Overview of content related to 'search technology'

Editorial Introduction to Issue 41: Forces in Train

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

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne 41.

For someone who is relatively ill at ease with numbers, it comes as no surprise that our lives grow increasingly controlled by them in ways which perhaps Orwell did not 'foresee' in 1984. Winston Smith tries very hard to remain an individual, as I hope do we all; indeed it is most often the great individuals whom we either cherish as a national treasure [1], or loathe most enthusiastically, but to whom we are rarely indifferent.

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 Tapir: Adding E-Theses Functionality to DSpace

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

Richard Jones demonstrates how the Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) has provided E-Theses functionality for DSpace.

The Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) [1] has been developed at Edinburgh University Library [2] to help provide an E-Thesis service within an institution using DSpace [3].

Improving Communications Within JISC through News Aggregation

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

Paul Davey explains what JISC is doing to improve communications through more effective news promotion. Roddy MacLeod and Malcolm Moffat examine the technology EEVL has developed in this area.

JISC currently funds thirty-four services across the UK. These can be divided into Network Services (e.g. JANET), Content Services (e.g. BizEd, BUFVC), Development Services (e.g. TechWatch, UKOLN), Support Services (e.g. Regional Support Centres) and Expert Services (e.g. JISC Legal). The people and communities that they serve are varied, but what unites them is that, through JISC-funding, they all carry out some function which supports the needs of UK Further and Higher Education and research.

Developing Portal Services and Evaluating How Users Want to Use Them: The CREE Project

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

Chris Awre, Matthew J Dovey, Jon Hunter, William Kilbride and Ian Dolphin describe the JISC-funded Contextual Resource Evaluation Environment (CREE) Project and its user and technical investigations to examine how users wish to use library search services.

The JISC-funded PORTAL Project [1] examined and established which services users wished to have made available through an institutional portal. The results of this project have provided firm guidance to institutional portal developers in planning the services they wished to present. In particular, there was common demand amongst users for access to library-based services and resources within a portal environment.

What Do Application Profiles Reveal about the Learning Object Metadata Standard?

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

Jean Godby assesses the customised subsets of metadata elements that have been defined by 35 projects using the LOM standard to describe e-learning resources.

A Metadata Standard for Learning Objects

As learning objects grow in number and importance, institutions are faced with the daunting task of managing them. Like familiar items in library collections, learning objects need to be organised by subject and registered in searchable repositories. But they also introduce special problems. As computer files, they are dependent on a particular hardware and software environment.

How the Use of Standards Is Transforming Australian Digital Libraries

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

Debbie Campbell explains how the exploitation of recent standards has allowed the National Library of Australia to digitise its collections and host federated search services and provide an improved service.

The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been able to achieve new business practices such as digitising its collections and hosting federated search services by exploiting recent standards including the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), handles for persistent identification, and metadata schemas for new types of content. Each instantiation of the OAI-PMH opens up new ways of creating and managing our digital libraries while making them more accessible for learning, teaching and research purposes.

Planet-SOSIG

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

Angela Joyce shares her personal impressions from the recent European Digital Libraries Conference in Bath; Emma Place introduces a new seminar series to support online information seeking in the social sciences.

A Digital Day in Bath

On a stormy wet Tuesday, I battled my way through the Bath University campus to attend the 2004 European Conference on Digital Libraries. The keynote address by Neil McLean from IMS Australia was called The Ecology of Repository Services: A Cosmic View and it lived up to its name, being a wide-ranging look at the explosion of interest in digital resources and e-learning. People are just starting to think about the lifecycle of online resources and how to manage them.

EEVL News: EEVL Update

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

Roddy MacLeod and Agnes Guyon look at some recent developments to the EEVL service.

New Sustainable Development section added to the EEVL Catalogue of Engineering Resources

It is now tacitly recognised that engineers, across all sectors of engineering, play an important role in shaping our environment and therefore have a professional responsibility towards ensuring sustainable development.

News from BIOME

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

Jenny Hall and Donald Mackay report on recent news form BIOME, the Health and Life Sciences hub of the Resource Discovery Network.

BIOME Hot Topics

BIOME contains a wealth of information on a wide range of topics in the health and life sciences and we aim to keep introducing new features in line with user needs. As of October 2004 we are trialling a new fortnightly feature - 'Hot Topics'.

Search Engines: New and Developing Search Engines

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

Phil Bradley looks at some existing search engines and also some new ones to bring you up to date on what is happening in the world of Internet search engines.

In the last edition of Ariadne, I wrote about a few search engines that had come to my attention. Obviously the summer months are a fruitful period of development for search engine producers, because I've got a new crop to write about again! There are also some useful Web pages about search engines and developments in existing search engines that I've also discovered, so I'll be making mention of those as well.

ECDL 2004: A Digital Librarian's Report

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

Jessie Hey reports on the 8th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries held at the University of Bath in September 2004.

This year it was the turn of the UK to host this major European conference and researchers and librarians took the opportunity to recharge and hear about and debate the latest research and technology advances in digital libraries. There were 47 peer-reviewed papers - a 32% acceptance rate. Remarkably papers were received from 27 countries.

Sense of the South West Conference: Collaboration for Sustainability

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

Katie Lusty reports on a one-day conference on the sustainability of digitisation projects, held in Bath on 8 October 2004.

The conference on the sustainability of Big Lottery Fund projects was attended by about fifty participants from across the country and there were displays by members of the Sense of the South West Consortium, who organised the event.

News and Events

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

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Hyper Clumps, Mini Clumps and National Catalogues...

The JISC-funded CC-interop Project completed its work during 2004 and now is holding an event to disseminate the key findings of the project. The project built on the work of the successful eLib Phase 3 "Clumps" projects and investigated three broad areas to inform about interoperability between physical and distributed union catalogues. Find out about:

Book Review: Libraries Without Walls 5

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

David Parkes reviews the fifth compilation of the biennial Library Without Walls Conference. He finds how far we have come and how far we have to go in delivering services to distributed learners.

This is the 5th collection of papers from the biennial Libraries Without Walls Conference (LWW5). Reference to the preceding 4 volumes published in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002 respectively is rewarding to see how discourse and practice has developed.

Book Review: Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age

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

Chris Awre finds a useful if limited introduction for those coming new to the field of information representation and retrieval, but is unconvinced by its overall coverage and depth.

There are two distinct aspects covered by this book: information representation and information retrieval. It is refreshing to see a book seek to address these together, as it is important to recognise how interlinked they are. As the author herself indicates in the preface, ' - two chapters of this book are devoted exclusively to information representation, a step that must be taken before information becomes retrievable'.

Book Review: The Information Society - A Study of Continuity and Change

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

Lise Foster finds this a useful scene setter for the novice and valuable reminder for the professional of the challenges facing today's librarian.

In 2000, John Feather concluded the 3rd edition certain that libraries would endure as concrete entities due to the investment of time and money they represent and as bookstores. In this latest edition he is no longer sure, describing the library as no longer a location, but a concept and asking such tough questions as what place do librarians occupy in the context of these new developments and what challenges to our fundamental attitudes and skills must we overcome as we adapt to changing times.