http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/ Recent content in Issue 30 on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 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/digital-curation/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/digital-curation/ Digital preservation remains a significant and growing challenge for libraries, archives, and scientific data centres. This invitational seminar held in London on the 19th October sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition and the British National Space Centre, brought together international speakers to discuss leading edge developments in the field. Three developments were key to the timing and organisation of this international event: firstly, the imminent approval of the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model as an ISO standard; secondly, the launch of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a cross-sectoral coalition of over 15 major organisations; and, finally, the development of the e-science programme to develop the research grid in the UK. 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/web-security/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/web-security/ Do users need to know about computer security? The vast and growing literature of computer security suggests that solutions to most security issues are currently being sought purely through technology. Humanity obtrudes into the literature primarily in the guise of hackers and disaffected administrators, in the debate over which is the greater threat. The average user is strangely absent, like the labourer in eighteenth century landscape painting. True, a little consideration has been given to the special problems of making security software useable, and some thought has been given to how to raise security awareness. 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/angel/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/angel/ The terms MLE (Managed Learning Environment) and VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) are frequently found in use within UK HE institutions at present. They are applied, along with a range of alternative terms, to products that provide teaching and learning tools within an online environment. These products range from commercial offerings from companies such as Blackboard [1] and WebCT [2], project developments such as COSE [3] and CoMentor [4], and institutional portal developments that allow users easy access to all required services such as the Edinburgh Student Portal (ESP) [5]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/dti/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/dti/ The Software Technology Outreach Programme (1) was initiated in Autumn 2000 by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to bridge the gap between academia and industry. As Tony Stock explains “More than 1,000 advanced projects are carried out in UK universities every year, each producing on average five potential business applications - but companies are missing out because they and the universities are out of touch with each other”. Software Technology Outreach coordinates a variety of different workshops on relevant technology research areas that provide an opportunity for academic researchers to present to a commercial audience. 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/newsline/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/newsline/ Multimedia Archive Preservation - a practical workshopOrganised by IASA, FIAT, PRESTO, ECPA … and more! 22-24 May 2002 in London, UK Overview: 80% of audio and video archive content is at risk, according to the results of EC project PRESTO. Unless preservation procedures are funded and implemented - quickly - unique heritage and commercially valuable material will be lost. This workshop will provide, in a concentrated three days, the combined experience of ten major European broadcast archives, and the new technology developed by PRESTO. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/oai-chan/ Although the World Wide Web is less than a decade old, it already has had a profound impact on scientific publishing and scholarly communication. In particular, open standards and low-cost networking tools are opening many possibilities for reducing and even eliminating entirely the cost barriers to scientific publications. (1) One development that has great potential value for poorly-resourced countries is “open archiving”, or the deposition of scholarly research papers into networked servers accessible over the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/planet-sosig/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/planet-sosig/ Renardus - the European Subject Gateways Project Renardus is a collaborative project funded through the European Union’s Information Society Technologies Programme (IST). It aims to improve academic users’ access to a range of existing Internet-based information services across Europe. Renardus partners are drawn from European library and other information-related communities who work at the forefront of developments in quality-controlled subject gateways. The aim of the Renardus project is to provide users with integrated access, through a single interface, to these and other Internet-based, distributed services. 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-focus/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/web-focus/ Over the past 30 years or so we have seen a wide range of computer devices. Those of us over 40 may have distant memories of paper tape and punch cards. Over time these were replaced by terminals, followed by VDUs. Although the VT100 terminal became a de facto standard developments still continued, especially in the area of graphical devices. In the early 1980s personal computers came along. Within the UK the BBC microcomputer and various offerings from Sinclair had some degree of popularity. 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.