Overview of content related to 'doi'

'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.

Motivations for the Development of a Web Resource Synchronisation Framework

lisrw — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:58:46 +0000

Stuart Lewis, Richard Jones and Simeon Warner explain some of the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework.

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.

23rd International CODATA Conference

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:41:16 +0000

Alex Ball reports on a conference on ‘Open Data and Information for a Changing Planet’ held by the International Council for Science’s Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan on 28–31 October 2012.

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.

Making the Most of a Conference

lisrw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:05:33 +0000

Stephanie Taylor writes about how she made the most of a conference to promote and inform the work of a project.

I’ve been working with repositories in various ways for over five years, so I have, of course, attended the major international conference Open Repositories before. I have never actually presented anything or represented a specific project at the event, though. This year was different. This year I had a mission - to present a poster on the DataFlow Project [1] and to talk to people about the work we had been doing for the past 12 months and (I hoped) to interest them in using the Open Source (OS) systems we had developed during that period.

The Second British Library DataCite Workshop

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:54:47 +0000

Alex Ball reports on a one-day workshop on metadata supporting the citation of research data, held at the British Library, London, on 6 July 2012.

On Friday, 6 July 2012 I made my way to the British Library Conference Centre for the second in a series of DataCite workshops [1]. The theme was Describe, Disseminate, Discover: Metadata for Effective Data Citation. In welcoming us to the event, Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Scientific, Technical and Medical Information at the British Library, said there had been some doubt as to whether anyone would turn up to an event about metadata, but as it happened there were 36 of us, drawn from across the UK and beyond.

Book Review: Managing Research Data

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:51:34 +0000

Sally Rumsey reviews a book which describes and explains the topics of interest central to practitioners involved with research data management.

Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are planning and implementing infrastructure and services to manage research data more urgently than they did for research publications. One policy framework sent to UK vice-chancellors from a major UK funding body (EPSRC), which set out clear expectations of responsibilities for data management at institutions within a given timetable, appears to have been the spark that prompted research data management (RDM) to be taken up by the upper echelons of management, and concrete activities set in place to start addressing the problem.

Data Citation and Publication by NERC’s Environmental Data Centres

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

Sarah Callaghan, Roy Lowry, David Walton and members of the Natural Environment Research Council Science Information Strategy Data Citation and Publication Project team describe their work in NERC’s Environmental Data Centres.

Data are the foundation upon which scientific progress rests. Historically speaking, data were a scarce resource, but one which was (relatively) easy to publish in hard copy, as tables or graphs in journal papers. With modern scientific methods, and the increased ease in collecting and analysing vast quantities of data, there arises a corresponding difficulty in publishing this data in a form that can be considered part of the scientific record.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 68

lisrw — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:17:06 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne issue 68.

I am pleased to introduce you to the content of Issue 68, and to have the opportunity to remind you that you have a far larger number of channels into the publication’s content.

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.

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.

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.

Repository Fringe 2010

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

Martin Donnelly (and friends) report on the Repository Fringe "unconference" held at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, over 2-3 September 2010.

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.

Public Library 2.0: Culture Change?

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Sarah Hammond explores UK public libraries' growing participation in social media to reach their audiences online, with a focus on blogging.

Beginning in the mid 2000s I began keeping an eye on how libraries have been getting involved with social software - I started this haphazardly just out of interest but then I started to be more systematic when I needed to explore online resources for my organisation, the National Railway Museum. When I left to pursue my MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield I took the opportunity to do some serious research into the subject with a focus on UK public libraries as it seemed to me that they were hugely under-represented online.

Making Datasets Visible and Accessible: DataCite's First Summer Meeting

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Tom J Pollard and J Max Wilkinson report on DataCite's First Summer Meeting, a two-day event focused on making datasets visible and accessible, held in Hannover, Germany, in June 2010.

E-books and E-content 2010: Data As Content

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Whalley reports on a meeting dealing with academic data management and some JISC projects concerned with institutional responses to the need to manage research data more effectively.

News and Events

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Engagement, Impact, Value Workshop

University of Manchester
Monday 24 May 2010
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/engagement-impact-value-201005/

Abstract Modelling of Digital Identifiers

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Nick Nicholas, Nigel Ward and Kerry Blinco present an information model of digital identifiers, to help bring clarity to the vocabulary debates from which this field has suffered.

Discussion of digital identifiers, and persistent identifiers in particular, has often been confused by differences in underlying assumptions and approaches. To bring more clarity to such discussions, the PILIN Project has devised an abstract model of identifiers and identifier services, which is presented here in summary. Given such an abstract model, it is possible to compare different identifier schemes, despite variations in terminology; and policies and strategies can be formulated for persistence without committing to particular systems. The abstract model is formal and layered; in this article, we give an overview of the distinctions made in the model. This presentation is not exhaustive, but it presents some of the key concepts represented, and some of the insights that result.

The main goal of the Persistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure (PILIN) project [1] has been to scope the infrastructure necessary for a national persistent identifier service. There are a variety of approaches and technologies already on offer for persistent digital identification of objects. But true identity persistence cannot be bound to particular technologies, domain policies, or information models: any formulation of a persistent identifier strategy needs to outlast current technologies, if the identifiers are to remain persistent in the long term.

For that reason, PILIN has modelled the digital identifier space in the abstract. It has arrived at an ontology [2] and a service model [3] for digital identifiers, and for how they are used and managed, building on previous work in the identifier field [4] (including the thinking behind URI [5], DOI [6], XRI [7] and ARK [8]), as well as semiotic theory [9]. The ontology, as an abstract model, addresses the question 'what is (and isn't) an identifier?' and 'what does an identifier management system do?'. This more abstract view also brings clarity to the ongoing conversation of whether URIs can be (and should be) universal persistent identifiers.

Identifier Model

For the identifier model to be abstract, it cannot commit to a particular information model. The notion of an identifier depends crucially on the understanding that an identifier only identifies one distinct thing. But different domains will have different understandings of what things are distinct from each other, and what can legitimately count as a single thing. (This includes aggregations of objects, and different versions or snapshots of objects.) In order for the abstract identifier model to be applicable to all those domains, it cannot impose its own definitions of what things are distinct: it must rely on the distinctions specific to the domain.

This means that information modelling is a critical prerequisite to introducing identifiers to a domain, as we discuss elsewhere [10]: identifier users should be able to tell whether any changes in a thing's content, presentation, or location mean it is no longer identified by the same identifier (i.e. whether the identifier is restricted to a particular version, format, or copy).

The abstract identifier model also cannot commit to any particular protocols or service models. In fact, the abstract identifier model should not even presume the Internet as a medium. A sufficiently abstract model of identifiers should apply just as much to URLs as it does to ISBNs, or names of sheep; the model should not be inherently digital, in order to avoid restricting our understanding of identifiers to the current state of digital technologies. This means that our model of identifiers comes close to the understanding in semiotics of signs, as our definitions below make clear.

There are two important distinctions between digital identifiers and other signs which we needed to capture. First, identifiers are managed through some system, in order to guarantee the stability of certain properties of the identifier. This is different to other signs, whose meaning is constantly renegotiated in a community. Those identifier properties requiring guarantees include the accountability and persistence of various facets of the identifier—most crucially, what is being identified. For digital identifiers, the identifier management system involves registries, accessed through defined services. An HTTP server, a PURL [11] registry, and an XRI registry are all instances of identifier management systems.

Second, digital identifiers are straightforwardly actionable: actions can be made to happen in connection with the identifier. Those actions involve interacting with computers, rather than other people: the computer consistently does what the system specifies is to be done with the identifier, and has no latitude for subjective interpretation. This is in contrast with human language, which can involve complex processes of interpretation, and where there can be considerable disconnect between what a speaker intends and how a listener reacts. Because the interactions involved are much simpler, the model can concentrate on two actions which are core to digital identifiers, but which are only part of the picture in human communication: working out what is being identified (resolution), and accessing a representation of what is identified (retrieval).

So to model managing and acting on digital identifiers, we need a concept of things that can be identified, names for things, and the relations between them. (Semiotics already gives us such concepts.) We also need a model of the systems through which identifiers are managed and acted on; what those systems do, and who requests them to do so; and what aspects of identifiers the systems manage.

Our identifier model (as an ontology) thus encompasses:

Entities - including actors and identifier systems;
Relations between entities;
Qualities, as desirable properties of entities. Actions are typically undertaken in order to make qualities apply to entities.
Actions, as the processes carried out on entities (and corresponding to services in implementations);

An individual identifier system can be modelled using concepts from the ontology, with an identifier system model.

In the remainder of this article, we go through the various concepts introduced in the model under these classes. We present the concept definitions under each section, before discussing issues that arise out of them. Resolution and Retrieval are crucial actions for identifiers, whose definition involves distinct issues; they are discussed separately from other Actions. We briefly discuss the standing of HTTP URIs in the model at the end.

Versioning in Repositories: Implementing Best Practice

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Jenny Brace explains why giving time to versioning within a repository is worthwhile and outlines the best practice to implement.

The VIF Project

The Version Identification Framework (VIF) [1] Project ran between July 2007 and May 2008 and was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, (JISC) under the Repositories and Preservation Programme [2] in order to help develop versioning best practice in repositories.

Persistent Identifiers: Considering the Options

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin looks at the current landscape of persistent identifiers, describes several current services, and examines the theoretical background behind their structure and use.

What Is a Persistent Identifier, and Why?

Persistent identifiers (PIs) are simply maintainable identifiers that allow us to refer to a digital object – a file or set of files, such as an e-print (article, paper or report), an image or an installation file for a piece of software. The only interesting persistent identifiers are also persistently actionable (that is, you can "click" them); however, unlike a simple hyperlink, persistent identifiers are supposed to continue to provide access to the resource, even when it moves to other servers or even to other organisations.

The National Centre for Text Mining: A Vision for the Future

editor — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Sophia Ananiadou describes NaCTeM and the main scientific challenges it helps to solve together with issues related to deployment, use and uptake of NaCTeM's text mining tools and services.

One of the defining challenges of e-Science is dealing with the data deluge [1] information overload and information overlook. More than 8,000 scientific papers are published every week (on Google Scholar, for example). Without sophisticated new tools, researchers will be unable to keep abreast of developments in their field and valuable new sources of research data will be under-exploited. The capability of text mining (TM) to find knowledge hidden in text and to present it in a concise form makes it an essential part of any strategy for addressing these problems.

DC 2007

editor — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Ann Apps reports on DC2007, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, held 27-31 August 2007 in Singapore.

The main theme of this year's international conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications was 'Application Profiles: Theory and Practice' [1]. The conference was hosted by the Singapore National Library Board and held in the Intercontinental Hotel, which was across the road from the superb National Library building.

The W3C Technical Architecture Group

editor — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Henry S. Thompson introduces the W3C Technical Architecture Group and its work.

From Nought to a Thousand: The HUSCAP Project

editor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Suziki Masako and Sugita Shigeki describe Hokkaido University's efforts to populate its institutional repository with journal articles.

Hokkaido University launched its project to construct an institutional repository in early 2004. After a year of discussion, planning and preparation, we started soliciting content in July 2005. Within a year of that start, we had assembled a depository of approximately 9,000 documents. It is named the Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers (HUSCAP)[1].

Considering a Marketing and Communications Approach for an Institutional Repository

editor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Heleen Gierveld proposes a market-oriented approach to increase the rate of deposit to an institutional repository.

Institutional Repositories (IR) are a result of the vision to collect, secure, and provide access to scholarly publications in a novel, digital way, mostly initiated by the institutional library. Various factors have contributed to the emergence of these repositories, including technological innovations which allow a new form of collection management of a university's output, the desire to counteract the 'serials crisis', and the opportunity of promoting wide dissemination and quick access to publications.

Folksonomies: The Fall and Rise of Plain-text Tagging

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin suggests that rising new ideas are often on their second circuit - and none the worse for that.

Despite the stability of many key technologies underlying today's Internet, venerable workhorses such as TCP/IP and HTTP, the rise of new candidate specifications frequently leads to a sort of collaborative manic depression. Every now and then, a new idea comes along and sparks a wave of interest, the first stage in the Internet hype cycle.

The Second Digital Repositories Programme Meeting

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson and Mahendra Mahey report on a 2-day JISC Digital Repositories Meeting focusing on project clusters working together and other related issues held by JISC in Warwick, UK over 27-28 March 2006.

The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Digital Repositories Programme [1] held its second Programme meeting towards the end of March. Following in the collaborative tradition set by last October's joint Programme meeting with the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme [2], this gathering was themed around the cluster groups established by the Digital Repositories Programme [3] and included many guests from other JISC areas of work and beyond.

Joint Workshop on Future-proofing Institutional Websites

editor — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Maureen Pennock reports on a two-day workshop on Future-Proofing Web Sites, organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the Wellcome Library at the Wellcome Library, London, over 19-20 January 2006.

This DCC [1] and Wellcome Library [2] workshop sought to provide insight into ways that content creators and curators can ensure ongoing access to reliable Web sites over time.

DCC Workshop on Persistent Identifiers

editor — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Philip Hunter gives a personal view of this workshop held in Glasgow, 30 June - 1 July, supported by NISO, CETIS, ERPANET, UKOLN and the DCC.

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.

ISBN-13: New Number on the Block

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Ann Chapman outlines the planned changes to the ISBN standard and its impact on the information community and the book trade.

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique machine-readable identification number, defined in ISO Standard 2108, which is applied to books. As a result of electronic publishing and other changes in the publishing industry, the numbering capacity of the ISBN system is being consumed at a much faster rate than was originally anticipated when the standard was designed in the late 1960s. While we will not run out of ISBNs tomorrow, it will happen before too long and plans are already in hand to provide a solution before the crisis point is reached.

The Dawning of DARE: A Shared Experience

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Annemiek van der Kuil and Martin Feijen describe the first year of the DARE Project and its foundation of the OAI repositories of Dutch academic output.

The SURF Programme Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) is a joint initiative of Dutch universities to make their academic output digitally accessible. The KB (National Library of the Netherlands), the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) also cooperate in this unique programme. DARE is being coordinated by the SURF Foundation [1]. The programme will run from January 2003 until December 2006.

DARE has several goals:

ERPANET Seminar on Persistent Identifiers

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Monica Duke reports on a two-day training seminar on persistent identifiers held by ERPANET in Cork, Ireland over 17-18 June 2004.

Day One

Introduction
Welcome and Keynote
Overview of Persistent Identifier initiatives
URN
OpenURL - The Rough Guide
Info URIs
The DCMI Persistent Identifier Working Group
The CENDI Report
ARK
PURLs
Overview of the Handle System
DOI

News and Events

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Seminar Invitation from DEF - Danish Electronic Research Library

The DEF XML Web Services project invites you to participate in the seminar: Building Digital Libraries with XML Web Services on Friday 27 August 2004 from 9:30 to 16:00 at the Technical University of Denmark, Building 303, DK-2800 Lyngby.

The headlines of the seminar are:

The OpenURL and OpenURL Framework: Demystifying Link Resolution

editor — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Ann Apps reports on a conference about current and future uses of the proposed OpenURL Framework Standard Z39.88-2004.

The Event at a Glance

Welcome - Pat Harris
The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services Standard - Eric Van de Velde
The Promise and History of the OpenURL - Oliver Pesch
Related Linking Standards: CrossRef and DOI - Ed Pentz
Why Should Publishers Implement the OpenURL Framework?

Delivering OAI Records As RSS: An IMesh Toolkit Module for Facilitating Resource Sharing

editor — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Monica Duke provides an overview of a means of providing records in RSS through the use of an IMesh Toolkit module that supports resource sharing. The content of this article was presented at the 4th Open Archives Forum Workshop

Subject Gateways act as a main point of access to high-quality resources on the Web. They are resource discovery guides that provide links to information resources which can be whole Web sites, organisational home pages and other collections or services, themed around a specific subject, such as the physical sciences or humanities. At their core is a catalogue of rich metadata records that describe Internet resources - subject specialists identify and select the resources and create the descriptions.

Mapping the JISC IE Service Landscape

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000

Andy Powell provides a graphical representation of how some well-known services, projects and software applications fit within the JISC Information Environment technical architecture.

This largely graphical article attempts to explain the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [1] by layering a set of fairly well-known services, projects and software applications over the network architecture diagram [2].

5 Step Guide to Becoming a Content Provider in the JISC Information Environment

editor — Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000

Andy Powell describes steps which content providers can take to integrate their resources into the JISC IE.

This document provides a brief introduction to the JISC Information Environment (JISC-IE) [1], with a particular focus on the technical steps that content providers need to take in order to make their systems interoperable within the JISC-IE technical architecture.

Architects of the Information Age

editor — Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Paul Miller reports on a recent UKOLN-organised event at the Office of the e-Envoy, and explores the need for an architecture to scope what we build online.

In July of this year, Interoperability Focus [1] organised a meeting at the Office of the e–Envoy [2], the Cabinet Office unit responsible for driving forward the UK's e–Government initiatives.

Across an increasing number of initiatives and programmes, there is a growing recognition of the need for common 'architectures' within which truly useful applications and services may be constructed.

OpenResolver: A Simple OpenURL Resolver

editor — Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Andy Powell describes UKOLN's OpenResolver, a freely available demonstration OpenURL resolver.

This article provides a brief introduction to the deployment and use of the OpenURL [1] [2] by walking through a few simple examples using UKOLN's OpenResolver, a demonstration OpenURL resolution service [3]. The intention is to demonstrate the ability of OpenURL resolvers to provide context-sensitive, extended services based on the metadata embedded in OpenURLs and to describe the construction of simple OpenURL resolver software.