http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/ Recent content in Issue 7 on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/ala/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/ala/ The American Library Association's (ALA) web site [1] is a large and growing part of the Association's five-year plan, dubbed ALA Goal 2000, to focus its resources on the public's right to a free and open information society. As part of a larger project to improve and increase the use of information technology at ALA headquarters and provide support for members' use of technology in the conduct of Association business, I was hired as " http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/acrobat/ As electronic library initiatives begin to move out of the research phase and into full production, one product is emerging as a dominant force in the presentation of electronic documents. Adobe's Acrobat software [1], which is used for both generating and viewing Portable Document Format (PDF) files, is gaining widespread acceptance in the world of higher education. PDF files allow documents to look like on-screen versions of their print equivalents. The format is based upon Adobe's own PostScript page-description language, which has for years been the industry standard. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/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/biz-ed/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/biz-ed/ Building upon an already self funding project, delivering networked resources and primary materials to students and teachers in the schools and colleges, eLib funding has enabled biz/ed [1].to expand and meet the needs of the students and lecturers in higher education. The project seeks to identify these needs through a series of partnerships and evaluation sessions. Partnerships with both the academic community and the business world enable biz/ed to provide quality resources which meet the needs of students and teachers at all levels. 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/cartoon/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/cartoon/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/access-control/   AbstractThe growth of networking and the Internet has led to more and more information resources being funded centrally by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council) and provided from a single or limited number of locations to the whole of the academic community. Centralised networked services such as these have been a fact of life in commercial organisations for many years and this model is now being adopted by government agencies like the NHS. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/copyright-corner/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/copyright-corner/ In this paper I will discuss some of the major copyright issues that have arisen as a result of experiences of the eLib. This paper assumes readers are familiar with the basic ground rules about who owns copyright, what it is, the restricted acts that are given to the copyright owner, the exceptions such as fair dealing and the library copying provisions, the lifetime of copyright, and so on. I would just emphasise a couple of points of law. 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/deliberations/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/deliberations/ In the current climate of higher education, the role of the librarian is changing. "More often than not, librarians' teaching abilities are taken for granted by faculty staff; there has always been a resistance to acknowledging library staff as a legitimate faculty. Academic librarians tend to be multi-skilled and equip themselves with a teaching qualification in addition to their IT/library/undergraduate qualifications ....academics will have to become more like librarians..." [1]. 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/erims/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/erims/ Part of the eLib On-demand Publishing Programme, the ERIMS Project aims to test the viability and user environment for provision of reading materials, in electronic format, to a cross section of users in Management Studies. Management Studies information has provided an interesting context for the development, and study of use, of the ERIMS resource. On-line databases are heavily used, and taking periodical literature for example, two full-text systems are used in UK Business Schools: Business Periodicals On-Disc and General Business File. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/espere/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/espere/ The ESPERE project (Electronic Submission and Peer Review) [1] started in April 1996 and we have recently completed the research phase. The project is lead jointly by the University of Ulster and the Society for Endocrinology and has seven Learned Society partners. The project focuses on the electronic peer review of papers submitted to UK learned society publishers, initially in the biomedical area. The aim is to achieve an introductory level of article submission and peer review by transfer of a file which includes all the figures and tables applicable to the paper. 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/midas/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/midas/ MIDAS [1], based at Manchester Computing, University of Manchester, is a National Dataset Service funded by JISC [2], ESRC [3] and the University of Manchester [4], to provide UK academics with online access to large strategic and research datasets, software packages, training and large-scale computing resources. The datasets are supplied by arrangement with CHEST [5] and The Data Archive [6]. Anne McCombe was appointed on October 1996 to promote awareness and use of MIDAS in the academic community. 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/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/omni/ MNI is by no means the first or only of the Electronic Libraries Programme Access to Network Resources projects to experiment with using the well known and popular Harvest software to create descriptions of networked resources automatically. EEVL (the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, for example, recently announced the availability of their own Harvest experiment [1]) and non-eLib gateway projects had in any case, beaten us to it some time ago. 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/fytton/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/fytton/ The four functions of the scholarly journalIt has been recognised for many years (Ziman, 1968 [1]; Ravetz, 1973[2]; Meadows, 1980 [3]) that the dissemination of information is not the sole function of the scholarly journal literature. The paradoxical survival of this apparently archaic form of literature has depended on its multiple functions, which are essential to the orderly functioning of a scholarly community. The four chief functions are: Dissemination of informationQuality controlThe canonical archiveRecognition of authorsThe first of these has not necessarily ever been the most important. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/loughborough/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/loughborough/ I, along with the team of stakeholders whom I report to, have been running this project for ten months now, and we have reached a point where it would be useful to sit back and reflect on what we have achieved thus far and where we go from here. One of the most important aspects of the job in this first year has been to determine the levels of Internet service use among University staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/public-libraries/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/public-libraries/ With the failure of the second public library Millennium Bid the dream of a gift-wrapped-paid-for-by-someone-else-national-networked-public-library-service disappeared. Although Information for All [1], the company set up to run this bid, has pledged to continue looking for funding from other sources it seems unlikely that they will be able achieve the national implementation that Millennium funding would have made possible. The failure of the Bid, however, must not be seen as the end of Internet services in public libraries but as a starting point. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/books-bytes/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/books-bytes/ With more and more Americans turning to their desk-top computers for information, American libraries have been struggling to redefine their role. Numerous library leaders, aware of the seismic impact of the digital revolution, have crafted visions for their field that include cutting edge, building-without-walls, digital libraries, as well as partnerships with other public service information providers, such as schools and public broadcasters. But little has been known about the public's willingness to subscribe to an expansive vision of libraries as technology leaders in the digital age. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/scran/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/scran/ The images that the year 2001 bring up are either seductively utopian or dimly dystopian from an information and technology point of view. Visionaries either see an information rich world with constant online access - built into your clothes in some scenarios - or HAL 9000 calmly saying, "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave." There is probably no doubt that we will have the technology, but can we build a bionic information system? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/sideline/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/sideline/ Nick Hornby made me do it! This is my defence...Unaware of the distractions that lurked in the suburbs of Milton Keynes, I rose at 5.30 a.m. Jogged between bus-stops, in that hesitant 'does the 52 run at this hour?' kind of way. Caught my train and two connections. Bored of pondering life's mysteries (do you stir your coffee with the square or triangular end of the plastic thingie?), serenaded by the Mobile Phone Chorus, I retreated into my book, High Fidelity [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/british-library/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/british-library/ The Digital Library Programme [1] has been set up by the British Library following the progress made during the widely publicised Initiatives for Access [2] programme which examined the application of new technologies to the Library. The Programme comprises a number of activities across the Library aimed at providing the Library with the capabilities to acquire, store, preserve and access collection materials in digital form. The Digital Library is the widely accepted term describing the use of digital technologies to acquire, store, conserve and provide access to information and material whether originally published in digital form or digitised from print, audio-visual and other forms. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/view/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/view/ The main reason why the eLib projects are so aware of the need to evaluate what they do is that the Follett Implementation Group in Information Technology (FIGIT), in establishing the programme, commissioned the Tavistock Institute [1]to assist projects in the preparation of self-evaluation strategies. Founded in London in 1947, the Tavistock is an independent not- for-profit organisation which combines social science research with professional practice. At around the time that it was setting up its Evaluation Development and Review Unit (EDRU) about six years ago, John Kelleher - a social science researcher who had done some European-sponsored research and development work into technology transfer - moved from County Cork to the Tavistock. 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.