Table of contents: issue54

Web 2.0 in U.S. LIS Schools: Are They Missing the Boat?

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Noa Aharony asks whether library and information science schools in the United States are underestimating the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 applications.

Library and information science (LIS) programmes prepare students for performing traditional information tasks such as indexing, retrieval and library management [1][2][3]. The increased importance and centrality of information has moved LIS schools to offer new curricula that combine traditional librarianship and archiving with technological and social aspects of information.

SWORD: Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson, Sebastien Francois and Stuart Lewis describe the JISC-funded SWORD Project which has produced a lightweight protocol for repository deposit.

Human-powered Search Engines: An Overview and Roundup

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Phil Bradley looks at the major contenders and discusses the value of this type of search engine.

Ancient Cultures Inside Modern Universes

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Edgardo Civallero writes on preservation and dissemination of intangible South American indigenous heritage and updating information using Web-based tools.

Cultural Heritage

Heritage can be defined as a heterogeneous ensemble of environmental and cultural elements - material or otherwise - that are transmitted from generation to generation, creating the foundations on which people build and orientate their identity and vision of the world. According to the definition reached during the UNESCO Experts´ Round Table in Turin (Italy, 2001), heritage includes:

RepoMMan: Delivering Private Repository Space for Day-to-day Use

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Green and Chris Awre describe work undertaken at the University of Hull to place Web services at the heart of its personalised digital repository provision.

In the spring of 2005, the University of Hull embarked on the RepoMMan Project [1], a two-year JISC-funded [2] endeavour to investigate a number of aspects of user interaction with an institutional repository. The vision at Hull was, and is, of a repository placed at the heart of a Web services architecture: a key component of a university's information management.

E-Publication and Open Access in the Arts and Humanities in the UK

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Malcolm Heath, Michael Jubb and David Robey review recent UK discussions and evidence about e-publishing and open access, their impact and implications for researchers in the arts and humanities.

Version Identification: A Growing Problem

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Puplett outlines the issues associated with versions in institutional repositories, and discusses the solutions being developed by the Version Identification Framework (VIF) Project.

Collaborative and Social Tagging Networks

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin, Edward M. Corrado, Heather Lea Moulaison, Margaret E. I. Kipp, Andrea Resmini, Heather D. Pfeiffer and Qiping Zhang gather a series of international perspectives on the practice of social tagging of documents within a community context.

Social tagging, which is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, and social indexing, allows ordinary users to assign keywords, or tags, to items. Typically these items are Web-based resources and the tags become immediately available for others to see and use. Unlike traditional classification, social tagging keywords are typically freely chosen instead of using a controlled vocabulary.

Saving Energy in the Workplace

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Eddie Young outlines some of the issues faced by a Systems Administrator when trying to save energy in the workplace.