Overview of content related to 'university of edinburgh'

The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland

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

John MacColl reviews the first two volumes of this very substantial three-part work, covering the periods to 1640 and 1640-1850.

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.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 46: Ten Years of Pathfinding

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

John MacColl, Lorcan Dempsey and John Kirriemuir reflect in turn on the rationale and history of the founding of Ariadne.

Ten Years of Pathfinding

John MacColl reflects upon the choice of Ariadne's name in the light of the publication's guiding mission.

Google Challenges for Academic Libraries

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

John MacColl analyses the reactions many academic libraries may be having to the range of tools Google is currently rolling out and outlines a strategy for institutions in the face of such potentially radical developments.

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.

Adding Value to the National Information Infrastructure: The EDINA Exchange Day, Edinburgh

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

John MacColl provides us with a report of EDINA's first general information event for the HE and FE communities held at the National E-Science Centre.

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.

Metadata Wanted for the Evanescent Library

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

John MacColl reports on Schemas and Ontologies: Building a Semantic Infrastructure for the GRID and Digital Libraries: a one-day workshop at the e-Science Institute, May 2003.

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:

Climbing the Scholarly Publishing Mountain With SHERPA

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

John MacColl and Stephen Pinfield explore the SHERPA project, which is concentrating on making e-prints available online.

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:

Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Strategy for the UK

editor — Sun, 07 Jul 2002 23:00:00 +0000

by John MacColl considers a strategy for electronic theses and dissertations in the United Kingdom.

‘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’.

Setting up an Institutional E-Print Archive

editor — Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:00:00 +0000

Stephen Pinfield, Mike Gardner, and John MacColl with some practical advice on setting up an e-print archive.

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.

ACM / IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

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

John MacColl reports on a selection of the papers given at this conference in Roanoake, Virginia, June 24-28 2001.

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 Future Is Hybrid: Edinburgh

editor — Fri, 23 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000

John MacColl and Philip Hunter report on 'The Future is Hybrid' project day in Edinburgh.

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.

Instructional Management Systems

editor — Fri, 19 Mar 1999 00:00:00 +0000

John MacColl explores the IMS concept in the context of the SELLIC project.