Table of contents: issue43

Opening Up OpenURLs with Autodiscovery

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Daniel Chudnov, Richard Cameron, Jeremy Frumkin, Ross Singer and Raymond Yee demonstrate a 'gather locally, share globally' approach to OpenURLs and metadata autodiscovery in scholarly and non-scholarly environments.

Library users have never before had so many options for finding, collecting and sharing information. Many users abandon old information management tools whenever new tools are easier, faster, more comprehensive, more intuitive, or simply 'cooler.' Many successful new tools adhere to a principle of simplicity - HTML made it simple for anyone to publish on the Web; XML made it simple for anyone to exchange more strictly defined data; and RSS made it simple to extract and repurpose information from any kind of published resource [1].

Trust in Global Virtual Teams

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Niki Panteli identifies ways of developing trust within global virtual teams.

During the last few years there has been an increasing acknowledgement of the importance of trust in business interactions within the management and organisational literatures [1][2]. Trust enables cooperation and becomes the means for complexity reduction even in situations where individuals must act with uncertainty because they are in possession of ambiguous and incomplete information. It is not therefore surprising that in the current age of global and digital economy and virtuality [3] there has been an enormous interest in trust.

National Library Goes Local

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Kenna and Sue Cook tell the story behind the British Library's online training package for public library staff.

In response to a challenge from the Society of Chief Librarians, the British Library has launched an online training package [1] to its services and the wealth of information in its collections for the benefit of staff in public libraries and their users. In this article we describe how the training package was conceived and created, how it is being rolled out and evaluated, and our plans for future developments.

Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Leona Carpenter describes a JISC development programme tackling the organisational and technical challenges facing Higher and Further Education in the UK.

In the early days of the shift from paper-based to digital means of holding administrative records, research data, publications and other academic resources, those responsible for its safety tended to breathe a sigh of relief once they had got a category of material into digital form. Reduced to bits and bytes, all they would have to do is make regular backups, perhaps keeping a copy off-site in case of disaster, and all would be well. Increasingly, material of value to Further and Higher Education is produced and held only in digital form.

Digital Preservation: Best Practice and Its Dissemination

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Neil Beagrie describes the development and subsequent use of a digital preservation handbook and future plans for expansion of its use in training and professional practice.

Digital information is increasingly important to our culture, knowledge base and economy. Long-term management of this material is a vital part of curation practice. This paper outlines the development and subsequent use of an international guide to digital preservation Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook [1] and its use in training and professional practice. The Handbook was published in 2001 in hard copy by The British Library and is also available digitally online via the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) [2].

E-Archiving: An Overview of Some Repository Management Software Tools

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Marion Prudlo discusses LOCKSS, EPrints, and DSpace in terms of who uses them, their cost, underlying technology, the required know-how, and functionalities.

In recent years initiatives to create software packages for electronic repository management have mushroomed all over the world. Some institutions engage in these activities in order to preserve content that might otherwise be lost, others in order to provide greater access to material that might otherwise be too obscure to be widely used such as grey literature. The open access movement has also been an important factor in this development. Digital initiatives such as pre-print, post-print, and document servers are being created to come up with new ways of publishing.

Finding Someplace to Go: Reading and the Internet

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy takes a look at what the Internet has to offer the art of reading.

Reading has always been pretty popular. According to Alberto Manguel in his work A History of Reading [1] archaeologists have argued that the prehistory of books began near Babylon towards the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. It may well have begun even earlier than that. This given, it will come as no surprise that readers are the biggest arts audience we have in the UK. The number of readers far exceeds all other arts audiences combined (with the country's soccer fans thrown in for good measure) [2].

What Are Your Terms?

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Pete Johnston introduces the JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR) Project and examines some of the challenges it is facing.

The JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR) Project [1] is funded by JISC through its Shared Services Programme to develop a metadata schema registry as a pilot shared service for the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE). Partners in the project are UKOLN, University of Bath and the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol.