http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/organisations/university-of-cambridge/ Recent content in University of Cambridge on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 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/sanders-rvw/ Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/72/sanders-rvw/ Following a body of work that includes The University of Google: Education in the (post) Information Age (2007) [1] and Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching (2002), Brabazon has developed a central position within the debate surrounding technology and pedagogy, although there is very little that is centrist about Brabazon's writing. Developing Contextual ThemesWith Digital Dieting: From Information Obesity to Intellectual Fitness (2013) Brabazon’s primary research interests in media, information and digital literacies are extended even further into the core issues binding contemporary Higher Education (HE) and learning in a world surrounded by an excess of online information, and the political framework that surrounds it. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/schmoller/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/schmoller/ Ariadne: Seb, please tell us a little about yourself. I’ve lived in the same house in Sheffield since 1976, having moved here from London via Cambridge in 1975. Between 1978 and 2002 I worked in Further Education. I did two main things. Between 1978 and 1996 I mainly ran and developed courses for trade union representatives under the auspices of the TUC Education Service. Between 1996 and 2002 when I was made voluntarily redundant in a reorganisation, I was The Sheffield College’s Learning Technology Development Manager, responsible with others for developing Learning To Teach On-Line (LeTTOL) [1], an early online course about how to be on online tutor. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/white-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/white-rvw/ I will admit to having read very little in the way of fiction writing over the last half-century though perhaps as a chemist by training I do enjoy science fiction from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle. All were distinguished scientists, none more so than Fred Hoyle, who was Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. On Clouds and Crystal BallsHoyle came to fame as the author of A for Andromeda, but in my opinion his best work is The Black Cloud. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley-rvw/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/whalley-rvw/ The front cover tells you succinctly what this book is about; 'A theory Connecting  - Information Search – to – Knowledge Formation.'  Equally bluntly, I shall set out my credentials for this review. I am not a library/informational professional but I have an interest in delivering digital and information skills to students. I have read and reviewed this book to further my own knowledge of the subject, as well as to see what (new? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/coetsee/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/coetsee/ The Phytomedicine Programme is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa.  The programme was started in 1995 and was transferred to the Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria in 2002. In 2007 it was designated as a National Research Foundation Developed Research Niche Area [1]. The Faculty Plan (2007-2011) of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria lists Phytomedicine and ethno-veterinary medicine as one of the six research focus themes that will contribute to the realisation of the Faculty’s newly formulated vision statement relevant to its research programme. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/69/iwmw-2012-rpt/ The 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 12) took place at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower – a building with a stunning panoramic view over the volcanic city.  The event brought together 172 delegates and attracted an additional 165 viewers to the live video stream of the plenary sessions over the three days. This year's theme focussed on embedding innovation, and the event featured a range of case studies and examples of embedded practice. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/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/67/rinaldo-et-al/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/rinaldo-et-al/ The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) [1] is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that co-operate to digitise and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global ‘biodiversity commons.’ [2] The participating libraries hold more than two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/66/idcc-2010-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago. Thus it was that the sixth conference in the series [3], entitled ‘Participation and Practice: Growing the Curation Community through the Data Decade’, came to be held jointly by the DCC, UIUC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). 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/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/repos-fringe-2010-rpt/ 2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team. 2 September 2010Opening the event proper on Thursday morning, Sheila Cannell, Director of Library Services, University of Edinburgh, used the imminent Edinburgh festival fireworks as a metaphor for the repository development endeavour. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/bremner-rvw/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/bremner-rvw/ The PreambleI have been building online ‘communities of practice’ for about 10 years now. Some have thrived and others not. It started about 10 years ago with the formation of a small association with a shared interest in classic marine heritage. The community operated entirely online, mainly through a forum and we found that, with very little conscious effort, the community quickly grew and thrived. It was quickly taken up as an example of good practice and evidence for what could be achieved within a small community with similar interests and aspirations. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/iwmw-2010-rpt/ This was the 13th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1] to be organised by UKOLN [2] held at the University of Sheffield from 12 to 14 July 2010. The theme was 'The Web in Turbulent Times' [3]. As such, there was a healthy balance of glass-half-empty-doom-and-gloom, and glass-half-full-yes-we-can. More detailed reporting, including live blogging by Kirsty McGill of T Consult Ltd [4] and blog posts by presenters, can be found at the IWMW Blog [5]. 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/61/ili-2009-rpt/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/ili-2009-rpt/ Internet Librarian International [1] brought together librarians and information professionals from 33 countries including China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Australia as well as Europe and North America, to discuss and debate the latest developments under the conference theme 'value, versatility and viability'. Conference Chair Marydee Ojala emphasised that today's challenge for libraries and librarians lies in maximising the value of the internet for users, while proving the value of services to communities, and the theme of innovation was common to many speakers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/61/lyte-et-al/ Institutional repositories are a major element of the Open Access movement. More specifically in research and education, the main purpose is to make available as much of the research output of an institution as possible. However, a simple search box and a long list of returned (keyword) artefacts derived from either an individual institutional repository (IR) or a federated search that would generate an even longer list, is no longer sufficient. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/isko-2009-rpt/ I recently attended the first biennial Conference of the British Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK) [1] entitled ‘Content Architecture: Exploiting and Managing Diverse Resources’. It was organized in co-operation with the Department of Information Studies, University College London. If the intention was to focus on the diversity of resources out there, I also felt that the audience was very diverse in terms of levels of expertise and perspectives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/hess-et-al/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/hess-et-al/ Introduction: The Evolving Field of Artefact DocumentationDigital heritage technologies promise a greater understanding of cultural objects cared for by museums. Recent technological advances in digital photography and image processing not only offer a high level of documentation, they also provide powerful analytical tools for conservation monitoring of cultural objects. Museums are increasingly turning to digital documentation and relational databases to administer their collections for a variety of tasks: detailed description, intervention planning, loan. 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/m-libraries-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/60/m-libraries-2009-rpt/ Jointly hosted by the University of British Columbia (UBC), Athabasca University, the UK Open University (OU) and Thomson Rivers University, the conference [1] was held on UBC's beautiful campus in Vancouver and covered a broad range of topics, from SMS reference to using QR codes. The conference aims were to explore and share work carried out in libraries around the world to deliver services and resources to users 'on the move', via a growing plethora of mobile and hand-held devices, as well as to bring together researchers, technical developers, managers and library practitioners to exchange experience and expertise and generate ideas for future developments. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/newsline/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/newsline/ Digital Preservation – The Planets WayRoyal Library Copenhagen, Denmark 22-24 June 2009 http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/ Does your organisation know what to preserve digitally for the future? Do you want to discuss your strategies for digital preservation with colleagues and experts? Do you know how to preserve your collections for the future? Do you know which tools and services to use for this? There has been an explosion in the volume of information world-wide which will grow to 180 exabytes by 2011. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/lilac-2009-rpt/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/lilac-2009-rpt/ LILAC celebrated its fifth birthday in style in what proved to be a fantastic venue, Cardiff University. This occasion was commemorated with tour t-shirts available for all the delegates. The conference proved more popular than ever with a record number of presentations submitted and over 240 delegates from across the UK and worldwide. There were also seven funded places for Library students to attend, a fantastic investment in the profession for the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/nichols/ Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/58/nichols/ There is no longer anything exotic about digital humanities projects. Almost every humanities faculty has at least one. But like humanities disciplines themselves, digital projects too often exist in lonely splendour, each in its own sub-disciplinary silo. Classicists have their project(s), Middle English scholars post Chaucer and Langland manuscripts, while French medievalists have sites for major genres or authors from the troubadours to Christine de Pizan, and beyond. The situation is not appreciably different for digital humanities projects dealing with modern topics. 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/56/or-08-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/or-08-rpt/ This was the third international Open Repositories Conference, the previous two being held in 2007, San Antonio, Texas [1] and in 2006, Sydney [2], so Europe was the third continent to host the event. Southampton was gloriously sunny for the five days of the conference (1-4 April), so there was no need to use the disposable plastic macs that were provided in the delegate bags. The event tends to attract people who have either already set up digital repositories in their institutions, are thinking about it or are interested in various aspects of repositories. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/kim-conf-2008-rpt/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/55/kim-conf-2008-rpt/ The KIM Project [1] is a £5.5 million research programme involving eleven UK universities and funded primarily by the EPSRC [2] and ESRC [3]. The Project’s tagline is ‘Knowledge and Information Management Through Life’, and it is primarily focussed on long-lived engineering artifacts and the companies that produce and support them. The driver for the research is a ‘product-service paradigm’ that is emerging in several industrial sectors, whereby a supplier is contracted not only to deliver a product such as an aircraft or building, but to maintain and adapt it throughout its lifecycle. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/tonkin-et-al/ Social tagging, which is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, and social indexing, allows ordinary users to assign keywords, or tags, to items. Typically these items are Web-based resources and the tags become immediately available for others to see and use. Unlike traditional classification, social tagging keywords are typically freely chosen instead of using a controlled vocabulary. Social tagging is of interest to researchers because it is possible that with a sufficiently large number of tags, useful folksonomies will emerge that can either augment or even replace traditional ontologies. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/heath-et-al/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/heath-et-al/ In most of the discussions about e-publications and open access (OA) in recent years, the focus of attention has tended to be on the interests and needs of researchers in the sciences, and of the libraries that seek to serve them. Significantly less attention has been paid to the needs and interests of researchers in the arts and humanities; and indeed e-publication and open access initiatives, and general awareness of the key issues and debates, are much less advanced in the arts and humanities than in the sciences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/editorial/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/editorial/ Given Ariadne's recent attempts to gather in contributions in the field of digital cultural heritage, which once upon a time would have found a home in Cultivate Interactive, I am particularly pleased, after some enquiries and kind offers of help along the way, to secure an article entitled The Video Active Consortium: Europe's Television History Online by Johan Ooman and Vassilis Tzouvaras. There will come a time when our civilisation will be assessed as much upon its cultural development as its historical path or scientific progress. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/manuel-oppenheim/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/53/manuel-oppenheim/ The development of an increasing array of tools for storing, organising, managing, and searching electronic resources poses some interesting questions for those in the Higher Education sector, not least of which are: what role do repositories have in this new information environment? What effect is Google having on the information-seeking strategies of students, researchers and teachers? Where do libraries fit within the information continuum? And ultimately, what services should they look to provide for their 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/52/pratty/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/pratty/ 24 Hour Museum [1] is a successful and sustainable cultural Web site. Type the word 'museum' into Google UK and up it pops as a top five search result. Unlike the other top sites, all national museums or galleries, 24HM's remit covers the whole country, in eclectic subject areas, reaching a wide variety of audiences with simple and accessible content. In 2006 24HM reached ten million visits in the year. 2007 sees the site reaching a million visitors a month, from home to office, schoolroom to museum. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/alpsp-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/alpsp-rpt/ The provision of scholarly information is undergoing well-documented change, affecting libraries, publishers and researchers. The Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) presented a one-day seminar to discuss these changes and their impact, with perspectives on the near future from an academic librarian, society publishers, a scientific researcher and library technology providers. The seminar looked ‘at what the library will look like in the future, and how publishers will need to adapt to keep pace with rapid change, not only to the online content that they provide to their scholarly users, but to the way they retrieve and deliver it’ [1]. 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/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/iwmw-2007-rpt/ Torrential rain, thunder and lightening provided the backdrop to the Institutional Web Management Workshop [1], held this year at the University of York. Dramatic as they were, the conditions did not in any way dampen the enthusiasm of the delegates over the three days. The programme this year consisted of plenary sessions, discussion groups, parallel sessions and the famed social events. New this year was the IWMW Innovation Competition, where participants were invited to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies as well as the IWMW logo. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/mckay/ If institutional repositories (IRs) were all that their proponents could have hoped, they would be providing researchers with better access to research, improving institutional prestige, and assisting with formal research assessment [1][2][3]. The reality, though, is that IRs are less frequently implemented, harder to fill, and less visible than their advocates would hope or expect [4][5][6]. While technical platforms for IRs, such as DSpace [7] and ePrints [8] have seen an abundance of research, little is known about the users of IRs, neither how they use IR software, nor how usable it is for them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/rsp-summer-sch-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/rsp-summer-sch-rpt/ The Repositories Support Project (RSP) is a major initiative from JISC to support the development and growth of the repositories network in the UK [1]. With its first major event the RSP team offered 23 prospective and new repository managers from Higher Education institutions across the UK the opportunity to participate in an intensive 48-hour repository summer school. Held at the inspirational and delightful Dartington Hall in Devon, this three-day residential course delivered a comprehensive overview of the practical challenges and solutions to effective repository implementation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/maccoll-dempsey-rvw/ Cambridge University Press has, with the first two volumes of its three-volume history of libraries in Britain and Ireland, provided a wealth of fascinating information on the development of libraries and librarianship from a sterling collection of historians and scholar librarians. The publication of an edited history results in a denser packing of detail than would be achieved by a work of single authorship, since so many specialists each have an abundance of knowledge to cram into their relatively small allocations of space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/kim-conf-rpt/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/kim-conf-rpt/ The KIM Project [1], known in full as Immortal Information and Through Life Knowledge Management: Strategies and Tools for the Emerging Product-Service Paradigm, is a £5.5 million research programme funded primarily by the EPSRC [2] and ESRC [3] and involving eleven UK universities. The purpose of the project is to find robust ways of handling information and knowledge — for example, product models and documentation of design processes and rationale — over the lifetime of project-services such as PFI hospitals, schools and military equipment, as well as enterprise-level strategies for this new way of working. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/thompson/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/thompson/ Background: The W3C and Its Process The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was set up by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 to preserve and enhance the public utility of the Web for everyone, to “lead the Web to its full potential”. It is a consortium of industrial and institutional members (around 450 at the time of writing) who pay on a sliding scale proportional to size. It produces Recommendations which are widely recognised as de facto standards. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/young-thrower/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/young-thrower/ Virtualisation is a hot buzzword in the IT industry right now, with major players including Microsoft and IBM making multi-million pound investments into the technology. In essence the idea of virtualisation is that you allow one server, with one set of hardware to masquerade as a number of separate servers with ‘virtual hardware’, each of which can run its own operating system and set of applications. As you might imagine, the details of this technology are somewhat complex and its potential uses are myriad, but we’ll return to those points later. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/2-dcc-conf-rpt/ The International Digital Curation Conference is held annually by the Digital Curation Centre [1] to bring together researchers in the field and promote discussion of policy and strategy. The second conference in this series [2], with the theme 'digital data curation in practice', was held between 21-22 November 2006 in Glasgow. Day OneOpening Keynote AddressHans Hoffman of CERN gave the opening keynote address. The e-Science 'revolution' is being both pushed by advances in technology and pulled by demands from researchers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/lervik-et-al/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/lervik-et-al/ Since the early 1980s the aim of knowledge management researchers and practitioners has been to develop technologies and systems to codify and share explicit knowledge efficiently through electronic means. With the growing appreciation of the importance of tacit knowledge [1], we have a new problem: how to facilitate other forms of systematic organisational learning and knowledge exchange where knowledge cannot be codified. In this article we take a further step by looking at the problem of analysing and managing complex knowledge in organisations that have multiple specialised knowledge communities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/miller/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/50/miller/ Over the summer of 2006, there was much talk about extending and enriching the online offerings of the library. Reports for the Library of Congress [1] and University of California [2] were still being cogitated upon. North Carolina State University's [3] Endeca-powered catalogue was attracting a lot of interest [4]. The Next Generation Catalog list [5] was going from strength to strength, and two competitions in particular invited entrants to re-imagine the library and aspects of its online service delivery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/e-collab-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/e-collab-rpt/ This workshop was held on 28 June 2006 at Manchester Metropolitan University as part of the 2nd International Conference on e-Social Science hosted by the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). The aim of the workshop was to bring together conference attendees interested in e-Collaboration as part of their research activities, to review requirements and to see what is currently going on in various JISC-funded projects. Several of these are funded by the Virtual Research Environments Programme [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/ferreira-et-al/ Efforts to archive a large amount of digital material are being developed by many cultural heritage institutions. We have evidence of this in the numerous initiatives aiming to harvest the Web [1-5] together with the impressive burgeoning of institutional repositories [6]. However, getting the material inside the archive is just the beginning for any initiative concerned with the long-term preservation of digital materials. Digital preservation can best be described as the activity or set of activities that enable digital information to be intelligible for long periods of time. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Since volume 36 (2002), the editor of ARIST has been Professor Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, Bloomington. Professor Cronin's introduction to the 2004 volume highlighted some of the difficulties with planning a publication like ARIST, noting that it has a habit of not quite turning out as it was initially conceived [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mason-rvw/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/mason-rvw/ It seemed a good idea to look at the definition of 'digital culture' offered in Wikipedia [1] and consider this alongside the ideas presented in this text. The definition was marked for possible deletion, then, a few days later the definition had changed, and the matter seems settled (for the moment) [2]. Somewhat serendipitously the Wikipedia definition had moved from two broad expressions of 'digital culture' that arises from the use of digital technologies, to one that refers to it as a discrete field of study that examines the effect on people. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/newsline/ Web Tools for EU Research Projects Tuesday 7 February 2006 - Cambridge, UK EU research projects share lots of information and involve joint working amongst organisations from many different countries. There are many software tools which can support them, from shared workspaces to resource planning and reporting tools, from electronic meetings to web content management. But which tools are effective for EU research projects? Management tools for coordinating a construction project are rarely suitable for the more uncertain world of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/day-rvw/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/day-rvw/ The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) is an important annual publication containing review articles on many topics of relevance to library and information science, published on behalf of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). Since volume 36, the editor of ARIST has been Professor Blaise Cronin of Indiana University, Bloomington. The twelve chapters in volume 38 are divided into three sections, dealing with theory, technology, and policy. 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/jisc-conf-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ The 2005 JISC Conference took place on 12 April at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) which this year - inexplicably - had a giant Ferris wheel thirty yards from the main entrance, entirely unconnected with the main event. The annual conference [1] is a chance for JISC to showcase the breadth of its activities [2] in providing support for the use of ICT in education and research, and as usual it was a bustle of networking and learning. 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/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/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/42/ananiadou/ Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/42/ananiadou/ In this article we describe the role of the National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM). NaCTeM is operated by a consortium of three Universities: the University of Manchester which leads the consortium, the University of Liverpool and the University of Salford. The service activity is run by the National Centre for Dataset Services (MIMAS), based within Manchester Computing (MC). As part of previous and ongoing collaboration, NaCTeM involves, as self-funded partners, world-leading groups at San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), the University of Geneva and the University of Tokyo. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/eevl/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/eevl/ New Sustainable Development section added to the EEVL Catalogue of Engineering ResourcesIt is now tacitly recognised that engineers, across all sectors of engineering, play an important role in shaping our environment and therefore have a professional responsibility towards ensuring sustainable development. Sustainable development, defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) as ‘Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ has been integrated in most engineering curricula throughout the nation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/garrod/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/garrod/ “I suspect that more words are being published about the ebook phenomenon in print than have actually been placed into ebooks so far.” [1] Clifford Lynch made this observation back in June 2001 in his seminal paper The Battle to define the future of the book in the digital world. At the end of 2003 Lynch’s words still strike a chord here in the UK, as conferences, articles and workshops on the ebook ‘phenomenon’ continue to feature on a regular basis. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/oa-forum-ws-rpt/ Welcome and IntroductionRachel Heery, UKOLN, University of BathDelegates were welcomed and reminded that this was the fourth and final in a series of workshops which have been organised by the Open Archives Forum Project. Rachel Heery explained that the project was a supporting action funded by the European Commission to bring together EU researchers and implementers working in the area of open access to archives. Fourth Open Archives Forum Technical Validation Report Birgit Matthaei, HU Berlin Technical validation based on Resource Database 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/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/35/web-watch/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/web-watch/ It has been said that those who ignore history, are condemned to repeat it. In the Web world we can be so excited by new developments that we may forget approaches we have taken in the past and fail to learn from our mistakes. This article describes how the WayBack Machine [1] was used to look at the history of UK University Web sites. The SurveyThe survey was carried out by entering the URL of the entry point for UK University Web sites, recording details of the availability of the Web site in the Internet Archive (including earliest and most recent dates and numbers of entries) and providing a link to enable readers of this article to obtain the most recent results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/rydberg-cox/ The field of classics has a long tradition of electronic editions of both primary and secondary materials for the study of the ancient world. Large electronic corpora of Greek and Latin texts are available from groups such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the Packard Humanities Institute, and the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, and in the Perseus Digital Library [1]. Because such large collections of primary texts have already been digitized, it is now possible to devote concerted effort to developing new computational tools that can transform the way that humanists work with these digitized versions of their primary sources. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/newsline/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/newsline/ DOCUSEND PROJECT MANAGERDocusend <http://www.docusend.ac.uk> is a national three-year project which began in May 2002 and is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The key project objective is to develop a journal article request and delivery broker service. The Docusend partners include the ten university libraries which comprise the Lamda electronic document delivery service <http://lamdaweb.mcc.ac.uk>, with King’s College London as the lead site. Docusend is part of the JOIN-UP project cluster <http://edina. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-watch/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/web-watch/ A survey of Web server software used on UK University Web sites was carried out in October 1997 and the findings were reported in Ariadne issue 12 [1]. The survey was repeated in September 2000 and the updated findings published in Ariadne issue 21 [2]. The survey was repeated in November 2002 and the findings are published in this article. Current SurveyThe survey was carried out on 21th November 2002. This time the survey made use of the HTTP header Wizards tool provided by the University of Dundee [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/dendrinos/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/dendrinos/ The design of a speech agent for automatic library services is presented in this paper. The proposed system will be based on speech recognition and synthesis technologies, applied to the library environment. The client of the library can have access to various automatic electronic services through a sophisticated interface, making use of the embedded technologies. The access to OPAC, the loaning process, the database access and the resource retrieval are some of the services that could be greatly facilitated through the use of the system. 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/web-watch/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/web-watch/ The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) came into effect on 1 st September 2002. The Act removes the previous exemption of education from the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), ensuring that discrimination against disabled students will be unlawful. Institutions will incur additional responsibilities in 2003, with the final sections of legislation coming into effect in 2005 [1]. The implications of the Act will be of much interest to institutional Web managers who will be concerned that inaccessible Web pages will render their institution liable to claims from disabled students who are unable to access resources due to accessibility barriers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-watch/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/web-watch/ How many Web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey was published in June 2000 [1] which aimed to provide answers to these questions. The survey has been repeated recently in order to see if there has been any significant changes. 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/29/web-focus/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/web-focus/ The fifth Institutional Web Management Workshop was held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001. This year's workshop, which had the theme "Organising Chaos", was the largest to date with 150 delegates. It was also the longest workshop, lasting from Monday morning until Wednesday lunchtime. The extra half-day compared with the previous three workshops allowed us to run a full day of interactive parallel sessions. The workshop is aimed primarily at members of institutional Web management teams within UK HE and FE institutions, although participants from related communities are also welcome. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/metadata/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/metadata/ In the April 2001 issue of D-Lib Magazine, Peter Hirtle produced an editorial highlighting the potential for confusion between the standards being developed by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) [1] and the draft Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) [2]. He noted the frustration that can ensue when words that have a clearly understood meaning in one domain begin to be used by others in a different way. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/cms/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/cms/ A publishing revolution on the Web?Just three or four years ago the Web community was getting used to the idea that the way we would work in future would be radically different from the way we work now. The world of coalface flatfile html markup would begin to disappear in favour of collaborative working, managed workflow, document versioning, on the fly pages constructed out of application independent xml chunks, site management tools and push-button publishing via multiple formats - html, xml, pdf, print, etc. 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/28/web-watch/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/web-watch/ Is your University home page big, bold and brassy? Is it colourful and interactive, making use of new technologies in order to stand out from the crowd? Or is it mean and lean, with a simple design providing rapid download times and universal access? This survey of the size of the entry points for UK University and College entry points seeks an answer to these questions. The MethodologyThis report is based on use of two Web-based tools: NetMechanic and Bobby. 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/web-watch/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/web-watch/ Netscape’s What’s Related ServiceOne possibly underused facility in the Netscape browser is its What’s Related feature. When viewing a Web page, clicking on the What’s Related button in the Netscape toolbar (shown in Figure 1) will display related information about the page being viewing. The information displayed by use of the What’s Related service is illustrated in Figure 2. As can be seen a number of related Web sites will be displayed. 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/25/cimi/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/cimi/ Like libraries, museums face the daunting task of preserving our cultural heritage, whilst also striving with the often conflicting need to make that cultural heritage available to us today. Perhaps differently from libraries, interpretation plays an important part in the work of museums, where exhibitions are often designed around the telling of one or more stories about the past in order to place objects within their historical context. Possibly even more so than in the library sector, the information revolution has had a profound effect upon the ways in which museums manage information, whether for internal use within their rich collection management systems, or externally in the content made available on web sites, in 'exhiblets', or in data exchanged between institutions or embedded within various educational resources such as CD–ROMs. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/review/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/review/ Cataloguing, long respected as the prime task of librarians, declined somewhat in status in the 1970s, when libraries became conscious of the need to serve users more directly than by merely providing finding tools; also, a need to change the image of librarians (represented by the middle-aged female cataloguer) was perceived to be important. More recently, the growth of the Internet has led to increasingly desperate cries for the imposition of some order on the vast quantities of unstructured information that it made accessible, and to attempts at doing so. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/foster/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/foster/ In 1997 The Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997) published its review of the British higher education system. Underpinned by principles of inclusion and life-long learning the Report put forward wide-ranging recommendations in all areas of educational provision including students and learning, supporting research and scholarship, staff in higher education and the management and governance of higher education institutions. An important component of the Dearing vision is the utilization of new technology, which can provide universities with the potential to widen participation, to reach new markets and to make internal efficiency gains. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-focus/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-focus/ “One of the best workshops I’ve ever been at”“Excellent! One of the best workshops I’ve ever been at“ “I return because it is by far the best way for me to find out what I need to do in the coming year at my site“ “The workshop gets better every year and I never fail to learn something new.“ “A good mixture of web/techie people and communications/PR people. Important to have both for this type of event“As can be seen from the quotes given above the Institutional Web Management workshop was very highly regarded by the workshop delegates. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-watch/ Sat, 23 Sep 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/25/web-watch/ What Web server software is used within the UK Higher Education community? What trends are there? How can I find out which institutions are using the same software as mine? Am I running a dated version of the software, compared with the rest of the community? This survey aims to provide answers to these questions by surveying the server software used on the main institutional entry point. Using The Netcraft ServiceNetcraft [1] is a company based in Bath which carries out surveys of Web server software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/checkout-review/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/checkout-review/ My first reaction when asked to review this book was "What is a community information network?" Fortunately the authors of the book foresaw such a response and were thoughtful enough to include the following definition in the opening chapter: "a [network of computers] which provide: community information; and a means for the community to communicate". Obvious when you think about it. Furthermore, the opening chapter gives a brief overview of what characterises a community network from any other (that they have a local focus and promote free access to all) and sets out the impetus behind their creation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/virtual-universities/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/virtual-universities/ Abstract: This article reports on a two-year research project that is investigating the way in which UK universities are attempting to build new technologies into higher education. In recent years there has been a phenomenal interest in the growth of what some are calling 'digital', 'online', or 'virtual' universities. Indeed, today, it is commonplace to read that information and communication technologies are radically reconfiguring the landscape of higher education, changing the very 'nature' of the university[1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-watch/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/web-watch/ How many web servers are there in use within the UK higher education community? What is the profile of server usage within the community - do most institutions take a distributed approach, running many servers, or is a centralised approach more popular? A WebWatch survey has been carried out recently in an attempt to answer these questions. The Tools AvailableNetcraft [1] is a company based in Bath which carries out surveys of Web server software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/web-watch/ Thu, 23 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/23/web-watch/ BackgroundOn 10 February Phillip Simons sent the following query to the web-support Mailbase list: “Can anyone tell me if there is any way of detecting who is linking to a particular URL? We want to see who still has our old URL on their links pages.” [1]. The replies suggested a couple of approaches: looking at referer (sic) fields in server log files and using the link feature provided by a number of search engines to report on pages containing a link to a resource or web site. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/metadata/ Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/metadata/ In May 1997, the present author produced a short article for this column entitled "Extending metadata for digital preservation" [1]. The article introduced the idea of using metadata-based methods as a means of helping to manage the process of preserving digital information objects. At the time the article was first published, the term 'metadata' was just beginning to be used by the library and information community (and others) to describe 'data about data' that could be used for resource discovery. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/subject-gateways/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/subject-gateways/ This information paper was written by the National Library of Australia to describe the scope and intent of four of Australia's national subject gateways: Agrigate [2], the Australian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL) [3], EdNA Online - the website of the Education Network of Australia (EdNA) [4], and MetaChem [5]. The four criteria shaping subject gateway development were identified as an operational framework, standards & guidelines, quality of service delivery, and scope. They have been mapped to the characteristics of the Australian subject gateways as described below. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/web-focus/ The "Institutional Web Management: The Next Steps" workshop took place at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9 September 1999. This was the third annual event for institutional web managers which has been organised by UK Web Focus. The first workshop was held over 2 day (16/17 July 1997) at Kings College London. As described in the workshop report published in Ariadne [1] the event attracted a total of 95 participants. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity for web editors to meet their peers at other institutions and compare experiences. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/webwatch/ Wed, 22 Sep 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/21/webwatch/ In the previous issue of Ariadne an analysis of 404 error messages provided on UK University web sites was carried out [1]. In this issue an analysis of indexing software used to provide searches on UK University web sites is given. Although the WebWatch project [2] has finished, UKOLN will continue to carry out occasional surveys across UK HE web sites and publish reports in Ariadne. This will enable trends to be observed and documented. 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/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/metadiversity/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/metadiversity/ Introduction and contextFirst, we simply need to be moving faster to coordinate the information that already exists, on file cards and computers, scattered around the world’s major and minor museums and other collections. … Second these databases must be widely available and ‘customer friendly’. We need to accelerate current efforts for international cooperation and coordination, so that common formats are increasingly agreed and used. Robert M. May (1994) [1].  Biodiversity information managementThe management and exchange of information is an important part of the ongoing management of biodiversity and ecosystems. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/online/ Mon, 19 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/13/online/ The day didn’t start off quite as planned - a late taxi led to a missed train, and 40 minutes of sitting at a very cold station! But my day trip as OMNI Project Officer to the Online Exhibition at Olympia in London did however get better. It was the first day of the exhibition, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. The hall was packed with stands - on two floors, an impressive display of the information world. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/disaster/ Fri, 18 Jul 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/10/disaster/ A disaster control plan for the Pilkington library was created using HTML to link existing documentation. The plan was then evaluated by both students and library staff in order to assess the usefulness of a disaster control plan in this format. It was hoped that using hypertext would create a structured, easily accessible information resource. The resulting hypertext system was called "Pilkplan". In this article, the positive aspects and problems of using HTML in this area of library management are considered as well as feedback from users. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eevl/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/eevl/ EEVL [1] is approaching the end of its two-year funding from JISC as part of the eLib Project. We have applied for a further twelve months of precious funding to enable us to carry on providing and developing our services, to tie in with other three-year Subject Based Information Gateway projects such as SOSIG [2] and ADAM [3]. EEVL provides a free gateway to networked engineering resources, primarily for the UK Higher Academic community, however it is peculiarly gratifying to see from the log files that users from Greenland and Swaziland, as well as the USA Military Network have also accessed our site. 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/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/public-libraries/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/public-libraries/ Methods of locating, obtaining and presenting information continue to increase at an unprecedented rate. The recent review of public libraries published by the Department of National Heritage [1] emphasised the government’s view that public libraries are the logical choice as facilitators of access to information in all its multiplicity of formats. Community librarians, in particular, are expected to assist in the fulfillment of the information needs specific to the community served. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/harnad/ Wed, 19 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/8/harnad/ One cannot disagree with most of what Fytton Rowland wrote in his Ariadne article: The four chief functions of the scholarly literature are indeed the ones he listed: quality control, information dissemination, archiving and academic credit. He is quite right about the indispensability of peer review [1], [2], [3], and about how the safety of our bridges and of our very bodies depends on it. Nor can one take issue with his distinction between fact and opinion (in principle, though their disentanglement in practice is not always that straightforward [4], [5]). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/fytton/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/fytton/ The four functions of the scholarly journalIt has been recognised for many years (Ziman, 1968 [1]; Ravetz, 1973[2]; Meadows, 1980 [3]) that the dissemination of information is not the sole function of the scholarly journal literature. The paradoxical survival of this apparently archaic form of literature has depended on its multiple functions, which are essential to the orderly functioning of a scholarly community. The four chief functions are: Dissemination of informationQuality controlThe canonical archiveRecognition of authorsThe first of these has not necessarily ever been the most important. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/7/wire/ What are you doing now? I'm studying for a Masters in Knowledge Based Systems at Edinburgh University's Department of Artificial Intelligence. ...and what where you doing before? Before this academic year I was a software engineer working for Nokia Telecommunications in Cambridge on a variety of network management products. Why the jump from the networkie side of a telecoms company to doing a masters degree? Mainly for financial reasons, I think. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/cover/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/cover/ Information is the foundation on which any strategic plan is based" stated Gareth Roberts, Vice- Chancellor of the University of Sheffield and Chair of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP), opening a conference of University Librarians, Computing Centre Directors and Directors of Information Services in Sheffield last month. Universities, like many large companies, now recognise that information is a resource which can be used to strategic advantage. While it is clear that no planning document could ever appear without it, it is only recently that universities have begun to develop strategies for the management of information in its own right. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/omni-corner/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/omni-corner/ The Visible Human is one of the Internets best known sites; one of its big stories. However, the size of the Visible Human Dataset (VHD) means that most of us have no way of making use of the raw data itself. We have, so far, been more impressed by the idea than the reality. Not for much longer - last month the first Visible Human Project Conference brought together the people involved in producing the data, the researchers, information scientists and clinicians who have used it and the ignorant but curious, for two days of demonstration and discussion, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. 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/jime/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/jime/ The emergence of the internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have potentially profound implications for scholarly practice, particularly in the submission, review, and publication of articles in journals. However to date, much of the impact of these new technologies on journals has been on digitising the products of journal publication; the scholarly processes involved in reviewing articles remain unchanged and unsupported. We are using computer-supported collaborative argumentation (CSCA) tools to rethink and redesign the process of scholarly debate at the heart of journal reviewing. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wolverhampton/ Wed, 18 Sep 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/5/wolverhampton/ Many of you are probably familiar with the WWW active maps of UK academic resources operated by the University of Wolverhampton's School of Computing and Information Technology. If you're not point your WWW browser at http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/ukinfo/uk.map.html before going any further. I thought it might be of interest to Ariadne readers to hear how and why these maps were created. Maps such as these provide a very high density of information in a fairly digestable form, a recent version had well over 200 links to institutions displayed on a single WWW page. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/health/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/health/ That many of the challenges and difficulties (see the two lists below) facing medical information specialists, have potential solutions in the near future organisation of the World Wide Web, is widely accepted. The problem facing medical information specialists is how, in the context of the NHS, do we make the Web work for us?   Challenges to health librarianship in a changing NHS Primary care led NHS: with more health care taking place away from hospitals information services should be more available to primary care practitionersCreation of an evidence-based culture: decision makers are ready to consider using bibliographic information to inform clinical and policy decisions provided the information is made available effectivelySpecific difficulties facing health libraries http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/sideline/ Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/4/sideline/ <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN”> Sideline Sideline: Skinheads in Cambridge In Sideline, people give an alternative view of conference attendance. Jim Huntingford is Subject Librarian for Accountancy, Management and Law at The University of Abertay, Dundee. Sometimes you just hate travelling. Waiting for a connection at a Cambridgeshire station I’m blasted by unrelenting winds and find little solace from the weak April sun. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Sat, 18 May 1996 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/3/libraries/ Current public library Internet activity can be divided into four main types: Initial Experimentation and ExplorationPublic AccessCivic InformationCooperationThis is a relatively small range of topics and gives an indication of the lack of resources available to libraries with which to undertake research. Whereas the eLib programme has allowed academic libraries to explore a whole range of topics ranging from electronic documentary delivery to digitization to on demand publishing, public libraries are concentrating on much more fundamental issues. 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/1/clic/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/clic/ Chemistry is one of the most visual and "three dimensional" of sciences. For many generations, communication of the subject has been rooted on the printed pages of chemical journals, with even colour a rare event. Partially because of such limitations, the subject has evolved a complex and arcane symbolism for its written representation. The complexities of this "chemical nomenclature" in turn result in substantial risk of the propagation of errors and misinterpretation of results. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/wire/ Fri, 19 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/1/wire/ In this 'Wire' interview Ariadne staff ask Traugott Koch for his views on how libraries can develop in response to the World Wide Web. 1) What do you do in the world of networking / libraries / WWW? Projects developing the use of networked information at NetLab, the Development department of Lund University Library, Sweden. 80 % of the projects are externally funded, by local, national, Nordic and European partners. (http://www.