http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/organisations/british-library/ Recent content in British Library on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/caperon/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/caperon/ Mobile devices such as smartphones, iPads and tablet computers are rapidly proliferating in society and changing the way information is organised, received and disseminated. Consequently the library world must adopt mobile services which maximise and adapt to these significant technological changes. What do library users want from mobile services? How can libraries adopt new, innovative mobile initiatives? How can libraries use their advantage of being technological intelligence centres to forge and create attractive new mobile services that meet the needs of users effectively, since many such users are now armed with smartphones when commencing their academic experience? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/ili-2014-rpt/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/ili-2014-rpt/ Zoë reports from day one of the conference and Garth reports from day two. Day 1 : 21 October 2014I attended day one[1] of Internet Librarian International 2014 as I was sharing the conference with my colleague, Garth Bradshaw. This was the first large conference I had attended since returning to the profession following a break from librarianship; my review reflects my thoughts following an absence of eight years from the profession, a long time in our fast moving world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/white/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/white/ I was an early starter in the world of metadata. Within hours of arriving at the offices of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in Euston Street, London, in 1970 to start a career as an information scientist I was writing my first abstract. ‘Writing’ is the correct verb as my A3 abstract would be typed up on an IBM golfball typewriter for production. At the bottom of this form was a section called ‘Index Terms’ and it was made very clear at the outset that mistakes in the abstract were regrettable, but mistakes in indexing were unforgivable. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/jenkins/ Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/jenkins/ 2013 marked the 10th anniversary of SUNCAT. Back in 2003, SUNCAT (Serials Union CATalogue) started as a project undertaken by EDINA [1] in response to an observed need for better journals information in the UK, which was identified in the UKNUC report [2]. In August 2006, SUNCAT became a full service, and is now an established resource that contains serials records, including more and more e-journals information, of an ever-increasing number of libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ball-fowler/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/ball-fowler/ The Hartley Library at the University of Southampton has in excess of 15,000 bound PhD and MPhil theses on 340 linear metres of shelving. Consultation of the hard-copy version is now restricted to readers making a personal visit to the Library, as no further microfiche copies are being produced by the British Library and no master copies of theses are lent from the Library. Retrieval of theses from storage for readers and their subsequent return requires effort from a large number of staff. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/white-rvw/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/white-rvw/ I’ve been working in information consultancy for over 35 years and not regretted for a moment my choice of career. It’s taken me to over 30 countries and the opportunity to work with an amazing array of organisations in temperatures ranging from 47C to minus 25C. I’ve had project meetings on the top floor of the United Nations building, on a boat anchored in the harbour at Cannes, a luxury hotel in Oman and in a London convent. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/stone-collins/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/stone-collins/ This article explores whether an online learning course can help academic researchers to become more familiar with social media tools, and seeks to understand how they can put them to use within their research and teaching activities. It does so by considering the development, implementation and evaluation of a pilot Web 2.0 course, 25 Research Things, an innovative online learning programme developed at the University of Huddersfield, which gives researchers a structured way to engage with selected Web 2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/datacite-2013-rpt/ On Friday, 8 March 2013, I attended the fifth in the series of DataCite workshops run by the British Library [1]. The British Library Conference Centre was the venue for this workshop on the theme 'Making Citation Work: Practical Issues for Institutions'. I counted myself lucky to get a place: the organisers had had so much interest they had started a reserve list for the event.  I could believe it as it was standing room only at one point, though an awkwardly placed pillar may have contributed to that. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/kehoe-gee/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/kehoe-gee/ In the Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) at Birmingham City University, our main research field is Corpus Linguistics: the compilation and analysis of large text collections in order to extract new knowledge about language. We have previously developed the WebCorp [1] suite of software tools, designed to extract language examples from the Web and to uncover frequent and changing usage patterns automatically. eMargin, with its emphasis on manual annotation and analysis, was therefore somewhat of a departure for us. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/thomas/ Wikipedia, the world’s fifth most-used Web site [1], is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, “Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptance” [2], Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology. He concluded that ‘If Wikipedia is the first port of call, as it already seems to be, for information requirement traffic, then there is a commitment to build on Open Educational Resources (OERs) of various kinds and improve their quality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/ipres-curatecamp-2012-rpt/ CURATEcamp is ‘A series of unconference-style events focused on connecting practitioners and technologists interested in digital curation.’ [1] The first CURATEcamp was held in the summer of 2010, and there have been just over 10 Camps since then. The activity at CURATEcamps is driven by the attendees; in other words, ‘There are no spectators at CURATEcamp, only participants.’ [2] Camps follow the ‘open agenda’ model: while organisers will typically build the activity around a particular theme within the field of digital curation, and sometimes (but not always) collect topics for discussion, there is no preset agenda. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/white/ My career has spanned 42 years in the information business. It has encompassed 10,000-hole optical coincidence cards, online database services, videotext, laser discs, and CD-ROMs, the World Wide Web, mobile services and big data solutions. I find the historical development of information resource management absolutely fascinating, yet feel that in general it is poorly documented from an analytical perspective even though there are some excellent archives. These archives include the back issues of Ariadne from January 1996. 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/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/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/68/callaghan-et-al/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/callaghan-et-al/ Data are the foundation upon which scientific progress rests. Historically speaking, data were a scarce resource, but one which was (relatively) easy to publish in hard copy, as tables or graphs in journal papers. With modern scientific methods, and the increased ease in collecting and analysing vast quantities of data, there arises a corresponding difficulty in publishing this data in a form that can be considered part of the scientific record. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/ Early writing which first appeared as cuneiform protocols and then emerged in manuscript form and as printed materials is currently entering a new stage in its development – in the form of electronic publications. The Internet has drastically changed our understanding of access to library resources, to publication schemas, and has introduced brand new ways of information delivery. And as a result, the present situation could be described as a continuous increase in the amount of material being published only in electronic form, together with wide-scale conversion of paper-based material to digital formats. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lis-rc-dream-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lis-rc-dream-rpt/ The DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) Conference [1] was held at the British Library Conference Centre in London in July 2011. The conference was attended by 86 delegates, and consisted of an overview of the DREaM Project, two keynote papers, a one-minute madness session, and four parallel breakout sessions. I had the opportunity to attend as a sponsored delegate, thanks to Glen Recruitment, Sue Hill Recruitment and TFPL. Welcome AddressProfessor Hazel Hall, Edinburgh Napier UniversityThe welcome address was given by Professor Hazel Hall. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/editorial2/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/editorial2/ I am pleased to introduce you to the content of Issue 68, and to have the opportunity to remind you that you have a far larger number of channels into the publication’s content. You can do so by using the Archive (for back issues), Authors or Articles tabs on the front page to search for material or information (in addition to the general search field top right) or you can casually browse the material offered by Today’s Choice, view the passing articles in the Gallery block to the right, or drill down into the Gallery from its tab. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/impact-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/impact-rpt/ The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs. The final conference was a 2-day event held over 24 - 25 October 2011 at the British Library in London where it demonstrated findings, showcased tools and presented related research in the field of OCR and language technology. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/fpw11-rpt/ Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/fpw11-rpt/ We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/lyon/ Research libraries have traditionally supported the scholarly research and communication process, largely through supporting access to and preservation of its published outputs. The library cornerstones have been positioned around a long-established publication process tailored to deliver the peer-reviewed scholarly article or monograph; but now the research landscape is dramatically changing. The application of computational science and growth of data-intensive research, combined with a veritable explosion of social media tools and Web technologies, are reshaping research practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/azzolini-rvw/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/azzolini-rvw/ Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/datacite-2011-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/datacite-2011-rpt/ DataCite [1] is an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making research data a normal, citable part of the scientific record. It is made up of a membership of 15 major libraries and data centres, which, along with four associate members, represent 11 different countries across four continents. The approach taken by DataCite currently centres on assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets; it is a member of the International DOI Foundation and one of a handful of DOI registration agencies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/ronson/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/ronson/ Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Zetoc [1] provides quality-assured, comprehensive journal table of contents data for resource discovery that users can search and have delivered straight to their in-box or desktop. In a nutshell, Zetoc is all about convenience, current awareness and comprehensive coverage. In a recent survey, one academic commented: 'This is a "one-stop shop" for relevant literature'. What is Zetoc, what has it achieved and where is it going? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/editorial/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/editorial/ With institutions searching to increase the impact of the work they do, and conscious of the immediate impact of any event they organise, many will be interested to read of 10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event in which Marieke Guy provides a raft of suggestions to enhance the participants' experience of and involvement in, the event they are attending. For the unconvinced, they will be pleased to hear it is all Lorcan Dempsey's fault when in 2007 he made reference to the 'amplified conference', but as Marieke points out, the suggestions in her article do not amount to a dismissal of professional events teams but, rather, constitute a range of strategies they might wish to adopt in an environment where the expectation is of doing more with fewer resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/pennock-clark/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/pennock-clark/ The impact of the digital age upon libraries has been profound, changing not only the back office, services, and the range of materials available to users, but also the public face of libraries and the relationship between the library and its users. Within this changed relationship, collaboration, participation, and online social networks play an increasingly important role in the user experience, especially in large university and national libraries. At the same time, a shift is taking place in the type of collection items held in libraries, and the percentage of born-digital materials acquired is increasing on a daily basis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/chapman/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/chapman/ Earlier this year UKOLN received an email informing us that the server hosting the Tap into Bath collection description database was due to be decommissioned towards the end of 2010. Although there had been some previous discussion over the future of the database, the email was the trigger for a formal review of the project. This article describes the preservation strategy that was developed and the steps that were taken to preserve information about the database and the software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/oppenheim-rvw/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/oppenheim-rvw/ With a title like that, one would expect a primer, introducing all the key concepts of information science to someone studying the topic for the first time at undergraduate or Masters' level, and possibly for the interested layman. Such a book would be a worthy successor to Chris Hanson's Introduction to Science Information Work, and Roger Meetham's Information Retrieval, both of which were first published about 40 years ago. Sadly, however, this book does not fulfil the promise of its title. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/cig-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/cig-2010-rpt/ The focus of this conference was initiatives to get through the current economic climate. Cataloguing departments are under threat of cutbacks as never before. Papers on streamlining, collaborative enterprises, shared catalogues and services, recycling and repurposing of content using metadata extraction techniques combined to give a flavour of the new thrift driving management. The continuing progress of the long awaited Resource Description and Access (RDA)[1][2] towards becoming the new international cataloguing standard was another hot topic. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/ili-2010-rpt/ Thursday 14 OctoberTrack A: Looking Ahead to ValueA102: Future of Academic LibrariesMal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus. As this new building should be able to respond to demands for many years to come, Mal emphasised how important it is to consider the future users as well as library and technology developments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/blue-ribbon-uk-2010-rpt/ On Thursday 6 May 2010 an historic event took place. The event allowed people to express their opinions on potential future action in a highly significant area. No, not the British general election, and I'm sure the concurrence of dates was unintentional! This event was the Blue Ribbon Task Force Symposium on sustainable digital preservation and access, held at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre in London [1]. The symposium, companion event to the national conversation which took place in Washington DC in April 2010 [2], provided an opportunity for stakeholders to respond to the recent Blue Ribbon Task Force report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/day-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/day-rvw/ It is normal in some subject disciplines to publish volumes of edited papers in honour of a respected colleague, usually to mark a significant birthday or career change. The contributors to such Festschriften* are usually made up of former colleagues or pupils of the person being honoured. This volume celebrates the work of Professor Peter Brophy, the founder of the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM), which since 1998 has been based at the Manchester Metropolitan University. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/ebooks-ucl-2010-rpt/ This meeting on 11 May 2010, chaired by Anthony Watkinson, was organised by the University College London Department of Information Studies. Some 40 people attended the ‘e-book’ conference with the specific title; ‘Data as Content’. Eight papers were presented with a final panel question and answer session that explored some of the issues that had arisen during the day. Papers Presented Unfortunately, the first billed presentation, by Matthew Day (Nature) on ‘The role of publishers in data management, now and next’, had to be cancelled. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/lisrc10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/lisrc10-rpt/ Having been involved in developing the concept of a coalition for research in Library and Information Science (LIS) since 2006, it was with both pride and excitement that I took my place in the British Library's auditorium on Monday 28 June. There was a buzz of anticipation. We were not disappointed. The Coalition was established by a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the five founder members in March 2009 [1]. In August 2009 the Coalition Board was in a position to appoint Hazel Hall as Executive Secretary and to start work. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/joyce-et-al/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/joyce-et-al/ Increasingly, library and information services are under pressure to demonstrate value for money. Against the backdrop of search engine dominance, economic instability, and rapid technological development, Intute, a JISC-funded free national service which delivers the best of the Web for education and research, is facing reduced funding and an uncertain future. This article will share its successes and achievements, put a spotlight on the human expertise of its contributors and partners, and reflect on lessons learnt in the context of the sustainability of library and information services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/datacite-2010-rpt/ Over 7-8 June 2010 DataCite held its First Summer Meeting in Hannover, Germany. More than 100 information specialists, researchers, and publishers came together to focus on making datasets visible and accessible [1]. Uwe Rosemann, German Technical Library (TIB), welcomed delegates and handed over to the current President of DataCite, Adam Farquhar, British Library. Adam gave an overview of DataCite, an international association which aims to support researchers by enabling them to locate, identify, and cite research datasets with confidence. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/hammond/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/hammond/ Beginning in the mid 2000s I began keeping an eye on how libraries have been getting involved with social software - I started this haphazardly just out of interest but then I started to be more systematic when I needed to explore online resources for my organisation, the National Railway Museum. When I left to pursue my MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield I took the opportunity to do some serious research into the subject with a focus on UK public libraries as it seemed to me that they were hugely under-represented online. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/fay/ Digital collections at LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science)[1] are significant and growing, as are the requirements of their users. LSE Library collects materials relevant to research and teaching in the social sciences, crossing the boundaries between personal and organisational archives, rare and unique printed collections and institutional research outputs. Digital preservation is an increasing concern alongside our commitment to continue to develop innovative digital services for researchers and students. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/holley/ In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/day-rvw/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/day-rvw/ Until it joined with the Library Association in 2002 to form the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the Institute of Information Scientists was a professional organisation for those primarily working in scientific and technical information work. The chapters in this volume were first published in 2008 as a special issue of the Journal of Information Science to commemorate the founding of the institute in 1958. In accordance with this, many of the chapters provide a retrospective - sometimes even anecdotal - overview of developments in information science in the UK since the 1950s. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paschoud/ Way back in prehistory, when libraries were buildings with books in, identity management was a pretty simple challenge for them. A library was either truly 'public', in which case you did not care who came in (the more people, the more popular you were, which was 'a good thing'). Otherwise, you had to be a member, and the security officer on the door knew your face, or you could show him (it was usually a 'him', then) a card or something to prove you were a member. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/newsline/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/newsline/ Engagement, Impact, Value WorkshopUniversity of Manchester Monday 24 May 2010 http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/engagement-impact-value-201005/ UKOLN and Mimas will be jointly running a workshop entitled Engagement, Impact, Value which will be held at the University of Manchester on Monday 24 May. The event will provide an opportunity to share and discuss ways in which service providers can engage with their user communities in order to enhance the impact of their work and maximise the value. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rda-briefing-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rda-briefing-rpt/ In June 2010 Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), [1] the cataloguing standard in use for the last thirty years, will be replaced by Resource Description and Access (RDA) [2]. As the biggest change in bibliographic standards since the adoption of MARC21 ten years ago, the new rules have inspired much discussion in the cataloguing community and beyond. This briefing, organised by CILIP, aimed to provide an overview of the new standard as well as addressing the impact on librarians and libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paterson-low/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/paterson-low/ Demands for improved usability and developments in user experience (UX) have become pertinent due to the increasing complexities of digital libraries (DLs) and user expectations associated with the advances in Web technologies. In particular, usability research and testing are becoming necessary means to assess the current and future breeds of information environments such that they can be better understood, well-formed and validated. Usability studies and digital library development are not often intertwined due to the existing cultural model in system development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/planets-2010-rome-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/planets-2010-rome-rpt/ In far more dramatic circumstances than expected, the Planets Project [1] held its 3-day training event Digital Preservation – The Planets Way in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010. This article reports its proceedings. The venue chosen for this Planets training event, the last of a series of five held over the past 12 months around Europe, was the prestigious Pontifica Universitata Gregoriana – the first Jesuit University, founded over 450 years ago in the heart of Rome and only a few minutes’ walk from the Trevi Fountain. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/maidmentotlet-redfearn/ At the end of November 2009, JISC launched a year-long suite of activities under the heading Research 3.0: driving the knowledge economy. A series of events, publications and Web activity are stimulating discussion about how advanced digital technologies are creating a revolution in research and the way researchers work. With a central role in making these technologies available, JISC is also hoping to learn more about the concerns, views and requirements of researchers and the institutions that support them, especially given the financial constraints they are now under. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/davis/ It seems fair to say that the lion’s share of work on developing online tools for reference and citation management by students and researchers has focused on familiar types of publication. They generally comprise resources that can be neatly and discretely bound in the covers of a book or journal, or their electronic analogues, like the Portable Document Format (PDF): objects in established library or database systems, with ISBNs and ISSNs underwritten by the authority of formal publication and legal deposit. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/newsline/ UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform – February 2010UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform: A chance to see one of the world's top 10 best intranets Free informal Intranets Forum meeting for UKeiG members ERM, 2/F Exchequer Court, 33 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AA Friday 26 February 2010, 4.00 - 5.30 p.m. http://www.ukeig.org.uk/ Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the world's leading environmental consultancy firm was recognized in a recent survey by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) as having one of the world's top 10 best intranets. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/tonkin/ Due in large part to the appearance since mid-2006 of increasingly affordable devices making use of e-Ink technology (a monochrome display supporting a high-resolution image despite low battery use, since the screen consumes power only during page refreshes, which in the case of ebooks generally represent page turns), the ebook has gone from a somewhat limited market into a real, although presently still niche, contender. Amazon sold 500,000 Kindles in 2008 [1]; Sony sold 300,000 of its Reader Digital Book model between October 2006 and October 2009. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/newsline/ 5th International Digital Curation Conference – Moving to Multi-Scale Science: Managing Complexity and DiversityMillennium Gloucester Hotel, Kensington, London 2-4 December 2009 http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2009/ The International Digital Curation Conference is an established annual event reaching out to individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains involved in curating data for e-science and e-research. The Digital Curation Centre, which is responsible for organising the Conference, will be hosting a full day of workshops on 2 December including Disciplinary Dimensions of Digital Curation: New Perspectives on Research Data; Digital Curation 101 Lite Training; Citability of Research Data; and Repository Preservation Infrastructure (REPRISE). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/strsp-rpt/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/strsp-rpt/ I recently attended the Back to School event [1] run by the Repositories Support Project (RSP)[2] at Matfen Hall [3], Northumberland, where I gave a workshop on metadata and also attended the second and third days of the event as a delegate. I was sorry not to be able to attend the sessions on the first day, but arrived in time for dinner so was able to meet the delegates and other presenters. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/marchionni/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/marchionni/ Do we know enough about what our users' needs are when creating online digitised scholarly resources? What are the benefits of engaging users? In what way can they be useful to the process? These might sound like rhetorical questions, yet, looking back at the last decade of activity in digitisation and creation of online resources, such questions have been tackled by content providers only in part, and with various degrees of success. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/jisc-digi-content-rpt/ In the bucolic setting of the Cotswolds, on one of the hottest weeks of the summer, 200 delegates gathered to discuss the future of online content and to examine why UK universities need a sustainable digital content strategy to deliver successfully accessible learning and research materials for the future. Over two days, the delegates heard from a series of keynote speakers in plenary sessions and attended breakout ‘strand sessions’ on five different themes: Managing Content; Content Development Strategies; Content in Education; User Engagement; and Looking into the Future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/missing-links-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/missing-links-rpt/ This workshop, jointly sponsored by the DPC [1], JISC [2] and UKWAC [3], aimed to bring together content creators and tool developers with key stakeholders from the library and archives domains, in the quest for a technically feasible, socially and historically acceptable, legacy for the World Wide Web. Setting the SceneAdrian Brown, Assistant Clerk of the Records at the Parliamentary Archives [4], set out the framework for ‘securing an enduring Web’ around the key elements of selection, capture, storage, access and preservation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/newsline/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/newsline/ JISC Digital Media Course: Introduction to Image MetadataILRT, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1HH Wednesday 9 December 2009 Full-day course: 10.00 - 16.30 http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training/courses/introduction-to-image-metadata/ AimThis course is designed specifically to help you consider how to effectively incorporate metadata into the fabric of your image collection, through explanation, discussion and practical activities. AudienceAnyone new to describing and cataloguing images. Some previous knowledge of metadata will be useful but not essential. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/beagrie-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/beagrie-et-al/ Data has always been fundamental to many areas of research but it in recent years it has become central to more disciplines and inter-disciplinary projects and grown substantially in scale and complexity. There is increasing awareness of its strategic importance as a resource in addressing modern global challenges such as climate change, and the possibilities being unlocked by rapid technological advances and their application in research. In the US the National Science Board has stated that: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/russell/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/russell/ EThOS 1 opened up access to UK doctoral theses in January 2009. It is a service by and for the research community. Although EThOS is still in beta version, it is already changing the way theses are accessed and is helping to raise the visibility of UK research. BackgroundDoctoral theses represent a special category of research writing and are the culmination of several years of intensive work. Traditionally difficult to access, they have as a result remained underused; so modernising access to research theses has been on the Higher Education agenda for many years in line with the changing characteristics of the working environment: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/impact-2009-rpt/ The first conference of the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) Project was held at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands (KB) in The Hague on 6 and 7 April 2009. A total of 136 participants from over 30 countries attended. The main focus of the event was on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies and their use in supporting the large-scale digitisation of historical text resources. It was also an opportunity to introduce the IMPACT Project to a wider audience and to describe some of its initial results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/pienaar-vandeventer/ Worldwide, the research paradigm is in the process of expanding into eResearch and open scholarship. This implies new ways of collaboration, dissemination and reuse of research results, specifically via the Web. Developing countries are also able to exploit the opportunity to make their knowledge output more widely known and accessible and to co-operate in research partnerships. Although there are exisiting examples of eResearch activities, the implementation of eResearch is not yet being fully supported in any co-ordinated way within the South African context. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/boyle-et-al/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/boyle-et-al/ Digital preservation is an area which is pervasive and challenging for many sectors – it impinges on the landscape from high-level business and e-government to an individual's personal digital memories. One sector where the challenges of preservation and long-term access to resources are well rehearsed is within the archives sector. There has been innovative research within the archives community including the Paradigm [1] and the DARP [2] projects. The initiative described in this article focuses on the local authority archives sector and is an outcome of collaborative work from the authors, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [3] and The National Archives (TNA) [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cig-2008-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/cig-2008-rpt/ Cataloguers from all over Europe travelled into Glasgow to attend the conference, subtitled “Classification and subject retrieval in the 21st century: you can’t make jelly without a mould”. The conference provided sessions with talks on both wide-ranging and detailed aspects of cataloguing, combined together into seven sessions distributed over the three days. All notes of the presentations are available online. [1] Said the spider to the fly: Identity and authority in the semantic web The keynote address was given by Gordon Dunsire from the Centre for Digital Library Research [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/dpc-planets-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/dpc-planets-rpt/ The aim of this one-day event was to provide an informal, interactive workshop that allowed delegates to share knowledge and experience in digital preservation planning, strategy and policy setting and of Planets [1] tools and technology. The event was an opportunity for DPC [2] members as well as other organisations with an interest in digital preservation to learn about the approach of colleagues some way down the road with the process and to share experiences and learn about the tools and services which are being developed by Planets to support the process. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/editorial/ In her second Get Tooled Up article on the subject of remote working Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke Guy takes a look at the many technologies that support remote working, from broadband to Web 2.0 social networking tools. Readers may also be interested to read her blog on remote working which I am definitely finding interesting [1]. I am greatly indebted to Marieke, who as many IWMW delegates will attest, is indisputably one of Life's finishers and who, in her delivery of both this article and its predecessor 'A Desk Too Far? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/jisc-powr-2008-09-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/jisc-powr-2008-09-rpt/ The Web is where you go to find out what is happening now, it is, or should be, where the most up to date information about a topic, company or institution is to be found. Every day more and more information is added to existing Web sites and new ones appear at a frightening pace. Having all this information at our fingertips is undoubtedly a good thing but there is also a downside: more information means that it is increasingly difficult to find the bits that are relevant to you, and often the new information simply replaces what was there before. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/milne-tuck/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/milne-tuck/ ‘The purpose of legal deposit is to ensure that the nation’s published output (and thereby its intellectual record and future published heritage) is collected systematically and as comprehensively as possible, both in order to make it available to current researchers within the libraries of the legal deposit system and to preserve the material for the use of future generations of researchers’ [1]. In his Alexandria article of 2004, Dr Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library (2001-2006), provided a detailed account of the Legal Deposit Libraries Bill and its progress through Parliament to the statute book. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/stevenson/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/stevenson/ For online services, the importance of developing user-friendly and accessible Web sites is of paramount importance. This article is about user testing recently carried out by the Archives Hub [1], an online service run by Mimas [2], which is a national data centre that provides access to a whole range of online services for research, learning and teaching. The Archives Hub is a JISC-funded service that provides a gateway to search descriptions of archives for education and research, enabling researchers to discover unique archival sources held in repositories across the country. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/ipres-2008-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/57/ipres-2008-rpt/ iPRES 2008, the Fifth International Conference on Digital Preservation, was held at the British Library on 29-30 September, 2008. From its beginnings five years ago, iPRES has retained its strong international flavour. This year, it brought together over 250 participants from 33 countries. iPRES has become a major international forum for the exchange of ideas and practice in Digital Preservation. The theme of the conference was ‘Joined Up and Working: tools and methods for digital preservation’. 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/55/williams-et-al/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/williams-et-al/ Personal collections such as those kept in the British Library have long documented diverse careers and lives, and include a wide variety of document (and artefact) types, formats and relationships. In recent years these collections have become ever more ‘digital’. Not surprisingly, given the inexorable march of technological innovation, individuals are capturing and storing an ever-increasing amount of digital information about or for themselves, including documents, articles, portfolios of work, digital images, and audio and video recordings [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lewis/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/lewis/ At the University of East Anglia (UEA), we have been taking part in the Primo Charter Programme in which various libraries in the Europe and the US have been able to work with Ex Libris on version 1 of their Primo product. We have learned a great deal from the process and there is interest throughout the library sector in the potential benefits of separating or decoupling the search and retrieval interface layer from the database layer when presenting library resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/newsline/ UkeiG Course: Information Law for Information ProfessionalsInformation Law for Information Professionals: What you need to know about Copyright, Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Accessibility and Disability Discrimination Laws CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE 19 February 2008, 9.30-16.30 Course outline In particular, four key legal areas currently affect the work of many information professionals in the digital environment - copyright, data protection, freedom of information, and disability discrimination and accessibility. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/editorial/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/editorial/ In his article Ancient Cultures Inside Modern Universes Edgardo Civallero teases out for us the relationship between notions such as cultural heritage, cultural identity and what he terms intangible cultural heritage, in the context of indigenous peoples. What becomes immediately apparent for those of us concerned for fellow citizens on the wrong side of the Digital Divide [1][2] is the degree to which even they are fortunate when compared with the indigenous minorities across Latin America [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ First, a note about this reviewer. I am not a library historian although I am interested in our professional and institutional development. I received my library education in Ireland, although I have worked for much of my career in the UK and am now in the US. I observed the developments discussed in the latter parts of this volume and have contributed to the literature about them. I have met many of the contributors and am familiar with the writings of others. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/kidmm-rpt/discussions.html Information Retrieval Today: An Overview of Issues and MethodsDiscussionDavid Pullinger (UK Cabinet Office), in charge of the pan-government search solution, commented that ordinary people searching for government documents use terms other than the government's argot. Ironically, Google finds these documents effectively, because it picks up words that are associated with links, often written in plainer English. Conrad drew attention to a 2003 paper on e-democracy by Danny Budzak [5], comparing terms used to describe services on local government Web sites to those chosen by users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/newsline/ TASI Workshops in November & DecemberThere are currently places available on the following Nov/Dec workshops: 14 November 2007: Image Capture - Level 3, Bristol15 November 2007: Introduction to Image Metadata, Bristol23 November 2007: Image Optimisation - Correcting and Preparing Images, Bristol30 November 2007: Building a Departmental Image Collection, Bristol4 December 2007: Colour Management, Bristol13 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 1, Bristol14 December 2007: Photoshop - Level 2, BristolFull details of these and all TASI workshops are available from the Training page http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/fp6-2007-rpt/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/fp6-2007-rpt/ Digital preservation has become an area of strategic importance for the European Union in recent years. This has been reflected in the investment of €17 million in co-funding three major digital preservation projects under call 5 of its Framework Programme 6 in September 2005. Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) [1], CASPAR (Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) [2] and DPE (DigitalPreservationEurope) [3] are all co-ordinated by British organisations: Planets by the British Library, CASPAR by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (formerly CCLRC) and DPE by the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/russell/ EThOSnet is a project funded by JISC, CURL and the project partners, to bring the UK to the forefront of international e-theses provision. It is a highly practical and participative project to turn the prototype e-theses infrastructure that was developed by EThOS, into a live service that will revolutionise the document supply arrangements for theses and greatly increase the visibility of UK research. The Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) Project arose after several earlier initiatives in the UK had articulated an urgent need to improve on the present methods for giving researchers access to PhD and other higher-level theses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/editorial/ We are frequently reminded that, in a globalised market place, industrialised countries must ever look to a developing knowledge-based economy to ensure the green shoots of competitive innovation keep sprouting. Whether all governments have been as quick to invest whole-heartedly in the research that sustains that knowledge-based economy remains to be seen. However, if the industrialised nations think they have got their problems, then, like Barbara Kirsop, Leslie Chan and Subbiah Arunachalam, they would do well to consider the situation of the developing countries which must not only compete in a ferocious global market but do so without the depth of infrastructure and investment which the Western Hemisphere takes for granted. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pope-beresford/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pope-beresford/ The British Library is adopting the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Toolset [1] - comprising the Web Curator Tool (WCT), NutchWax and the Open Source Wayback Machine (OSWM) for its evolving Web archiving operations, in anticipation of Legal Deposit legislation being introduced within the next few years. The aim of this performance-testing stage was to evaluate what hardware would be required to run the toolset in a production environment. This article summarises the results of that testing with recommendations for the hardware platform for a production system. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Researchers in all disciplines increasingly expect to be able to undertake a variety of research-associated tasks online. These range from collaborative activities with colleagues around the globe through to information-seeking activities in an electronic library environment. Many of the tools which enable these activities to take place are already available within the local IT infrastructure. However, in many cases, the tools are provided through discrete, bespoke interfaces with few links between them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/hitchcock/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/hitchcock/ Does anyone remember the first popular music video (emphasis on popular)? Now, does anyone remember the first JISC project video (emphasis on, er, project)? That is, a video about the project rather than about the subject of the project. If not then the Preserv video [1] produced to tell the story of the JISC Preserv Project [2] might claim the prize. If you are stunned to learn of a project with this degree of bravado, vanity or sheer recklessness to commit to this format, then it’s probably as nothing until you have seen the video. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/newsline/ Introduction to Federated Searching Technology & DevelopmentsDate: 11 May 2007 Venue: Conference Room, Southport College, Mornington Road, Southport, PR9 0TT Delegate Fee: £50.00 This one day conference is aimed at further education library and information. As electronic content and sources of information, provided by academic libraries, become greater and vaster, the need for federated searching technologies has increased. This seminar will introduce delegates to the concepts of federated searching (also known as meta-searching) of library content, and will illustrate some of the current developments and initiatives within this field. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/jisc-conf-rpt/ Opening Keynote AddressThe 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham. JISC Chairman Professor Sir Ron Cooke outlined JISC’s achievements over the last year, including the launch of the UK Access Management Federation [1], the launch of JISC Collections [2] as a mutual trading company and the launch of SuperJANET5 [3], the upgrade to the JANET network which quadruples its capacity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/foggo/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/foggo/ This case study shows how students were taught the skills they need to find information relevant to their subject area. As groups of students are generally seen once only, measures to assess the effectiveness of teaching are needed, i.e. to determine the skills the students have acquired. Blogs were used as a tool for formative assessment and were used to measure student expectations before teaching, and their level of satisfaction with the session afterwards. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/editorial/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/editorial/ With Dyson and parts of Burberry disappearing points east, leaving their design departments behind them [1] [2], there are possible grounds for arguing that the (previously) industrialised countries must live by their wits and the emerging knowledge economy. In Limits to Information Transfer: The Boundary Problem Jon Erland Lervik, Mark Easterby-Smith, Kathryn Fahy and Carole Elliott write that 'the challenge for knowledge management is not only to make knowledge available in repositories for dissemination across the firm' or organisation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/newsline/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/newsline/ Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) Training Programme Either: Birmingham, Bristol or London, 8 February to 27 April 2007 http://www.tasi.ac.uk/training/ The TASI programme of practical hands-on training includes three brand new workshops: Digital Photography - Level 2 Provides an introduction to the effective operation of a digital SLR, explaining how the camera's manual controls can be used to improve photography. The course also explains how to illuminate small 2D and 3D objects using tungsten studio lights. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/beresford/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/beresford/ In September 2006 The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna M?tauranga o Aotearoa, The British Library and Sytec, announced the successful development of a Web harvesting management system. The system, known as Web Curator Tool, is designed to assist curators of digital archives in collecting Web-published material for storage and preservation. The Web Curator Tool is the latest development in the practice of Web site harvesting (using software to 'crawl' through a specified section of the World Wide Web, and gather 'snapshots' of Web sites, including the images and documents posted on them). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/dc-2006-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/dc-2006-rpt/ DC-2006 [1], the annual conference of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), took place this year in the city of Manzanillo, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, with a subtitle of ‘Metadata for Knowledge and Learning’. The four-day conference was organised by the University of Colima [2], and the venue for the event was the Karmina Palace Hotel, a large hotel set within its own complex of restaurants, bars, shops and swimming pools. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/cig-2006-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/cig-2006-rpt/ Restful accommodation and pleasant food prepared the delegates for the carefully balanced mix of social networking sessions and challenging seminars. Everyone was extremely friendly and most proved to be erudite socialites, networking in some cases with great assertiveness and sense of purpose. Cataloguing and classification was revealed as an area of library and information science that has survived years of neglect by most library schools to reveal itself as the much-needed solution to online resource accessibility. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/newsline/ Digital Data Curation in Practice: The Second International Digital Curation ConferenceThe second International Digital Curation Conference will take place over 21-22 November 2006 at the City Centre Hilton in Glasgow. The theme of the conference will be Digital Data Curation in Practice. The programme comprises a series of peer-reviewed papers covering a range of disciplines from social sciences and neurosciences to astronomy. The programme will also focus on a number of different aspects of the curation life cycle including the management of repositories, educating the data scientist and the role of policy and strategy. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/chapman/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/chapman/ Cataloguing principles and rules ensure that bibliographic / catalogue records contain structured data about information resources and are created in a consistent manner within the various catalogue and metadata formats. Today ‘catalogues’ (in the widest sense) need to provide access to a wider range of information carriers, with a greater depth and complexity of content. While building on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), the work on Resource Description and Access (RDA) is going back to basic principles and aiming to develop a resource that can be used internationally by a wide range of personnel working in different areas. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/c21stcuration-rpt/ A growing and significant part of the record and culture of the UK is now in digital form. The lives of staff working in our institutions, current students, and private individuals will be increasingly influenced by these trends and the growing demand for professionals to curate digital assets. The School of Library, Archives and Information Studies (SLAIS) at University College London aims to raise awareness of digital stewardship. Following the highly successful inaugural series of C21st Curation public lectures last year, SLAIS organised a second series of public lectures by eight leading speakers, open to students, professionals and general public during April and May 2006. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dpc-web-archiving-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/dpc-web-archiving-rpt/ The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [1] ran its first Web archiving forum in 2002, when archiving the Web was still a relatively unexplored concept for most organisations. This second Web-archiving forum sought to review and update on national and international activities since then and provided delegates with an excellent opportunity to exchange experiences and identify emerging areas of research and future developments in Web archiving activities. Session 1: Technical Aspects The first session focused on technical aspects of archiving Web content. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/curating-email-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/curating-email-rpt/ This workshop organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] brought together librarians, archivists and IT specialists from academic, commercial and government sectors. Email is a major universal communication tool. It’s used for both assigning responsibilities and for decision making. People using email have differing perspectives and expectations from those who manage the infrastructure. While there are common desires for preservation no one solution fits all circumstances. Day One: Emails as Records Seamus Ross, DCC, chaired the first session. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/newsline/ UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collectionsThe UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. Course OutlineThis course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dpm-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dpm-rpt/ Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology is commonly portrayed as a mechanism for restricting access to and use of digital content. On the contrary, a properly implemented Digital Policy Management infrastructure will facilitate the widest possible use of digital content, supporting the interests of library users, libraries and rights owners. 'Access and use policies' are a traditional element in the management of every library collection. There are many reasons why every item in a library collection may not be accessible to every library user; and the uses to which different items may be put are frequently not uniform across the complete collection. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/hiom/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/hiom/ IntroductionThis article will describe the history of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [1], charting the development of subject gateways in the UK since 1993 to the present day. To help set the history of the gateways in the wider context of the resource discovery landscape in the last decade or so, readers are encouraged to refer to Lorcan Dempsey’s recent article on the development of digital libraries [2]. A timeline of the RDN’s development is also available to serve as a summary of its history. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dlservices-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/dlservices-rpt/ Over the past decade there has been substantial progress in the use and delivery of digital resources. This evolving area has now reached a point of maturity where digital library providers, be they national libraries, universities, or bodies co-ordinating and delivering distributed national and global services, have begun to identify common service requirements and service frameworks. These emerging digital library services might be delivered in a distributed manner or shared centrally. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/47/jisc-conf-rpt/ On 14 March 2006 we found ourselves back at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) for the 2006 JISC Conference. The annual conference [1] is both an opportunity for JISC to platform the variety of activities it funds and for delegates to learn about the full range of JISC's work by participating in seminars, debates, workshops and demonstrations. This report tries to capture the air of the event through a series of session snapshots. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/c21st-curation-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/c21st-curation-rpt/ A growing and significant part of the record and culture of the UK is now in digital form. The lives of staff working in our institutions, current students, and private individuals will be increasingly influenced by these trends and the growing demand for professionals to curate digital assets. The School of Library, Archives and Information Studies (SLAIS) at University College London aims to raise awareness and interest amongst students on university vocational courses for museums, libraries and archives in digital stewardship. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/warwick-2005-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/warwick-2005-rpt/ Over recent years it has become clear that accessing and preserving digital data is increasingly important across a wide range of scientific, artistic and cultural activities. There has been a growing recognition of the need to address the fragility and accessibility of the digital information collected in all aspects of our lives. Access to digital information lies at the heart of the scientific and technical innovation vital for modern economies. A two-day workshop took place over 7 - 8 November at the University of Warwick to address these issues and to map out a future research agenda for digital curation and preservation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/rusbridge/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/rusbridge/ Excuse me…I have been asked to write an article for the tenth anniversary of Ariadne, a venture that I have enjoyed, off and on, since its inception in 1996 as part of the eLib Programme, of which I was then Programme Director. Some years ago I wrote an article entitled “After eLib” [1] for Ariadne. The original suggestion was for a follow-up “even more after eLib”; however, I now work for JISC, and that probably makes it hard to be objective! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dcc-fpw-rpt/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dcc-fpw-rpt/ This DCC [1] and Wellcome Library [2] workshop sought to provide insight into ways that content creators and curators can ensure ongoing access to reliable Web sites over time. The issue is not merely one of archiving; it is also about designing and managing a Web site so that it is suitable for long-term preservation with minimum intervention by curators to ensure the content remains reliable and understandable through time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/brophy/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/brophy/ Introduction: The First WaveIt is worth remembering that there is a long history of successful commercialisation of digital library R&D projects in the UK. While there are probably even earlier examples, the obvious instances are the Birmingham Libraries Co-operative Mechanisation Project (BLCMP) and the South-West Academic Libraries Co-operative Automation Project (SWALCAP) from the 1960s. Both were initially funded by grants from the then Office for Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI, a body whose responsibilities were to be taken over by the British Library Research & Development Department (BLRDD) and later dispersed among various funders such as the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA)). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ We have recently come through several decennial celebrations: the W3C, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, D-Lib Magazine, and now Ariadne. What happened clearly in the mid-nineties was the convergence of the Web with more pervasive network connectivity, and this made our sense of the network as a shared space for research and learning, work and play, a more real and apparently achievable goal. What also emerged - at least in the library and research domains - was a sense that it was also a propitious time for digital libraries to move from niche to central role as part of the information infrastructure of this new shared space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/carr/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/carr/ User-focus in the Academic LibraryIt may seem odd to say it but, even in a self-respecting part of the information world like the academic library, users have not always been at the centre of the practitioner’s professional attention. Over thirty years ago, the writer heard a long-serving Head of Reader Services (in a major university library that will remain nameless) announce, after the redecoration of his library’s main catalogue hall had completely obliterated the library’s original hand-painted directional signs, that ‘if our students are bright enough, they should still be able to find their way around the place’! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dc-2005-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dc-2005-rpt/ This year's DC Conference took place over four days in the excellent facilities of the University of Carlos III in Leganes, which is a few minutes train ride south of Madrid in Spain. In excess of two hundred people attended coming from 34 countries around the world. As always it was a busy conference with many parallel strands to choose between. The rest of this report therefore covers only a fraction of all the papers and work that happened there: it is a fairly personal selection drawn from some of the sessions I attended. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dcc-1st-rpt/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/dcc-1st-rpt/ The conference aimed to raise awareness of key issues in digital curation and to encourage active participation and feedback from the relevant stakeholder communities. The conference attracted an impressive range of keynote speakers and focused on the following areas: the work of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)the concepts and principles of digital curationglobal curation policiessocio-legal issues, sustainability, user requirements and the research agendaThe participants were a mix of researchers, curators, policy makers and representatives from funding agencies that are engaged, or have an interest, in the creation, use and management of digital data. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/newsline/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/newsline/ PV 2005: Ensuring long-term preservation and adding value to scientific and technical data Royal Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK 21-23 November 2005 This conference is the third of a series on long-term preservation and adding value to scientific data. Topics covered include: 1. Ensuring long-term data preservationState of the art of data archiving and access techniques, for example: What standardisation has to offer (in the form of feedback from experience)Adapting archiving techniques to the different categories of information handled, such as scientific data, technical data, documents, sounds and imagesSystem architecture in the context of constant technological developments2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lovecy-rvw/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/lovecy-rvw/ The aim of this book is ambitious: it sets out to present current professional and practical ideas on the whole range of disaster management, from the precautions which will prevent - or at least minimise - disaster, through the financial considerations, balancing of risk, and staff training needs, to the process of recovery and re-establishment of a service. It does so in an international context; and it does so based on the practical experience of the contributors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/dcc-pi-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/dcc-pi-rpt/ A Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Meeting on Persistent Identifiers was held over 30 June - 1 July 2005 at the Wolfson Building at the University of Glasgow. This is a new construction (2002) just opposite the 1970s Boyd-Orr building, mentioned before in Ariadne's pages. The architecture of this building is quite unlike the Boyd-Orr building however, being light and airy, with more imaginative use of space: the lecture theatre in which the meeting took place is in the shape of an eye, situated at the edge of the main open space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/eevl/ EEVL Xtra - In a NutshellEEVL Xtra [1] is an exciting new, free service which helps people find articles, books, the best Web sites, the latest industry news, job announcements, technical reports, technical data, full text eprints, the latest research, teaching and learning resources and more, in engineering, mathematics and computing. EEVL Xtra cross-searches (hence the ‘X’ in Xtra) over twenty different collections/ databases relevant to engineering, mathematics and computing, and includes content from over fifty publishers and providers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/chapman/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/chapman/ The launch of Revealweb [1] on 16 September 2003 was a big step forward for anyone with visual impairment in the UK. For the first time, they had access to a Web-based union catalogue of resources in accessible formats and information about the producers and suppliers of these materials. Until that point there had been no single place which provided information accessible by everyone; in effect, these people were second-class citizens in the information world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/beagrie/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/beagrie/ Digital information is increasingly important to our culture, knowledge base and economy. Long-term management of this material is a vital part of curation practice. This paper outlines the development and subsequent use of an international guide to digital preservation Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook [1] and its use in training and professional practice. The Handbook was published in 2001 in hard copy by The British Library and is also available digitally online via the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/editorial/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/editorial/ Niki Panteli provides us with an article which clearly indicates that, in our increasingly technology-dominated world, there are times when Trust in Global Virtual Teams cannot be taken for granted. This is particularly true where, as is increasingly the case, projects are being obliged, indeed, actively encouraged, to operate on a distributed working model; a model where the lack of interaction between virtual teams increases the chances of loss of trust. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/cook-kenna/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/cook-kenna/ In response to a challenge from the Society of Chief Librarians, the British Library has launched an online training package [1] to its services and the wealth of information in its collections for the benefit of staff in public libraries and their users. In this article we describe how the training package was conceived and created, how it is being rolled out and evaluated, and our plans for future developments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/newsline/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/newsline/ Netskills Workshops in May 2005Web: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ Netskills will be running the following workshops at North Herts College in Letchworth Garden City in May 2005: 10 May : e-Assessment: Tools & TechniquesFocuses on the tools available for creating e-assessment and the practical techniques required to use them effectively. The tools are considered both in terms of their functionality as well as their interoperability with other systems. 11 May: Design Solutions for e-LearningThis workshop examines how to design pedagogically effective e-learning to enhance traditional forms of teaching and learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/carpenter/ In the early days of the shift from paper-based to digital means of holding administrative records, research data, publications and other academic resources, those responsible for its safety tended to breathe a sigh of relief once they had got a category of material into digital form. Reduced to bits and bytes, all they would have to do is make regular backups, perhaps keeping a copy off-site in case of disaster, and all would be well. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/wakingupinbl-rpt/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/43/wakingupinbl-rpt/ ‘The existence of EEBO has completely transformed my teaching as well as my own scholarly life -both entirely for the better’. Regius Professor Quentin Skinner, University of Cambridge.Delegates may have been surprised to hear about a pamphlet discussing Mary II’s breasts as the subject for academic discussion at the ‘Waking up in the British Library’ event hosted by the John Rylands University Library. But it served only to illustrate the kind of serendipitous discoveries that Early English Books Online (EEBO) [1] facilitates in teaching and research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/dcc-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/dcc-rpt/ The Digital Curation Centre had its official launch in Edinburgh on 5 November 2004. Perhaps an odd date to pick for the launch of such an important international initiative, but it justified the inclusion of some virtual fireworks on the home page of the DCC launch Web site. The DCC is one of three major activities in Phase 2 of the UK e-Science Programme, along with the National Grid service and the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute, as well as being a key activity of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/cc-interops-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/cc-interops-rpt/ Introduction Keynote Speech: The Concept of a ‘National Catalogue’ - Jean Sykes Interoperability: Architectures and Connections - John Gilby & Ashley Sanders Making Sense of Hybrid Union Catalogues: Collection Landscaping in Complex Information Environments - Gordon Dunsire Interoperability: The Performance of Institutional Catalogues - Fraser Nicolaides & George Macgregor User Behaviour in Large-scale Resource Discovery Contexts - Dick Hartley Futures and Plenary Question & Answer Session - Jean Sykes & Bob Sharpe http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/newsline/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/newsline/ Digital Cultural Content Forum 200511-13 February 2005, Oxford, UK The Digital Cultural Content Forum (DCCF) is an annual international gathering of key stakeholders in the digitisation and delivery of our global cultural assets. The focus of the meeting is to explore how public institutions that steward cultural content, the agencies responsible for public policy, and organisations in the public broadcast sectors can collaborate to deliver services to public audiences. The meeting is organised by UKOLN on behalf of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council of the UK (MLA), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/digi-histories-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/digi-histories-rpt/ For the last three years the RHS has held a seminar in memory of Gerald Aylmer, the purpose of which is an exchange of ideas between historians and archivists. Digitisation was to be the subject for 2004. The AHC proposing a conference on the same subject, the two bodies came together to present this joint event. The format of the conference was that of four sessions, each with two panels, except for the last. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/ecdl2004-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/ecdl2004-rpt/ This year it was the turn of the UK to host this major European conference and researchers and librarians took the opportunity to recharge and hear about and debate the latest research and technology advances in digital libraries. There were 47 peer-reviewed papers - a 32% acceptance rate. Remarkably papers were received from 27 countries. There was something for everyone: from digital library architectures through innovative technologies and techniques and particular kinds of libraries - personal and music - and I was particularly pleased to attend several sessions more focussed towards the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/chapman/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/chapman/ The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique machine-readable identification number, defined in ISO Standard 2108, which is applied to books. As a result of electronic publishing and other changes in the publishing industry, the numbering capacity of the ISBN system is being consumed at a much faster rate than was originally anticipated when the standard was designed in the late 1960s. While we will not run out of ISBNs tomorrow, it will happen before too long and plans are already in hand to provide a solution before the crisis point is reached. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/newsline/ Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues...The JISC-funded CC-interop Project completed its work during 2004 and now is holding an event to disseminate the key findings of the project. The project built on the work of the successful eLib Phase 3 "Clumps" projects and investigated three broad areas to inform about interoperability between physical and distributed union catalogues. Find out about: how distributed and large physical union catalogues can interact, including the building of a distributed catalogue capable of accepting remote Z39. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/sustain-rpt/ The conference on the sustainability of Big Lottery Fund projects was attended by about fifty participants from across the country and there were displays by members of the Sense of the South West Consortium, who organised the event. Approaches to SustainabilityThe first speaker was Chris Anderson, Head of Programmes at the Big Lottery Fund, successor to NOF, (New Opportunities Fund). He described the nof-digitise [1] projects, funded to the tune of £50m, as a great experiment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/jones/ The Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) [1] has been developed at Edinburgh University Library [2] to help provide an E-Thesis service within an institution using DSpace [3]. It has been developed as part of the Theses Alive! [4] Project under funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [5], as part of the Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) [6] Programme. This article looks at DSpace, the repository system initially developed by Hewlett-Packard and MIT and subsequently made available as a community-owned package. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/edina-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/edina-rpt/ EDINA [1] held its first general information event for the Higher and Further Education communities on Tuesday 11 May 2004. EDINA Exchange took place in the National E-Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh. The day began with an introduction by EDINA Director Peter Burnhill, who took us through the programme for the day, and highlighted some of EDINA's notable recent achievements. The morning session then began with presentations on the various subject and resource type clusters in which EDINA is active. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/robinson/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/robinson/ Collection Description FocusThe UK Collection Description Focus was launched on 1 June 2001. It was set up as a national post, jointly funded for a twelve-month period by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1], the Research Support Libraries Program (RSLP) [2] and the British Library [3]. The aim of the Focus was to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/turner/ A Little HistoryCornucopia is a searchable database of collections held by cultural heritage institutions throughout the UK. It is developed and managed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and was initially established in response to the Government’s Treasures in Trust report which called for a way to be found of recognising the richness and diversity of our collections. The original Cornucopia was set up in 1998. MLA, (then the Museums & Galleries Commission (MGC)), contracted Cognitive Applications to develop the site featuring data from the 62 museums in England holding collections which are ‘Designated’ as being of outstanding importance. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/cilip-cig-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/cilip-cig-rpt/ The conference was aimed at information professionals interested in looking at issues that are changing cataloguing and indexing. The latest international developments in metadata standards, cataloguing codes, taxonomies and controlled languages unlock new opportunities for cataloguers' involvement. They also raise complex interoperability issues which go beyond traditional cataloguing and highlight the need for the acquisition of new skills in the digital information environment. The event focused on three interlinked themes: new and emerging standards, collection-level description and professional education. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hill/ The last ten years have seen a huge investment in the creation of electronic resources for use by researchers, students and teachers. Increasing amounts of money are being spent now on providing portals and virtual learning environments (or learning management systems) for use within institutions and organisations, or for people focusing on particular subject areas. A portal is defined by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as - " - a network service that brings together content from diverse distributed resources using technologies such as cross searching, harvesting, and alerting, and collates this into an amalgamated form for presentation to the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/39/miller/ aquifer nunderground bed or layer yielding ground water for wells and springs etcNisus Thesaurus 1.0.1. All rights reserved. Using the WordNet 1.7 database, © 2001 Princeton University Google [1] is great. Personally, I use it every day, and it is undeniably extremely good at finding stuff in the largely unstructured chaos that is the public Web. However, like most tools, Google cannot do everything. Faced with a focussed request to retrieve richly structured information such as that to be found in the databases of our Memory Institutions [2], hospitals, schools, colleges or universities, Google and others among the current generation of Internet search engines struggle. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/public-libraries/ Spam, privacy and the lawAnother year gone and the millennium celebrations and Y2K bug already seem to belong to some dim and distant technological past. As 2003 drew to a close the spotlight was on the use and abuse of Information Technology: never was so much havoc caused by so few. The language employed by the media to describe events in the online world reflected global concerns about warfare and disease. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/5-99/ The 5/99 Programme, as it became known, was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] in the year 2000. Quite simply the name, 5/99, refers to the number of a JISC circular letter. It was the fifth circular issued by the JISC in 1999. So the name is pretty meaningless to those outside the JISC or not involved in one of 54 projects that were funded via the circular. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/apps-rpt/ The Event at a GlanceWelcome - Pat HarrisThe OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services Standard - Eric Van de VeldeThe Promise and History of the OpenURL - Oliver PeschRelated Linking Standards: CrossRef and DOI - Ed PentzWhy Should Publishers Implement the OpenURL Framework? - Andrew PacePanel 1: Link Resolvers ExplainedPanel 2: Practical Perspectives for Librarians Translating Your Needs into Visions for the Future - Herbert Van de SompelQuestionsThis one-day conference, held by NISO (US National Information Standards Organization) on Wednesday 29 October at the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC, USA, attended by 150 people, was so popular it was ‘sold out’ a week before the event. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/espoo-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/espoo-rpt/ The National Library of Finland led the organisation of this conference to bring together librarians and researchers from around the world to discuss progress with digital libraries. The aims were to explore how users were responding to digital services and to examine how services could be made more 'user-centred'. The conference was attended by 200 delegates from 23 countries. The Powerpoint presentations of speakers have been placed on the finelib Web site [1] and some of the papers have been published in the electronic journal Information Research [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/sosig/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/sosig/ The Internet holds great potential for supporting education at FE level, but it can be fraught with difficulty. Lecturers often have very little time to spend surfing the 'Net to find useful resources for course materials and teaching, or to help their students develop Internet skills. Students can lack the skills, confidence or ability to use the Internet effectively for their study, especially given that the Internet is not exclusively about education, containing many materials that are completely inappropriate for coursework or study. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/newsline/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/newsline/ Reveal[September 2003] The Reveal Web site, launched on 16 September 2003, brings together information about services and resources for visually impaired people from organisations across the United Kingdom. Reveal is an information resource where you will be able to find books in Braille and Moon, audio books and digital talking books, tactile diagrams and other accessible format materials, find out who produces, loans or sells accessible materials, and find information about the different accessible materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/public-libraries/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/public-libraries/ Question: How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Er,.. Change? You can’t beat the old jokes can you, and this variation on an old theme provided some light relief to delegates on day two of this year’s annual Public Library Authorities event [1]. Who said librarians can’t take a joke? Most people managed a snigger, but then it was après lunch. This year’s event had the emotive title: Hearts and Lives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/mimas/ The Joint Information Systems Committee [1] was founded by the Higher Education Funding Councils in 1993. It quickly established its sub-committees, one of which, the Information Systems Sub-committee (ISSC), reflected JISC’s interest in networked information services and datasets. At its May 1993 meeting, the ISSC designated Manchester and Bath as National Data Centres. (EDINA became a JISC-designated national data centre a few years later). Over the last ten years there have been advances to the Information Systems infrastructure within universities enabling new and advanced use of online information within research and teaching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/newsline/ The British Library’s ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery ServiceJune 2003 The British Library previewed its new and ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery Service at the SLA 94th Annual Conference in New York in June . Fully available from October 2003, the new service means that almost anything from the Library’s huge collections - whether born digital, in print or in microform - can be securely delivered to a desktop within two hours if needed, with born digital material available for instant delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/cd-focus-rpt/ The national Collection Description Focus is based at UKOLN [1] and funded by the British Library [2], the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [3] , the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [4] and Resource [5]. It aims to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. The Showcase EventThere is an increasing emphasis on mapping and managing information resources in a way that will allow users to find, access, use and disseminate resources from a range of diverse collections. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/editorial/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/editorial/ Welcome to the March/April issue of Ariadne. This issue of Ariadne focuses on the Portal concept. The term 'portalage' (the making of portals) crept (unforced) into a discussion of the portal concept held on the 25th April at the University of London Library (Gateways to Research and Lifelong Learning: Portals in Perspective). A good question for anyone to ask is: 'What features in a Portal?' since it is an area still lacking in consensus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/harnad/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/harnad/ Being the only country with a national research assessment exercise [1], the UK is today in a unique position to make a small change that will confer some large benefits. The Funding Councils should mandate that in order to be eligible for Research Assessment and funding, all UK research-active university staff must maintain (I) a standardised online RAE-CV, including all designated RAE performance indicators, chief among them being (II) the full text of every refereed research paper, publicly self-archived in the university's online Eprint Archive and linked to the CV for online harvesting, scientometric analysis and assessment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/newsline/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/newsline/ The 7th Institutional Web Management Workshop :Supporting Our Users[April 2003] The 7th Institutional Web Management Workshop will take place at the University of Kent on 11-13th June 2003. The theme of this year's workshop, the seventh in the series, is Supporting Our Users. The Institutional Web Management Workshop series is organised by UKOLN's UK Web Focus and its aim is to support members of institutional Web management teams within the UK Higher and Further Educational communities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/garrod-review/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/garrod-review/ If you want to get people to read a set of conference papers, and to engage with the topic covered - then pick a title in the form of a question. Do we want to keep our newspapers? - anyone with an interest in the media, and the power of the press in particular, will want to dip in to this slim illustrated collection to find out what it’s all about. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/london/ This conference was set up 'to consider the central importance of moving images and sound to our heritage and present-day culture, the necessity of adequate funding for the archives that preserve such materials, and asks why there is a lack of any coherent infrastructure for moving image and sound archives in the UK'. In fact the real subtext of this conference was the race to save 100 years worth of material. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/sherpa/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/sherpa/   JISC announced its FAIR Programme (Focus on Access to Institutional Resources) in January of this year. The central objective of the Programme is to test ways of releasing institutionally-produced content onto the web. FAIR describes its scope as: “to support access to and sharing of institutional content within Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) and to allow intelligence to be gathered about the technical, organisational and cultural challenges of these processes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/china/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/china/ I was indeed fortunate to be invited to China to speak at the International Digital Library Conference [1] in Beijing in July 2002. The 3-day event was held at the Friendship Hotel, a large and splendid establishment built in traditional garden style and which retained some of the architectural character of times past. The conference was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture with support from other government departments and organized by the National Library of China NLC [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/oclc-scurl/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/oclc-scurl/ The problem of "navigating a rich and complex information landscape" took on a new dimension as I traversed Edinburgh's High Street on a bright Thursday morning at the height of the Festival. Fielding a barrage of enthusiastic invitations to attend a bewildering range of performances, I headed across town to the University for the "New Directions in Metadata" conference [1], organised jointly by OCLC [2] and SCURL [3]. Michael Anderson (Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Edinburgh) welcomed delegates to Edinburgh, and made an appeal for us to bear in mind that the true value of the services we build around metadata will be measured by how well they meet the requirements of the user. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/public-libraries/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/public-libraries/ As I write schools have closed for summer, the volume of early morning traffic has temporarily subsided, and the tourists are out and about in vast numbers in Bath city centre. The 'out of office' auto-replies drop into the email box daily as proof that some people have managed to unplug themselves from their computers to go on holiday. It is also, alas, the 'silly season' - time for the British media to devote column inches to vital matters - such as the Prime Minister's sartorial taste, and how a certain blue shirt 'brings out the colour of his eyes'. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/collection-workshops/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/collection-workshops/ With the increasing emphasis being placed on improving access to the content of research resources in the UK, the importance of collection description as a means of ensuring that access has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The resultant debate that has surrounded the concept of collection description has been particularly fuelled by the work of the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) and the many projects it has sponsored over the past three years [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/theses-dissertations/ ‘ETDs’ is the acronym widely used in the US to stand for ‘Electronic Theses and Dissertations’. The father of the ETD movement, Professor Ed Fox of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), explains the acronym as containing an implicit Boolean ‘OR’: ‘ETs’ OR ‘EDs’ equals ‘ETDs’. This makes for a very convenient shorthand, whereby a digital object which is either an electronic thesis or an electronic dissertation can be referred to as ‘an ETD’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/newsline/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/newsline/ The JISC has published the following circular (JISC Circular C06/02) to the community[3 July 2002] A call for number of projects designed to give the UK experience of emerging technologies in the authentication and authorisation area, based on open, vendor-independent standards. Institutions have a period of six weeks to respond. The deadline for full proposals is 12 noon on Thursday 18th July 2002. An electronic copy of this circular can be found on the JISC website at: http://www. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/planet-sosig/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/planet-sosig/ Launch of Citizenship PastThe launch of Citizenship Past took place on the 12th June. This is a NOF (New Opportunities Fund) consortium whose aim is to digitize over a half a million historical papers and images in order to open up access to archival and government papers in the following areas: Unlocking Key British Government Publications, 1801-1995: Full Text Digital Library, led by BOPCRIS, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. British Official Publications (government and parliamentary reports) constitute an immense body of material on the development of British society. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-archiving/ Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/32/web-archiving/ Web sites are an increasingly important part of this country’s information and cultural heritage. As such, the question of their preservation through archiving becomes one which organisations need to be increasingly aware of. This event, organised by the newly-created Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), brought together key organisations in the field of web archiving in order to assess the needs of organisations involved in the field to archive their and others’ web sites, to find areas of agreement, to highlight good practice, and to influence the wider debate about digital preservation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/cld/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/cld/ The UK Collection Description Focus [1] was launched on 1 June 2001. It is a national post, jointly funded for a twelve-month period by the Joint Information Systems Committee/Distributed National Electronic Resource (JISC/DNER) [2], the Research Support Libraries Program (RSLP) [3] and the British Library [4]. The Focus is working towards improving co-ordination on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/rslp/ The Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), a £30m initiative funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies, has spawned 53 projects and a number of studies and other activities. This brief overview aims to give a flavour of the Programme. Articles relating to particular projects will appear in future issues of Ariadne. But first, some background: RSLP derives from the deliberations of the Follett Review (1993)1 and the associated Anderson Report (1996). 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/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/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/29/miller/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/miller/ In July of this year, Interoperability Focus [1] organised a meeting at the Office of the e–Envoy [2], the Cabinet Office unit responsible for driving forward the UK’s e–Government initiatives. Across an increasing number of initiatives and programmes, there is a growing recognition of the need for common ‘architectures’ within which truly useful applications and services may be constructed. Partly, these architectures form a philosophical basis within which developments may be undertaken. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/robinson/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/robinson/ The UK Collection Description Focus (1) was launched on 1 June 2001. It is a national post, jointly funded for a twelve-month period by the Joint Information Systems Committee/Distributed National Electronic Resource (JISC/DNER) (2) , the Research Support Libraries Program (RSLP) (3) and the British Library (4). The Focus aims to improve co-ordination of work on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/open-archives/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/open-archives/ A one day Open Archives event co-ordinated by the DNER, CURL and UKOLN was held on Wednesday 11th July at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Birdcage Walk, London. Birdcage walk is in a very impressive part of London, circumscribed by Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. Lucky for us the hot sun added to the splendor of the location. Catherine Grout giving the opening presentation The Institute of Mechanical Engineers building itself is also very grand. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/editorial/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/editorial/ As we suggested in issue 28, we have the first detailed information on the new post of Collection Description Focus, in the form of a short article by Pete Johnston and Bridget Robinson. Launched on 1 June 2001, the Focus will provide support both for UK projects actively involved in collection description work and for those investigating or planning such work. The Focus is located within UKOLN, which is based at the University of Bath. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/kirriemuir/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/kirriemuir/ This article discusses some of the issues that arise when an academic department, unit or institution moves from possessing a few digital library projects and services, to possessing an integrated digital library centre. The article is based on: the experiences of the author, who has worked in four digital library centres (according to the definition in the next section) in UK higher education.replies from various people who have been employed by digital/electronic library projects and services over the past decade, to emailed questions about various aspects of digital library centre cultureexamples of incidents or case studies of things that have occurred within UK digital library centresIt does not prescribe a 'one model fits all' plan for all budding digital library centres. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pinfield/ Managing the development and delivery of electronic library services is one of the major current challenges for university library and information services. This article provides a brief overview of some of the key issues facing information professionals working in higher education institutions (HEIs). In doing so, it also picks up some of the real-world lessons which have emerged from the eLib (Electronic Libraries) programme now that it has come to a close. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/museum/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/museum/ On Friday 20 April 2001, the mda held a one-day colloquium entitled Beyond the Museum: Working with Collections in the Digital Age [1]. The event was jointly organised by the University of Oxford Humanities Computing Unit (HCU) and the mda. It was the most recent in a series of events that include last year's Beyond Control, or Through the Looking Glass? Threats and Liberties in the Electronic Age; 1999's Beyond Art: Digital Culture in the 21st Century; and 1998's Beyond the Hype. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/editorial/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/editorial/ Here in the UK we are living in the aftermath of the recent General election. Although apathy was the order of the day and few seats actually changed hands, important changes have been made that are worth mentioning here in Ariadne. In a Cabinet reshuffle the government has replaced the previous Culture secretary, Chris Smith, with Tessa Jowell, formerly a minister of state in the Department for Education and Employment. Working alongside her in the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) will be Tessa Blackstone, also a previous minister in the DFEE. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/news/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/news/ Tessa Jowell, new Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has recently been appointed Minister for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) replacing Chris Smith. Tessa has been a minister since Labour won its first landslide four years ago. As minister for public health, Ms Jowell was embroiled in the Bernie Ecclestone affair, when the government gave Formula One motor racing an exemption from the ban on tobacco advertising after its boss, Mr Ecclestone, gave an anonymous £1m donation to the Labour Party. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/planet-sosig/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/planet-sosig/ Virtual Training Suite LaunchedSOSIG is pleased to announce the launch of 9 more free Web-tutorials teaching Internet skills for different social science subjects - ideal for students, lecturers and researchers who want to learn how to get the best from the Web. This brings the total to 16 - with one tutorial for each of the main subjects covered by the gateway (ranging from Anthropology to Women’s Studies). The tutorials give a guided tour of the Web for the subject, with expert “tour guides” from university libraries and national social science organisations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/join-up/ This seminar brought together experts in the field of linking technology with participants in the four projects which constitute the JOIN-UP programme, for exploration and discussion of recent technical developments in reference linking. The JOIN-UP project cluster forms part of the DNER infrastructure programme supported by the JISC 5⁄99 initiative. Its focus is development of the infrastructure needed to support services that supply users with journal articles and similar resources. The programme addresses the linkage between references found in discovery databases (such as Abstracting and Indexing databases and Table of Contents databases) and the supply of services for the referenced item (typically, a journal article), in printed or electronic form. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/red/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/red/ In literary criticism and cultural studies more attention is being paid to the reception of the text – who read it, who had access to it, how was it read – partly perhaps due to the interest in reader theory. Such questions are relevant to the study of the development of a literary canon, the study of popular literature, the transmission of ideas through society both today and in the past and the changing relations between the author, editor, producer and reader of the text. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/hylife/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/hylife/ HyLiFe (The Hybrid Library of the Future), one of the five Hybrid Library Projects in eLib’s Phase 3 formally ended as a project at the end of 2000. Distinctive features of HyLiFe include its diverse consortium, its non technological approach and its emphasis throughout on evaluation. By drawing on evaluation findings in HyLiFe’s six partner sites, it has been possible to identify ten steps which need to be observed en route to successful Hybrid Library implementation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/review/ Christine L. Borgman, From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure: access to information in the networked world. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, 2000. xviii, 324 pp. £27.95. ISBN 0-262-02473-X. Christine Borgman’s book From Gutenberg to the global information infrastructure was published in March 2000 in the Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing series edited by William Arms. The book is an excellent introduction to a wide range of issues related to the development of digital libraries and to what is called here a ‘global information infrastructure. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/maccoll/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/maccoll/ This 1-day conference was the third in a series of events organised by the Hybrid Libraries projects funded by JISC via the eLib Programme, and supported by the DNER. The prior two events had been held at the British Library, in November 2000, and Manchester Metropolitan University, in the previous week. The event was late in starting due to heavy snow having delayed several of the delegates. Indeed, many of those who had intended being in Edinburgh had to call off altogether. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/chris/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/chris/ Philip Hunter asked for an assessment of the achievements and legacy of the eLib Programme 5 years on. It is a strange experience trying to summarise a huge enterprise, covering more than 5 years involving hundreds of people, and costing in excess of £20M, in a couple of thousand words. I immediately abandoned any thought of comprehensiveness, any formalised evaluation, or even any serious attempt at history. Instead this is a highly personal commentary on some of the highlights for me as Programme Director of the Electronic Libraries Programme (known as eLib) with a reflection on some of the less overtly successful things – again highlights where 20:20 hindsight showed we could have done better. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/clumps26/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/clumps26/ This article is an end of project review of the Large Scale Resource Discovery strand of the eLib Phase 3 Programme. Four ‘clump’ [1] projects were funded, CAIRNS, M25 Link, and RIDING are regionally based, and Music Libraries Online (MLO) is subject based. One question that this article aims to answer is ‘Have the clumps projects been a success?’ The following sections highlight some of the many issues that the four projects have looked at and the progress that has been made. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/editorial/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/editorial/ Welcome to Ariadne issue 26. In this issue Ariadne welcomes the new Director of UKOLN, Dr Elizabeth Lyon. Previously, Liz Lyon was Head of Research & Learning Support Systems in Information Services at the University of Surrey, where she was founding Director of the Centre for Learning Developments (CLD) and was also responsible for Library IT systems, audio-visual services and administration. CLD comprised four Units promoting and supporting new Learning Technologies, Skills Developments and Applied Research & Development. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/metadata/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/metadata/ The Cedars conference, "Preservation 2000: an International Conference on the Preservation and Long Term Accessibility of Digital Materials," was held at the Viking Moat House Hotel in York on 7-8 December 2000. There were over 150 participants, about one half from outside the UK. As a prelude to the conference proper, a one-day workshop entitled "Information Infrastructures for Digital Preservation" was held at the same venue on the 6 December. This workshop mostly concerned preservation metadata and attracted over 70 participants. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/kate-robinson/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/kate-robinson/ This workshop had a very full programme and made an early start. The day began with an enthusiastic welcome to the British Library by Lynne Brindley, who spoke about whether in hindsight the British Library could have been re-designed as a building, or as a digital resource. She went on to describe the value of the physical presence of a building and its role as a showcase for the importance of libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/craven/ Wed, 10 Jan 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/26/craven/ Background to the NoVA projectIt is recognised that in order to participate fully in today’s society it is vital that citizens are not excluded for any reason, whether by virtue of birth, belief, aptitude or circumstance. Exclusion takes many forms and must be countered in many different ways. Funded by Resource and undertaken by the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) at Manchester Metropolitan University, the NoVA project is concerned with countering the exclusion from access to information which can all too easily occur when individuals do not have so-called ‘normal’ vision. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/subject-gateways/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/subject-gateways/ This brief paper outlines some of the features of the policy environment which led to the setting up of the influential 'subject gateways' as part of the Electronic Libraries Programme. It has the modest and partial ambition of putting some of the discussions of the time on record. It should be read as a companion piece to two other articles. The first, Law 1994, develops the historical context for the emergence of the data centres, a central component of JISC information infrastructure, and collaterally discusses the broad thrust of JISC's developing informational activity. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/planet-sosig/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/planet-sosig/ RDN Virtual Training SuiteSOSIG is pleased to announce the launch of the RDN (Resource Discovery Network) Virtual Training Suite - a set of free, interactive, web-based tutorials for students, lecturers and researchers who want to discover what the Internet can offer in their subject area. Each tutorial has been written by an academic or librarian with specialist knowledge of both their subject area and the Internet. There are 11 tutorials available in phase one of the project (with another 27 in production). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jisc-cni/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/jisc-cni/ The conference was opened by Professor Maxwell Irvine, Chair of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), who extended a familiar transport metaphor to talk of the route maps and driving instructors needed to ensure the effective use of the information superhighway, observing that the JISC's DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) can be seen as the "overall integrated transport policy". He went on to highlight the international collaboration and partnerships which will be needed to bring true coherence to networked information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/in-vision/ IntroductionUntil recently, visually impaired people (VIP) were poorly served by the library and information provision that is routinely available to sighted people. They have relied to a great extent on specialist voluntary organisations transcribing a limited range of materials into accessible formats. This situation is changing with advances in technology and recent initiatives on social inclusion. Increasingly visually impaired people will be able to locate and use information independently, as sighted people already do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/glasgow-clumps/ This article is supplementary to the issue 23 report on the CLUMPS event at Goldsmiths College in March this year, and perhaps should be read in conjunction with both that report and Peter Stubley’s article on ‘What have the CLUMPS ever done for us?’ in the same issue. Details of presentations which were broadly similar to those given at Goldsmiths are not repeated here, but can be found in the Ariadne 23 report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/news/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/news/ Foraging for a Good Read: Book Forager Goes Live It is August 2000; the UK is enjoying the driest, sunniest summer this century. You are in the library trying to find a book which isunorthodox, very realistic but also quite funny, set in Spain. You go over to the public access terminal and input details of the kind of read you need to match your mood, and the computer comes up with ten suggestions for you to try. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/planet-sosig/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/planet-sosig/ Social Science Librarians Update1999 was a momentous year for the ASLIB Social Science Librarians Special Interest Group. In April 1999 it was decided to merge with ALISS (Academic Librarians in the Social Sciences), a professional grouping of information workers based in UK university libraries, in order to create one national body. The past year has seen a great deal of negotiation behind the scenes with ASLIB and the interim committee members in order to establish a firm foundation for the group and a renewed programme of activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/at-the-event/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/at-the-event/ Last year’s CLUMPS meeting took place in a large purpose built lecture theatre in the new British Library building at St Pancras. This was very handy for those of us arriving from Bath, since it is only 3 tube stops or so from Paddington to St Pancras/Kings Cross. This year the meeting is split into two events, and the first of these was arranged to happen at Goldsmiths College at New Cross in South East London. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/metadata/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/metadata/ "Interoperability is easy. It’s a piece of cake. Simply digitise (or create in digital form) a load of content and stick it on a web site. To let people find it, use this cool stuff called metadata. Basically, that means describing your stuff by writing a description of it inside some <META> tags." Erm… Wrong!!! The prevalence of this view — or views remarkably akin to it — is truly scary, even amongst the ranks of those such as readers of Ariadne, from whom we might reasonably expect better. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/stubley/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/stubley/   Terminology appears to have played a large part in the work associated with virtual union catalogues. We have had three years of dealing with new and slightly odd terms and only time will tell whether or not the curious word ‘clump’ becomes established in the library lexicon or whether it is simply a minor blip in cataloguing, networking and service history. Rather like the term UKLDS.   Many readers will be too young to remember the UKLDS – United Kingdom Library Database System – an initiative begun in 1981 under the auspices of the CAG (Co-operative Automation Group) to consider the possibility of creating a centralised bibliographic database – a National Union Catalogue – for the UK. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/bl-isp/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/bl-isp/ The rapid growth in services offering free Internet access to users dialling into the Internet is well known. The market leader, Freeserve, has signed up over 1.5 million customers and has been followed by TescoNet, WH Smith, Currant Bun, etc. But did you know that in September the British Library launched British Library Net, the first free Internet service to be provided by a public sector body in the UK? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/digiwilf/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/digiwilf/ PH How did the WWW1 JTAP seminars get started? SL A long time ago we did a set of Hypercard stacks on Isaac Rosenberg, which I converted for the web in January ‘95, and then when the JTAP call came out I thought that we could expand the tutorial and make four tutorials. And then we had all the archive nearby: we thought we would tackle the idea of creating both online tutorials and a digital archive which lecturers could use. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/planet-sosig/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/planet-sosig/ Social Science Business and Law HubWe are pleased to announce that as of August 1999 SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway), the UK’s number one place to find social science information on the Internet will be expanding its service. SOSIG provides a browsable and searchable database of thousands of high quality Internet resources of relevance to social science researchers, academics and practitioners. The gateway will draw on the expertise of a number of specialist organisations within the social sciences to help build its database of resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/eevl/seminar.html Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/eevl/seminar.html EEVL was invited to present a paper at the Bibliotecas Universitárias em Consórcio (University Libraries in Consortium) seminar, held 26 - 27 April 1999 at the University of Aveiro [01]. The seminar was organised by RUBi - Rede Universitária de Bibliotecas e Informação (Universities' Libraries and Information Network) [02]. RUBi is intended to be "a logical structure that provides an Integrated Information Management, in a progressive manner, through new ways of co-operative work and resources sharing" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/editorial/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/editorial/ Welcome to the newly redesigned Ariadne. The new interface was created to improve the appearance of Ariadne both on screen and when printed: the latter is particularly important now that Ariadne is published only in electronic format (since issue 19). The old 1996 design was generally very servicable from the point of view of structure and navigation, but it had a number of features which, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, introduced un-necessary complications to the editorial process: these have now been redesigned. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/planet-sosig/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/planet-sosig/ The Resource Guide for the Social Scienceshttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/subject/socsci/  Karen Ford describes the new Resource Guide for Social Scientists, which aims to provide a user-friendly overview of the electronic services available for UK social scientists. The Resource Guide for the Social Sciences is a pilot project funded jointly by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The project aims to provide staff and students in higher education with an overview of the exciting but often overwhelming range of electronic services available to them and to promote effective use of the resources for research and learning purposes. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bopac/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/bopac/ This article attempts to draw some practical lessons for those involved with clumps (or thinking about them) from our experiences on the BOPAC2 project [1]. BOPAC2 was a British Library funded project, that was investigating the problems of large and complex retrievals from Z39.50 [2] searches especially from multiple targets. Although the funded stage of BOPAC2 is over the system is still under development and available on the web and I would urge people to try the sort of examples I will mention below (and give us feedback). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/metadata/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/metadata/ IntroductionImage-based information is a key component of human progress in a number of distinct subject domains and digital image retrieval is a fast-growing research area with regard to both still and moving images. In order to address some relevant issues the Second UK Conference on Image Retrieval - the Challenge of Image Retrieval (CIR 99) was held in Newcastle upon Tyne on the 25 and 26 February 1999 [1]. Participants included both researchers and practitioners in the area of image retrieval. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/rowlatt/ SEAMLESS is a two year research project, funded by the British Library, which aims to develop a new model for citizens’ information - one which is distributed, and based on partnerships and common standards. The objectives of the SEAMLESS project are to: build strong and sustainable partnerships between the various information providers operating in the regiondevelop and implement common standards (technical and informational) so as to achieve interoperability between their systems and datadevelop a SEAMLESS interface which will allow simultaneous querying of distributed information sources (whether stored in a database, made available on a website, or in word processed documents) and return all the information back to the user in a unified listfacilitate electronic communication between the information providers and their customers, and between the various participating agenciesdevelop a current awareness/alerting service for users (second phase)Currently the project team (Essex Libraries, Fretwell Downing Data Systems Ltd. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/webwatch/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/webwatch/ The WebWatch project [1], which was based at UKOLN, University of Bath and funded the the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC), involved the development of robot software to analyse web resources in a variety of (mainly UK) communities. The project analysed several communities and has produced reports on the results. Following the successful completetion of the WebWatch project a final report has been produced. This article summarises the findings published in the report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/cedars/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/cedars/ In recent years, libraries have been fortunate to have increasing access to new and innovative digital resources. A number of factors contribute to this trend: advances in networking technology and the growth of the JANET network mean that UK libraries can deliver more information more quickly directly to their end-users; an influx of funding following on from the Follett Report has provided libraries with an opportunity to experiment with and integrate new technologies into the services they provide; the emergence of consortium purchasing (i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/knowledge-mgt/ Over the last twelve months Knowledge Management (KM) has become the latest hot topic in the business world. There has been a phenomenal growth in interest and activity, as seen in many new publications, conferences, IT products, and job advertisements (including a post advertised by HEFCE). Various professional groups, notably HR professionals, IT specialists, and librarians, are staking their claims, seeing KM as an opportunity to move centre stage. People often used to describe librarianship as the organisation of recorded knowledge, so perhaps our time has come? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadata/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadata/ Introduction: cataloguing and the Internet Modern descriptive cataloguing theory and practice has developed over the past 150 years as a means of organising information for retrieval in libraries. Library catalogues typically consist of a collection of bibliographic records that describe published materials, usually - as the name implies - in the form of printed books but also including cartographic materials, music scores and manuscripts. The standards and cataloguing codes originally developed to support this activity have expanded to include a range of newer publishing media, typically: sound recordings, microforms, video recordings, films and computer files. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/pub-lib/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/pub-lib/ The Work of the Networked Policy TaskgroupFor public libraries wishing to provide their users with access to the Internet there are a number of difficult policy decisions that need to be made. For example, do they provide Internet access for free? If they charge how much do they charge? Do they use filtering software? How long can people use the Internet terminals for? What level of services (e.g. e-mail or not) will they provide? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/verity/ AbstractThe majority of library enquiry systems usually consist of a non-graphical interface linked to a library catalogue (Online Public Access Catalog, or OPAC). Graphics, animation and sound are usually sacrificed to speed up the enquiry process. Some interfaces support the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) and can therefore be accessed on the World Wide Web (Web). Although they allow access using a number of keywords (author, subject, title, etc.), they do not provide any help on how the catalogues are accessed, how to structure or refine a query or how to evaluate the responses. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/cover/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/cover/ A British Library funded research project at the University of Surrey Library is using a questionnaire and a number of case studies to investigate devolved budgets. The work is being carried out in collaboration with David Haynes Associates and Information Management Associates. A full report will be published shortly, but some interesting issues have already emerged. What is meant by devolved budgeting?One of the fundamental points that has arisen from the study is the varied understanding of what devolved budgeting actually means. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/events/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/events/ IntroductionA conference on Electronic Access: Archives in the New Milennium was held at the Public Record Office (PRO) [1], Kew, on 3-4 June 1998. The Conference was held as part of the UK Presidency of the European Union. Present (over the two days) were about one hundred and twenty delegates representing a large number of organisations based in the European Union, countries in east-central Europe and the Russian Federation. The conference opening speech was given by Geoff Hoon MP who is Parliamentary Secretary to the Lord Chancellor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/ill/ The National Library of Australia has selected Fretwell-Downing’s OLIB VDX, the same product chosen by the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee’s LIDDA (Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration) Project as the heart of the new interlending and document delivery support services for the nation’s libraries. OLIB (Open Library Systems) is Fretwell-Downing Informatics’ library management system, consisting of a family of products of which VDX (Virtual Document eXchange) is the product supporting ILL management. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/landscapes/ Sat, 18 Jul 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/16/landscapes/ The third UKOLN conference in the series Networking and the future of libraries was held at the University of Bath, 29 June-1 July. There were around 240 delegates, nearly a third of whom were from overseas. Its central theme was the construction of information and learning landscapes. The programme ranged from the exploration of distributed library architectures now being developed, to future gazing with the help of some visionary speakers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/digital/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/digital/ During the supporting study the authors consulted various stake-holders in the creation, distribution and use of digital materials. A number of recommendations arose from this study and are presented in this paper. These recommendations are not official policy and represent the authors’ views of one possible way forward for ensuring that potentially valued digital materials are preserved for future study and use. How the study originatedThe JISC-funded study on ‘Responsibility for long term preservation and access to digital materials’ extended beyond rights holders to include all stakeholders in the production, exploitation, distribution and preservation of digital materials (see Figure 1 below). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/ccc/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/ccc/ The Web and legal deposit Paul Auchterlonie, University of Exeter Library (J.P.C.Auchterlonie@exeter.ac.uk) asked: From what I have read of your column in Ariadne, any downloading and storage by an ordinary library of material from a Web site is a straightforward infringement of copyright, unless the agreement of the copyright owner is obtained in advance. However, if this permission is granted, are there any other laws, preventing the library from making material produded on a Web site or in e-journal form available to its readers in hard-copy? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/older-people/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/older-people/ The number of older people in the UK is growing. At the same time, use of the Internet is expanding rapidly. A recent BLRIC report [1] brought together material concerning these trends in an attempt to explore the possible contribution the Internet could make to the lives of older people. After looking at information and older people from a library and information perspective, it considered questions of access to the Internet, Internet resources, and the current use of the Internet by older people. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/news/ National Networking Demonstrator Project for archives launchThe Archives Sub-Committee is organising a meeting to launch the NNDP which it has instigated and funded through the Non Formula Funding of Specialised Research Collections monitoring programme on 18 March. The Meeting is open to archivists and interested parties and is intended to be a platform for public review of the project’s developments. The NNDP aims to implement cross-searching of multi-level archival data, originating from numerous sources, primarily but not exclusively in the HE sector, as presented in a wide variety of formats (from EAD, to fielded data in a MODES system, to catalogue entries in Word 6). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/public-libraries/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/public-libraries/ As the number of public libraries that offer Internet access, for their staff and/or the public increases, many libraries will be wanting to provide basic training for staff and the public that familiarise them with the World Wide Web. In many situations what is required is a training package that is flexible, that staff or members of the public can work through independently or in a group and that is relatively cheap to produce and administer. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/lamda/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/lamda/ NOTHING IS THE short answer. LAMDA is not exciting for the technophile. Some annoying problems to solve, yes, but nothing revolutionary about the hardware or software. Just standard PCs, scanners and printers, loaded with the tried and tested RLG Ariel software. Perhaps the most exciting technical development has been the JEDDS software, which will allow e-mail delivery of scanned journal articles to the users desktop, but even that will not cause a frisson of excitement in the computer science community. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/down-your-way/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/down-your-way/ THE VIEW, DOWN THE VALLEY and towards the mouth of the River Bann, from the Central Library of the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster, is seriously distracting. However, I was not here to be distracted, but to learn about the University of Ulster’s Library Services[1]. The Ulster Polytechnic and New University of Ulster (NUU) were merged in the mid- 1980’s as part of a rationalisation of higher education in Northern Ireland. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/news/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/news/ The Next UKOLN Conference, Summer 1998Information landscapes for a learning society is the title of the next UKOLN conference, to be held at the University of Bath from 29th June - 1st July 1998. It is the third in the Networking and the Future of Libraries conference series and marks the 21st anniversary of UKOLN and its antecedent organisations at the University of Bath. The conference will be opened by Brian Lang, Chief Executive of the British Library, with the closing address by Clifford Lynch, the Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) in Washington. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/planet-sosig/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/planet-sosig/ During 1997 the indexing and cataloguing of resources for the SOSIG database was reorganised with the creation of a committee of section editors based in a number of UK university libraries. The purpose of this article is to give some insight into the role of the Section Editor with reference to my own work on the Politics section. SOSIG (The Social Science Information Gateway)[1] was founded in 1994 as a result of funding from the ESRC. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/bl/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/bl/ THE DIGITAL LIBRARIES Research Programme at British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) is at a difficult stage in its development, being currently in no-man’s land awaiting the appointment of a new Research Analyst. The ethos of the RIC is such that a heavy responsibility is borne by the analysts with oversight of the programmes. Sue Howley, the Deputy Director, while outlining the general nature of the programme, put the position: ‘The research analyst is responsible for developing an area and giving it a slant, which inevitably reflects the experience and the interests the particular RA brings to that area. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/main/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/main/ I ONCE WROTE (LINE, 1989 [1]) THAT there was nothing that national libraries did that could not be done in some other way or by some other body or bodies, and was not so done in one or another country. This is true of even the most basic functions. The deposit and preservation of national imprints could be spread among several libraries, where they can be consulted; and the national bibliography (which some countries do without) could be produced by the private sector or co-operatively by other libraries. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ghosts/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ghosts/ I rather enjoyed a recent piece on email in the Independent on Sunday which appeared under the title “scam@gibberish.com”[1]. It set off rather nicely a more serious piece in the Financial Times called “Failing to get the message”[2] which contained the amusing (or is it?) anecdote of one international company where every member of staff received the message: “Would the owner of the red Biro left by the second floor coffee machine like to come and collect it? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/public-libraries/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/public-libraries/ New Library: the People’s Network has had an overwhelmingly positive reception. Caveat and qualification may exist but they have been submerged in enthusiasm, gratitude even, for the vision the report presents of a renovated public library service and the specific recommendations by which it might be achieved. Its content succeeds in making its readers feel positive about the future of a strong social institution, committed to the communication and preservation of knowledge, imagination and learning in all their manifestations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ihr-info/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/ihr-info/ In the early modern era of computing the first server and gateway to the humanities in Europe was established in London, UK. It was the product of the Academic Secretary of the Institute of Historical Research looking over the shoulder of a member of the Institute who had used Lynx, a text-based browser, to establish a personal list of addresses and search engines. “Could we do that for the subject of history? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/web-focus/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/web-focus/ About WebWatchWebWatch is a one year project funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) [1]. The main aim of WebWatch is to develop and use robot software to analyse the use of web technologies with various UK communities and to report on the findings to various interested communities. Other aims of WebWatch include: Evaluation of robot technologies and making recommendations on appropriate technologies.Analysis of the results obtained, and liaising with the relevant communities in interpreting the analyses and making recommendations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/dl97/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/dl97/ The ACM conference on Digital Libraries is, despite its short life, the premier conference for the field. This year the computer scientists, librarians and all those in-between travelled to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania for ACM Digital Libraries ‘97 [1]. The conference, from 23-26 July, took place in the Doubletree Hotel [2] in downtown Philly and was co-located with the more technical SIGIR ‘97 [3]. All of the usual conference elements were present with 28 papers, 2 invited talks, tutorials, workshops and a session for posters/demonstrations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/edd/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/edd/ Following the original Electronic Document Delivery (EDD) trial using Blackwell’s Uncover Service, a number of recommendations were made which led to an investigation into other document delivery services available on the market. The criteria used to decide which services would best suit the needs of the user, and the University of Bath Library staff who would be carrying out the trial are outlined in the first article of this two-part series (Williams). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/sigir97/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/sigir97/ SIGIR is a well established technical conference and a little daunting for those hangers-on from Digital Libraries ‘97 who did not have a background in information retrieval. It was good, therefore, that the opening Salton Award lecture by Tefko Saracevic of Rutgers University made us feel at home with a talk entitled Users Lost. He described the history of the field and, what he felt, was a split in the early 80s between the technical algorithm-based side and the user-oriented side. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/cover/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/cover/ Is the age of the printed thesis doomed? The University Thesis On-line Group (UTOG) has recently completed a survey, funded by the British Library and JISC, on the use of doctoral theses in UK universities [1]. The survey forms the first phase of UTOG’s work of addressing the problems and opportunities presented by making theses available electronically. Surveys were distributed to all authors completing PhD theses in the year to October 1996 in eight participating institutions, representing a cross-section of UK universities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/york/ Thu, 18 Sep 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/11/york/ LibWeb [1] is the University of York Library’s web information service. LibWeb was designed right from the start as a comprehensive site which would provide as much information as possible on library services, staff and collections, and which would include electronic versions of all printed library guides. One of the first questions that arose in designing the site was how to deal with Internet resources. The Computing Service had maintained a campus information service for several years before the Web became the standard method of access to the Internet. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/bubl/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/bubl/ BUBL Basics BUBL provides a national information service for two audiences: the higher education community in general, and the library and information science community in particular. The BUBL Information Service was relaunched on 23 March 1997. The new URL is http://bubl.ac.uk/ BUBL is now based entirely at Strathclyde University Library. It moved from UKOLN in Bath during the first quarter of 1997. BUBL is not an acronym. Although it began as the BUlletin Board for Libraries back in 1990, it has been trying to drop this label for the past three years. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/clifford/ Z39.50 has been around for a long time, now - why do you think it has not been assimilated into networked retrieval applications and technologies to the extent of e.g. CD-ROMs, the Web? I think that Z39.50 is now well established for large, if you will, mainframe or server-based systems. Certainly, those folks who wonder what real Z39.50 systems are in use could look at institutions like the University of California, where we have had it in production for a number of years, and we're using it every day to provide access to our community of close to a quarter of a million people, to resources mounted at places like OCLC and RLG. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/edd/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/edd/   The BackgroundIn November 1994 members of the library staff met to discuss the feasibility of setting up an experiment in Electronic Document Delivery (EDD). This was a result of the continued increase of periodical prices above the rate of inflation; the increasing difficulty in subscribing to core journals caused by price increases and the need to create more space in the Library. The Deputy Librarian produced statistics which showed that 102 journals subscribed to by the Library cost over 800 pounds each i. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/interface/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/interface/ Dennis Nicholson is the head of Library Systems at the University of Strathclyde, where he has been responsible for the installation of two generations of library systems. In the library community at large he is best known as the driving force behind the BUBL Information Service [1] and is also involved with a number of Scottish collaborative initiatives. BUBL began life as the Bulletin Board for Libraries under Project Jupiter at the University of Glasgow. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/minotaur/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/minotaur/ Metadata [1]: it’s one of those words that rolls off the tongue; I expect Tony Hancock of h-h-h-half hour fame, could have had some fun with it, as in (I think) the Blood donor, where the ‘drinka pinta milka day’ slogan catches his eye - eatametadataday, anyone? What I want to rant about in this column is something close, yet ‘further away’ - metametadata. If metadata is ‘data about data’, then metametadata is ‘data about metadata’. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/public-libraries/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/public-libraries/   Background to the ProjectChildren’s libraries have always had a crucial role in the educational development of children. However, they are now potentially in danger of appearing outmoded and potentially irrelevant to their readers. Leisure and some home-environments are becoming technology-rich: libraries may appear ‘dull’ in comparison. Increasingly children’s libraries are going to be dealing with readers who will be familiar with and could want to use networked computers. Children’s libraries need to begin to explore how they can integrate this technology into their traditional literature and literacy services if they are to remain current. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/british-library/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/british-library/ The British Library Research and Innovation Centre’s Digital Library Research Programme aims to help the library and information community formulate an appropriate and effective response to the challenge posed by the ‘digital library’. It also seeks to address the issues raised by rapid technological change for library staff and users, and to assess its relevance for the information needs of the wider community. We believe that few greater challenges face libraries and information services today. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/metadata/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/metadata/ Metadata for resource discovery and accessWhen the library and information community discuss metadata, the most common analogy given is the library catalogue record. Priscilla Caplan, for example, has defined metadata as a neutral term for cataloguing without the “excess baggage” of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules or the MARC formats [1]. The most well-known metadata initiative, the Dubin Core Metadata Element Set, has the specific aim of supporting resource discovery in a network environment. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/public-libraries/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/public-libraries/ For a description of the MODELS programme and its aims see Rosemary Russell’s article in Ariadne [1]. As Rosemary explains this was the final workshop in the MODELS programme and was entitled ‘Managing Access to a Distributed Library Resource’. The workshop had a strong public library focus. Background to Models 5This workshop was in response to the recommendations for increased resource sharing between libraries that have been emerging from a range of sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/global-digital/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/global-digital/ This international conference, with the overall theme of “Realising the Digital Library”, will feature invited speakers from around the world, including Australia, Europe, Japan and the United States. The conference is being coordinated by UKOLN on behalf of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee for the Higher Education Funding Councils), the British Library Research & Innovation Centre, CNI (the Coalition for Networked Information, Washington), CAUSE (the Association for Managing and Using Information Resources in Higher Education, Colorado) and CAUL (the Council of Australian University Libraries). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/copac/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/copac/ 1. IntroductionCOPAC is a new consolidated union catalogue which provides free access to a database of records provided by members of the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL). The CURL database has been in existence since 1987, permitting record exchange between member libraries and providing a reference service to library staff, and it has long been felt that the database would be of value to the wider academic community. COPAC is the product of a JISC funded project to make the CURL database accessible to the research community as a whole. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/models/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/models/ MODELS (MOving to Distributed Environments for Library Services) [1] is one of the three eLib Supporting Studies [2] projects. It was intended that projects in this area of the programme would help to define issues in more detail and set parameters for other work. In addition to fulfilling this role, MODELS has generated several significant national initiatives and achieved some important results for the management of distributed library services. The project is a UKOLN initiative, which has support from eLib and the British Library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/marc/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/marc/ In the last issue of Ariadne the basic layout of the MAchine Readable Catalogue (MARC) records [1] used by most library systems worldwide was introduced. The article also described the first release of a Perl module that can be used for processing MARC records. Since that article was published, a number of people have been in touch saying that they either were developing similar in-house MARC processing software or were planning on developing something similar for public usage themselves. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/oral-history/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/oral-history/ Like many national, regional and research libraries, the National Library of Australia (NLA) is actively facing a wide range of challenges associated with using digital technology to improve access to its collections. In at least one area this is not discretionary: the Oral History collections are intrinsically affected by technological change and without moving to digital, access to the collections will be lost as analogue audio technology loses market support. The NLA is implementing a strategy to bridge the difficult transition between fully analogue and fully digital environments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/rudi/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/rudi/ RUDI (Resource for Urban Design Information) [1] began in January 1996 and is run jointly by the Engineering Research and Development Centre at the University of Hertfordshire, and the Library of Oxford Brookes University. RUDI is concerned with all aspects of urban design, but in particular physical design, within the Western cultural context. The project is funded for three years by JISC. The intention is for RUDI to become commercially self- supporting at the end of its grant period by attracting investment, subscription and sponsorship directly from users and contributors. 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/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/6/lund/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lund/     On 11-13 October 1996 I was fortunate to be invited to participate in the 10th annual Anglo-Nordic Seminar, held in Lund, Sweden. This annual event is co-organised by the British Library and their Nordic colleagues at NORDINFO. Each year the seminar is based on a particular theme and this year it was Networking. The event was preceded by an all day session called a "Metadata Information Day" http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/allerton/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/allerton/ The Allerton Institute is an annual conference series addressing user-centred aspects of library and information science, organised by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. The conference, which this year took place from 27-29 October, is held in the disorientatingly English-stately-home-ish setting of the Robert Allerton House and Park near Monticello, Illinois. This lovely mansion and its landscaped wooded grounds were built around the turn of the century, and were later donated to the university. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/british-library/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/british-library/ Further details on the call for proposals mentioned in this article can be found at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/papers/bl/callforproposal.html The British Library Research and Innovation Centre has initiated a process of discussion and debate among those working in the field of digital library research. This discussion is intended to help gain some idea of which issues need to be addressed and to establish how the research programmes and funding agencies in the field might set their own priorities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/lindsay/ Jeremy Bentham coined the term 'panopticon' in his proposal for a circular prison, whose cells were exposed to a central well in which the warders were located, allowing the prisoners to see all other prisoners and to be observed at all times without ever knowing when they were being watched. Bentham also promoted the idea of political economy as the greatest good for the greatest number. Drawing on his terminology as the basis for this article, I therefore propose the new term 'infopolecon' to describe the political economy of information. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/performance/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/performance/ Performance measurement has been used as a research tool for many years, and as such has been used in some of the studies undertaken by UKOLN and its predecessor bodies (the Centre for Catalogue Research - CCR, and the Centre for Bibliographic Management). In the past few years, however, increasing demands for accountability to the public and to local and central government, combined with the requirements of compulsory competitive tendering, have led to performance measurement becoming an integral part of public sector management. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/humanities/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/humanities/ The aim of the symposium is to explore how information technology has affected research in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in terms of the topics chosen and the way they are are approached – in other words, whether there has been a paradigm shift, and, if so, what its characteristics are. This question will be examined by reference to research in individual disciplines, particularly as illustrated by the work of each speaker. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/british-library/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/british-library/ This is the text of a paper given at Libtech 96 on 5 September 1996 in a session organised by the British Library's Centre for the Book. The author regards it - in the nature of texts on the Internet - as a "work in progress" and welcomes corrections and comments. He hopes to improve the text on the basis of comments received and will, of course, acknowledge their source! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/editorial/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/editorial/ So why is this issue of the Web version of Ariadne so big, then? …was a question asked by several people who have watched this issue being constructed. The answer is, in one word, "awareness" (Ariadne does reside in the Training and Awareness section of the eLib programme). In a possibly noticeable change of direction, the Web version of Ariadne (WVA for short) will have a significantly heavier bias towards making its target audience aware of relevant and useful services and resources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/helix/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/helix/ Image collections and resources are of immense importance for research, teaching and learning across a wide spectrum of subject areas. Images may be the primary research material or may inform and enrich research which is principally text based or experimental in nature. Research carried out over the last three or four years had addressed many of the problems associated with digitization, indexing and retrieval, distribution, staffing and management issues, and problems concerned with copyright and access controls. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/interface/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/interface/ Project EARL was established in 1995 with funding from the British Library, the Library Association and participating libraries, with the objective of developing 'the role of public libraries in a networked environment, within a collaborative framework'. The coordinating partner is the London and South Eastern Library Region (LASER). Frances Hendrix, Director of LASER, and Catherine Hume of EARL, were happy to fill me in on what public libraries are doing on the Internet at present. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/metadata-masses/ Metadata. The word is increasingly to be found bandied about amongst the Web cognoscenti, but what exactly is it, and is it something that can be of value to you and your work? This article aims to explore some of the issues involved in metadata and then, concentrating specifically upon the Dublin Core, move on to show in a non-technical fashion how metadata may be used by anyone to make their material more accessible. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/newsagent/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/newsagent/ Information overload has created a need for information delivered to the desktop at a time, in a format and covering topics chosen by the user, not the provider. NewsAgent for Libraries started on April 1st 1996, and runs for two years. Located within the Electronic Journals strand of the eLib programme, the project will develop a personalised news and current awareness service for the LIS community. The main partners involved in the project are: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/pick/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/pick/ The Electronic Documentation Project is funded by the HEFC (Wales) as part of funding for specialist research collections in the humanities. It is based in Thomas Parry Library (formerly the ILS library) which is closely associated with the internationally respected Department of Information and Library Studies, UWA. The broad purpose of the project is to ‘collect’ (in some sense) Internet Resources in our field; integrate them into the existing collection and promote their use. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/iielr/ De Montfort University is one of the largest universities in Britain, with 29,000 students based on 10 campuses in eastern and central England. Major city locations are Leicester, Lincoln, Bedford and Milton Keynes. Given the distributed nature of the University, much use has to be made of the latest information and communication technologies: video-conferencing is used extensively in teaching, and in enabling teachers and researchers to meet and talk without leaving their own campus. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/user-services/ Preparing to write this article, I sought inspiration in the form of a recurring question. How can we improve our knowledge of users and their use of networked information services? What should we be doing to develop our understanding in the context of emerging digital library developments? And how might we make progress? My starting point came from a recent reading of the executive summary of the TULIP project final report. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/cedar/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/cedar/ Almost in the very beginning …The seed which has grown into CeDAR - the Centre for Database Access Research was probably planted way back in 1973 at the early days of online searching. The Marconi Research Laboratories at Gt. Baddow in Essex had developed an Automated Ultrafiche Terminal capable of storing enormous quantities of information on high density microform. This device offered access for a wide variety of potential applications from telephone directories to criminal records, maps to images of grasses brought back by Darwin from Australia, learning programmes to literature abstracts. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/follett/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/follett/ A packed lecture room in Leeds was the venue for the series' second birthday, when Richard Lucier gave his well-received talk The University as Library. Developed from an idea put forward by members of JISC's Follett Implementation Group on Information Technology (chaired by Lynne Brindley), the series began with Clifford Lynch's lecture on The Role of Libraries in the Networked Information Age. It has always been the aim to take the lectures to the audience. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/jugl/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/jugl/ <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN”> 1996 JUGL Annual Conference The 1996 JUGL Annual Conference Emma Wright describes the 1996 JUGL (JANET User Group for Libraries) Annual Conference, held in Preston in early July . Emma works for the Netskills eLib project. Education on the Net This year’s JUGL Annual Conference and General Meeting was held at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/libtech/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/libtech/ Libtech International '96 has a set of Web pages at: http://www.herts.ac.uk/Libtech/libtech.htm Libtech International is organised by the the Library & Media Services department of the University of Hertfordshire and held on the University's Hatfield Campus in September each year. The event consists of a large exhibition and a conference programme, which consists of various seminars, lectures and workshops. Entry to Libtech '96 itself is free to attend; some of the seminars and workshops charge a nominal fee for admission. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/ahds/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/ahds/ Increasing scholarly use of computers and electronic resources raises a number of related challenges. Computer-based research produces digital data with significant secondary use value. Yet that value cannot fully be realised unless the data are created and described according to relevant standards, systematically collected, preserved, and reported to the widest possible community. The outpouring of digital resources which make up a growing share of our cultural heritage makes digital preservation an urgent cause. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ucr/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/ucr/ New ways of addressing the ‘access versus holdings’ debate were explored in March at the annual meeting of the University, College and Research Group of the Library Association, held at New Hall College, Cambridge. The topics covered included electronic access, user education, the difficulties faced by distance learners, staff development, budget management and undergraduate access to networked learning resources. These issues were explored during an intensive three day programme of papers and workshops (and over the odd glass of wine). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/seren/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/seren/ Traditionally, interlibrary loans in academic libraries has made extensive use of the collections of the BLDSC as the primary resource; an approach emphasised by the designation of certain large academic libraries as “backup” libraries to the BLDSC. In other sectors of the profession, notably among Health Libraries and Public Libraries, the position has been reversed: other comparable libraries have formed the main source, with the BLDSC acting as long-stop. The reasons for this are many, and not just financial; indeed, analysis recently in one regional loan scheme suggested that as at present funded loans are actually costing some member libraries more than would use of the British Library. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/bernard/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/bernard/ It seems such a short time ago since it was low on the horizon. It was still difficult, then, to be sure the seascape was changing. The burgeoning expansion of electronic communication had small beginnings in the late '60s and '70s with automated library in-house systems and online database searching. Even as recently as three years ago, we were still arguing about those minor tropical storms called Archie, Gopher, Veronica and WAIS. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/adam-farquhar-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/adam-farquhar-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/chris-clark-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/chris-clark-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/clive-billenness-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/clive-billenness-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/helen-hockxyu-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/helen-hockxyu-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/j-max-wilkinson-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/j-max-wilkinson-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jackson-pope-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jackson-pope-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jane-humphreys-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jane-humphreys-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jeremy-leighton-john-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jeremy-leighton-john-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/katrina-dean-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/katrina-dean-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/neil-beagrie-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/neil-beagrie-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/philip-beresford-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/philip-beresford-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robina-clayphan-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robina-clayphan-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/ronald-milne/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/ronald-milne/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/sarah-hammond-bsc-ma-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/sarah-hammond-bsc-ma-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/tom-pollard/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/tom-pollard/