http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/ Recent content in Issue 69 on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 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/rusbridge-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/rusbridge-rvw/ We are all too familiar with the dire predictions of coming Digital Dark Ages, when All Shall be Lost because of the fragility of our digital files and the transience of the formats. We forget, of course, that loss was always the norm. The wonderful documents in papyrus, parchment and paper that we so admire and wonder at, are the few lucky survivors of their times. Sometimes they have been carefully nurtured, sometimes they have been accidentally preserved. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/mchugh-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/mchugh-rvw/ At some point in our careers there may, indeed in these fast moving technological times, will be a period or periods when we will be required to be part of, lead or manage a project implementing technology solutions in libraries.  At 173 pages long, with 13 chapters and 5 appendices, the author seeks to provide the reader with a clear, practitioner-written, jargon-free guide to doing so.  The author, Karen Knox, is a public library librarian who has been working in the sector for over 10 years. 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/rumsey-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/rumsey-rvw/ Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are planning and implementing infrastructure and services to manage research data more urgently than they did for research publications. One policy framework sent to UK vice-chancellors from a major UK funding body (EPSRC), which set out clear expectations of responsibilities for data management at institutions within a given timetable, appears to have been the spark that prompted research data management (RDM) to be taken up by the upper echelons of management, and concrete activities set in place to start addressing the problem. 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/aayeshah-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/aayeshah-rvw/ Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching: A Beginner’s Guide is exactly what the title maintains: a beginner’s guide. The editors and primary authors, Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley, have provided an extensive overview of using games as a pedagogical resource. While this title highlights the benefits of effective games usage, it nonetheless also identifies the potential problems when employing games in a pedagogical context. ContentThe book is divided into three major sections together with an introduction and a conclusion. 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/eduserv-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/eduserv-2012-rpt/ The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management. This year’s theme of big data is certainly stimulating interest, but what exactly are the implications for those working in research, learning, and operations in Higher Education? 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/fitzgibbon-lau/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/fitzgibbon-lau/ Assessment and feedback practice in Higher Education has long been the major source of student dissatisfaction (National Student Surveys) [1]. While technologies are increasingly being used as a tool to improve the learning experience for students and staff, the use of technologies in improving the assessment experience is still patchy. In particular, in the JISC call for proposals for the assessment and feedback programme, it was suggested that ‘many institutions have yet to put in place well-embedded, supported and sustainable technology-enhanced assessment and feedback practices. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/jisc-rim-cerif-rpt/ A workshop on Research Information Management (RIM) and CERIF was held in Bristol on 27-28 June 2012, organised by the Innovation Support Centre [1] at UKOLN, together with the JISC RIM and RCSI (Repositories and Curation Shared Infrastructure) Programmes. It was a follow-up to the CERIF Tutorial and UK Data Surgery [2] held in Bath in February. Workshop Scope and AimsThe aim was to bring together people working on the various elements of the UK RIM jigsaw to share experience of using CERIF and explore ways of working together more closely. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/milloy/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/milloy/ JISC eCollections is a set of e-resource platforms launched in November 2011 by JISC Collections, in partnership with the JISC data centres EDINA and Mimas. The platforms (Figure 1) are JISC MediaHub, JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives; together, they are intended to provide a sustainable, value-for-money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms, by consolidating and hosting the broad range of historical book, journal archive and multimedia content purchased by JISC Collections on behalf of the UK education community. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/taylor/ I’ve been working with repositories in various ways for over five years, so I have, of course, attended the major international conference Open Repositories before. I have never actually presented anything or represented a specific project at the event, though. This year was different. This year I had a mission -  to present a poster on the DataFlow Project [1] and to talk to people about the work we had been doing for the past 12 months and (I hoped) to interest them in using the Open Source (OS) systems we had developed during that period. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/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/knight-et-al/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/knight-et-al/ The Loughborough Online Reading Lists System (LORLS) [1] has been developed at Loughborough University since the late 1990s.  LORLS was originally implemented at the request of the University’s Learning and Teaching Committee simply to make reading lists available online to students.  The Library staff immediately saw the benefit of such a system in not only allowing students ready access to academics’ reading lists but also in having such access themselves. This was because a significant number of academics were bypassing the library when generating and distributing lists to their students who were then in turn surprised when the library did not have the recommended books either in stock or in sufficient numbers to meet demand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ The 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 12) took place at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower – a building with a stunning panoramic view over the volcanic city.  The event brought together 172 delegates and attracted an additional 165 viewers to the live video stream of the plenary sessions over the three days. This year's theme focussed on embedding innovation, and the event featured a range of case studies and examples of embedded practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/datacite-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/datacite-2012-rpt/ On Friday, 6 July 2012 I made my way to the British Library Conference Centre for the second in a series of DataCite workshops [1]. The theme was Describe, Disseminate, Discover: Metadata for Effective Data Citation. In welcoming us to the event, Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Scientific, Technical and Medical Information at the British Library, said there had been some doubt as to whether anyone would turn up to an event about metadata, but as it happened there were 36 of us, drawn from across the UK and beyond. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/robinson-et-al/ Although the move from print to electronic journals over the last two decades has been enormously beneficial to academic libraries and their users, the shift from owning material outright to renting access has restricted the autonomy of librarians to grant access to these journals. The ProblemLicence restrictions imposed by publishers define and limit access rights and librarians have increasingly taken on the role of restricting access on behalf of the publisher, rather than granting access on behalf of their institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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'.