Table of contents: issue66

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.

Turning Off Tap Into Bath

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

Ann Chapman describes the lifecycle of a demonstrator database and the development of a preservation policy for its content and software.

RefShare: A Community of Practice to Enhance Research Collaboration

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

Tertia Coetsee describes a community of practice for postgraduate students in phytomedicine using RefShare, to enhance collaborative research.

Developments in Virtual 3D Imaging of Cultural Artefacts

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

Richard Collmann describes how experience using a portable Virtual 3D Object Rig in cultural institutions has led to significant improvements in apparatus design and workflow.

The collapsable, portable electromechanical Virtual 3D (V3D) Object Rig Model 1 (ORm1) (Figures 1, 2, 3) was developed to meet an obvious need found after an important Australian cultural artefact - a nineteenth-century post-mortem plaster head-cast of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly [1] - was Apple QTVR-imaged (QuickTime Virtual Reality) using a large static object rig at the University of Melbourne over 2003/4. The author requested that this moving and hyperlinked image be constructed as a multimedia component of a conjectured cross-disciplinary undergraduate teaching unit. The difficulties encountered in obtaining permission from the cultural collection involved to transport this object some 400 metres to the imaging rig located on the same geographical campus suggested to the author that a portable object imaging rig could be devised and taken to any cultural collection anywhere to image objects in situ.

In the early to mid-19th century these physical records were taken for phrenological research purposes, however by the late-C19 this quasi-science had been largely discredited. The underlying reasons for these practices had been forgotten; the recording and keeping was absorbed by reason of habit into accepted routine procedure; as just a part of the workflow within the State criminal justice execution process. This procedure would be rejected out of hand nowadays, but this 19th century habit of retaining physical artefacts is fortunate for the present-day cross-disciplinary historian.

As mentioned, the author wished to use the head cast as the pivotal focus for cross-disciplinary undergraduate teaching purposes with contributions from the perspective of History of Science, Australian Colonial History, Sociology and Criminology. It was considered by the subject contributors that such a cross-disciplinary teaching module could well benefit from a Web-based multimedia approach.

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.