Overview of content related to 'university of edinburgh'

Gold Open Access: Counting the Costs

lisrw — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:23:29 +0000

Theo Andrew presents new data on the cost of Gold OA publishing at the University of Edinburgh.

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.

A subsequent clarification from RCUK stated that Gold OA is the preferred mechanism of choice to realise open access for outputs that they have funded and have announced the award of block grants to eligible institutions to achieve this aim [2]. Where a Gold OA option is unavailable, Green OA is also acceptable; however, RCUK have indicated that the decision will be ultimately left up to institutions as to which route to take [3].

Since RCUK are the major funder of research in the United Kingdom, this new policy will not only have a major impact on how researchers publish their work, but also huge implications for their budgets. Many research institutions funded by RCUK are currently investigating how they will implement this policy and are looking at the costs for open access publication, and how they can support the adoption of open access within their organisation. The ball is very much in the court of institutions to decide how to play the open access game.

One of the key factors that will affect institutions is the cost that publishers will set for their APCs. So far RCUK have steered clear of suggesting an appropriate fee, leaving individual publishers to determine the market level of the APCs as per the current situation. Meanwhile there seems to be a huge variability in costs. There is a general expectation that over time APCs will settle to a reasonable rate and similarly journal subscriptions will lower to reflect the gradual change in business model from subscription fees to APCs. Most publishers have not yet been upfront about what impact they will have on journal subscriptions, if any, and it is hard to access and assess real-life data. RSC Publishing is one notable exception since it has introduced a system of waiving a proportion of APC fees based on institutional subscription costs.

Much of this transition period to full open access will have to be navigated through uncharted territory, where no one has a clear handle on the costs involved. The rationale of this article is to present data on article processing charges gathered over the past five years, report on trends seen within this data, to suggest some approaches and to generally contribute to and inform the policy discussion.

The Problem

To put some rough-and-ready figures on the table, the University of Edinburgh publishes in the region of 4,000-4,500 peer-reviewed journal articles per year; this figure does not include other publication types like working papers not affected by the RCUK policy. Assuming an average Article Processing Charge (APC) of £1500 [4], the total publication costs to make all of these outputs Gold would be in the region of £6m. It is clear that even with guaranteed funding from HEFCE, and other funders of research, large research-intensive universities will not be able to pay for all of their research to be published under Gold OA. How to allocate funding to researchers will be a difficult choice that many institutions are currently asking themselves - will it be on a first-come-first-served basis, funder-specific, or will REF-submitted material take priority?

Equally problematic are the difficulties we face in fully assessing an institution’s total spend on open access. Whilst it is possible to find out through aggregate sources like Web of Science how many articles are published in fully open access journals. It is virtually impossible to find out the number of open access articles published in hybrid journals as there is currently no flag in the metadata which indicates the open status of the paper. A hybrid journal is a traditional subscription journal that offers open access to individual articles upon payment of an APC. Of course it is possible to find hybrid open access content through EuropePMC.org; however this will only give a snapshot for the biomedical and life sciences. With current systems and processes it is virtually impossible to gauge this spend accurately.

Cost Data

Unfortunately, financial data about open access publishing is scarce. The University of Edinburgh (UoE) has recently implemented account codes to allow the finance systems to track this spend going forwards; however, finding out costs retrospectively remains problematic. Furthermore, institutions are not typically in the habit of publishing this data with others. The institutions that have shared data show a degree of variability. In 2010, the foremost initial supporter and enabler of Gold Open Access publishing in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, found that the average cost of publication under the author-pays model was $2,367 (approximately £1,500) [4]. RCUK in their recent press release on block grants for open access estimate the average APC as £1,727 plus VAT [2], whilst, based on figures in the Finch Report, the University of Nottingham paid on average £1,216 [5].

All these figures are useful as they give a ballpark figure upon which further estimates can be based. The precise cost of individual APCs levied by publishers is generally unavailable in a form which easily enables further analysis. Typically this information is available from publisher’s Web sites; however, aggregating the data is cumbersome as there is no consistent way to interrogate the Web sites and APCs commonly vary from title to title in the publishers’ portfolio. There have been some commendable attempts to gather this information, for example the SHERPA RoMEO listing of Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access [7]. Here about 100 publishers have been surveyed and their APCs are listed. A large cost variance exists for some publishers’ records as individual journals often have different APCs, and also institutional subscriptions/memberships can reduce costs in a non-uniform way. It takes a lot of effort to gather these data and keep them it up to date. Other approaches have tried to crowd-source this activity, for example Ross Mounce’s survey of open access publishers, publications, licences and fees. Here approximately 130 publishers’ web sites were surveyed to find out what licences are being used on the open access content; the cost being a secondary focus of the survey. Analysis of these data shows less than 5% of publishers claiming 'open access' are fully compliant with the Budapest Declaration on Open Access [7].

The data we present here is an attempt to enrich the data available to interested parties and make them available in a reusable format for further analysis. It comprises articles funded by the Wellcome Trust at the University of Edinburgh between 2007 and 2012. In total there are 260 articles published in a mixture of open access journals and traditional subscription journals with an open access option (sometimes known as hybrid). All of the journals charged an article processing fee. Overall, the total cost incurred was £452,713.40. The mean article processing charge was £1,741.21, with the median value £1,644.22. The full data can be accessed online at the Edinburgh DataShare repository [8].

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.

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: User Studies for Digital Library Development

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:10:17 +0000

Selenay Aytac reviews a collection of essays on user studies and digital library development that provides a concise overview of a variety of digital library projects and examines major research trends relating to digital libraries.

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.

The Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) 2012

lisrw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:54:44 +0000

Kirsty Pitkin reports on the 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower between 18 - 20 July 2012.

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.

Has Second Life Lived up to Expectations?

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

Paul Gorman examines to what degree Second Life has justified the claims made for it by its evangelists with particular regard to education.

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.

Institutional Challenges in the Data Decade

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

Marion Tattersall, Carmen O'Dell and John Lewis report on Institutional Challenges in the Data Decade, organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) in partnership with the White Rose University Consortium and held 1-3 March 2011 at the University of Sheffield.

International Digital Curation Conference 2010

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

Alex Ball reports on the 6th International Digital Curation Conference, held on 7-8 December 2010 in Chicago.

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.

What Is a URI and Why Does It Matter?

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

Henry S. Thompson describes how recent developments in Web technology have affected the relationship between URI and resource representation and the related consequences.

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. If you have never heard of URIs (or IRIs, the even more recent fully internationalised version), but are familiar with URLs, just think 'URL' whenever you see 'URI' below.)

Historically, URIs were mostly seen as simply the way you accessed Web pages. These pages were hand-authored, relatively stable and simply shipped out on demand. More and more often that is no longer the case; in at least three different ways:

Web pages for reading have been complemented by pictures for viewing, videos for watching and music for listening;
The Web is now more than a conduit for information, it is a means to a variety of ends; we use it to do things: purchase goods and services, contribute to forums, play games;
The things we access on the Web are often not hand-authored or stable, but are automatically synthesised from 'deeper' data sources on demand. Furthermore, that synthesis is increasingly influenced by aspects of the way we initiate the access.

It is against this background that I think it is worth exploring with some care what URIs were meant to be, and how they are being used in practice. In particular, I want to look at what is to be gained from a better understanding of how other kinds of identifiers work.

The Official Version

Insofar as there are definitive documents about all this, they all agree that URIs are, as the third initial says, identifiers, that is, names. They identify resources, and often (although not always) allow you to access representations of those resources. (Words in bold are used as technical terms—their ordinary language meaning is in many cases likely to be more confusing than helpful.)

'Resource' names a role in a story, not an intrinsically distinguishable subset of things, just as 'referent' does in ordinary language. Things are resources because someone created a URI to identify them, not because they have some particular properties in and of themselves.

'Representation' names a pair: a character sequence and a media type. The media type specifies how the character string should be interpreted. For example JPG or HTML or MP3 would be likely media types for representations of an image of an apple, a news report about an orchard or a recording of a Beatles song, respectively.

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.

Data Services for the Sciences: A Needs Assessment

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

Brian Westra describes a data services needs assessment for science research staff at the University of Oregon.

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].

Scientific research data management is a fluid and evolving endeavour, reflective of the high rate of change in the information technology landscape, increasing levels of multi-disciplinary research, complex data structures and linkages, advances in data visualisation and analysis, and new tools capable of generating or capturing massive amounts of data.

These factors can create a complex and challenging environment for managing data, and one in which libraries can have a significant positive role supporting e-science. A needs assessment can help to characterise scientists' research methods and data management practices, highlighting gaps and barriers [2], and thereby improve the odds for libraries to plan appropriately and effectively implement services in the local setting [3].

Methods

An initiative to conduct a science data services needs assessment was developed and approved in early 2009 at the University of Oregon. The initiative coincided with the hiring of a science data services librarian, and served as an initial project for the position. A researcher-centric approach to the development of services was a primary factor in using an assessment to shape services [4]. The goals of the project were to:

define the information services needs of science research staff;
inform the Libraries and other stakeholders of gaps in the current service structures; and
identify research groups or staff who would be willing to participate in, and whose datasets would be good subjects for, pilot data curation projects.

The library took the lead role on the assessment, consulting with other stakeholders in its development and implementation. Campus Information Services provided input on questions regarding campus information technology infrastructure, and to avoid unnecessary overlap with other IT service activities focused on research staff. The Vice President for Research and other organisational units were advised of the project and were asked for referrals to potential project participants. These units provided valuable input in the selection of staff contacts. Librarian subject specialists also suggested staff who might be working with data and interested in participating. Librarians responsible for digital collections, records management, scholarly communications, and the institutional repository were involved in the development of the assessment questions and project plan.

The questions used in the assessment were developed through an iterative process. A literature and Web review located several useful resources and examples. These included the University of Minnesota Libraries' study of scientists' research behaviours [3], and a study by Henty, et al. on the data management practices of Australian researchers [5]. The Data Audit Framework (DAF - now called the Data Asset Framework) methodology was considered to provide the most comprehensive set of questions with a field-tested methodology and guidelines [6][7][8][9][10][11]. The stages outlined in the DAF methodology were also instructive, although we elected not to execute a process for identifying and classifying assets (DAF Stage 2), since the organisational structure of our departments and institutes are not conducive to that level of investigation. From the beginning it was recognised that recruitment of scientists was based as much on their willingness to participate as their responsibility for any specific class or type of research-generated data.

Open Repositories 2010

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

Philip Hunter and Robin Taylor report on the Open Repositories Conference held in Madrid between 6 -9 July 2010 at the Palacio de Congresos.

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.

Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University

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

Shailey Minocha reflects on the one-day symposium organised by Eduserv in May 2010. The aim of the event was to discuss whether and how mobile technology will play a significant role in the delivery of UK Higher Education in the future.

International UPA 2010 Conference User Experience Design for the World

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

Liza Zamboglou and Lorraine Paterson report on the Usability Professionals' Association's International Conference held in Munich, Germany in May 2010.

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.

Usability Inspection of Digital Libraries

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

Lorraine Paterson and Boon Low highlight findings from the usability inspection report conducted for the UX2.0 research project.

The Fourth DCC-RIN Research Data Management Forum

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

Martin Donnelly and Graham Pryor report on the fourth Research Data Management Forum event, on the theme "Dealing with Sensitive Data: Managing Ethics, Security and Trust," organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and Research Information Network (RIN) in Manchester, England, over 10 - 11 March, 2010.

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 2010

DCC 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.

Iain's talk was entitled Opening Bio-Health Data and Models Securely and Effectively for Public Benefit, and addressed three main questions:

Where does the public's health need digital innovation?
How can research curators promote this innovation (and what are the implications for Ethics, Security and Trust)?
Is a framework required (covering the Social Contract and a digital and operational infrastructure)?

A major theme in contemporary healthcare is that of prevention, and the need for proactive 'citizen buy-in' in order to avert NHS bankruptcy, a need supported by the use of 'persuasive technologies.' There is, however, a disconnect between the proactive public health model, and the reactive clinical model, and between expectations and available resource. 'Digital bridges', composed of new information technologies, are used to close the gaps between primary and secondary care, and to link disease-specific pathways.

Iain touched on the impact that the data deluge is having on healthcare, reflecting that knowledge can no longer be managed solely by reading scholarly papers: the datasets and structures now extend far beyond any single study's observations. It is now necessary to build data-centred models, and to interrogate them for clusters via dedicated algorithms.

However, there are holes in the datasets – for example, clinical trials exclude women of childbearing age and subjects undergoing certain treatments – hence electronic health records must be mined in order to fill these gaps, but this can be problematised by a lack of useful metadata, leading to 'healthcare data tombs,' repositories of health records lacking the contextual information to make them useful. Such data resources may be worse than useless: they may be misinformation.

Comprehensible social networks with user-friendly interfaces can be used to improve the quality of metadata, based on the principle that more frequent use leads to better quality information. These networks can also bridge the Balkanisation that can occur when different groups tackle the same issue from varying standpoints (e.g. examining obesity from dietary- and exercise-based perspectives, but not sharing data across these boundaries.) The vision is for a joint, open, unifying and interdisciplinary framework and understanding wherein resources and expertise are shared. Of course, crossing these divides is accompanied by a raft of trust and security issues, and Iain described the various measures that are implemented to cope with them.

Iain discussed the ethical issues surrounding wider use of health record information across the NHS, including consent (opt-in versus opt-out), the right (or lack thereof) of an investigator to go to a patient directly, and – perhaps most controversially – whether it was actually unethical to allow a health dataset to go under-exploited. If this is indeed the case, it follows that there is a real need to audit the demonstrable good that is derived from datasets.

Book Review: Information Science in Transition

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

Michael Day reviews an edited volume published to commemorate the founding of the Institute of Information Scientists in 1958.

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. While the approach of the volume is thematic, a major focus is on key initiatives and individuals, the latter including such luminaries as Jason Farradane, Cyril Cleverden and Karen Spärk Jones.

Following a guest editorial by Brian Vickery, there are sixteen chapters in the book. While each chapter stands alone, conceptually the volume moves - with some exceptions - from largely retrospective reviews of past progress in information science by scholars of the older generation to overviews of current trends and technologies by their younger colleagues. Vickery's editorial tries to place information science in its historical context, explaining how the advent of digital computers and the Internet has transformed the discipline dramatically while simultaneously making its future more uncertain. This is also a view articulated by several of the volume contributors.

The opening chapter is an attempt by Jack Meadows to discern the main research themes in UK information science over the past 50 years. A survey of the Journal of Information Science and other journals showed that the predominant theme was information retrieval, but that there was also important research being undertaken into information seeking, communication and bibliometrics. The chapter also tries to delineate some of the factors affecting information science research in the UK, for example noting the negative consequences of the demise of the old British Library Research and Development Department in the 1990s [1]. He concludes, however, on a positive note, pointing out that 'activities that were relatively marginal decades ago - such as automated information retrieval - are now at the heart of major growth industries' (p. 17). He also notes that the widening interest in information science concepts has brought in researchers from other disciplines - which is probably one of the key lessons of the whole book. In the second chapter, David Bawden (City University) again uses the Journal of Information Science as a means of exploring the development of the information science discipline itself, focusing on the underlying philosophical bases of the subject proposed by scholars like Bertie Brookes and Jason Farradane.

The third chapter is by Stella Dextre Clarke. This is a retrospective of fifty years of knowledge organisation work in the information science domain that takes a partly anecdotal approach, attempting to illustrate 'how it felt to work in those times' (p. 45). Perhaps the best aspect of this is that it enables Dextre Clarke to give the reader a feel for what information retrieval could be like in the card-based pre-computer age. The chapter opens with a brief overview of the state of subject classification in the late 1950s, noting the continued practical predominance of enumerative schemes like the Dewey Decimal Classification while the theoreticians S. R. Ranganathan and Henry E. Bliss were still working away developing their (then) revolutionary ideas of 'faceted classification.' The focus then changes to the development of thesauri, noting the importance of Jean Aitchison's pioneering work on thesaurus construction. Dextre Clarke then provides a very brief overview of the role of controlled vocabularies in the early information retrieval tests conducted as part of the Aslib-Cranfield Research Project, a topic covered in more detail in the following chapter. Finally, moving to the present day, Dextre Clarke notes the continued importance of controlled vocabularies in the form of taxonomies and provides some pointers for a future Semantic Web.

Moving Targets: Web Preservation and Reference Management

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

Richard Davis discusses the role of Web preservation in reference management. This article is based on a presentation given at the Innovations in Reference Management workshop, January 2010.

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.

Yet, increasingly, native Web resources are also becoming eminently citable, and managing both the resources, and references to them, is an ongoing challenge. Moreover, the issues associated with referencing this kind of material have received comparatively little attention, beyond introducing the convention that includes the URL and the date it was accessed in bibliographies. While it may be hard to quantify the "average lifespan of a web page" [1], what is undeniable is that Web resources are highly volatile and prone to deletion or amendment without warning.

Web Preservation is one field of endeavour which attempts to counter the Web's transient tendency, and a variety of approaches continue to be explored. The aim of this article is to convey the fairly simple message that many themes and concerns of Web preservation are equally relevant in the quest for effective reference management in academic research, particularly given the rate at which our dependence on Web-delivered resources is growing.

Digital preservation is, naturally, a strong theme in the work of the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC)'s Digital Archives Department, and Web preservation has featured particularly strongly in recent years. This article will draw upon several initiatives with which we have been involved recently. These include: the 2008 JISC Preservation of Web Resources Project (JISC-PoWR) [2], on which we worked with Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy of UKOLN; our work for the UK Web Archiving Consortium; and the ongoing JISC ArchivePress Project [3] (itself, in many ways, a sequel to JISC-PoWR).

Another perspective that I bring is as a part-time student myself, on the MSc E-Learning programme at Edinburgh University. As a consequence I have papers to read, and write, and a dissertation imminent. So for this reason too I have a stake in making it easier to keep track of information for reading lists, footnotes and bibliographies, whether with desktop tools or Web-based tools, or through features in online VLEs, databases and repositories.

Fedora UK & Ireland / EU Joint User Group Meeting

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

Chris Awre reports on the first coming together of two regional user groups for the Fedora digital repository system, hosted by the University of Oxford in December 2009.

The Fedora digital repository system [1] (as opposed to the Fedora Linux distribution, with which there is no connection) 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.

The RSP Goes 'Back to School'

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Taylor reports on the three-day residential school for repository managers run by the Repositories Support Project (RSP), held on 14-16 September 2009 in Northumberland.

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.

News and Events

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

5th International Digital Curation Conference – Moving to Multi-Scale Science: Managing Complexity and Diversity

Millennium 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.

A DRY CRIG Event for the IE Demonstrator

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

Paul Walk reports on an 'unconference' for developers working in and around the JISC Information Environment and institutional systems, hosted by UKOLN at the University of Bath in June 2008.

News and Events

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

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007: Virtual Worlds, Real Learning?

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

Paul Walk reports on the Eduserv Foundation Symposium which took as its theme 'Virtual Worlds, Real Learning?' and which was primarily concerned with educational uses for Second Life.

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.

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.

2nd International DCC Conference 2006: Digital Data Curation in Practice

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

Alexander Ball and Manjula Patel provide an overview of the second annual conference of the Digital Curation Centre.

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.

News and Events

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

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

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:

A Foundation for Automatic Digital Preservation

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

Miguel Ferreira, Ana Alice Baptista and Jose Carlos Ramalho propose a Service-Oriented Architecture to help cultural heritage institutions to accomplish automatic digital preservation.

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.

Email Curation: Practical Approaches for Long-term Preservation

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

Dave Thompson reports on a two-day conference on Email Curation organised by the Digital Curation Centre.

JISC/CNI Conference, York 2006

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

Najla Semple and Robin Rice were at the JISC / CNI conference 'Envisioning future challenges in networked information'.

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.

The Rustle of Digital Curation: The JISC Annual Conference

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

Julie Allinson, Marieke Guy and Maureen Pennock find themselves contemplating e-frameworks, digital curation and repositories at the JISC Annual Conference.

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.

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.

Excuse Me... Some Digital Preservation Fallacies?

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

Chris Rusbridge argues with himself about some of the assumptions behind digital preservation thinking.

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!

In "After eLib", I wrote this paragraph about digital preservation:

Putting the Library Into the Institution: Using JSR 168 and WSRP to Enable Search Within Portal Frameworks

editor — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Chris Awre, Stewart Waller, Jon Allen, Matthew J Dovey, Jon Hunter and Ian Dolphin describe the investigations and technical development undertaken within the JISC-funded Contextual Resource Evaluation Environment (CREE) Project to enable the presentation of existing search tools within portal frameworks using the JSR 168 and WSRP portlet standards.

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. Each project, as a key part of its investigations, created its own such interface and Web site.

Web Focus: Must Email Die?

editor — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Kelly recently gave a talk on this subject at the Internet Librarian International 2005 conference. In this article he expands on the talk and revisits the question as to whether email really should disappear.

The ILI 2005 Conference

The 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.

Digital Curation: Where Do We Go from Here?

editor — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Peter Kerr, Fiona Reddington and Max Wilkinson report on the 1st International Digital Curation Conference held in Bath in September 2005.

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:

Book Review: Cataloging and Organizing Digital Resources

editor — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Sarah Higgins learns how to incorporate online resources into a library catalogue using AACR2 and MARC, but wonders why the wider issue of organising and describing a full range of digital resources is not addressed.

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.