it to be a rival to Wordsworth’s Classics. And Internet sites are increasingly doing more than just offering plain ASCII versions. Firstly, HTML can be used to establish connections between different sections of a text, and between a text and critical apparatus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/caching/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/caching/ The Internet is obviously the current buzzword in many organisations and libraries are no exception. Academic libraries have long valued online access to their OPACs and the ability to provide search services of large scale remote databases. However the phenomenal growth in the World Wide Web (WWW) and the demands from an increasing number of people to get easy access to the wealth of information now available has meant that library network provisions are currently undergoing a rapid period of evolution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/cedar/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/cedar/ Almost in the very beginning …The seed which has grown into CeDAR - the Centre for Database Access Research was probably planted way back in 1973 at the early days of online searching. The Marconi Research Laboratories at Gt. Baddow in Essex had developed an Automated Ultrafiche Terminal capable of storing enormous quantities of information on high density microform. This device offered access for a wide variety of potential applications from telephone directories to criminal records, maps to images of grasses brought back by Darwin from Australia, learning programmes to literature abstracts. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/editor.html Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/editor.html Caching: A criminal offence not to?How many others are dreading the next massive intake/return of Internet curious student in the autumn, and the subsequent effects on networking speed? In this issue of Ariadne, Jon Knight and Martin Hamilton describe the benefits of caching. Caching is essentially a way of bringing resources closer to the people who use them; less network used, less congestion, greater download speed, less frustration. In these times, where the increase in network users (be they students, users in the prolifically spawning cybercafe market, or the secret army of at-home modem users) easily outpaces the increase in bandwidth, such initiatives are not so much useful, but essential. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/libtech/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/libtech/ Libtech International '96 has a set of Web pages at: http://www.herts.ac.uk/Libtech/libtech.htm Libtech International is organised by the the Library & Media Services department of the University of Hertfordshire and held on the University's Hatfield Campus in September each year. The event consists of a large exhibition and a conference programme, which consists of various seminars, lectures and workshops. Entry to Libtech '96 itself is free to attend; some of the seminars and workshops charge a nominal fee for admission. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/health/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/health/ That many of the challenges and difficulties (see the two lists below) facing medical information specialists, have potential solutions in the near future organisation of the World Wide Web, is widely accepted. The problem facing medical information specialists is how, in the context of the NHS, do we make the Web work for us?   Challenges to health librarianship in a changing NHS Primary care led NHS: with more health care taking place away from hospitals information services should be more available to primary care practitionersCreation of an evidence-based culture: decision makers are ready to consider using bibliographic information to inform clinical and policy decisions provided the information is made available effectivelySpecific difficulties facing health libraries 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/4/tapin/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/tapin/ The TAPin project is a project which aims to deliver early in the eLib programme. The first deliverable was the Interim Report featuring the six partner universities, each representing a unique segment of the HE community. TAPin includes new and old universities with a variety of IT infrastructures and network readiness. The Infrastructure Audit, IT Strategy Survey, and Academic Staff Audit touched the heart of information provision from a variety of perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/acts/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/acts/ ACTS is an acronym for Advanced Communications Technologies and Services, a programme under the European Community 4th Framework R &TD Programme (collaborative research and technology development in Europe). ACTS is one of the biggest European R&TD investments with around 120 projects in place. The DTI/EPSRC High Performance Interfaces & Protocols (HPIP) LINK programme is the complementary UK initiative. In the words of the Commissions overview: "ACTS is part of a new agenda - outlined in the European Union's White Paper on 'Growth, Competitiveness and Employment' - aimed at making direct contribution to Europe's economic and social development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/acdc/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/acdc/ WWW Crawlers - Why A New One? All the major WWW crawling programs such as Alta Vista (Digital), InfoSeek, Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite etc. are based in the USA and collect their pages across the transatlantic link. There are two problems with the USA based services: They index the whole world and can return resources that are not very relevant for the UK. A UK-based system will index only UK sites, and should return local answers to the queries which may be more relevant to UK academics on JANET sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/adam/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/adam/ The ADAM Project is creating a subject-based information gateway service that will provide access to quality-assured Internet resources in the following areas: Fine Art, including painting, prints and drawings, sculpture and other contemporary media including those using technologyDesign, including industrial, product, fashion, graphic, packaging, interior designArchitecture, including town planning and landscape design, but excluding building constructionApplied Arts, including textiles, ceramics, glass, metals, jewellery, furnitureMedia, including film, television, broadcasting, photography, animation,Theory, historical, philosophical and contextual studies relating to any other categoryMuseum studies and conservationProfessional Practice, related to any of the aboveThe 3-year JISC funding for ADAM was awarded to a consortium of 10 institutions, each with a vested interest in the creation of the service, as part of the Access to Network Resources initiative of the Electronic Libraries Programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/bath/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/bath/ The 1996 Bath meeting raised some interesting questions - some explicit and others less so - like "Do we really need librarians?" And "Is traditional information work such a backwater that it takes 30 years for technology to transfer from the research laboratory into professional practice?" On display - an impressive array of computer-based systems for the retrieval - and analysis - of information. All offer natural language input with best match output - based on statistical techniques pioneered by the late great Gerard Salton. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/burnside/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/burnside/ It's is one of those hot questions in the poetry world: does poetry work on the Web, and if so, how? How is electronically transmitted verse different from poetry read aloud, or scanned from a conventional book? Is there a magic in the book's physicality, in the smell and feel of it, in the intimacy of it all? In the end, I think there is. On the other hand, poets and poetry lovers can find good stuff on the Web, and in recent weeks, I've been drifting around, in a more or less random fashion, looking for the interesting sites. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copac/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copac/ The Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) has for some years maintained a database of machine-readable catalogue records contributed by member libraries to enable the costs of cataloguing to be kept down, to members' mutual benefit. Hitherto, these records have only been made available to librarians, but with funding from the Higher Education Funding Councils' Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the database is being turned into an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) known as COPAC (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copyright/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/copyright/ Part of the basic philosophy of the eLib programme is to explore issues to do with copyright, to engender culture change amongst librarians, users and copyright owners about copyright, and to explore novel contractual or technical means to overcome the difficulties that copyright poses. In this article, I look at some of the major project lines and the copyright issues that might be raised from them. On demand publishingThe major issue that has arisen is negotiating rights from publishers for scanning the material in that subsequently is offered under on demand publishing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/downtime/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/downtime/ Win a copy of The Library and Information Professional's Guide to the Internet, as reviewed in Ariadne. This photo was taken in a dimly lit corner of the bar at the International Networked Information Conference at the Ramada hotel in February of this year. The photo features Caroline Bardrick (JISC), Lorcan Dempsey (UKOLN) and the left arm of someone who is wearing a burgundy blazer but who wishes to stay anonymous. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elvira/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elvira/ Hurrah! Users enter the Metaverse.......in their anoraks? The third Electronic Library and Visual Information Research (ELVIRA) conference opened on 30th April. The conference was truly international with delegates and speakers from Japan, Australia and throughout Europe. The conference was as usual very well organised and in extremely comfortable surroundings. ELVIRA is held in Milton Keynes and as De Montfort University is one of the leading UK electronic library research Universities (they have just established the Institute of Electronic Library Research) the venue is wholly appropriate. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/editorial.html Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/editorial.html Brief thoughts on indexing the WorldAs speculation mounts on when, as opposed to whether, Digital will be mirroring Alta Vista in the UK/Europe, and what exactly they mean by “will have partners who can localize the pages and include regional content”, late night pre-Ariadne launch thoughts turn to matters indexing. In this issue Dave Beckett and Neil Smith describe AC/DC, a Web search engine. The hugely significant difference between AC/DC and other search engines is that it indexes only a subset of publically available UK Web servers i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ggg/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ggg/ Most academics regard themselves as radicals; in practice, they are probably as conservative as anyone else in the world, publishers included. These are generalisations of course, but regarding new and novel forms of publishing it would appear that physicists logging on to Paul Ginsparg's workstation at Los Alamos are well ahead of the field. Ginsparg is, according to some, changing the face of academic publishing. Publishers and academic authors and readers all have some experience of electronic journals, an indication that they are no longer on the horizon but have arrived. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/fiddo/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/fiddo/ The FIDDO Project is studying options, methods and the management of document delivery. The principal aim is to disseminate reliable and objective data to enable library and information managers to make informed decisions about the feasibility, selection and implementation of electronic and other document delivery services within their own institutions. A range of issues, challenges and decisions confront the manger of the modern library and information service. The pressure to use dwindling resources more economically, the growth in numbers and variety of information users, and the demand for a 'customer based culture' all converge to present a formidable burden. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/trenches/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/trenches/ Many libraries now make heavy use of CD-ROM titles. Today databases held on CD-ROMs cover practically all subjects and provide a way for a library to acquire a large quantity of regularly updated information. Coupled with the relatively cheap network equipment that is now available, these CD-ROMs should also be able to provide a very useful network resource for an entire library or even campus. However the current crop of CD-ROMs vary enormously in their ease of use in a networked environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/george/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/george/ George Brett set up CNIDR (pronounced 'Snyder' – the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval) in 1992, with a three year grant obtained from the National Science Foundation. CNIDR exists to promote and support the implementation of networked information discovery and retrieval tools through working with applications developers and through its involvement in producing networking standards. With the grant due to run out in October of this year, Brett decided it was time for a switch. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/intarch/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/intarch/ Internet Archaeology is an electronic journal run by a consortium which includes the British Academy, the Council for British Archaeology and the Universities of York, Durham, Oxford, Glasgow and Southampton. The project is managed by a steering committee chaired by Prof B W Cunliffe, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. The project has two staff, myself (Managing Editor) and Sandra Garside-Neville (Assistant Editor). The choice of archaeology - the study of the past - as a subject for an electronic journal is based on the wide variety of media now being used by archaeologists in their research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/bubl/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/bubl/ The BUBL Information Service, formerly BUBL, the BUlletin Board for Libraries, is in the process of transforming itself into a new service called LINK, an acronym for LIbraries of Networked Knowledge. LINK already exists in embryonic form and can be accessed via the WWW at: http://catriona.lib.strath.ac.uk/ The service can also be accessed via Z39.50 at the same address - Port: 210, Database: Zpub. Gopher access is also available on Port 70, however gopher client access is currently very limited and is not recommended. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/mailbase/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/mailbase/ Background: What are electronic mailing lists?The terminology is not yet standardised for what I prefer to call online discussion lists. Other names used include computer mediated conferences, bulletin board systems and newsgroups. Whichever name is chosen the concept is of a large number of people with an interest in common, and geographically dispersed, communicating as a group. The mailing list is the mechanism that permits the communication and it does so by allowing one list subscriber to send a message which will be received by all other subscribers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elib/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/elib/ As mentioned in last issue’s Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) section, a wave of new projects has recently joined the programme. This now takes the number of projects to roughly 60, with the majority of UK universities, and many other research centres, organisations and companies, being involved in at least 1 project (some organisations have a stake in as many as four). A consequence of this increase is that many people, either directly working within a project, or less centrally as a project deliverable tester or eventual end-user, are interested in how their project and it’s supporting programme develop. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/metadata/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/metadata/ How do you find out what is of interest on the network? The answer is with difficulty. What should libraries and the eLib subject services be doing about this? The answer is not clear. Let's postpone the question for a while, and look at the rapidly shifting service and technical environment in which they are operating. For many people the first ports of call are the major robot- based 'vacuum-cleaner' services such as Lycos and Alta Vista which provide access to web pages worldwide, or classified listings such as Yahoo. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/minotaur/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/minotaur/ The Internet cannot be avoided. Our children will be affected by it whether we like it or not and, as information specialists, we need to get involved. Ignore it and we are doing a disservice to students young and old. Most articles with this sort of opening then go on to laud the learning opportunities of the Internet and suggest ways of getting online. A particular growth area for Internet use at present is in our children's schools. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Current public library Internet activity can be divided into four main types: Initial Experimentation and ExplorationPublic AccessCivic InformationCooperationThis is a relatively small range of topics and gives an indication of the lack of resources available to libraries with which to undertake research. Whereas the eLib programme has allowed academic libraries to explore a whole range of topics ranging from electronic documentary delivery to digitization to on demand publishing, public libraries are concentrating on much more fundamental issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/roads/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/roads/ As MARC and cataloguing give way to metadata and resource description, the true impact of the internet is realised. Cataloguers are being transformed to.....metaloguers(?). The ranks of library school students who sat bemused through lectures on UKMARC and AACR need to indulge in a bit of reconstruction. Really they were applying a canonical syntactical representation to related manifestations, and maybe occasionally considering extensibility. They were doing metadata. And if we had realised that a bit earlier, maybe we would be as rich as Jerry Yang and David Filo; as reported in mid-April, the public share offering in the internet 'catalogue' Yahoo! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/loans/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/loans/ Short Loan Collections have long been a necessary evil in academic libraries. Sometimes called 'Reserve' or 'Heavy Demand' collections, they were developed as a compromise solution to the problem of providing sufficient copies of undergraduate texts to meet the demands of large numbers of students all requiring access to the same texts at the same time. Among the latest group of eLib projects to be funded are four in the new 'Electronic Reserve' area. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/sideline/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/sideline/ Trips from Aberdeen to most places take a long time. Not being one to turn down the rare opportunity to travel abroad in my library's interest, I journeyed for 12 hours via three Flughafens and four Bahnhofs, two planes and three trains to a conference on Electronic Publishing and Libraries in Bielefeld, Germany. It's very cold in Northern Germany in early February, much colder even than Aberdeen. The temperature outside did not rise much above -9oC during my visit. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/sro/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/sro/ Sociological Research Online is a new international journal which promotes rapid communication among sociologists. The first issue was published at the end of March 1996. The journal features high quality applied sociology, focusing on theoretical, empirical and methodological discussions which engage with current political, cultural and intellectual topics and debates. The journal brings together peer-reviewed articles and debates concerned with the application of sociological forms of analysis to a wide range of public issues and private concerns, with the intention of demonstrating the wide social relevance of sociological research and theory to contemporary social issues. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ucr/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ucr/ New ways of addressing the ‘access versus holdings’ debate were explored in March at the annual meeting of the University, College and Research Group of the Library Association, held at New Hall College, Cambridge. The topics covered included electronic access, user education, the difficulties faced by distance learners, staff development, budget management and undergraduate access to networked learning resources. These issues were explored during an intensive three day programme of papers and workshops (and over the odd glass of wine). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/autotrack/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/autotrack/ Paul Hollands: One of the problems that the academic community faces with respect to the Internet is that certain types resources are, by nature, subject to rapid change (eJournals and eZines for example). How do you remember when to look for the latest edition of your favourite Web publications? Once you have found that ideal specialist list of sources, how do you know when new items are added? From the web author's point of view an even greater difficulty is keeping links within your own documents up to date. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/view/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/view/ Future Publishing, based in Bath, publishes 36 magazine titles covering sport, computing, music and leisure. In 1987, the year Rob Ainsley joined it as a staff writer, it published only three. Ainsley became features editor of Classic CD magazine when it began in 1990, and then took over as editor the following year. Early this year, he decided it was time for a change. Future had had its own promotional Web site for over a year, and Ainsley felt that it was time for the music titles to develop an Internet angle. 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/many/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/many/ The title of the Ariadne newsletter illustrates a difficulty with content-based retrieval of resources - multiple entities with the same name. This duplication of identifiers inevitably leads to confusion. These problems are particularly acute when the name has an appropriate metaphor associated with it. Ariadne, with its Greek associations of navigation in difficult environments, is a case in point - as Graham Whitaker has pointed out. There are several other WWW resources whose projects have already chosen this identifier, several in the same field of network resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/engines/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/engines/ Searching for information on the World Wide Web (WWW) can often be a long and tedious task. The WWW has grown phenomenally since its origin as a small-scale resource for sharing information and finding the information you need amongst this huge collection of resources can be very difficult without effective tools. As the WWW has grown it has become necessary to provide a quick and easy method of rapidly searching webspace; and search tools - often known as search engines - have been developed which can perform this activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/copyright/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/copyright/ The owner of a copyright has the right to prevent others from selling, hiring out or renting, copying it in any form, performing the work in public, broadcasting the work on radio or TV, or amending ("adapting") it. These acts are the so-called restricted acts. Anyone who does any of these acts without permission is deemed to have infringed the copyright and can be sued for damages. Infringement is subject to the requirement that either all the work, or at least a " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/faroe/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/faroe/ The Faroe Islands is a small archipelago, comprised of 18 small islands, off in the middle of the North Atlantic, between Norway and Iceland. The total area is 1,400 sqr.km., and the population only 43,000. The population of the capital Tórshavn is approximately 15,000. Although the nearest neighbour to the south is 300 km. away, the Faroe Islands has always maintained close connections with other countries. The Faroe Islands has to import most of its commodities, as well as to rely on regular access to export markets in Europe, USA, and other countries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/glasgow/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/glasgow/ The library at Glasgow University literally towers over the campus, standing high on a hill above the round reading room, its stark geometry contrasting powerfully with the neo-Gothic main University building opposite. The University is the second oldest in Scotland and the fourth oldest in the UK. Its library, built in the 1960s, was pioneering for its time in stock arrangement, each level of the building devoted to a subject area. 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/2/netlaunch/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/netlaunch/ On 7th-8th February, John Kirriemuir attended the Netskills launch, which was combined with a Netskills training session; an overview of the event appears below. In addition, pictures of the launch (warning: very large files) are available. In this same edition of Ariadne, you can also find an interview with Jill Foster, the director of Netskills and Mailbase, as well as a more detailed description of the Netskills project. 7th February http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/netskills/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/netskills/ With the rapid growth of the Internet we have seen a huge increase in the volume and range of networked information. We have also seen an increased public awareness - hardly a day goes by without some mention of the Internet in the national press or television. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are quoted everywhere - even on Dutch tax return forms! With the increased attention has come the increase in hype. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/seren/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/seren/ Traditionally, interlibrary loans in academic libraries has made extensive use of the collections of the BLDSC as the primary resource; an approach emphasised by the designation of certain large academic libraries as “backup” libraries to the BLDSC. In other sectors of the profession, notably among Health Libraries and Public Libraries, the position has been reversed: other comparable libraries have formed the main source, with the BLDSC acting as long-stop. The reasons for this are many, and not just financial; indeed, analysis recently in one regional loan scheme suggested that as at present funded loans are actually costing some member libraries more than would use of the British Library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/sosig/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/sosig/ Behind all the hype about the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) lies the undeniable fact that valuable networked resources are becoming more accessible. Internet access software has been much improved and simplified with the coming of the WWW and more staff throughout the UK academic community have access to graphical and text browsers such as Netscape or Lynx. The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) and other subject-based gateways are helping to provide academics, researchers, support staff and Librarians with quality, ordered fare from the chaotic menu represented by the vast and ever-growing number of networked resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/bids/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/bids/ In 1990 Bath University Computing services won a contract from the Universities Funding Council’s Information System Committee to host the recently accquired ISI databases. BIDS (Bath Information and Data Systems) was up and running by February 1991. The inital four databases (the 3 Citation Indecices and the Index of Scientific and Technical Proceedings) have been joined by eight more databases acquired through CHEST so that five years later there are now twelve databases in total to choose from as well as a gateway to Blackwell’s Uncover. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/lough/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/lough/ Sprawling across a vast 216 acre site, Loughborough University is one of the largest university campuses anywhere in the UK. The university is the largest employer in this little industrial town, and in term time the student population swells the population of the town considerably. Fittingly, for an academic institution in an industrial environment, the university has a reputation as a leader in the field of technological innovation. In addition, it is considering dropping the 'Technology', from its title, and is now known simply as 'Loughborough University'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/paul/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/paul/ Paul Evan Peters is of a philosophical turn of mind. Even at breakfast, in his hotel in Hatfield where he was based for the LibTech Conference, he drops easily into a fluent analysis of the goals of the Coalition for Networked Information, the organisation which he founded five years ago. The CNI was formed to promote the creation of networked information resources which will advance scholarship and intellectual productivity. It draws upon a task force consisting of universities, publishers, hardware and software companies and library organisations. 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. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/bubl/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/bubl/ There is no doubt that BUBL retains its place as the Number One Internet resource for librarians. BUBL was one of the first of the major cooperative sites in our common subject area of the Internet, and is an impressive example of what can be accomplished by well organized, broad cooperation between colleagues. The support which it receives from its many sponsors, enabling it to employ dedicated staff, is well deserved, as is the high level of usage, both nationally and internationally. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/wire/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/wire/ In this 'Wire' interview Ariadne staff ask Traugott Koch for his views on how libraries can develop in response to the World Wide Web. 1) What do you do in the world of networking / libraries / WWW? Projects developing the use of networked information at NetLab, the Development department of Lund University Library, Sweden. 80 % of the projects are externally funded, by local, national, Nordic and European partners. (http://www.