Web Magazine for Information Professionals

Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) Update

Recently, a wave of new projects under the umbrella of the Electronic Libraries Programme was announced. A consequence of this is that a large majority of the HE institutions in the UK are involved in at least one eLib project (is yours?), as well as many non HE organisations and institutions. Here, we give brief details of some of these new projects.

Recently, a wave of new projects under the umbrella of the Electronic Libraries Programme was announced. A consequence of this is that a large majority of the HE institutions in the UK are involved in at least one eLib project (is yours?), as well as many non HE organisations and institutions.
Here, we give brief details of some of these new projects.

In the Preprints/Grey Literature area, we have three projects:

Formations
Lead Site: University of Ulster
Contact: Nigel Gardner, Dan Fleming (dr.fleming@ulst.ac.uk)

Formations is a preprint database in the areas of cultural policy, media studies and performance theory. The project proposes creating an interactive connection between editorially moderated newsgroups and a "grey" electronic journal.

BERID
Lead Site: University of Leeds
Contact: Mr High Wellesley-Smith
Tel: 0113 2335542, Fax: 2335539, H.N.Wellesley-Smith@Leeds.ac.uk

A project to establish an thesaurus indexed database of grey literature in the field of education and training accessible via the WWW. The system will provide and electronic forum for comments on documents as a form of "peer review".

EPACS
Lead Site: University of Southampton
Proposed Partner Sites: Los Alamos Physics Preprint Archive
Contact: Prof. Stevan Harnad Tel: 01703 592582, Fax: 594597, Harnad@Cogsci.soton.ac.uk

A project which plans to establish an international, interdisciplinary electronics preprint archive in the Cognitive Sciences.

Four projects are announced from the Electronic Short Loan Collections section:

ERCOMS
Lead Site: De Montfort
Contact: Prof. Mel Collier Tel: 0116 2577039, Fax: 2577170, MWC@dmu.ac.uk

ERCOMS will develop an Electronic Reserve Copyright Management System capable of working with different electronic reserve management systems and providing full tracking facilities.

ACORN
Lead Site: Loughborough University
Proposed Partner Sites: SWETS, Leicester University Library
Contact: Mr J.A. Arfield Tel.: 01509 222340, Fax: 234806, J.A.Arfield@lut.ac.uk

Project ACORN (Access to Course Readings Via Networks) aims to develop a transferable model for the whole process of providing electronic access to course readings. Working initially in the areas of engineering, geography and LIS, ACORN plans to demonstrate a model for "effective and cost-efficient working relationships between university libraries and third party agents for copyright clearance and digitisation of text".

ResIDe (Research, Information and Delivery)
Lead Site: University of the West of England
Contact: Ms Tessa Bruce Tel: 0117 965 6261 *2702, Fax: 976 3846, T-Bruce@uwe.ac.uk

Electronic Reserve for UK Universities aims to develop a pilot electronic reserve system aimed at students in the Faculty of the Built Environment where work has been pursued previously in this area. The project will use a Netscape server and provide a facility for the "management of the flow of documents and data in and out of the system" as well a system for managing copyright.

PATRON : (performing arts)
Lead Site: The University of Surrey
If ‘Patron’ then Contact: Mr T.J.A. Crashaw Tel: 01483 259231, Fax: 259500, T.Crawshaw@surrey.ac.uk

The project will develop a system to store and deliver multimedia short loan materials in music (CD's, videos, music scores) on demand to students over a broadband network.

A few Images projects (all proposals from the 4/94 targeted call)

HELIX - Electronic Document Delivery
Lead Institution: De Montfort
Contact: Prof. Mel Collier

HELIX is a project which aims to develop a substantial body of image resource-content based on distributed image banks held in the partner institutions. Access will be via SuperJanet. The project will be based on the methods and standards developed for ELISE and its successor, ELISE II.

DIGIMAP - Electronic Document Delivery
Lead Site: University of Edinburgh
Contact: Mr Peter Burnhill Tel: 0131 650 3301, Fax: 0131 650 6547, P.Burnhill@ed.ac.uk

The Digital Map Data as Electronic Document project's specific aim is to identify and assess service models by which staff and students in HE can access Ordnance Survey digital map data. The project will continue with work in this area already underway at Edinburgh.

MIDRIB
Lead Site: St. George's Hospital Medical School
Contact: Ms Susan Gove

MIDRIB (Medical Images - Digitised Reference Information Bank) plans to collate a comprehensive collection of medical images for use in teaching and research and make this available nationally, across networks via the Internet (WWW).

One other project...

NewsAgent for Libraries
Lead Site: South Bank University
Contact: Mr Robin Yeates Tel: 0171 815 7871, Fax 815 6699

A proposal held over from the 4/94 call for proposals. NewsAgent for Libraries proposes an innovative information and current awareness service for the library and information science community. The service will focus on value-added to existing published material by creating an "user-focused" systems for distributing information resources direct to end users.

More details will be available from the Electronic Libraries Programme Web Pages when we have them.

There are snippets of eLib project updates, as well as news relevant to the eLib programme, in the news section.

In this issue of Ariadne, we again feature three projects:

Issue 1 of Ariadne contained an overview of the eLib programme