http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ Recent content in Issue 56 on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 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/guy/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/guy/ Introduction: A New Way of Working In the 21st Century work has changed. Remote working or teleworking [1] is an employment arrangement in which employees can complete their work from a location other than their office base, be it their home, a sub-office or even the local coffee shop. As Woody Leonhard puts it in the Underground Guide to Telecommuting, “Work is becoming something you do, not a place you go to. 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/parker-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/parker-rvw/ When asked to review the second edition of this book, I willingly accepted as I considered the first edition to be "easy to read, full of practical advice, whilst challenging me to reflect on my own practice". [1] In addition, the interest in blended learning in HEIs shows no sign of abating with several textbooks [2] [3] [4] appearing since 2006 and the Blended Learning Unit, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) with an annual conference, being established at the University of Hertfordshire[5] [6]. 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/delaney-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/delaney-rvw/ To my mind, information literacy is all about education: teaching users of all kinds of information how to find it, understand and evaluate it, and use it effectively. Yet it is getting harder and harder to find ways to teach these skills when so much information is available at everybody's fingertips. As a consequence, many people think they can get all they need from the Internet for free, let alone when your end-users are busy professionals for whom reading a book is often a desirable option they rarely find time to take up. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/cliff-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/cliff-rvw/ I'll be honest - I am no expert in data visualisation. I had not heard of Edward Tufte [1] before looking at this book and while I thought I had an idea about the topic, the book suggested to me I did not. Perhaps this makes me unable to judge the value of its content; but I prefer to think this means I can come at the work as a member of the target audience: 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/coelho-rvw/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/coelho-rvw/ If you have been wondering whether there are any alternative career options you could pursue whilst using your skills to full potential, do not miss this book. It will boost your confidence, focus your mind and take you on dozens of brief career journeys with fellow professionals. The author also builds on her personal experience of "taking the leap". After ten years in public libraries she is now self-employed, "stitching together multiple threads to create a personal career path, outside of, yet related to libraries" 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/jisc-powr-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/jisc-powr-rpt/ A university’s Web site is typically an honest reflection of the university, which is often an uncomfortable state of affairs for its managers. I was reminded of this as I negotiated my way from Senate House’s cycle bays to the Dr Seng Tee Room at the University of London. Having arrived in time, Reception – one person behind wood and glass – thought I was looking for Dr Seng Tee. A 404 [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/pasig-2008-05-rpt/ The third meeting of Sun's Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group took place in San Francisco in May. The event, the third PASIG meeting in the last year, drew around 180 participants from Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America to discuss a broad range of issues surrounding digital repositories. Presentations ranged from geographically or community-themed high-level perspectives of repository- related activity, through to detailed technical analysis and reports of development activity at an institutional or project level. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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].