Overview of content related to 'higher education'

Editorial Introduction to Issue 70

lisrw — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:20:23 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne Issue 70.

Welcome to Issue 70 of Ariadne which is full to the brim with feature articles and a wide range of event reports and book reviews.

Upskilling Liaison Librarians for Research Data Management

lisrw — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:27:43 +0000

Andrew Cox, Eddy Verbaan and Barbara Sen explore the design of a curriculum to train academic librarians in the competencies to support Research Data Management.

For many UK HEIs, especially research-intensive institutions, Research Data Management (RDM) is rising rapidly up the agenda. Working closely with other professional services, and with researchers themselves, libraries will probably have a key role to play in supporting RDM. This role might include signposting institutional expertise in RDM; inclusion of the topic in information literacy sessions for PhD students and other researchers; advocacy for open data sharing; or contributing to the management of an institutional data repository.

'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.

Seb Schmoller Replies

lisrw — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:27:42 +0000

Stepping down from his pivotal role as CEO at ALT, Seb Schmoller kindly answers a few questions from Ariadne on his perspective on online learning.

Ariadne: Seb, please tell us a little about yourself.

21st-century Scholarship and Wikipedia

lisrw — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:18:23 +0000

Amber Thomas explores the ways in which emerging research practices and Wikipedia illustrate the changing boundaries of academic work.

Wikipedia, the world’s fifth most-used Web site [1], is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, “Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptance” [2], Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology.

Mining the Archive: The Development of Electronic Journals

lisrw — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:50:18 +0000

Martin White looks through the Ariadne archive to trace the development of e-journals as a particular aspect of electronic service delivery and highlights material he considers as significant.

My career has spanned 42 years in the information business. It has encompassed 10,000-hole optical coincidence cards, online database services, videotext, laser discs, and CD-ROMs, the World Wide Web, mobile services and big data solutions. I find the historical development of information resource management absolutely fascinating, yet feel that in general it is poorly documented from an analytical perspective even though there are some excellent archives.

These archives include the back issues of Ariadne from January 1996. Ariadne has always been one of my must-reads as a way of keeping in touch with issues and developments in e-delivery of information. The recently launched new Ariadne platform [1] has provided easier access to these archives. Looking through its content has reminded me of the skills and vision of the UK information profession as it sought to meet emerging user requirements with very limited resources. The archives have always been available on the Ariadne site but the recent update to the site and the availability of good tags on the archive content has made it much easier to mine through the archive issues.

The Ariadne team, in particular Richard Waller, has given me the opportunity to mine those archives [2] and trace some of the developments in electronic service delivery in the UK.

Indeed working through the archives is now probably too easy as in the preparation of this column I have found myself moving sideways from many of the feature articles to revel in the other columns that have been a feature of Ariadne. This article is a personal view of some of these developments and is in no way intended to be a definitive account. Its main purpose is to encourage others to look into the archive and learn from the experiences of the many innovators that have patiently coped with the challenges of emerging technology, resource limitations and often a distinct lack of strategy and policy at both an institutional and government level.

Figure 1: Optical coincidence card, circa 1970

e-Journal Development

Arriving at the University of Southampton in 1967 my main surprise was not the standard of the laboratories but the quality and scale of the Chemistry Department library. School does not prepare you for reading primary journals and how best to make use of Chemical Abstracts, but I quickly found that working in the library was much more fun than in a laboratory. I obtained an excellent result in one vacation project on physical chemistry problems by reverse engineering the problems through Chemical Abstracts! Therefore, as it turned out, I had started my career as an information scientist before I even graduated. By 1977 I was working with The Chemical Society on the micropublishing of journals and taking part in a British Library project on the future of chemical information. Re-reading the outcomes of that project makes me realise how difficult it is to forecast the future. Now my past has re-asserted itself to good effect as I have both the honour and excitement of being Chair of the eContent Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Figure 2: Laser disc, circa 1980

So from my standpoint, in seeking to identify distinct themes in the development of information resource management in Ariadne, a good place to start is with the e-markup of chemical journals. In Issue 1 Dr Henry Rzepa wrote about the potential benefits of the semantic markup of primary journals to provide chemists with access to the content of the journal article and not just to a contents page and title [4]. The immediate problem you face reading this admirable summary of the potential benefits of markup is that many of the hyperlinks have disappeared. History has been technologically terminated. Almost 15 years passed by before the Royal Society of Chemistry set up Project Prospect and turned semantic markup into a production process [4]. Dr Rzepa is now Professor of Computational Chemistry at Imperial College, London.

By the mid-1990s good progress had been made in e-journal production technologies and the first e-only journals were beginning to appear. Among them was Glacial Geology and Geomorphology (GGG) which existed in a printed version only in as far as readers could print out a selection from it. One aim of GGG is therefore to provide the benefits of electronic transfer as well as other value added products in an accepted academic, peer-reviewed system. The author of the article describing the project [5] was Dr. Brian Whalley, who went on to become a Professor in the Geomaterials Research Group, Queens University of Belfast. As you will discover from his author profile (another Ariadne innovation), Brian is still active though retired from formal education. What struck me about this article was the author’s vision in January 1996 of how e-journals could be of benefit in university teaching.

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: The Embedded Librarian

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:32:15 +0000

John Azzolini reviews a comprehensive overview of embedded librarianship, a new model of library service that promises to enhance the strategic value of contemporary knowledge work.

Librarianship as a profession is confronting a growing demand to prove its worth. Library patrons expect utility. The organisations that fund them pre-suppose a contribution to their bottom lines.

The calls for this proof come from librarians themselves as much as from their employers. And the tone of the questioning is persistent if not redundant. It can be distilled to a fundamental query: Can the library sustain its basic mission of effectively and efficiently fulfilling its users' information needs given the technological, social, and economic developments that are transforming how people interact with data, documents, and each other?

Librarianship: In Search of the Value Proposition

These transformations have been occurring for some time, in different areas of living and working. Though not flowing from a single source, for librarians the impacts from these changes have seemingly converged on their profession as if they were collusive forces.

A global financial crisis and its lingering downturns have resulted in deeper budget cuts for many departments in every type of institution, public and private. A rising trend toward direct information consumption has caused many everyday users as well as executives to believe that removing librarians from the knowledge cycle is the next logical step. Caught within the sights of cost-conscious decision makers, libraries and information centres have become vulnerable to downsizing.

Students enter universities - even secondary schools - wedded unconsciously to their handhelds, always connected, assuming unmitigated and near-immediate digital satisfaction for their knowledge wants. Most of them were born into this socio-technical life-world as if it were a natural order. They know and expect nothing else. In such an environment, librarians orchestrate access but need not be confronted. They maintain crucial databases and finding aids, but can do so unseen and disembodied. They can be relegated to infrastructural innards.

For-profit organisations, the home of law firm and business librarians, are looking upon the outsourcing of support staff with increasing favour. And while library positions have not yet been handed over wholesale to third-party providers, there is industry trepidation that it could move in that direction. The threat is vague but distinctly present.

Many have taken to the outlets of library opinion and prediction, warning of impending disintermediation and possible obsolescence if the field fails to embrace drastic changes in how it carries out its service mission. Blogs, journals, and conferences are animated with calls to re-conceptualise philosophies and re-direct core methods. Some commentators merely emit distress signals on behalf of the library community. They are invocations of crisis without even a stab at real solutions. Others, however, are serious attempts to map out alternative pathways to a more stable occupational future. These need to be reckoned with.

A common path taken by the more constructive endeavours is demonstrating how librarianship can re-establish its value in a rapidly changing environment. This value is understood to be the knowledge-creating and disseminating efficacies that libraries bring to their users more ably and with less cost than other institutions. Since libraries are housed and financially supported by parent organisations of some kind, the value is usually construed as a combination of business and mission-relevant attributes. The emphasis on mission may be more pronounced in academic and public libraries, while corporate and firm libraries stress the financial aspects, but it is ultimately about how management assesses the library's contributions to the organisation's long-term integrity. Granted, the value has a large practical component for a library's patrons; the direct benefits are the answers, leads, and guidance they obtain when visiting the reference desk or searching the collections. However, the final criterion for most libraries will be the value proposition attributed to them by upper-level decision makers. User satisfaction is a valuable standard, but in the end it is often translated into a determination of whether the library produces distinct results in light of the resources devoted to maintaining it.

A concrete attempt to re-assert the business and service value of librarians has been the adoption of the practice model known as embedded librarianship. Although it has been applied in libraries in one form or another for a few decades - without necessarily using the word ‘embedded’ - only in the past several years has it risen to widespread notability. Judging by the upsurge in professional discussions and published cases devoted to this approach, librarians of many types are expressing keen interest in the value-enhancing potential of embedding themselves. Its contemporary significance is fully examined by David Shumaker in The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where It's Needed. The author, an associate professor at The Catholic University of America's School of Library and Information Science in Washington, D.C., is a well-known chronicler of embedded practices. This book is the field's first attempt at a comprehensive review of embedded librarianship's shared features, variable manifestations, and elements for success among major types of libraries.

Evaluation of Assessment Diaries and GradeMark at the University of Glamorgan

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 12:26:56 +0000

Karen Fitzgibbon and Alice Lau describe a JISC-funded project in evaluating the pedagogical and workload impact that two assessment- and feedback-related innovations have on students and staff and report on lessons for the sector.

Assessment and feedback practice in Higher Education has long been the major source of student dissatisfaction (National Student Surveys) [1]. While technologies are increasingly being used as a tool to improve the learning experience for students and staff, the use of technologies in improving the assessment experience is still patchy.

Launching a New Community-owned Content Service

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:36:05 +0000

Caren Milloy describes some of the challenges overcome and lessons learned by JISC Collections during the development of JISC eCollections.

JISC eCollections is a set of e-resource platforms launched in November 2011 by JISC Collections, in partnership with the JISC data centres EDINA and Mimas. The platforms (Figure 1) are JISC MediaHub, JISC Historic Books and JISC Journal Archives; together, they are intended to provide a sustainable, value-for-money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms, by consolidating and hosting the broad range of historical book, journal archive and multimedia content purchased by JISC Collections on behalf of the UK education community. The vision is to provide a world-class collection that ensures users’ broadest information needs are well met, and to work in partnership with the community to improve and develop the platforms around evolving student and researcher expectations.

Background

The primary role of JISC Collections is the licensing of content on behalf of its UK Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) member organisations. Over the last 10 years, JISC Collections has invested over £40 million in centralised licensing of digital content, in perpetuity, on behalf of all its members. The first agreement was signed in 2002 for ProQuest’s Early English Books Online (EEBO). Since then, national licences have been negotiated for historic books, journal archives and multimedia content (Figure 1), such as documentaries and educational films. In 2010, JISC Collections invested a further £2.5 million in film and image content, representing UK and world history since 1987, specially selected for teaching and learning. The majority of JISC Collections’ member organisations would be unable to afford per-institution subscriptions to these book, journal and multimedia collections, so centralised licensing is critical to broadening access.

Figure 1: The three platforms that make up the JISC eCollections service

Why Develop JISC eCollections?

The platforms contain more than 4.5 million resources from over 20 providers. JISC Collections members were previously required to access this content via a range of separate services, each with different user interfaces and administrative requirements, and with a complex funding set-up including both JISC subsidies and publisher access fees payable by each institution. JISC Collections felt that its existing – and future – investments in content would best be protected and preserved by developing an independent service, as an affordable alternative to relying on content providers for access to perpetually licensed content. Such a service would allow the education community to take ownership of its acquisitions and assure it of future control. In 2011 each group of resources was consolidated into one platform to increase discoverability, simplify the user experience (making it more inclusive to users at all academic levels), reduce the administrative burden, and thereby enable maximum value to be derived from the initial content investments.

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.

Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Acceptance in Academic Environments

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:26:22 +0000

In the light of a workshop run by the Geological Society of London and Wikimedia UK, Brian Whalley reflects on the attitudes and practice of academia in respect of present-day Wikipedia content.

Wikipedia has become internationally known as an online encyclopaedia ('The Free Encyclopedia'). Developed by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and launched in 2001 it has, to date, editions in 285 languages. Wikipedia is but one subset of the Web-based applications known as 'wikis'. The original wiki (as wikiwikiweb) was developed by Ward Cunningham in the 1990s as the least complex way of rapidly sharing and communicating 'information'. Wiki is Hawaiian for 'quick'; repeating the word is equivalent to adding 'very'.

Moving Ariadne: Migrating and Enriching Content with Drupal

lisrw — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:47:36 +0000

Thom Bunting explains some of the technology behind the migration of Ariadne (including more than 1600 articles from its back issues archive) onto a Drupal content management platform.

Tools and strategies for content management are a perennial topic in Ariadne. With more than one hundred articles touching on content management system (CMS) technologies or techniques since this online magazine commenced publication in 1996, Ariadne attests to continuing interest in this topic. Authors have discussed this topic within various contexts, from intranets to repositories and Web 2.0, with some notable surges in references to 'content management' between 2000 and 2005 (see Figure 1 below). Although levels of discussion are by no means trending, over recent years it is clear that Ariadne authors have taken note of and written about content management tools and techniques on a regular basis.

In the light of this long-established interest, it is noteworthy that Ariadne itself migrated into a content management system only recently. Although the formatting of its articles did change a few times since 1996, Ariadne remained 'hand-coded' for more than fifteen years. None of its articles had been migrated into a database-driven content management system until March 2012, when issue 68 was published.

As mentioned in the editorial introduction to that first issue, launching the new content management arrangements, and as discussed in some more detail below (see 'Technical challenges in content migration'), the considerable size of Ariadne's archive of back issues was daunting. With more than 1600 articles in hand-coded 'flat'-html formats, the process of migration itself required careful planning to result in a seamless, graceful transition into an entirely new content management arrangement. Over time, the sheer size of the Ariadne corpus had made it both increasingly rich in content and increasingly more challenging to convert retrospectively into a database-driven CMS as the total number of articles published within this online magazine steadily expanded.

In looking back over the recent process of migrating Ariadne onto a CMS platform, this article discusses some tools and techniques used to prepare content for transfer, testing, and then re-launch. After explaining some of the background to and objectives of this work, this article focuses on key features of content management supported by Drupal.

Figure 1: Ariadne timeline of references to content management

Requirements Analysis: Planning the Way Forward

Based on surveys of readers and authors conducted in late 2010, the Ariadne management team analysed the range of feedback, drew up sets of re-development requirements, and then considered the options available.

The following table provides an overview of key findings regarding the range of enhanced functionality and features considered:

Overview of findings derived from survey responses
enhanced functionality or feature	interest recorded in surveys
browsing by keywords	73.4% of respondents
updated look and feel	62.3% of respondents
browsing by title	50.0% of respondents
enhanced use of search engine	48.0% of respondents
improved display for portable devices	34.0% of respondents
more summative information on articles	32.1% of respondents
improved navigability from article level	32.1% of respondents
improved social media options	29.5% of respondents
browsing by author	28.0% of respondents
improved RSS feeds	27.0% of respondents

In addition to these findings derived from surveys, the management team also recognised the need for some other functionalities to support monitoring of Ariadne's on-going engagement with various domains and institutions across the UK and beyond.

Additional features to support monitoring of engagement
identification of author domains (higher education, further education, research, commercial, etc)	to support analysis of Ariadne connections and reach across various sectors
identification of authors by organisation	to support analysis of Ariadne connections and reach in UK and worldwide

Taking into account the key findings derived from survey questions as well as the additional functionality identified as useful in monitoring UK and worldwide engagement, the Ariadne management team drew up sets of re-development requirements and considered how to proceed. Migration into a content management system represented the obvious way forward, as it became clear that Ariadne's previous tradition of 'hand-coded' production (dating from the early days of the Web) had little chance of coping gracefully with the new sets of requirements.

In a review of CMS options available, it also became clear that Drupal [1] was well positioned as a content management system (or, emphasising its highly modular and extensible design, content management framework [2] ) to supply required functionality and features.

Walk-in Access to e-Resources at the University of Bath

lisrw — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:10:21 +0000

Kate Robinson, Lizz Jennings and Laurence Lockton outline a low-cost solution to walk-in (visitor) access to licensed e-journals, drawing on their practice at the University of Bath with a wiki ERM and OPAC terminals.

Although the move from print to electronic journals over the last two decades has been enormously beneficial to academic libraries and their users, the shift from owning material outright to renting access has restricted the autonomy of librarians to grant access to these journals.

The Problem

Licence restrictions imposed by publishers define and limit access rights and librarians have increasingly taken on the role of restricting access on behalf of the publisher, rather than granting access on behalf of their institution. In other words, librarians and their institutions are no longer free to decide who may read this material as they no longer own it.

This situation has been the subject of negotiation for some time, and it is fair to say that an accommodation has been reached in many cases through less restrictive licensing terms. Some clearer definition of groups who can use e-journals has eased the situation for 'authorised users', such as those teaching students of an institution who are not directly employed by the institution itself, for example, through franchised courses. However, there is still a group of potential users who do not have a relationship with an institution other than a wish to access the Library's holdings to further their research or their curiosity. In the past, such access was at the discretion of the Librarian but with regard to e-journals it is now set out in publishers’ licences, usually under the terms of 'walk-in access' to these resources. This in itself is a positive move and seemingly restores some access control to the Librarian. In practice, however, it has not proved to be straightforward to implement.

In general terms e-journal access, although via the Web, piggybacks on established University IT systems and safeguards which have not always been specifically designed to support the licence restrictions of publishers. The definition of an authorised user for walk-in access is usually one who has been granted access to the Library building. This requirement for e-journal material to be restricted to the actual library building, not just University premises, presents a technical challenge. It is not reasonable to expect a University's IT infrastructure to be redesigned to accommodate the needs of those who are not part of the institution. However, there is a balance to be struck as a tipping point has been reached, with journal holdings become increasingly e-only and widening participation becoming increasingly important to institutions.

There are a growing number of groups who would like would and benefit from walk-in access. In recent years requests for access to e-journals have become more frequent from library users, such as researchers who already use and borrow hard-copy materials through the SCONUL Access scheme, and school/college students undertaking Extended Project or International Baccalaureate qualifications. Clearly it is desirable to support the research community of which we are part, and to encourage EP/IB students whose next steps may well be into Higher Education. Visits for school/college groups are increasingly encouraged at institutional level and often include teaching and other intensive support from library staff; support which increases as the range of material they are authorised to access decreases. Research areas and subjects for these pieces of work are diverse and cannot be easily satisfied through textbook material or residual hard-copy journal holdings. In this climate, we need to look again at how to implement walk-in access to open up resources wherever possible. To do this we first need to take two steps: to identify which online material we can allow access to and to facilitate access through a route which meets licence terms, that is, to this material only within the library building.

Eduserv Symposium 2012: Big Data, Big Deal?

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:48:45 +0000

Marieke Guy attended the annual Eduserv Symposium on 10 May 2012 at the Royal College of Physicians, London to find out what are the implications of big data for Higher Education Institutions.

The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management.

JISC Research Information Management: CERIF Workshop

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:46:13 +0000

Rosemary Russell reports on a two-day workshop on research information management and CERIF held in Bristol over 27-28 June 2012.

Table of Contents

Workshop Scope and Aims
The New CERIF Support Project at the ISC, UKOLN
UK CERIF Landscape
UK Involvement in euroCRIS and Other International Initiatives

A workshop on Research Information Management (RIM) and CERIF was held in Bristol on 27-28 June 2012, organised by the Innovation Support Centre [1] at UKOLN, together with the JISC RIM and RCSI (Repositories and Curation Shared Infrastructure) Programmes. It was a follow-up to the CERIF Tutorial and UK Data Surgery [2] held in Bath in February.

Workshop Scope and Aims

The aim was to bring together people working on the various elements of the UK RIM jigsaw to share experience of using CERIF and explore ways of working together more closely. While the first day focused specifically on RIM, the second day widened to explore synergies with the repositories community. Participants therefore included JISC RIM and MRD projects and programme managers, support and evaluation projects, Research Councils, funders and repository infrastructure projects. There were around 30 participants [3] in total, with some variation across the two days, given the different content. The event was chaired by Josh Brown, RIM Programme Manager and Neil Jacobs, Programme Director, Digital Infrastructure, both at JISC. All presentations as well as breakout session outputs are available via the UKOLN ISC Events site [4].

The New CERIF Support Project at the ISC, UKOLN

The UK community was pleased to welcome Brigitte Jörg [5] to the meeting, in the first week of her new role at UKOLN’s Innovation Support Centre as National Coordinator for the CERIF Support Project. Brigitte is already well known to British practitioners working with CERIF – both in her role as as CERIF Task Group Leader [6] at euroCRIS and as advisor to several existing JISC projects. We look forward to working with her on further initiatives – her CERIF expertise will be a huge asset for Research Information Management support and coordination in British Higher Education.

UK CERIF Landscape

There is certainly extensive RIM-related activity in the UK currently, which looks set to continue. The landscape was outlined in the scene setting sessions by myself, based on the CERIF adoption study [7] carried out earlier this year. The rate of CRIS (Current Research Information System) procurement has increased very rapidly in the last few years, particularly during 2011. For example the first Pure system in the UK was procured jointly by the Universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews in May 2009; now there are 19 UK universities using Pure. Since all CRIS on the market are CERIF-compatible (to a greater or lesser extent) this means that a large number of UK institutions are CERIF users (again, to varying degrees) – around 31% [7]. The two other CERIF CRIS being used in the UK are CONVERIS (Avedas, Germany) and Symplectic Elements (UK-based); only one UK CERIF CRIS is being developed in-house, at the University of Huddersfield. There is therefore a significant potential user base for the many CERIF-based services discussed over the course of the workshop. Particularly as more institutions reach the end of their CRIS implementation phase, they are going to be looking for opportunities to exploit the interchange benefits offered by CERIF.

UK Involvement in euroCRIS and Other International Initiatives

As a reflection of the intensity of UK CRIS activity, the UK has the largest number of institutional members of euroCRIS – 25. The next country in terms of membership is Germany, with just 13 members (and then the Netherlands, with seven). It is also notable that there were six UK papers (up from three in 2010) at the recent euroCRIS conference in Prague (all openly accessible from the euroCRIS website [8]), reflecting the growing UK presence at international level. This indicates the significant impact of JISC programmes - both RIM and MRD (Managing Research Data). At euroCRIS meetings other European countries have expressed some envy of the resources currently available in the UK to support RIM development!

Book Review: Implementing Technology in Libraries

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:49:35 +0000

Elizabeth McHugh reviews a first published work that she feels is a straightforward, jargon-free guide on how to implement technology solutions in libraries.

At some point in our careers there may, indeed in these fast moving technological times, will be a period or periods when we will be required to be part of, lead or manage a project implementing technology solutions in libraries. At 173 pages long, with 13 chapters and 5 appendices, the author seeks to provide the reader with a clear, practitioner-written, jargon-free guide to doing so.

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.

Book Review: Information Need - A Theory Connecting Information Search to Knowledge Formation

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Brian Whalley reviews a book about a new theory of ‘information need’ that builds upon the ideas of Allen and Taylor from the 1960s to provide a basis for information searching.

The front cover tells you succinctly what this book is about; 'A theory Connecting - Information Search – to – Knowledge Formation.' Equally bluntly, I shall set out my credentials for this review. I am not a library/informational professional but I have an interest in delivering digital and information skills to students. I have read and reviewed this book to further my own knowledge of the subject, as well as to see what (new?) ways there are for students to use search tools and methods as well as enhance both their digital and information literacies.

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.

Delivering Open Educational Resources for Engineering Design

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

Mansur Darlington describes two methods for presenting online OERs for engineering design that were developed and explored as part of the Higher Education Academy/JISC-funded DelOREs (Delivering Open Educational Resources for Engineering Design) Project.

A great deal of information is accessible on the World Wide Web which might be useful to both students and teachers. This material, however, is of variable quality and usefulness and is aimed at a wide spectrum of users. Moreover, such material rarely appears accompanied by guidance on how it may be most effectively used by potential users. To make information more usable it must be made more readily discoverable and there should be clear – and preferably machine-readable – indications of its provenance and quality and the legitimate uses to which it may be put.

The CLIF Project: The Repository as Part of a Content Lifecycle

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

Richard Green, Chris Awre and Simon Waddington describe how a digital repository can become part of the technical landscape within an institution and support digital content lifecycle management across systems.

At the heart of meeting institutional requirements for managing digital content is the need to understand the different operations through which content goes, from planning and creation through to disposal or preservation. Digital content is created using a variety of authoring tools. Once created, the content is often stored somewhere different, made accessible in possibly more than one way, altered as required, and then moved for deletion or preservation at an appropriate point.

Welsh Libraries and Social Media: A Survey

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

Alyson Tyler outlines the results of a survey of Welsh libraries, their access to, and use of, social media, and offers a sample business case.

Librarians are, in general, often quick to pick up and experiment with new technologies, integrating them into their work to improve the library service. Social media are no exception. This article seeks to show how the adoption of social media by different library sectors in Wales is helping to deliver and promote their library services.

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 Third Annual edUi Conference 2011

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:26:07 +0000

Danielle Cooley reports on the third annual edUi Conference, held over 13-14 October 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA, an opportunity for Web professionals in colleges, universities, libraries, museums, etc to discuss the latest developments in Web trends and technologies.

The third annual edUi Conference [1] was held October 13-14, 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The sold-out event saw 225 ‘Web professionals serving colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and beyond’ join together to discuss the latest and greatest in Web trends and technologies. The all-volunteer conference was presented by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and major sponsors included Microsoft, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

The two-day event consisted of four tracks [2]:

Book Review: University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments

lisrw — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:38:31 +0000

Sylvie Lafortune reviews a collection of essays that examine the transformation of academic libraries as they become part of digital learning environments.

This book examines how academic libraries are realigning themselves with the university of the 21^st century, which is increasingly becoming a digital learning environment. The expectations of the Google generation, the interdependence of teaching and research, and the changing roles of library staff and technology all play a fundamental part in this environment–and to lead the discussions in this book, the editors have called on 18 experts and practitioners.

eSciDoc Days 2011: The Challenges for Collaborative eResearch Environments

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:20:52 +0000

Ute Rusnak reports on the fourth in a series of two-day conferences called eSciDoc Days, organised by FIZ Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Digital Library in Berlin over 26-27 October 2011.

eSciDoc is a well-known open source platform for creating eResearch environments using generic services and tools based on a shared infrastructure. This concept allows for managing research and publication data together with related metadata, internal and/or external links and access rights. Development of eSciDoc was initiated by a collaborative venture between FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Book Review: Innovations in Information Retrieval

lisrw — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:11:39 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on a wide range of current topics and challenges in information retrieval.

Information Retrieval and Enterprise Search

For much of 2011 I worked on a project commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, on a techno-economic study of enterprise search in Europe. There is no dispute that the volume of information inside organisations is growing very rapidly, though much of this growth is the result of never discarding any digital information. The scale of the problem is well documented by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in its report on 'Big Data' [1].

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.

MyMobileBristol

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

Mike Jones, Simon Price, Nikki Rogers and Damian Steer describe the rationale, aims and progress of MyMobileBristol, highlighting some of the challenges and opportunities that have arisen during the project.

The MyMobileBristol Project is managed and developed by the Web Futures group at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol [1]. The project has a number of broad and ambitious aims and objectives, including collaboration with Bristol City Council on the development or adoption of standards with regard to the exchange of time- and location-sensitive data within the Bristol region, with particular emphasis on transport, the environment and sustainability.

Piloting Web Conferencing Software: Experiences and Challenges

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

Julian Prior and Marie Salter report on their experiences piloting Elluminate Live! at the University of Bath.

In the current fiscal climate faced by educational institutions in the UK, elearning tools and technologies that promise efficiency savings as well as enhancing the quality and quantity of course offerings are gaining popularity. One such technology is Web conferencing where lectures, seminars, meetings or presentations take place online and allow for remote participation and collaboration via audio, video, instant chat and a virtual 'whiteboard.'[1].

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)

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

Bernard M Scaife describes how an innovative use of the EPrints repository software is helping to preserve official documents from the Web.

When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian's life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still.

Looking for the Link Between Library Usage and Student Attainment

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

Graham Stone, Bryony Ramsden and Dave Pattern introduce the JISC-funded Library Impact Data Project (LIDP).

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.

A Double-edged Sword: What Are the Implications of Freedom of Information for the HE Sector?

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

Amy Gibbons reports on the second in a series of workshops organised by the Research Information Network to explore the impact of the Freedom of Information Act on the Higher Education sector, held at University College London on 1 April 2011.

UK Reading Experience Database

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

Bethan Ruddock reports from the launch event for the UK Reading Experience Database, held at the Betty Boothroyd Library, the Open University, Milton Keynes, on 24 February 2011.

I was invited down to the Open University (OU) Betty Boothroyd Library in Milton Keynes for the launch of the UK Reading Experience Database (UK RED) [1]. I had been asked to attend to talk about the LOCAH Project and Linked Data, but I was also looking forward to learning about the RED Project.

This was the first of two launch days, and was designed for librarians, archivists, and information managers. A second launch day for teachers in Higher Education was to be held in London the next day.

What Is UK RED?

The tagline for UK RED is 'the experience of reading in Britain from 1450 to 1945', and the database brings together reading experiences, making them both searchable and browsable. What is a reading experience? It is evidence of anyone alive between the mid-15th and 20thcenturies having read and interacted with a book or other piece of writing, such as magazines, newspapers, letters - even playbills and advertisements. Ownership alone is not enough; there must be something to show that the person in question actually read the work or at least part of it.

This information can be found in a number of places - a printed book review would be an obvious example. The RED team also find many entries in diaries. Such entries can range from simple lists of books that someone has read over the course of a year, to detailed descriptions of when and where they read a particular book, and how they felt about it. Often diary entries are not actually about the book; it is mentioned in passing and in the context of a number of other activities.

While the owner's name on the flyleaf is not itself enough to justify a 'reading experience', annotations to the text are, as they show that the person has actually interacted with the text. Of course, you then have to consider whether the person whose name is on the flyleaf is the same as the person doing the annotating!

RED is much more than a list of 'people who have read books'. The database aims to bring out as much information as possible about the reading experience. The interface to submit a new entry allows you to specify where the reading was taking place, all the way down to a particular room in a particular house. It also aims to identify if the reading was silent or aloud, alone or with other people; whether the book was owned by the reader, a library book, borrowed, or even stolen. All these data are then used to build up a rich database of information on who was reading what (and how!) in Britain.

UK RED is not just concerned with reading experiences within Britain: team members also look at the reading experiences of citizens abroad. Edmund King, Research Associate, Reading Experience Database, OU, told us that, as a consequence, there are fascinating examples of what captured British soldiers were reading in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps as well as examples of what they were not allowed to read. Books in Welsh and Pakistani were banned, as well as atlases and anything about the Russian revolution. I do not know if there are corresponding records for what prisoners in UK POW camps were forbidden to read, but it would be very interesting to find out.

Book Review: Envisioning Future Academic Library Services

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

John Azzolini reviews a timely collection of essays that highlights the values of institutional leadership and resourcefulness in academic librarianship's engagements with Web 2.0.

Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous.

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.

Never Waste a Good Crisis: Innovation and Technology in Institutions

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

Tore Hoel reports on the CETIS 2010 Conference, 15 - 16 November 2010 at the National College for Leadership of Schools and Childrens' Services Conference Centre, Nottingham.

'I get a feeling that we are on a...' [The hands make a gesture to show the stern of a sinking ship].