Overview of content related to 'database'

OMNI Seminar

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Debra Hiom reports from the second annual OMNI seminar.

Over 150 people gathered at the Wellcome Institute in London on the 23 January to attend the 2nd Annual OMNI [1] Seminar. This brought together a range of participants including medical academics, library and information professionals and practitioners; a good indication of the impact OMNI has had during its first two years.

A Brief History of the American Library Association Web Site

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

A brief history of the American Library Association Web Site: Rob Carlson, Internet Coordinator of the ALA, introduces us to the acclaimed Web site of the largest Library Association in the World.

The American Library Association's (ALA) web site [1] is a large and growing part of the Association's five-year plan, dubbed ALA Goal 2000, to focus its resources on the public's right to a free and open information society.

Promoting the Internet to Staff at a UK University

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Paul Hollands is the human part of a project to promote the use of Internet based information services among teaching and research staff at the university; in his own words, this is how the project has progressed to date.

I, along with the team of stakeholders whom I report to, have been running this project for ten months now, and we have reached a point where it would be useful to sit back and reflect on what we have achieved thus far and where we go from here.

One of the most important aspects of the job in this first year has been to determine the levels of Internet service use among University staff. Therefore, the first task I had was to survey levels of use of Internet based information sources.

IPL: The Internet Public Library

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Schelle Simcox describes a Web-based public library, designed in many ways to mimic, and improve on, features of and within a real, large-scale library.

The Internet Public Library (IPL) is the first public library created of and for the Internet community and its style and service is similar to any large library. Your experience of the IPL will be different depending upon who you are and your expectations or needs when you visit its homepage. Given your needs, it can be a comforting place to base your explorations of useful material, a place to begin your research, or a place for a child to turn the pages of one of the books in the youth division.

Biz/ed

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Catherine Sladen describes an information gateway for Business Studies and Economics.

Building upon an already self funding project, delivering networked resources and primary materials to students and teachers in the schools and colleges, eLib funding has enabled biz/ed [1].to expand and meet the needs of the students and lecturers in higher education. The project seeks to identify these needs through a series of partnerships and evaluation sessions. Partnerships with both the academic community and the business world enable biz/ed to provide quality resources which meet the needs of students and teachers at all levels.

ERIMS

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Catherine Hanratty issues a call to ERIMS.

Part of the eLib On-demand Publishing Programme, the ERIMS Project aims to test the viability and user environment for provision of reading materials, in electronic format, to a cross section of users in Management Studies.

MIDAS: Manchester Information, Datasets and Associated Services

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Anne McCombe describes a service that provides a wide range of datasets to the wider communities.

MIDAS [1], based at Manchester Computing, University of Manchester, is a National Dataset Service funded by JISC [2], ESRC [3] and the University of Manchester [4], to provide UK academics with online access to large strategic and research datasets, software packages, training and large-scale computing resources. The datasets are supplied by arrangement with CHEST [5] and The Data Archive [6].

Data Archive at the University of Essex

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Denise Lievesley and Bridget Winstanley describe this national resource centre for computer-readable data in the social sciences and humanities.

Abstract

This paper provides a background to the development and ongoing activities of data archives in general and The Data Archive (formerly known as the ESRC Data Archive) at the University of Essex in particular. It describes the main activities involved in running the Archive and explores the benefits for both data producers and data users of a central repository of data. It touches on the growth of The Data Archive in recent years.

Controlling Access in the Electronic Library

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Andy Powell and Mark Gillet discuss methods of electronic authentication.

Abstract

The growth of networking and the Internet has led to more and more information resources being funded centrally by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council) and provided from a single or limited number of locations to the whole of the academic community. Centralised networked services such as these have been a fact of life in commercial organisations for many years and this model is now being adopted by government agencies like the NHS.

MCF: Will Dublin Form the Apple Core

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Jon Knight looks at how Dublin Core and Apple's new MCF metadata file format might make useful and interesting bed fellows.

For many years librarians and computer scientists have been researching and developing metadata standards and technology. Although library OPACs are obviously commercially viable systems for maintaining metadata about hard copy resources, they are something of a niche market still. With the explosion in information provision on the Internet, this niche metadata market is set to explode itself, as an increasing number of companies develop a commercial interest in the provision and support for indexing, cataloging and navigating Internet resources.

Copyright Issues in Projects Funded by the Electronic Libraries Programme

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

After several months experience of dealing with copyright and the eLib programme, Charles Oppenheim returns to the major issues that have a risen.

In this paper I will discuss some of the major copyright issues that have arisen as a result of experiences of the eLib.

Web Access for the Disabled

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Cathy Murtha outlines the problems that audio-visually impaired people encounter when trying to use network-based resources.

If it is true that patience is a virtue, blind people must be the most virtuous people on earth. Waiting is omnipresent in a blind persons life. The simple act of reading a newspaper can be a major undertaking. However this seemingly simple task is accomplished, it requires waiting; waiting for a family member or friend to be available, or waiting for the next scheduled meeting with a paid reader.

Intelligent Searching Agents on the Web

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Tracey Stanley describes Web-based Intelligent Searching Agents, and takes a closer look at a few examples you may wish to play with.

What are Intelligent Searching Agents?

Many web search engines use the concept of a 'spider' - automated software which goes out onto the web and trawls through the contents of each server it encounters, indexing documents as it finds them. This approach results in the kinds of databases maintained by services such as Alta Vista and Excite - huge indexes to a vast chunk of what's currently available on the web. However, the problems which users can face when using such databases are beginning to be well documented.

OMNI Corner

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In her regular appearance in Ariadne, Sue Welsh, introduces a new experiment in network indexing underway at OMNI.

MNI is by no means the first or only of the Electronic Libraries Programme Access to Network Resources projects to experiment with using the well known and popular Harvest software to create descriptions of networked resources automatically. EEVL (the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, for example, recently announced the availability of their own Harvest experiment [1]) and non-eLib gateway projects had in any case, beaten us to it some time ago.

Down Your Way: Durham

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Paul Miller travels to Durham and reports on a mammoth archival digitisation project.

Spread across four sites within the small historic city of Durham, the University Library caters for a diverse range of staff and student requirements, as well as acting in an important archival role for the surrounding area.

Minotaur

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In Minotaur, the collective voice of Internet enthusiasts is countered by words of scepticism or caution. In this issue, Mike Holderness gives a few worrying examples of how much people outside the western hemisphere are behind us in terms of on-line resources.

I live in a small housing co-operative in East London. We have more access to electronic information than does the entire Indian university system. Between 15 of us, we have 72 kilobits per second of network connectivity, with more coming soon. The link between the Indian academic network ERNET [1] and the rest of the universe is 64kbps; some of the institutions on ERNET make do with 9600bps.

Interface: Les Carr Interview

editor — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Steve Hitchcock and Les Carr of the Open Journal Project link up with Ian Budden.

Hypertext links in cyberspace are the subject of fascinating research being undertaken by Steve Hitchcock and Les Carr at Southampton University [2]. They have been funded by [3] to explore, in the Open Journal Project, the use of links within the context of electronic scholarly journals. This work builds upon work being undertaken by the same team in a separate project, the Distributed Link Service (DLS) [4] .