Ariadne Issue 8

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Articles in this issue were added on March 14th 1997, except for those indicated by an
April 9 icon; not surprisingly, these articles were added on April 9th 1997.

Editorials

In this section, you can read the editorials from both the Web and Print versions of this issue of Ariadne.
* Web Editorial: John Kirriemuir with the editorial for the Web version of Ariadne.
* Print Editorial: John MacColl with the editorial for the Print version of Ariadne.

Main Articles

This section contains the main articles from the Print version of Ariadne, as well as some of the major pieces unique to the Web version.
April 9 Formats for the Electronic Library: Judith Wusteman describes the document formats used in electronic serials.
April 9 Reaching the OPAC - Java Telnet: Bill Drew writes about accessing his library's OPAC within a web page using Java Telnet. He looks at the need, implementation, problems, and opportunities.
* Late Night News: the Electronic Telegraph: A night in the life of the Electronic Telegraph. Emma Worsfold sits in on the editors' shift at ET.
* CEI Looks for Bold Response: John MacColl describes the new call for proposals for further eLib programme work.
* The Paper House of Cards (and why it's taking so long to collapse): In our previous issue, Fytton Rowland defended the continuation of print research journals into the networked age. Here, Stevan Harnad presents a different case.
* COPAC: the new nationally accessible Union Catalogue: Shirley Cousins introduces COPAC and discusses some of the issues involved in the ongoing development of a consolidated union OPAC.
* Patient Education - a role for Multimedia: Paul Garrud discusses the potential for on-line patient education multimedia.
* INFOMINE: Steve Mitchell describes INFOMINE, an impressive attempt to build a Web-based virtual library for the academic community.

eLib Update In the eLib section, we present descriptions of several eLib projects.
April 9 A Glimpse at EEVLs' Evaluation: Malcolm Moffat, Database Officer for the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) project, describes some findings from an initial evaluative study.
* JEDDS: Joint Electronic Document Delivery Software project: Kerry Blinco provides details of a global electronic document delivery project.
* MODELS: MOving to Distributed Environments for Library Services : Rosemary Russell shows how MODELS are built from clumps.
* RUDI: Resource for Urban Design Information Services: Alan Reeve maps out a new site in urban design.
* WoPEc: Electronic working papers in Economics Services : Thomas Krichel describes WoPEc, a working papers project.

Australian Digital 
Library Initiatives In this section, we take a look at several Australian projects, which cover a wide range of Digital Library issues familiar to the eLib programme.
* The Resource Discovery project: As Renato Iannella shows, the Resource Discovery project at the DSTC in Australia is investigating issues to do with information discovery and access across large heterogeneous networks.
* SETIS: Electronic Texts at the University of Sydney Library: Creagh Cole describes a project dedicated to providing in-house access to a large number of electronic texts on CD-ROM.
* Monash University Electronic Reserve project: Hans W. Groenewegen, Debbie Hedger and Iris Radulescu describe Monash University's Electronic Reserve Project which is at the core of the electronic library project at the University's new Berwick campus.
* Preserving Oral History Recordings: Colin Webb and Kevin Bradley look at some of the practical realities, and implications, of introducing digital technology into the sound preservation functions of the National Library of Australia.
* Australian Co-operative Digitisation Project, 1840-45: Ross Coleman describes a project which will create a unique research infrastructure in Australian studies through the digital conversion of Australian serials and fiction of the seminal period 1840-45.

Get Tooled Up This section contains a small number of articles of a slightly more technical nature (though still readable and often of relevance/interest to the less technically skewed amongst us).
* Making a MARC with Dublin Core: Jon Knight revisits his Perl module for processing MARC records that was introduced in the last issue and adds UNIMARC, USMARC and a script that converts Dublin Core metadata into USMARC records.
* Introducing...Web Focus!: UK Web Focus - a strange job title. What is it? What does it do? In this article Brian Kelly describes his role as UK Web Focus, his previous involvement with the Web and his work as the JISC representative on the World Wide Web Consortium.
* From MERCI to DESIRE: European Digital Library Projects: Dave Hartland writes the Netskills Corner column for this edition. In it, he provides a brief overview of some of the EU-funded Telematics for Research projects.
* Performance and Security - Notes for System Administrators: Andy Powell offers some hints and tips on the performance and security aspects of running electronic library services on UNIX based machines.

Regular Columns Our regular columns and columnists from both the paper and Web versions.
* Public Libraries Corner: In the Public Libraries Corner for this issue, a guest writer, Catherine Wrathall, writes about the current provision of Internet-based community information in public libraries.
* Web Access for the Disabled - ASK: Cathy Murtha describes a simple, but effective, library enquiry system, of use to disabled and non-disabled people.
* Wire - Icarus Sparry: In his own words, Icarus Sparry tells us how what he is doing at the University of Bath, as well as revealing his own opinions on various aspects of networking, such as firewalls and network charging.
* Search Engine Corner: Tracey Stanley looks at 'Push', where a network-based service 'pushes' information to your machine, rather than you 'pulling' information from the service.
* OMNI corner - New Societies for the exploitation of Medicine on the Internet: Sue Welsh looks at developments of interest to medics publishing on the Internet.
* Down your Way - the Natural History Museum: John Kirriemuir takes in megabytes of trilobites at the Natural History Museum.
* View from the Hill - Jon Ferguy: Do networks play any part in the making of films? Isobel Stark is shaken (not stirred) when she finds out.
* Around the Table - Engineering: Roddy MacLeod casts an EEVL eye over engineering resources.
* Interface - Jane Core: Chris Bailey discusses librarians and learning with Jane Core of EduLib.

At the Event In this section, occasional reports on conferences and workshops are presented, as well as details of significant forthcoming events.
* Down Under with the Dublin Core: Paul Miller and Tony Gill offer a view of the recent Dublin Core metadata workshop in the Australian capital, Canberra.
* Beyond the Beginning: The Global Digital Library: Hazel Gott introduces a major Digital Library event, taking place this June in London.
* Unique Identifiers in a Digital World: Andy Powell reports on a seminar organised jointly by Book Industry Communication and the UK Office for Library and Information Networking on the use of unique identifiers in electronic publishing.
* Disabil-IT? Conference: Isobel Stark reports from the February 1997 Disabil-IT? conference, aimed at library and computing services staff to help raise awareness of issues related to IT provision for students with disabilities.
* Disabil-IT? Part 2: Software for Students with Dyslexia, and Software Design Issues: Isobel Stark presents the second part of her report on the Disabil-IT? Conference. In this article, software for students with dyslexia is looked at, and issues to bear in mind when designing software which may be used by students with disabilities are listed.
* ELVIRA 4: Claire Davies sets the scene for ELVIRA 4, the annual Electronic Library Visual Information Research Conference, to be held this May in Milton Keynes, UK.
* eLib and Telematics: Projects and Partnerships: Jill Beard announces a conference for this August in the south of England that aims to bring together people and ideas from the UK eLib and European Telematics communities.

Odds and Ends The usual collection of the exotic and weird, such as a cartoon and the infamous caption competition.
* Results of the Ariadne survey : John MacColl presents a selection of the comments arising from the first Ariadne readership survey.
* Cartoon: The regular cartoon.
* Caption Competition: The now infamous caption competition - see if you find last issue's winners funny, and send in your suggestions for the current competition, which has an unusual metadata theme [contains large picture of around 690Kb].
* Checkout: Reviews of Web sites and books of interest.
* Mail us!: Send us criticisms, comments, ideas for reviews or features...

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Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This article last updated/links checked on 22-Apr-1997