http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/organisations/university-of-edinburgh/ Recent content in University of Edinburgh 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/71/garrett-et-al/ Mon, 08 Jul 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/71/garrett-et-al/ KAPTUR (2011-13) [1], funded by Jisc and led by the Visual Arts Data Service, was a collaborative project involving four institutional partners: the Glasgow School of Arts; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and the University of the Arts London. Research data have in recent years become regarded as a valuable institutional resource and their appropriate collection, curation, publication and preservation as essential. This has been driven by a number of internal and external forces, and all UK Research Councils now require it as a condition of funding [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/70/codata-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/codata-2012-rpt/ CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in  15 different countries across 4 continents. My colleague Monica Duke and I attended the most recent conference in Taipei both to represent the Digital Curation Centre – CODATA's national member for the UK – and to participate in a track of talks on data publication and citation. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/aytac-rvw/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/aytac-rvw/ User Studies for Digital Library Development provides a concise overview of a variety of digital library projects and examines major research trends relating to digital libraries. While there are many books on user studies and digital library development, this work operates at the junction of these two domains and stands out for its insights, balance, and quality of its case-based investigations. The book brings together points of view from different professional communities, including practitioners as well as researchers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/andrew/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/andrew/ Research Councils UK (RCUK) have recently announced a significant amendment to their open access (OA)  policy which requires all research papers that result from research partly or wholly funded by RCUK to be made open access [1]. To comply with this policy, researchers must either; a) publish in an open access journal, termed Gold OA, which often incurs an article processing charge (APC); or, b) ensure that a copy of the post-print is deposited in an appropriate repository, also known as Green OA. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lewis-et-al/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/lewis-et-al/ This article describes the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework. The Framework addresses the need to synchronise resources between Web sites.  Resources cover a wide spectrum of types, such as metadata, digital objects, Web pages, or data files.  There are many scenarios in which the ability to perform some form of synchronisation is required. Examples include aggregators such as Europeana that want to harvest and aggregate collections of resources, or preservation services that wish to archive Web sites as they change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/online-2012-rpt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/70/online-2012-rpt/ Online Information [1] is an interesting conference as it brings together information professionals from both the public and the private sector. The opportunity to share experiences from these differing perspectives doesn’t happen that often and brings real benefits, such as highly productive networking. This year’s Online Information, held between 20 - 21  November, felt like a slightly different event to previous years. The conference had condensed down to 2 days from 3, dropped its exhibition and free workshops and found a new home at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel, London. 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/gorman/ Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/gorman/ Second Life (SL) is a virtual world created and owned by a company called Linden Lab and was launched in 2003. By 2006, SL was increasingly visible in the UK media and by 2007 SL had secured over 600 mentions in UK newspapers and magazines [1]. However, media interest in SL evaporated rapidly with references to it dropping by more than 40% in 2008 and even further since. During this peak period SL attracted large investment in virtual land from multi-national corporations, businesses and also attracted significant interest from educational institutions. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/dcc-2011-03-rpt/ Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/67/dcc-2011-03-rpt/ The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is staging a series of free regional data management roadshows to support institutional data management, planning and training. These events run over three days, presenting best practice and showcasing new tools and resources. Each day is designed for a different audience with complementary content so that participants can attend the days that best meet their needs. Presentations from both the second roadshow in Sheffield and the first one in Bath in November 2010 are on the DCC Web site [1]. 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/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/65/thompson-hs/ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/65/thompson-hs/ URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier, the official name for those things you see all the time on the Web that begin 'http:' or 'mailto:', for example http://www.w3.org/, which is the URI for the home page of the World Wide Web Consortium [1]. (These things were called URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) in the early days of the Web, and the change from URL to URI is either hugely significant or completely irrelevant, depending on who is talking—I have nothing to say about this issue in this article. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/westra/ Computational science and raw and derivative scientific data are increasingly important to the research enterprise of higher education institutions. Academic libraries are beginning to examine what the expansion of data-intensive e-science means to scholarly communication and information services, and some are reshaping their own programmes to support the digital curation needs of research staff. These changes in libraries may involve repurposing or leveraging existing services, and the development or acquisition of new skills, roles, and organisational structures [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/eduserv-2010-rpt/ The Eduserv Symposium 2010 on the mobile university brought together colleagues from academia and practice to discuss the impact of the growth in mobile technologies on Higher Education: for example, on the student experience, learning and teaching initiatives, research, libraries, role of the educators, and the computer services support. Stephen Butcher and Andy Powell of Eduserv gave the welcome addresses. Stephen mentioned how this symposium was the largest that Eduserv had hosted and gave a background of Eduserv’s activities. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/upa-2010-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/upa-2010-rpt/ We were fortunate enough to attend the UPA 2010 International Conference [2] which was recently held in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, a beautiful hotel which has accommodated numerous famous guests in the past ranging from Paris Hilton to the Dalai Lama. The conferences main focus this year was on how UX professionals can create great user experiences across different cultures. Over 700 people who work in the user experience field attended, with a more international crowd than ever, mainly due to the fact that it was the first UPA conference held outside North America. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/or-10-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/64/or-10-rpt/ The air temperature in Madrid was around 37ºC when the Edinburgh contingent arrived in mid-afternoon on 5 July. The excellent air-conditioned Metro took us all the way into town - about 14km - for only 2 Euros. We were told later that the temperature during the preceding week had been about 21ºC, but by the end of the conference week we were enjoying 39ºC. The conference venue turned out to be opposite the Santiago Bernabeu stadium (home of Real Madrid), in Paseo de la Castellana. 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/rdmf4-rpt/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/63/rdmf4-rpt/ The fourth meeting of the Research Data Management Forum was held in Manchester on 10 and 11 March 2010, co-sponsored by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] and the Research Information Network (RIN) [2]. The event took Dealing with Sensitive Data: Managing Ethics, Security and Trust as its theme [3]. Day 1: 10 March 2010DCC Associate Director Liz Lyon and RIN Head of Programmes Stéphane Goldstein welcomed the 45 delegates to the event, and began by introducing the keynote speaker, Iain Buchan, Professor of Public Health Informatics and Director of the Northwest Institute for Bio-Health Informatics (NIBHI), University of Manchester. 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/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/62/fedora-eu-rpt/ The Fedora digital repository system 1 is an open source solution for the management of all types of digital content. Its development is managed through DuraSpace [2], the same organisation that now oversees DSpace, and carried out by developers around the world. The developers, alongside the extensive body of Fedora users, form the community that sustains Fedora. Although there have been regular international user group meetings for the Fedora community, hosted in recent years as part of the Open Repositories conference, there have also been a number of more regional initiatives to foster interaction amongst Fedora users and provide assistance to those adopting the software. 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/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/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/ie-testbed-rpt/ In June this year UKOLN hosted an ‘unconference’[1] which was given the title ‘DRY/CRIG’. Jointly funded through the IE Demonstrator Project [2] and the Common Repositories Interfaces Group (CRIG) [3], this event was intended to allow technical representatives of (mainly) JISC-funded ‘Shared-Infrastructure-Services [4] to meet software developers from UK Higher Education institutions (HEIs). The ‘DRY’ part of the name is an acronym standing for ‘Don’t Repeat Yourself’, a general principle in software engineering, which was deemed appropriate for an event mostly concerned with reusable shared services. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/56/newsline/ Minding the Skills Gap: A Workshop for Key Training ProvidersLeeds University Business School 3 September 2008 Over the last few years, researchers have enthusiastically embraced new technologies and services that allow them to discover, locate, gain access to and create information resources on their desktops. Yet there is evidence to suggest that their research information skills and competencies have not kept up with the rapid pace of change. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/eduserv-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/eduserv-rpt/ I was pleased this year to accept a place as a delegate at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium, which was held at Congress House, London on 10 May 2007. The Symposium was primarily concerned with Second Life and its relevance and applicability to learning. Second Life is a ‘virtual-world’ created and commercially operated by a company called Linden Lab. It has gained a significant amount of media coverage in recent months. 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/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/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/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/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/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/jisc-cni-rpt/ Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/48/jisc-cni-rpt/ Encapsulating the events of such an information-rich event as the JISC / CNI conference can be a tricky task, but the next few lines will, we hope, deliver a flavour of the occasion as well as a summary of a few significant themes. No single overarching theme dominated the event and indeed everyone we spoke to over the two-day event expressed a different opinion as to what they thought were the really important issues. 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/editorial/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/editorial/ Ten Years of PathfindingJohn MacColl reflects upon the choice of Ariadne’s name in the light of the publication’s guiding mission. The Follett Report [1] which started everything off, appeared in December 1993. When the subsequent JISC call for proposals for electronic library project activity appeared in the summer of 1994, I was only a few months into my new post as a Depute Librarian at Britain’s newest (and probably smallest) university, the University of Abertay Dundee. 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/maccoll/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/maccoll/ Introduction: A ‘Googly’ for Libraries?A googly, or a ‘wrong’un’, is a delivery which looks like a normal leg spinner but actually turns towards the batsmen, like an off break, rather than away from the bat. (BBC Sport Academic Web site [1]. Search result found in Google).How should we understand Google? Libraries still feel like the batsman at whom something has been bowled which looks familiar, but then turns out to be a nasty threat. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/higgins-rvw/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/higgins-rvw/ The title of this book will be bewitching for any library struggling with integrating the myriad of digital resources, to which they provide access, into its organisational and cataloguing workflows. However, the manual has a very narrow focus and gives an unscalable solution, which fails to address the problems faced by hybrid libraries, with a wide range of complex digital resources requiring lifecycle control. ContentAs a simple manual the book will be very helpful for libraries which are starting to provide access to licensed online resources for the first time. 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/awre/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Under the aegis of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) Portals Programme [1] development projects have taken place to investigate the use of portals as the presentation path for a variety of search tools. A major output from these projects has been the development of a portal interface, a Web site that users could come to in order to make use of the functionality that the portal provided, particularly searching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/web-focus/ The ILI 2005 ConferenceThe ILI (Internet Librarian International) 2005 Conference [1], the seventh in the series, was held in the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London over 10-11 September 2005. This conference is aimed at information professionals and librarians who are using, developing and implementing Internet, Intranet and Web-based services in their daily work. One of the main themes at the conference explored at the conference was the potential for technologies such as Blogs and Wikis within a library context. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ When people get together and talk about open source, there are three things that come into the conversation early on. Firstly, they argue about open source licences; secondly, they ask "but is it really free?"; and thirdly, they state that "it's all about the community". That last one is definitely worth unpacking further. When a new project starts, or an existing project is being assessed, everyone will ask "what sort of community does it have? 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/martinez/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/martinez/ This article will report on existing local data support infrastructures within the UK tertiary education community. It will discuss briefly early methods and traditions of data collection within UK territories. In addition it will focus on the current UK data landscape with particular reference to specialised national data centres which provide access to large-scale government surveys, macro socio-economic data, population censuses and spatial data. It will outline examples of local data support services, their organisational role and areas of expertise in addition to the origins of the Data Information Specialist Committee UK, DISC-UK. 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/41/awre-cree/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-cree/ The JISC-funded PORTAL Project [1] examined and established which services users wished to have made available through an institutional portal. The results of this project have provided firm guidance to institutional portal developers in planning the services they wished to present. In particular, there was common demand amongst users for access to library-based services and resources within a portal environment. Portal technology developments at the time of the PORTAL Project were not, unfortunately, at a stage that allowed full testing of the findings from this research. 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/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/hey/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/hey/ The University of Southampton has been one of the pioneers of open access to academic research, particularly, in the tireless advocacy of Professor Stevan Harnad and in the creation of the EPrints software [1], as a vehicle for creating open access archives (or repositories) for research. These activities have been supported by a long-standing programme of research into digital libraries, hypermedia, and scholarly communication. In the early days, before the vocabulary of open access issues was so well developed, we talked of the 'esoteric literature' - the 'not-for-profit' academic literature - and the Faustian bargain that the authors made with the publishers [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/jones/ The Theses Alive! [1] Project, based at Edinburgh University Library and funded under the JISC Fair Programme [2], is aiming to produce, among other things, a software solution for institutions in the UK to implement their own E-theses or Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) online submission system and repository. In order to achieve this it has been necessary to examine existing packages that may provide all or part of the solution we desire before considering what extra development we may need to do. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/nixon/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three-year JISC-funded project under the FAIR Programme [2] which will build a network of open access digital collections at the University of Glasgow. These collections will enable us to unlock access to a wide range of our institutional scholarly output. This output includes not only published and peer-reviewed papers but also administrative documents, research finding aids, pre-prints and theses. DAEDALUS is also a member of the CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries) SHERPA Project [3]. 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/37/andrew/ Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/37/andrew/ With the rapid uptake of digital media changing the way scholarly communication is perceived, we are in a privileged position to be part of a movement whose decisions now will help to decide ultimately future courses of action. A number of strategies have recently emerged to facilitate greatly enhanced access to traditional scholarly content, e.g. open access journals and institutional repositories. In this spirit of promoting access to scholarly resources, JISC has funded a number of projects under the banner of its Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/maccoll-rpt/ This event was organised jointly by UKOLN and the National e-Science Centre (NESC) [1]. Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, gave the introduction, reminding us that this was the second UKOLN-NESC workshop. The first happened about a year ago, bringing together the digital library and Grid computing communities for the first time. The presentations were as follows: Building a Semantic Infrastructure - David De RoureWhy Ontologies? - Jeremy RogersPublishing and Sharing Schemas - Rachel Heery and Pete JohnstonImplementing Ontologies in (my)Grid Environments - Carole GobleKnowledge Organisation Systems - Doug TudhopeConcluding Remarks - Carole GobleBuilding a Semantic InfrastructureIn his introductory talk, Building a Semantic Infrastructure, Professor David De Roure of the University of Southampton, provided a history lesson at a gallop on the Grid and the Semantic Web. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/nixon/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/nixon/ DAEDALUS [1] is a three year JISC funded project under the FAIR Programme [2] which will build a range of Open Archives Compliant (OAI) digital collections at the University of Glasgow. These collections will enable us to unlock access to a wide range of our institutional scholarly output. This output will include not only published and peer-reviewed papers but also administrative documents, research finding aids, pre-prints and theses. DAEDALUS is also a member of the CURL SHERPA project [3]. 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/editorial/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/editorial/ Welcome to the September/October issue of Ariadne. The concept of the 'Information Environment' is now one which appears often in Digital Library literature. While it is not a vague concept, it is still one which is undergoing development. Implementing an Information Environment is therefore currently a problematic exercise. Those interested in undertaking such an implementation therefore will be interested in a number of articles featured in this issue of Ariadne. 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/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/31/eprint-archives/ Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/31/eprint-archives/ This article outlines some of the main stages in setting up an institutional e-print archive. It is based on experiences at the universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham which have both recently developed pilot e-print servers(1). It is not the intention here to present arguments in favour of open access e-print archives – this has been done elsewhere(2). Rather, it is hoped to present give an account of some of the practical issues that arise in the early stages of establishing an archive in a higher education institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/maccoll/ This report covers a selection of the papers at the above conference, from those which I chose and was able to attend in a three-strand conference held over three days (with two additional days for workshops, which I did not attend). It includes the three keynote papers, as well as the paper which won the Vannevar Bush award for best conference paper. The conference was held in Roanoke, Virginia, in the Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center, which is owned by Virginia Tech (located in Blacksburg, some 40 miles away). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pedagogy/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/pedagogy/ ‘Beyond the Online Lecture’ was a one day workshop held in the University of Edinburgh Library on a rainy August day, which considered the pedagogical issues for projects which intend to supply the DNER with resources. Caroline Ingram chaired the event and Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston were the specialists in educational issues who took the bulk of the workshop. Caroline opened the event by outlining the DNER as it is, and moved on to a description of what the service might be at some point in the future. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/eevl/ EEVL is the Hub for engineering, mathematics and computing. It is a free service, and is funded by JISC through the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). Service NewsLogo graphic for links to EEVLA small graphic featuring the EEVL eye is now available for those sites who wish to place a link to EEVL. The graphic is shown in the main heading above and can be copied from the EEVL web site [1]. 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/vts/ Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/28/vts/ Wednesday the 9th of May saw the simultaneous launch of the JISC-funded Virtual Training Suite [1] across the United Kingdom. The launch took place in six academic institutions: Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol, Nottingham, Kings College London, and Manchester. We attended the Scottish launch, which was held in the main library of Edinburgh University. The Virtual Training Suite consists of forty online tutorials designed to help students, lecturers and researchers improve their Internet information skills. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/27/editorial/ Sarah Ormes, the UKOLN Public Libraries Focus is taking a short career break. Sarah has been with UKOLN for five years, which makes her positively antidiluvian in terms of web years. During that time both her role and her activities have expanded. Among other things Sarah was instrumental in the setting up of the hugely popular children's web site 'Stories from the Web', and in the last two years has run a very successful conference on Web Management issues for Public Librarians. 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/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/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/sellic/ Thu, 22 Jun 2000 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/24/sellic/ The Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information Centre (SELLIC) [1] Project at the University of Edinburgh has seen rapid changes in the context in which it operates. The project itself has therefore changed its emphasis in response to some of the challenges of the rapidly-evolving education environment. Staff at SELLIC are engaged in a number of projects, all of which are directed at some aspect of hybrid library development and aim to bring together library and academic interests in determining how new developments should be applied within the institution. 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/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/20/eevl/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/eevl/ Following the success of the subject gateways, developed as part of the eLib programme, JISC will fund a three-year programme which will expand the subject gateways model to cover all subject areas on a broadly faculty-hub basis. As part of this Resource Discovery Network (RDN), EEVL [01] and Heriot-Watt University successfully bid to establish an Engineering, Mathematics and Computing (EMC) 'Hub' (a focused collection of gateways). The EMC Hub, which will be funded from 1st August 1999, will develop services in these three subjects, expanding existing services and bringing online new ones. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ Mon, 21 Jun 1999 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/20/web-focus/ The Eighth World Wide Web Conference (WWW8) was on a smaller scale than in the past few years. The numbers of delegates seemed to be down, and there was no accompanying exhibition. The conference appeared to be refocussing on the web research community, with delegates from commercial companies more likely to be software developers than marketing types. This refocussing also seemed to be reflected in the conference papers, which, as a number of people commented, seemed to be of a higher quality this year. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/ims/ Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/19/ims/ Background At the University of Edinburgh, the Science and Engineering Library, Learning and Information Centre (SELLIC)[1] combines a physical learning resource centre development with the introduction of a learning management system for the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The new building, which will meet the demand for a science library for the University of Edinburgh which was first expressed over forty years ago, and has grown more insistent every since, will open its first phase for the beginning of session 2001⁄2. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-focus/ Sat, 19 Dec 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/18/web-focus/ The national workshops on Institutional Web Management held at the University of Newcastle in September 1998 [1] and King’s College London in July 1997 [2] attracted a variety of people involved in running institutional web services. Damon Querry, the WWW Trainer & Enabler at Newcastle University ran a discussion group session at the KCL workshop on The Trials and Tribulations of a Web Editor [3]. That session, together with informal discussions at the workshops and on mailing lists such as the website-info-mgt Mailbase list have shown that there is much interest in the role and responsibilities of such posts. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/news/ Fri, 18 Sep 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/17/news/ The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter For Librarians & Information Specialists Now in its second year of publication, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter For Librarians & Information Specialists covers issues such as privacy for web sites, copyright collectives and print and electronic copying, the European copyright scene and reviews of copyright web sites for libraries, museums and archives. A print newsletter, with email alerts between issues, subscribers are also entitled to a free subscription to the electronic newsletter Copyright & New Media Legal News. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/search-engines/ Mon, 18 May 1998 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/15/search-engines/ <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL PRO 4.0::19971010::extensions to HTML 4.0//EN” “hmpro4.dtd”> New search engines appear all the time on the web. Usually there is little to choose between the tools available other than the largely cosmetic differences of interface design However, every so often a new search engine comes along which seems to promise to take us to the ‘next level’ of web searching in terms of capability and functionality. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/planet-sosig/ Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/14/planet-sosig/   IntroductionREGARD [1] is a fully functional bibliographic database of ESRC [2] (Economic and Social Research Council) research awards and all associated publications and products. It is publicly available on the World Wide Web without subscription and uses keyword searching, available at two levels. BackgroundSince the mid-1980s the ESRC have provided access to their research award information, initially through the RAPID database service run by the University of Edinburgh. REGARD has now replaced RAPID and is available on the World Wide Web. 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/12/news/ Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/12/news/ EC funds second phase of TOLIMAC library smart card projectMonday, October 20th, 1997 Contact: Françoise Vandooren, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bibliotheques, Av. Franklin Roosevelt 50, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgique Tel: 32 2 650 23 80 Fax: 32 2 650 41 86 email: fdooren@ulb.ac.beor Contact: Anne Ramsden, International Institute for Electronic Library Research De Montfort University Milton Keynes, Hammerwood Gate, Kents Hill, Milton Keynes, MK7 6HP Tel: 44 1908 834924 Fax: 44 1908 834929 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/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/hypertext/ Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/9/hypertext/ “ The reaction of the hypertext research community to the World Wide Web is like finding out that you have a fully grown child. And it’s a delinquent. ” With this, Ted Nelson, who coined the term ‘hypertext’ in the early 60’s, summed up the reaction of one particular academic community to the explosive growth of the Web. The occasion was HyperText 97 [1], the Eighth ACM Conference on Hypertext, the place was Southampton, the date was April 6-11th 1997. 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/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/table/ Tue, 19 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/6/table/ Lawyers have a reputation for conservatism. Jokes still abound about the law professors who refuse to switch on the PC on their desk and defiantly handwrite all their work, then shamelessly thank their secretaries in prefaces for "deciphering unintelligible handwriting". Happily, such types are in a minority as the benefits of information technology are increasingly recognised in legal education and practice. The subject matter of law can be as diverse or as traditional as one wishes. 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/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/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/2/elib/ Tue, 19 Mar 1996 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/2/elib/ Recently, a wave of new projects under the umbrella of the Electronic Libraries Programme was announced. A consequence of this is that a large majority of the HE institutions in the UK are involved in at least one eLib project (is yours?), as well as many non HE organisations and institutions. Here, we give brief details of some of these new projects. In the Preprints/Grey Literature area, we have three projects: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/boon-low-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/boon-low-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/celia-jenkins-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/celia-jenkins-author-profile/ Celia Jenkins has been a member of the SUNCAT Bibliographic Team since 2008, processing and checking the data received from the Contributing Libraries. She also writes for and maintains the SUNCAT blog. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/graham-pryor-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/graham-pryor-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/henry-s-thompson-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/henry-s-thompson-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jonathan-hunter-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/jonathan-hunter-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/liza-zamboglou-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/liza-zamboglou-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/lorna-m-campbell-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/lorna-m-campbell-author-profile/ Lorna M. Campbell has over fifteen years experience working in education technology and interoperability standards, with a specific focus on open education. She currently work for the University of Edinburgh as EDINA Digital Education Manager (0.6 FTE) and as OER Liaison – Open Scotland (0.2 FTE) within the Learning, Teaching and Web Services Division. For many years she worked as Assistant Director of the Centre for Education Technology, Interoperability and Standards (CETIS), and recently became a founding partner of CETIS LLP. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/philip-hunter-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/philip-hunter-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/richard-jones-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/richard-jones-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robin-rice-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robin-rice-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robin-taylor-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/robin-taylor-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/sarah-higgins-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/sarah-higgins-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/stuart-macdonald-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/stuart-macdonald-author-profile/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/theo-andrew-author-profile/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/author/theo-andrew-author-profile/ Theo Andrew is the Open Scholarship development officer based at the Digital Library Section at the University of Edinburgh. Professional interests include: enhancing scholarly communication using new technologies; promoting the open agenda within academia; research analytics and altmetrics; and research information/data management.