Editorial introduction to Issue 19: Ariadne's Thread

This is the first issue of a purely electronic Ariadne, which has been produced without the assistance of a print editor (Lyndon Pugh) and production manager (John MacColl), both of whom contributed substantially to the commissioning side of the operation. In addition, UKOLN is this month launching a second electronic magazine, Exploit Interactive. We are therefore grateful to Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus) for a good deal of editorial assistance for this issue, in addition to his usual contribution, and also to the many contributors who supplied material well ahead of the deadline.

There are four main articles in the current issue. Mary Rowlatt describes SEAMLESS, an Essex based project concerned with the production of community information. Matthew Dovey outlines an Object Oriented approach to metadata in Meta-Objects. And the former Production Manager of the print arm of Ariadne John MacColl explores the IMS (Instructional Management Systems) concept in the context of the SELLIC project. We also feature an article on Web Research. This summarizes work being carried out at the University of West of England, in conjunction with Hewlett Packard laboratories, to develop automated techniques for browsing video content. The content used to illustrate the piece comes from “The Wrong Trousers”, the second Wallace and Gromit film (unfortunately no Feathers McGraw, but fans of the automatic toastmaker sequence will not be disappointed)

This edition of Ariadne contains a number of new “Regular Columns”. Ian Webb of the DISinHE Centre introduces a column which will feature accessibility and IT issues with a description of the DISinHE Centre - an initiative funded by JISC. George Neisser describes another JISC service - the JANET National Web Cache. George’s Caching In column will cover a variety of issues related to web caching. Continuing the technical theme, Brett Bailey introduces the “Windows NT Explorer” column by describing Microsoft’s Site Server indexing tool. Tony Grant won’t be using Site Server: in the “Minotaur” column Tony explains why a former Macintosh fan has embraced Linux and the Open Source Software movement.

The view of a Web Editor is provided by Stephen Emmott, while in the Unix Corner Brian Kelly describes how open source software such as Apache, PHP and IMP can be used to provide web-based access to email (incidently we welcome contributions to both the Web Editor and Unix Corner columns for future issues of Ariadne).

In this edition we have also extended our coverage of the Subject Gateways. Planet SOSIG continues and OMNI returns, but both have a broader remit to include news on developments on the Internet relating to Social Sciences and Biomedical Engineering respectively. In addition we welcome Biz/Ed Bulletin and the EEVL Eye On Engineering which feature news of the Biz/Ed and EEVL information gateways and more general news on Internet developments in Business and Economics and Engineering.

We are continuing to produce a number of our established “Regular Columns”. Brian Kelly’s Web Focus article describes how to extend web browsers. In what is likely to be the final WebWatch article Ian Peacock and Brian Kelly review the project and summarise the main findings. Following changes to Tracey Stanley’s responsibilities we welcome Phil Bradley to the Search Engine Corner.

In addition, there are two at the events reports: one by Christine Dugdale on the BOBCATSSS conference earlier this year in Bratislava; and another by Philip Hunter on the eLib Information Ecologies conference in York which took place just before the publication of Ariadne 18, and which explored a number of hybrid library, subject Gateway and copyright control issues.

Enjoy the issue.

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