Overview of content related to 'google'

Editorial Introduction to Issue 70

lisrw — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:20:23 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne Issue 70.

Welcome to Issue 70 of Ariadne which is full to the brim with feature articles and a wide range of event reports and book reviews.

'Does He Take Sugar?': The Risks of Standardising Easy-to-read Language

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:18:25 +0000

Brian Kelly, Dominik Lukeš and Alistair McNaught highlight the risks of attempting to standardise easy-to-read language for online resources.

The idea that if we could only improve how we communicate, there would be less misunderstanding among people is as old as the hills. Historically, this notion has been expressed through things like school reform, spelling reform, publication of communication manuals, etc. The most radical expression of the desire for better understanding is the invention of a whole new artificial language with the intention of providing a universal language for humanity.

Case Studies in Web Sustainability

lisrw — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:09:03 +0000

Scott Turner describes issues around making Web resources sustainable.

At the moment organisations often make significant investments in producing Web-based material, often funded through public money, for example from JISC. But what happens when some of those organisations are closed or there is no longer any money or resources to host the site? We are seeing cuts in funding or changes in governmental policy, which is resulting in the closure of some of these organisations.

IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2012

lisrw — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:16:31 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the 78th IFLA General Conference and Assembly held in Helsinki, Finland over 11-17 August 2012.

The Sunday newcomers session chaired by Buhle Mbambo-Thata provided us with some insight into the sheer magnitude of IFLA (as most people seem to call it) or the World Library and Information Congress (to give the formal name) [1]. This year’s congress had over 4,200 delegates from 120 different countries, though over a thousand of these were Finnish librarians making the most of the locality of this year’s event.

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:44:54 +0000

Anna Mastora and Sarantos Kapidakis report on TPDL 2012 held at Paphos, Cyprus, over 23-27 September 2012.

The 16^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012 [1] was another successful event in the series of ECDL/TPDL conferences which has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 15 years. Across these years, the conference has brought together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries by addressing issues in the area where theoretical and applied research meet, such as digital library models, architectures, functionality, users, and quality.

Online Information 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:10:56 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the largest gathering of information professionals in Europe.

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.

Book Review: The E-copyright Handbook

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 23:30:54 +0000

Charles Oppenheim takes a look at the latest of Paul Pedley’s copyright guidance books, and, in some respects, finds it wanting.

Paul Pedley is a name that needs no introduction to aficionados of copyright textbooks, being the author of several such books published by Facet Publishing in the past (and reviewed by Ariadne [1][2][3][4][5]). His latest effort, The E-copyright Handbook, attempts to cover the fast-moving and complex world of electronic copyright, using an interesting approach. Rather than the traditional way of such books, describing the media and describing the rights granted to copyright owners, the way the law applies to each media type, exceptions to copyright and so on, his approach is a mixture but with some emphasis on activities, as a glance at the chapter titles shows: Introduction, Content Types, Activities, Copyright Exceptions, Licences, the Digital Economy Act, Enforcement and The Hargreaves Review.

It is a complex approach, which requires careful cross-referencing and also checking that material is neither duplicated, nor that is anything is overlooked. It is not clear to me whether the book is meant for reading through, or whether it should be just dipped into when a particular issue causes someone to check the law; but I found the approach confusing.

The book also suffers from being in a fast-moving area, where the law, and technology, change fast and although it is clear that Facet got the book published in record time, as there are numerous references to 2012 developments in the text, the work is already out of date in several places, and will no doubt get more out of date as the months go on. Another problem is that the book cannot make up its mind whether it is written for UK readers, or readers in the EU, or in the USA. All too often, different countries’ court cases are mentioned together; one is (say) a UK case and another is a US case. Without the understanding that US law and UK law in this field are very different, people will come to incorrect conclusions about the significance of the cases to them in their day to day work. Moreover, all too often the cases are described without any court decisions relating to them being provided; so one is left with the worry ‘why did the author mention this case at all?’

Enhancing Collaboration and Interaction in a Post-graduate Research Programme

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 08:39:58 +0000

Tertia Coetsee describes a community of practice for post-graduate students where RefShare is deployed for digital storage and retrieval, alongside Blackboard for the purposes of communication. She also describes the role of the information specialist in the programme.

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].

Launching a New Community-owned Content Service

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:36:05 +0000

Caren Milloy describes some of the challenges overcome and lessons learned by JISC Collections during the development of JISC eCollections.

JISC eCollections is a set of e-resource platforms launched in November 2011 by JISC Collections, in partnership with the JISC data centres EDINA and Mimas. The platforms (Figure 1) are JISC MediaHub, JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives; together, they are intended to provide a sustainable, value-for-money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms, by consolidating and hosting the broad range of historical book, journal archive and multimedia content purchased by JISC Collections on behalf of the UK education community. The vision is to provide a world-class collection that ensures users’ broadest information needs are well met, and to work in partnership with the community to improve and develop the platforms around evolving student and researcher expectations.

Background

The primary role of JISC Collections is the licensing of content on behalf of its UK Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) member organisations. Over the last 10 years, JISC Collections has invested over £40 million in centralised licensing of digital content, in perpetuity, on behalf of all its members. The first agreement was signed in 2002 for ProQuest’s Early English Books Online (EEBO). Since then, national licences have been negotiated for historic books, journal archives and multimedia content (Figure 1), such as documentaries and educational films. In 2010, JISC Collections invested a further £2.5 million in film and image content, representing UK and world history since 1987, specially selected for teaching and learning. The majority of JISC Collections’ member organisations would be unable to afford per-institution subscriptions to these book, journal and multimedia collections, so centralised licensing is critical to broadening access.

Figure 1: The three platforms that make up the JISC eCollections service

Why Develop JISC eCollections?

The platforms contain more than 4.5 million resources from over 20 providers. JISC Collections members were previously required to access this content via a range of separate services, each with different user interfaces and administrative requirements, and with a complex funding set-up including both JISC subsidies and publisher access fees payable by each institution. JISC Collections felt that its existing – and future – investments in content would best be protected and preserved by developing an independent service, as an affordable alternative to relying on content providers for access to perpetually licensed content. Such a service would allow the education community to take ownership of its acquisitions and assure it of future control. In 2011 each group of resources was consolidated into one platform to increase discoverability, simplify the user experience (making it more inclusive to users at all academic levels), reduce the administrative burden, and thereby enable maximum value to be derived from the initial content investments.

Redeveloping the Loughborough Online Reading List System

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:32:55 +0000

Jon Knight, Jason Cooper and Gary Brewerton describe the redevelopment of Loughborough University’s open source reading list system.

The Loughborough Online Reading Lists System (LORLS) [1] has been developed at Loughborough University since the late 1990s. LORLS was originally implemented at the request of the University’s Learning and Teaching Committee simply to make reading lists available online to students. The Library staff immediately saw the benefit of such a system in not only allowing students ready access to academics’ reading lists but also in having such access themselves. This was because a significant number of academics were bypassing the library when generating and distributing lists to their students who were then in turn surprised when the library did not have the recommended books either in stock or in sufficient numbers to meet demand.

The first version of the system produced by the Library Systems Team was part of a project that also had a ‘reading lists amnesty’ in which academics were encouraged to provide their reading lists to the library which then employed some temporary staff over the summer to enter them into the new system. This meant that the first version of LORLS went live in July 2000 with a reasonable percentage of lists already in place. Subsequently the creation and editing of reading lists was made the responsibility of the academics or departmental admin staff, with some assistance from library staff.

LORLS was written in Perl, with a MySQL database back-end. Most user interfaces were delivered via the web, with a limited number of back-end scripts that helped the systems staff maintain the system and alert library staff to changes that had been made to reading lists.

Soon after the first version of LORLS went live at Loughborough, a number of other universities expressed an interest in using or modifying the system. Permission was granted by the University to release it as open source under the General Public Licence (GPL)[2]. New versions were released as the system was developed and bugs were fixed. The last version of the original LORLS code base/data design was version 5, which was downloaded by sites worldwide.

Redesign

By early 2007 it was decided to take a step back and see if there were things that could be done better in LORLS. Some design decisions made in 1999 no longer made sense eight years later. Indeed some of the database design was predicated on how teaching modules were supposed to work at Loughborough and it had already become clear that the reality of how they were deployed was often quite different. For example, during the original design, the principle was that each module would have a single reading list associated with it. Within a few years several modules had been found that were being taught by two (or more!) academics, all wanting their own independent reading list.

Some of the structuring of the data in the MySQL database began to limit how the system could be developed. The University began to plan an organisational restructuring shortly after the redesign of LORLS was commenced, and it was clear that the simple departmental structure was likely to be replaced by a more fluid school and department mix.

Library staff were also beginning to request new features that were thus increasingly awkward to implement. Rather than leap through hoops to satisfy them within the framework of the existing system, it made sense to add them into the design process for a full redesign.

It was also felt that the pure CGI-driven user interface could do with a revamp. The earlier LORLS user interfaces used only basic HTML forms, with little in the way of client-side scripting. Whilst that meant that they tended to work on any web browser and were pretty accessible, they were also a bit clunky compared to some of the newer dynamic web sites.

A distinct separation of the user interface from the back-end database was decided upon to improve localization and portability of the system as earlier versions of LORLS had already shown that many sites took the base code and then customised the user interface parts of the CGI scripts to their own look and feel. The older CGI scripts were a mix of user interaction elements and database access and processing, which made this task a bit more difficult than it really needed to be.

Separating the database code from the user interface code would let people easily tinker with one without unduly affecting the other. It would also allow local experimentation with multiple user-interface designs for different user communities or devices.

This implied that a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) would need to be defined. As asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)[3] interactions had been successful applied in a number of recent projects the team had worked on, XML was chosen as the format to be used. At first simple object access protocol (SOAP) style XML requests was experimented with, as well as XML responses, but it was soon realised that SOAP was far too heavy-weight for most of the API calls, so a lighter ‘RESTful’ API was selected. The API was formed of CGI scripts that took normal parameters as input and returned XML documents for the client to parse and display.

Eduserv Symposium 2012: Big Data, Big Deal?

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:48:45 +0000

Marieke Guy attended the annual Eduserv Symposium on 10 May 2012 at the Royal College of Physicians, London to find out what are the implications of big data for Higher Education Institutions.

The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management.

Book Review: Information Need - A Theory Connecting Information Search to Knowledge Formation

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Brian Whalley reviews a book about a new theory of ‘information need’ that builds upon the ideas of Allen and Taylor from the 1960s to provide a basis for information searching.

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?) ways there are for students to use search tools and methods as well as enhance both their digital and information literacies.

Book Review: Getting Started with Cloud Computing

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:42:54 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on cloud computing that attempts to clarify the technology and its applications for librarians and information professionals.

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.

Kultivating Kultur: Increasing Arts Research Deposit

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Marie-Therese Gramstadt discusses how the JISC-funded Kultivate Project is encouraging arts research deposit in UK institutional repositories.

Funded by the Deposit strand [1] JISC Information Environment programme and led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), a Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts, Kultivate will increase arts research deposit in UK institutional repositories.

Adapting VuFind as a Front-end to a Commercial Discovery System

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Graham Seaman describes the adaptation of an open source discovery tool, VuFind, to local needs, discusses the decisions which needed to be made in the process, and considers the implications of this process for future library discovery systems.

VuFind is an open source discovery system originally created by Villanova University near Philadelphia [1] and now supported by Villanova with the participation in development of libraries around the world. It was one of the first next-generation library discovery systems in the world, made possible by the open source Solr/Lucene text indexing and search system which lies at the heart of VuFind (Solr also underlies several of the current commercial offerings, including Serials Solutions' Summon and ExLibris' Primo).

The Future of the Past of the Web

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:06:52 +0000

Matthew Brack reports on the one-day international workshop 'The Future of the Past of the Web' held at the British Library Conference Centre, London on 7 October, 2011.

We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web.

The Third Annual edUi Conference 2011

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:26:07 +0000

Danielle Cooley reports on the third annual edUi Conference, held over 13-14 October 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA, an opportunity for Web professionals in colleges, universities, libraries, museums, etc to discuss the latest developments in Web trends and technologies.

The third annual edUi Conference [1] was held October 13-14, 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The sold-out event saw 225 ‘Web professionals serving colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and beyond’ join together to discuss the latest and greatest in Web trends and technologies. The all-volunteer conference was presented by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and major sponsors included Microsoft, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

The two-day event consisted of four tracks [2]:

IMPACT Final Conference 2011

lisrw — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:36:33 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the two-day conference looking at the results of the IMPACT Project in making digitisation and OCR better, faster and cheaper.

The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs.

Book Review: University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments

lisrw — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:38:31 +0000

Sylvie Lafortune reviews a collection of essays that examine the transformation of academic libraries as they become part of digital learning environments.

This book examines how academic libraries are realigning themselves with the university of the 21^st century, which is increasingly becoming a digital learning environment. The expectations of the Google generation, the interdependence of teaching and research, and the changing roles of library staff and technology all play a fundamental part in this environment–and to lead the discussions in this book, the editors have called on 18 experts and practitioners.

Book Review: Being an Information Innovator

lisrw — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:22:06 +0000

John Paschoud reviews a book which formalises the processes of being what many of us would like to be within our information-based organisations - innovators and entrepreneurs of the Information Age.

For Learners... and Practitioners?

Superficially at least, this book seems to be very clearly designed for students on a structured course at first degree or masters level for would-be information management professionals. In terms of structure I’m sure it’s ideally suited to that audience, with each of five chapters including learning objectives, review questions to test understanding, and group discussion topics.

Image 'Quotation' Using the C.I.T.E. Architecture

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Christopher Blackwell and Amy Hackney Blackwell describe with examples a digital library infrastructure that affords canonical citation for 'quoting' images, useful for creating commentaries, arguments, and teaching tools.

Quotation is the heart of scholarly argument and teaching, the activity of bringing insight to something complex by focused discussion of its parts. Philosophers who have reflected on the question of quotation have identified two necessary components: a name, pointer, or citation on the one hand and a reproduction or repetition on the other. Robert Sokolowski calls quotation a 'curious conjunction of being able to name and to contain' [1]; V.A. Howard is more succinct: quotation is 'replication-plus-reference' [2]. We are less interested in the metaphysical aspects of quotation than in the practical ones.

The tools and techniques described here were supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0916148 & No. 0916421. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Quotation

Quotation, when accompanied by citation, allows us to bring the reader's attention to bear on a particular part of a larger whole efficiently and without losing the surrounding context. A work of Biblical exegesis, for example, can quote or merely cite 'Genesis 1:29' without having to reproduce the entire Hebrew Bible, or even the Book of Genesis; a reader can resolve that citation to a particular passage about the creation of plants, and can see that passage as a discrete node at the bottom of a narrowing hierarchy: Hebrew Bible, Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 29. We take this for granted.

Quoting a text is easy. But how can we quote an image? This remains difficult even in the 21st century where it is easy to reproduce digital images, pass them around through networks, and manipulate them on our desks.

A scholar wishing to refer to a particular part of an image will generally do something like this: She will open one version of an image in some editing software, select and 'cut' a section from it, and 'paste' that section into a document containing the text of her commentary or argument. She might add to the text of her argument a reference to the source of the image. The language that describes this process is that of mechanical work – cutting and pasting – rather than the language of quotation and citation. The process yields a fragment of an image with only a tenuous connection to the ontological hierarchy of the object of study. The same scholar who would never give a citation to 'The Bible, page 12' rather than to 'Genesis 1:29' will, of necessity, cite an image-fragment in a way similarly unlikely to help readers find the source and locate the fragment in its natural context.

Connecting Researchers at the University of Bath

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Jez Cope and Geraldine Jones describe a recent series of events introducing social media to research students at the University of Bath.

The Connected Researcher initiative is a response to both local and sector-wide events. At the University of Bath groups of postgraduate research students from Chemistry and Social Sciences separately expressed an interest in finding out how to profile their own research and establish links with other researchers in their fields.

Piloting Web Conferencing Software: Experiences and Challenges

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Julian Prior and Marie Salter report on their experiences piloting Elluminate Live! at the University of Bath.

In the current fiscal climate faced by educational institutions in the UK, elearning tools and technologies that promise efficiency savings as well as enhancing the quality and quantity of course offerings are gaining popularity. One such technology is Web conferencing where lectures, seminars, meetings or presentations take place online and allow for remote participation and collaboration via audio, video, instant chat and a virtual 'whiteboard.'[1].

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Bernard M Scaife describes how an innovative use of the EPrints repository software is helping to preserve official documents from the Web.

When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian's life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still.

DataCite UK User Group Meeting

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Alex Ball reports on the 2nd UK User Group meeting for DataCite, held at the British Library in London, in April 2011.

DataCite [1] is an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making research data a normal, citable part of the scientific record. It is made up of a membership of 15 major libraries and data centres, which, along with four associate members, represent 11 different countries across four continents. The approach taken by DataCite currently centres on assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets; it is a member of the International DOI Foundation and one of a handful of DOI registration agencies.

Open Educational Resources Hack Day

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Kirsty Pitkin reports on a two-day practical hack event focusing on Open Educational Resources (OER), held by DevCSI and JISC CETIS in Manchester on 31 March - 1 April 2011.

The Open Educational Resources Hack Day event was designed to bring together those interested in rapidly developing tools and prototypes to solve problems related to OER. Whilst there is a growing interest in the potential for learning resources created and shared openly by academics and teachers, a number of technical challenges still exist, including resource retrieval, evaluation and reuse. This event aimed to explore some of these problem areas by partnering developers with the creators and users of OER to identify needs and potential solutions.

Book Review: Envisioning Future Academic Library Services

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

John Azzolini reviews a timely collection of essays that highlights the values of institutional leadership and resourcefulness in academic librarianship's engagements with Web 2.0.

Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 66: Sanity Check

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 66.

With institutions searching to increase the impact of the work they do, and conscious of the immediate impact of any event they organise, many will be interested to read of 10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event in which Marieke Guy provides a raft of suggestions to enhance the participants' experience of and involvement in, the event they are attending.

Reading Van Gogh Online?

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Peter Boot shows how log analysis can be employed to assess a site's usability, usage, and users, using the Van Gogh letter edition as an example.

Large amounts of money are spent building scholarly resources on the web. Unlike online retailers, large publishers and banks, scholarly institutions tend not to monitor very closely the way visitors use their web sites. In this article I would like to show that a look at the traces users leave behind in the Web servers' log files can teach us much about our sites' usability and about the way visitors use them.

In 2009 the Huygens Institute [1], together with the Van Gogh Museum [2], published a new edition of the letters of Vincent van Gogh. The complete edition was published online [3], and is accessible for free; there is also a six-volume book edition [4]. The online edition was reviewed in a number of publications [5][6][7]. I will use the server logs of the Van Gogh edition as an example of what we can learn about our visitors. I will focus not on the simple quantities, but try to assess the visitors' access patterns. When we created the edition, our assumption was that researchers would use the web site, while people who wanted to read the letters would favour the book. The desire to test that assumption was one of the reasons for embarking on this investigation.

When users view, or read, editions online, busy traffic is going on between their browser (e.g. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari), and the web server where the edition is located. Web servers keep logs of this traffic, and inspecting the logs gives us an opportunity to see how people are actually using the editions that we create. When people buy a book, this shows their intention to use it, in some sense. When people go to a web site, the server registers their visit, including, depending on the design of the site, every page they read and every search they do.

Most of the work on log analysis in scholarly environments has been done in the context of libraries researching use of electronic journals [8]. The financial interest in accurate knowledge about usage patterns in that context is obviously important. The LAIRAH (Log Analysis of Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities) study [9] used log analysis on portal sites in order to assess usage of digital resources in the arts and humanities. I believe the present article is the first reported study on actual usage data of a scholarly digital edition.

First I will discuss why these log data deserve investigation. I then will show what the data that we collect looks like and discuss both their potential and their limitations. I will give a brief overview of the edition site, as the log data can only be understood in the context of the site's structure and navigational facilities. Then I'll show a number of the things that can be done on the basis of the log files.

10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy describes new tools and services that can help you get your event heard.

In 2007 Lorcan Dempsey coined the phrase 'the amplified conference' [1]. He used the term to refer to how event outputs (such as talks and presentations) were being amplified 'through a variety of network tools and collateral communications'.

Characterising and Preserving Digital Repositories: File Format Profiles

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Steve Hitchcock and David Tarrant show how file format profiles, the starting point for preservation plans and actions, can also be used to reveal the fingerprints of emerging types of institutional repositories.

Saving the Sounds of the UK in the UK SoundMap

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Maureen Pennock and Chris Clark introduce an innovative initiative from the British Library to map a 12-month soundscape of the UK.

The impact of the digital age upon libraries has been profound, changing not only the back office, services, and the range of materials available to users, but also the public face of libraries and the relationship between the library and its users. Within this changed relationship, collaboration, participation, and online social networks play an increasingly important role in the user experience, especially in large university and national libraries. At the same time, a shift is taking place in the type of collection items held in libraries, and the percentage of born-digital materials acquired is increasing on a daily basis.

The British Library is no exception, making use of a wide range of online services and tools to engage with users and enhance access to the collections, both digitised and born-digital. Numerous initiatives are currently taking place across the Library to engage with users and address these changes, and one in particular has sought to capitalise on both the increase in participatory networks and the opportunities afforded by born-digital material. This initiative is the UK SoundMap, an online crowd-sourcing activity driven by the British Library in partnership with the Noise Futures Network to engage and build the community in development of a new born-digital audio-visual research resource [1][2].

Unlocking and Integrating Audio-Visual Content at the British Library

The UK SoundMap is being carried out as part of a wider project by the British Library's Sound & Vision Department: Unlocking & Integrating Audio Visual Content (UIAVC). The UIAVC project seeks to address changing user needs in a multi-media research environment by establishing the building blocks for a redefined and integrated sound and moving image service within the Library. Other, complementary initiatives in the project include:

Modernising and enhancing interactive features in the existing Archival Sound Recordings (ASR) portal, which currently provides access to over 45,000 selected recordings of music, spoken word, and human and natural environments [3].
Establishing a New Music Network to select and capture content from musicians whose work is produced outside the usual commercial channels
Exploring and piloting new R&D Tools to improve resource discovery through new search and analysis tools for speech and music [4]
Increasing the amount of digital audio and video content accessible to users at the Library (i.e. onsite), and remotely

Overall, the project is key to meeting the Library's audio-visual strategy, which aims to unlock and integrate audio-visual content across the library according to user needs. The initiatives interrelate to a significant degree as they each follow the content path from acquisition to curation to integrated delivery. They each focus on digital content (both born-digital and digitised analogue content), they embrace both onsite and remote (Web) access, and collectively they express the commitment the Library now has towards integrating audio-visual media within the research experience.

10 Years of Zetoc

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Jane Ronson looks at how Zetoc has developed and what the future holds for the service.

Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Zetoc [1] provides quality-assured, comprehensive journal table of contents data for resource discovery that users can search and have delivered straight to their in-box or desktop. In a nutshell, Zetoc is all about convenience, current awareness and comprehensive coverage. In a recent survey, one academic commented: 'This is a "one-stop shop" for relevant literature'. What is Zetoc, what has it achieved and where is it going? In this article I will look at the history of the service and how it has developed over the past decade.

Beyond the PDF

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Jodi Schneider reports on a three-day workshop about the future of scientific communication, held in San Diego CA, USA, in January 2011.

'Beyond the PDF' brought together around 80 people to the University of California San Diego to discuss scholarly communication, primarily in the sciences. The main topic: How can we apply emergent technologies to improve measurably the way that scholarship is conveyed and comprehended? The group included domain scientists, researchers and software developers, librarians, funders, publishers, journal editors - a mix which organiser Phil Bourne described as 'visionaries, developers, consumers, and conveyors' of scholarship.

Book Review: The Myths of Innovation

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Lina Coelho takes a look at Scott Berkun's challenging view of what innovation and creativity really mean.

The clue is in the title. This book sets out to dispel the myths about creativity and innovation which you have cherished so dearly. It tells you what 'not to do and what not to think' so that you can free yourself from common misguided notions on the subject. As a special bonus, this new paperback edition includes four new chapters which provide the practical tips you would need to help your ideas take off.

Book Review: Blogging and RSS - A Librarian's Guide, 2nd Edition

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Elly Cope reviews the second edition of this book in which the author explains how RSS and blogging can be used by librarians and libraries.

Michael P. Sauers is a trainer in Internet technologies and this book is intended for librarians who have heard of blogging and RSS and want to start using these tools as soon as possible, but who may not have the expertise or confidence in their ability to start by themselves.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 65: Ariadne in Search of Your Views

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 65.

You may have already noted in the editorial section of this issue a link to the Reader Survey which I ask you seriously to consider completing, whether you are a frequent Ariadne reader or are reading the Magazine for the first time. Moves are afoot to give Ariadne some effort towards improvements in your experience of the publication and I cannot emphasise enough the value I place on suggestions and comments from you. I am very keen to know what readers value and dislike in Ariadne.

From Passive to Active Preservation of Electronic Records

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Heather Briston and Karen Estlund provide a narrative of the process adopted by the University of Oregon in order to integrate electronic records management into its staff's workflow.

Permanent records of the University of Oregon (UO) are archived by the Special Collections and University Archives located within the University Libraries. In the digital environment, a new model is being created to ingest, curate and preserve electronic records. This article discusses two case studies working with the Office of the President to preserve electronic records.

Locating Image Presentation Technology Within Pedagogic Practice

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Marie-Therese Gramstadt contextualises image presentation technology and methods within a pedagogic framework for the visual arts.

Why UK Further and Higher Education Needs Local Software Developers

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Mahendra Mahey and Paul Walk discuss the work of the Developer Community Supporting Innovation (DevCSI) Project which focuses on building capacity for software developers in UK Further and Higher Education to support innovation in the sector.

Software developers are important to Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE). They are needed to develop and implement local FEI (Further Education Institution) and HEI (Higher Education Institution) solutions, to build e-infrastructure, and to innovate and develop ideas and prototypes that can be exploited by others. They also play an important part in the development and uptake of open standards and interoperability.