Overview of content related to 'usability'

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.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 69

lisrw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:45:13 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne Issue 69.

Never blessed with any sporting acumen, I have to confess to a degree of ambivalence towards the London Olympics unfolding around this issue as it publishes. That does not mean that I do not wish all the participants well in what after all is an enormous achievement just to be able to compete there at all. While I admit to not watching every team walk and wave, I cannot deny that the beginning and end of the Opening Ceremony [1] did grab my attention. Who could blame me? I suspect we sat as a nation terrified to discover what this would say about us all.

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.

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.

Adapting VuFind as a Front-end to a Commercial Discovery System

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

Graham Seaman describes the adaptation of an open source discovery tool, VuFind, to local needs, discusses the decisions which needed to be made in the process, and considers the implications of this process for future library discovery systems.

VuFind is an open source discovery system originally created by Villanova University near Philadelphia [1] and now supported by Villanova with the participation in development of libraries around the world. It was one of the first next-generation library discovery systems in the world, made possible by the open source Solr/Lucene text indexing and search system which lies at the heart of VuFind (Solr also underlies several of the current commercial offerings, including Serials Solutions' Summon and ExLibris' Primo).

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]:

Editorial Introduction to Issue 67: Changes Afoot

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

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 67.

For readers who might have been wondering, I shall resist Mark Twain's remark about reports of his demise being exaggerated, and reassure you that while Ariadne has been undergoing changes to the way in which it will be delivered to the Web, it has been business as usual in the matter of the content, as you will see from the paragraphs that follow. Issue 67, while currently not looking any different, is in the process of being migrated to a new platform developed to enhance functionality and give a more user-friendly look and feel to the publication.

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.

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.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 66: Sanity Check

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

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 66.

With institutions searching to increase the impact of the work they do, and conscious of the immediate impact of any event they organise, many will be interested to read of 10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event in which Marieke Guy provides a raft of suggestions to enhance the participants' experience of and involvement in, the event they are attending.

Reading Van Gogh Online?

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

Peter Boot shows how log analysis can be employed to assess a site's usability, usage, and users, using the Van Gogh letter edition as an example.

Large amounts of money are spent building scholarly resources on the web. Unlike online retailers, large publishers and banks, scholarly institutions tend not to monitor very closely the way visitors use their web sites. In this article I would like to show that a look at the traces users leave behind in the Web servers' log files can teach us much about our sites' usability and about the way visitors use them.

In 2009 the Huygens Institute [1], together with the Van Gogh Museum [2], published a new edition of the letters of Vincent van Gogh. The complete edition was published online [3], and is accessible for free; there is also a six-volume book edition [4]. The online edition was reviewed in a number of publications [5][6][7]. I will use the server logs of the Van Gogh edition as an example of what we can learn about our visitors. I will focus not on the simple quantities, but try to assess the visitors' access patterns. When we created the edition, our assumption was that researchers would use the web site, while people who wanted to read the letters would favour the book. The desire to test that assumption was one of the reasons for embarking on this investigation.

When users view, or read, editions online, busy traffic is going on between their browser (e.g. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari), and the web server where the edition is located. Web servers keep logs of this traffic, and inspecting the logs gives us an opportunity to see how people are actually using the editions that we create. When people buy a book, this shows their intention to use it, in some sense. When people go to a web site, the server registers their visit, including, depending on the design of the site, every page they read and every search they do.

Most of the work on log analysis in scholarly environments has been done in the context of libraries researching use of electronic journals [8]. The financial interest in accurate knowledge about usage patterns in that context is obviously important. The LAIRAH (Log Analysis of Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities) study [9] used log analysis on portal sites in order to assess usage of digital resources in the arts and humanities. I believe the present article is the first reported study on actual usage data of a scholarly digital edition.

First I will discuss why these log data deserve investigation. I then will show what the data that we collect looks like and discuss both their potential and their limitations. I will give a brief overview of the edition site, as the log data can only be understood in the context of the site's structure and navigational facilities. Then I'll show a number of the things that can be done on the basis of the log files.

Survive or Thrive

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

Ed Fay reports on a two-day conference organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC to consider growth and use of digital content on the Web, which was held in Manchester in June 2010.

Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources.

Trove: Innovation in Access to Information in Australia

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

Rose Holley describes a major development in the Australian national digital information infrastructure.

In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. Finding and retrieving instantly information in context; interacting with content and social engagement are core features of the service. This article describes Trove features, usage, content building, and its applications for contributors and users in the national context.

Opportunities for Libraries

I see tremendous opportunities for libraries this year because of advances in technology. The changes in technology mean that anyone can create, describe or recommend content, which means that many people and organisations are becoming librarians or libraries in their own way. Librarians should not be threatened or dismayed by this but rather encouraged, since it means that society is retaining its ongoing interest in the creation, organisation and dissemination of content, and we have an integral role to play in these developments. Libraries and librarians are relevant more than ever in this environment because we have vast amounts of data and information to share, a huge amount of information expertise, and an understanding of how technology can assist us in making information more accessible.

We need to have new ideas and re-examine our old ideas to see how technology can help us. What things have we always wanted to do that we couldn't before, like providing a single point of access to all Australian information? Is this still pie in the sky or can we now achieve it? Libraries need to think big. As Charles Leadbeater would say 'Libraries need to think they are leading a mass movement, not just serving a clientele.' [2] Librarians are often thought of as gatekeepers with the emphasis being on closed access, but technology enables gatekeepers to open doors as well as close them and this is the opportunity I see. However many institutions will need to change their strategic thinking from control/shut to free/open before they can make this transition, and take a large dose of courage as well. The American author Harriet Rubin says, 'Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.' [3] The National Library of Australia already took this step forward in 2008 with the advent of the Australian Newspapers beta service, which opened up the raw text of digitised Australian newspapers to the public for improvement, without moderation on a mass scale [4]. With a long history of collaboration across the Australian cultural heritage sector [5] with regard to digitisation, storage, and service delivery, the National Library of Australia is well placed to take the lead with innovation in access to information.

Some people may say, 'But isn't Google doing that, so why do we still need libraries?' There is no question in my mind that libraries are fundamentally different from Google and other similar services. Libraries are different to Google for these reasons: they commit to provide long-term preservation, curation and access to their content; they have no commercial motives in the provision of information (deemed by various library acts); they aim for universal access to everyone in society; and they are 'free for all'. To summarise: libraries are always and forever. Who can say that of a search engine, or of any commercial organisation, regardless of size?

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.

Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010

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

Keith Doyle provides a personal perspective on a conference organised by UKOLN for those involved in the provision of institutional Web services.

This was the 13th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1] to be organised by UKOLN [2] held at the University of Sheffield from 12 to 14 July 2010. The theme was 'The Web in Turbulent Times' [3]. As such, there was a healthy balance of glass-half-empty-doom-and-gloom, and glass-half-full-yes-we-can.

Evidence, Value and Impact: The LIS Research Landscape in 2010

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

Stephanie Kenna reports on the Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference, held at the British Library on 28 June 2010.

Having been involved in developing the concept of a coalition for research in Library and Information Science (LIS) since 2006, it was with both pride and excitement that I took my place in the British Library's auditorium on Monday 28 June. There was a buzz of anticipation. We were not disappointed.

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.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 63: Consider the Users in the Field

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

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 63.

For those who can either remember or are battling still to make the technology work, be it coding, integration or test, it is easy and understandable enough if the technology assumes an overwhelming profile on the horizon of one's project and daily work. It is very understandable when they privately grumble that colleagues unburdened with the minutiae of such work display a breath-taking insouciance to the consequences of asking for a change in spec because there has been an unexpected development in the requirements of the users.

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.

Balancing Stakeholder Needs: Archive 2.0 As Community-centred Design

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

Jim Ridolfo, William Hart-Davidson and Michael McLeod present a case example on building a digital archive with cultural and scholarly stakeholder groups - to provide a model for balancing stakeholder needs.

Archive 2.0 is relatively new concept for us, one that we have only worked with since 2007 and the beginning of our Samaritan Digital Archive Project at Michigan State University (MSU). Our project started with the intention of building a digital archive; the Archive 2.0 nature of the project surfaced when we realised that in order to build a useful archive, we would need to engage multiple stakeholder communities. In our project this meant working with the cultural stakeholders, the Samaritans, as well as academic stakeholders, including Samaritan and Biblical scholars. Initially we thought that applying Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, image tagging, etc, to a digital archive would be our most important contribution to the project. As the project unfolded and we identified stakeholder needs more precisely however, we realised that our role was as much about balancing stakeholders' representational needs as much as it was about the application of Web 2.0 technologies.

The project began in December of 2007 when Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center [1] Research Assistant Jim Ridolfo was browsing the digital MSU Special Collections catalogue, and discovered the library index for the MSU Chamberlain-Warren collection of Samaritan texts. While investigating the history of the collection, Ridolfo learnt that in 2003 a Samaritan elder had travelled to MSU and had spoken to the Board of Trustees. The elder, Binyamim Tsedaka, had 'encouraged the university to utilise the collection to promote Samaritan studies.' [2] On learning of Tsedaka's speech, Ridolfo e-mailed Tsedaka and enquired about the community's possible interest in collaborating on a digitisation project. Tsedaka responded with his full blessing and an offer of collaboration [3].

Who Are the Samaritans?

The Samaritans have existed as a community for thousands of years. They are an ancient biblical people living primarily in Holon, Israel and Mt. Gerizim, West Bank. Their Torah is similar in content to that of Jewish people, but with several major theological differences. For example, the Samaritan Torah maintains that Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem is holy. The Samaritan Pentateuch also contains thousands of textual differences from the Masoretic Hebrew text; consequently, their theological interpretations and practices differ from common Jewish interpretations and traditions. In addition, the script of the Samaritan Torah is written in Samaritan Hebrew, which includes a unique script, pronunciation scheme, and grammar. Starting at a very early age, all Samaritan children learn to read, write, and chant in Samaritan Hebrew.

The Samaritan community includes 712 members, with approximately half the population living in Holon, Israel, and the other half living in the Mt. Gerizim village of Kiryat Luza. The community in Holon speaks Modern Hebrew as a first language, while the community in Kiryat Luza speaks Palestinian Arabic as a first language. The Samaritans living in Kiryat Luza maintain a delicate relationship with the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Being few in number and vulnerable to larger political trends, they seek a peaceful relationship with both authorities. For example, the residents of Kiryat Luza possess both Palestinian Authority and Israeli passports, vote in both elections, and work, travel, and study on both sides of the Green Line. Since the Samaritans of Holon and Kiryat Luza commemorate all festivals, holidays, and life cycle celebrations together on Mt. Gerizim, they are very keen to maintain contact between both communities [4][5].

Moving Towards Interoperability: Experiences of the Archives Hub

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

Jane Stevenson and Bethan Ruddock describe the work that the Archives Hub team has been doing to promote the sharing of content.

News and Events

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

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Engagement, Impact, Value Workshop

University of Manchester
Monday 24 May 2010
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/engagement-impact-value-201005/

Towards a Toolkit for Implementing Application Profiles

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

Talat Chaudhri, Julian Cheal, Richard Jones, Mahendra Mahey and Emma Tonkin propose a user-driven methodology for the iterative development, testing and implementation of Dublin Core Application Profiles in diverse repository software environments.

Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity Data

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

Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlin discusses the outcomes and lessons learned from user tests performed on the Oxford Blue Pages, a tool designed to display information about researchers and their activities at the University of Oxford.

Competition, complex environments and needs for sophisticated resources and collaborations compel Higher Education institutions (HEIs) to look for innovative ways to support their research processes and improve the quality and dissemination of their research outcomes. Access, management and sharing of information about research activities and researchers (who, what, when and where) lie at the heart of all these needs and driving forces for improvements.

Intranet Management: Divine Comedy or Strategic Imperative?

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

Martin White suggests that a failure to recognise the value of intranets is a symptom of a failure to recognise information as a strategic asset.

According to Dante in his Divine Comedy the inscription above the door to Hades reads "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". For many this could also be the sign on the home page of their organisation's intranet as, with business-critical decisions to make, they begin the daily hunt for information that they are sure should be somewhere in the application. It could just as easily be the sign on the door of the intranet manager of the organisation, though this door usually also carries a number of other job descriptions, all of which seem to be given more priority by the organisation than the care and development of the intranet. Most organisations of any size will have a full-time web manager, often with a support team, but this is rarely the case with the intranet.

There are a substantial number of intranets in the UK. Statistics from the Office for National Statistics indicate that 22% of all businesses have an intranet [1]. As the size of the business increases so does the level of penetration, and most businesses of more than 500 people will now have some form of intranet. Given the number of businesses in the UK the author estimates that there are probably around 300,000 intranets in the commercial sector, and at a guess a further 100,000 in the public sector, charities, Higher Education institutions (HEIs) and other organisations. Only over the last few years has any reliable statistical information become available on intranet use and development, and this is a in-depth global survey of only around 300 intranets [2]. In the UK HEI sector a major opportunity was lost in a survey commissioned in 2009 by Eduserv into the management of web content in the HEI sector as no account of intranet use of CMS applications was included in the scope of the survey [3]. A survey of SharePoint use in HEIs undertaken for Eduserv in late 2009 [4] did indicate that a number of institutions were using SharePoint for intranet applications but the survey did not look in detail at intranet implementation.

It is also only over the last few years have forums been set up in which intranet managers are able to share experiences and challenges with others. The work of the Intranet Benchmark Forum [5] is focused on providing services to large organisations, but there are also other virtual and physical discussion forums, such as the Intranet Forum [6] run by UKeiG for its members. It is probably reasonable to suggest that the majority of intranet managers have seen very few intranets from which to gain a sense of good practice, whereas web managers have an almost unlimited supply of sites from which to gain ideas for their own use. This is as true in the HEI sector as in other sectors. Given the installed base of intranets in the UK it is also surprising that there is no 'intranet conference' event even though intranet management does feature in events such as Online Information [7]. Most countries in northern Europe have an intranet conference [8], often with several hundred delegates, so why there is no equivalent in the UK is a mystery.

Intranets Are Different

All too often an intranet is regarded as an internal web site. The reality is that about the only commonality between an intranet and a web site is the use of web browser technology. Many very successful intranets do not even use a web content management application but instead are based on Notes technology or portal applications. Intranet content contribution is usually highly distributed, with individual members of staff publishing content direct to the intranet perhaps only a few times a year. This means that the web content management system has to be highly intuitive, and enable Word documents to be rendered into clean HTML code to create web pages. The teams supporting public web sites are using the systems every working day, working often in HTML and having a much more limited range of content to cope with. Many of the problems that arise in keeping content current on an intranet are a result of staff having to use a complex Web publishing system that was specified for Web site management and not intranet management.

Another factor to be considered is that increasingly intranets are federated applications [9]. This is often the situation in HEIs where each department wants to have its own intranet, and on top of all these individual intranets there is some form of top-level 'corporate' home page and navigation. Often there is no central coordination of these intranets, and so each adopts some or none of the visual design standards of the HEI.

As far as enterprise applications are concerned, intranets are different because they are not based on business processes or work-flow. Finance, registry, personnel and most other applications support well-defined processes, usually within a specific department, and where the content requirements are usually specified in database terms. Anything approaching text content is usually relegated to a single field in the database. Intranets exist because there is a substantial amount of information in any organisation that is not based on business processes and cannot be managed within a formal database structure, such as policies, procedures, campus maps, events, staff notices and hundreds of other information formats produced by every department and location within the organisation.

As a result the intranet becomes an information dumping ground. Under-resourced intranet managers do not have the resources to maintain content quality, and so multiple versions of documents with no visible ownership or provenance proliferate. Employees leave or change responsibility but the intranet is based on a 'file-and-forget' principle and no effort is taken to ensure that document ownership is transferred to another member of staff. Very quickly the information architecture of the intranet, based usually on the structure of the organisation at the time of the last WCMS (Web content management system) deployment, is not fit for purpose. The decision is taken to implement a search engine, and only then does the scale of the problem of information decay become apparent. It can also be an interesting exercise to search for 'Confidential' and see just how many documents are returned!

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 Future of Interoperability and Standards in Education: A JISC CETIS Event

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

Sarah Currier reports on an international working meeting involving a range of educational interoperability standards bodies and communities, organised by JISC CETIS.

The stated intention of this working meeting organised by JISC CETIS, and held at the University of Bolton, UK, on 12 January 2010 was to:

Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context

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

Dave Puplett reports on the conference Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context held at the British Library in January 2010. The conference launched Economists Online (EO), an innovative economics subject repository.

Institutional repositories are now common in Higher Education, but successful examples of subject repositories, which cater to an entire discipline, are much rarer. The Subject Repositories conference taught some key lessons about the role of transnational collaboration in setting up a subject repository. The conference drew on the expertise of renowned specialists in the field and the two and a half-year-long development process of Economists Online [1].

News and Events

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

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform – February 2010

UKeiG Intranet's Forum: ERM's Knowledge Sharing Platform:
A chance to see one of the world's top 10 best intranets
Free informal Intranets Forum meeting for UKeiG members

ERM, 2/F Exchequer Court, 33 St. Mary Axe, London EC3A 8AA
Friday 26 February 2010, 4.00 - 5.30 p.m.
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/

Why Are Users So Useful? User Engagement and the Experience of the JISC Digitisation Programme

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

Paola Marchionni discusses the importance of user engagement in the creation of digitised scholarly resources with case studies from the JISC Digitisation Programme.

Do we know enough about what our users' needs are when creating online digitised scholarly resources? What are the benefits of engaging users? In what way can they be useful to the process?

Learning to YODL: Building York's Digital Library

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

Peri Stracchino and Yankui Feng describe a year's progress in building the digital library infrastructure outlined by Julie Allinson and Elizabeth Harbord in their article last issue.

Internet Librarian International 2009

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

Katherine Allen reports on Internet Librarian International 2009 which took place in London on 15 and 16 October 2009.

Internet Librarian International [1] brought together librarians and information professionals from 33 countries including China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Australia as well as Europe and North America, to discuss and debate the latest developments under the conference theme 'value, versatility and viability'.

Institutional Repositories for Creative and Applied Arts Research: The Kultur Project

editor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Andrew Gray discusses institutional repositories and the creative and applied arts specifically in relation to the JISC-funded Kultur Project.

Those involved in Higher Education (HE) may have started to sense the approach of Institutional Repositories (IRs). Leaving aside the unfortunate nomenclature, IRs are becoming a fact of life in many educational institutions. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has invested £14million in the Repositories and Preservation Programme [1] and the recent Repositories and Preservation Programme Meeting in Birmingham [2] celebrated the end of over 40 individual repository projects under the Start Up and Enhancement [3] strand.

Encouraging More Open Educational Resources With Southampton's EdShare

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Debra Morris describes the EdSpace Institutional Exemplar Project and the early development of EdShare for sharing learning and teaching materials within and beyond the institution.

The University of Southampton has around 22,000 students across six campuses: five in the city of Southampton and one in Winchester. It is a broad-based, research-intensive institution, a member of the Russell Group of UK Universities.

The University comprises three Faculties: Faculty of Engineering, Science and Maths; Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, and the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences.

Spinning a Semantic Web for Metadata: Developments in the IEMSR

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin and Alexey Strelnikov reflect on the experience of developing components for the Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry.

The IEMSR, a metadata schema registry, exists to support the development and use of metadata standards; in practice, what does this entail?

News and Events

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Digital Preservation – The Planets Way

Royal Library Copenhagen, Denmark
22-24 June 2009
http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/

Does your organisation know what to preserve digitally for the future? Do you want to discuss your strategies for digital preservation with colleagues and experts? Do you know how to preserve your collections for the future? Do you know which tools and services to use for this?

The MrCute Repository: The Next Phase

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

Helen Brady describes the MrCute repository project and its potential impact on the digital learning object-sharing community.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 57:Achieving the Balance

editor — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 57.

In her second Get Tooled Up article on the subject of remote working Staying Connected: Technologies Supporting Remote Workers, Marieke Guy takes a look at the many technologies that support remote working, from broadband to Web 2.0 social networking tools. Readers may also be interested to read her blog on remote working which I am definitely finding interesting [1].