Table of contents: issue31

Setting up an Institutional E-Print Archive

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

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

This article outlines some of the main stages in setting up an institutional e-print archive. It is based on experiences at the universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham which have both recently developed pilot e-print servers(1). It is not the intention here to present arguments in favour of open access e-print archives – this has been done elsewhere(2). Rather, it is hoped to present give an account of some of the practical issues that arise in the early stages of establishing an archive in a higher education institution.

Oxford Puts Its Reference Works Online

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

Dave Swarbrick on the new Oxford University Press reference Web site.

What or who is ‘Ariadne’? She was, of course, the girl who fell in love with Theseus, who gave him the thread by which he found his way out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. Her story was made into an opera by Strauss in which some of the greatest operatic stars have performed. But did you know that it has also inspired other composers like Handel, Dukas, Monteverdi, Haydn, and Musgrave, and many choreographers too? A Cretan dialect gave rise to the name, and St Ariadne was a Phrygian martyr.

The Distributed National Collection Access, and Cross-sectoral Collaboration: The Research Support Libraries Programme

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

Ronald Milne, Director of the programme, with an overview of the objectives for the Research Support Libraries Programme.

The Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), a £30m initiative funded by the four UK higher education funding bodies, has spawned 53 projects and a number of studies and other activities. This brief overview aims to give a flavour of the Programme. Articles relating to particular projects will appear in future issues of Ariadne.

The Open Archives Forum

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

Susanne Dobratz, Friederike Schimmelpfennig and Peter Schirmbacher introduce the new Open Archives Forum project to promote the ideas of the OAI in Europe.

The Open Archives Forum: Mission and Goals

The Open Archives Forum provides a European focus for the dissemination of information about European activities in Open Archives. A particular focus is on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The Open Archives Forum aims to promote the idea of globally distributed digital archives within Europe, to support the establishment of new digital archives and their related services, and to initiate European special interest groups. It is important to add particular European interests to already existing models such as the Open Archives Initiative.

The JISC Information Environment and Web Services

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

Andy Powell and Liz Lyon look at possible relationships between the Web Services idea and earlier ideas about seamless access to information.

The JISC Information Environment

The Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) [1] is a JISC-funded, managed, heterogeneous collection of information resources and services (bibliographic, full-text, image, video, geo-spatial, datasets, etc.) of particular value to the further and higher education communities. The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) [2] is the set of networked services that allows people to discover, access, use and publish resources within the DNER.

The AIM25 Project

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

Robert Baxter, Frances Blomeley and Rachel Kemsley present AIM25, a project providing electronic access to descriptions of archives held in various London institutions.

AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25 area), a project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) [1], and led by King's College London, provides a single point of networked access to collection descriptions of archives held in 49 higher education (HE) institutions and learned societies in the greater London area. The project has intended, where possible, to be comprehensive in its coverage of holdings by including deposited collections, in a wide range of subject areas, and also the administrative records of the participating institutions.

Collection Description Focus: Spreading the Gospel

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

Bridget Robinson and Pete Johnston with an overview of CLD activities in the first year.

The UK Collection Description Focus [1] was launched on 1 June 2001. It is a national post, jointly funded for a twelve-month period by the Joint Information Systems Committee/Distributed National Electronic Resource (JISC/DNER) [2], the Research Support Libraries Program (RSLP) [3] and the British Library [4]. The Focus is working towards improving co-ordination on collection description methods, schemas and tools, with the goal of ensuring consistency and compatibility of approaches across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors.

eVALUEd: An Evaluation Model for e-Library Developments

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

Becky Hartland-Fox and Pete Dalton on a project to develop a transferable model for e-library evaluation.

Project background

eVALUEd is a HEFCE funded project, based at the University of Central England. It has been set-up to develop a transferable model for e-library evaluation in Higher Education and to provide dissemination and training in e-library evaluation.