Newsline: News You Can Use
The British Library’s ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery Service
June 2003
The British Library previewed its new and ground-breaking secure Electronic Delivery Service at the SLA 94th Annual Conference in New York in June .
Fully available from October 2003, the new service means that almost anything from the Library’s huge collections - whether born digital, in print or in microform - can be securely delivered to a desktop within two hours if needed, with born digital material available for instant delivery.
One hundred and eleven new scanners have been installed in the Library Document Supply Centre to scan hard copy documents and customers can view the document with ease. Investment in new high speed Xerox printers ensures top quality hard-copy documents for postal delivery.
Natalie Ceeney, the British Library’s Director of Operations and Services, said, ‘This breakthrough will allow customers to deal direct - whilst delivering the security safeguards that publishers demand.‘
The annual Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH) conference
July 2003
DRH (http://www.drh.org.uk/) is the major forum for all those involved in, and affected by, the digitisation of our cultural heritage. It is a unique forum bringing together scholars, teachers, publishers and broadcasters, librarians, curators and archivists, and computer and information specialists. It provides an opportunity to consider the latest ideas in the creation and use of digital resources in all aspects of work in the humanities, in an informal and enjoyable atmosphere.
This year’s conference will be held at the University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham UK, 31 Aug - 3 Sept 2003.
Conference themes include:
- The impact of access to digital resources on teaching and learning
- Digital libraries, archives and museums
- Time-based media and multimedia studies in performing arts
- Network technologies used to support international community programmes
- The anticipated convergence between televisual, communication and computing media and its effect on the humanities
- Knowledge representation, including visualisation and simulation
For further information and the online booking form visit: http://www.glos.ac.uk/humanities/drh2003
The 7th ECDL conference takes place in Trondheim, Norway, 17-22 August 2003.
May 2003
A full programme offers insights into digital library research and practice through thirteen sessions in parallel tracks, invited talks, special panel debates, tutorials, posters and workshops.
The parallel sessions take delegates through the entire Digital Library lifecycle, from establishing user needs, through knowledge organisation and technical architectures to digital preservation, archives and evaluation. The Keynotes (John Lervik (Fast Search & Transfer), Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information) and Karen Sparck Jones, University of Cambridge) focus on information retrieval research and the role of search engines in digital libraries.
The nine tutorials cover a broad range of topics, from usability evaluations, through thesauri and ontologies, geo-spatial data and geo-referencing to multilingual access and the CIDOC conceptual model.
The proceedings will be available in print in the Springer Verlag LNCS series for all participants of the ECDL2003 conference, and the volume number will be LNCS 2769. A report of the conference will appear in a future edition of Ariadne.
The preliminary programme, registration forms and a host of other useful information are available from the conference Web site at http://www.ecdl2003.org/
Emerald, international publisher of management journals, launches ManagementFirst.
June 2003
The online information resource for managers offers critical insight, analysis and practical solutions to day-to-day management problems, and support for continuous professional development.
Based on information from Emerald’s research-based journals including Management Decision, Strategy & Leadership, The European Journal of Marketing and The TQM Magazine, the new service can help managers solve business problems and become better managers - acting like a virtual mentor.
Shelly Grimshaw, head of ManagementFirst, explains: ManagementFirst is an ideal resource for individuals or organizations who would like to supplement training, or who perhaps cannot justify expensive training courses. The service lets you obtain specific information about the challenge you are facing, whether its how to most effectively appraise someone or to gain knowledge fast on a particular topic.
She continues: At a time when practical leadership skills in the UK are in short supply from top to bottom of organizations, the ManagementFirst ethos of providing practical management advice will be welcomed.
Evidence links good people management practices with improved bottom line performance, but recent CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development) research shows that board level managers are not really aware of the evidence that links good people management and business performance. Shelly Grimshaw comments: ManagementFirst makes the latest thinking in management best practice accessible and affordable, helping managers become aware of research and thinking that will help improve the performance of their business as a whole, as well as the individuals within it.
Split into nine online communities or subject areas: change management; e-business; human resources; innovation; knowledge management; management styles; marketing; quality; and strategy. Discussion forums, case studies, articles and Guru interviews with the likes of Sir John Harvey-Jones and Philip Kotler are just some of the services on offer.
A host of information is available, ranging from free services such as the discussion forum to single article purchase, subscription to one journal or full access to all ManagementFirst titles and online information.
For further information visit http://www.managementfirst.com
The 4th Open Archives Forum ‘In Practice, Good Practice: the Future of Open Archives’ will take place at UKOLN, University of Bath, 4-5 September 2003.
July 2003
The workshop is now taking registrations for this event. Registration can be completed via a page at the Open Archives Forum project site at: http://www.oaforum.org/workshops/bath_invitation.php. The programme of the workshop is available at: http://www.oaforum.org/workshops/bath_programme.php and further information can be found on the Open Archives Forum Web site at: http://www.oaforum.org/
This event will focus on good practice in the implementation of open archives. A particular theme of the workshop will be the use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) in the area of Cultural Heritage. The workshop will also be looking at the use of the OAI protocol as a way of publishing information about university theses, and how that might contribute to developing useful content for institutional (as opposed to subject-based) eprint archives.
Topics for discussion will comprise Intellectual Property Rights, technical and organisational issues, including a report on the latter by an OAForum working group. There also will be an introduction to an online tutorial which will give guidance to those wishing to implement a project using the OAI-PMH. This tutorial will be based on the experience of pre-workshop tutorials held in Lisbon (2002) and Berlin (2003).
There will be representatives of the Open Archives Initiative present at the workshop - including Carl Lagoze - and other important figures in the world of open archives. There will be a contribution from LIBER and SPARC on the current status of Open Access and a closing panel session. Additionally there will be a poster session and time and space for networking. Those wishing to submit a poster should contact Sara Hassen (s.hassen@ukoln.ac.uk)
UK research, accessible for free, for everyone
June 2003
More than 80,000 biology and medical researchers working at UK universities can now share their research findings freely with fellow researchers, funding bodies, students, journalists, and the general public worldwide. Making the results of science and medical research openly available will aid the global advancement of science and healthcare. Publishing in freely accessible online journals will also make the UK higher education system more cost-effective, by reducing the amount of money spent on journal subscriptions.
The landmark deal announced today by The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of HEFCE and other UK further and higher education funding bodies, and open access publisher BioMed Central places the UK at the forefront of the drive to make scientific research freely available on the Internet. The BioMed Central membership agreement commences on the 1 July. From this date article-processing charges will be waived - for all UK higher education staff - when publishing in any of BioMed Central’s 90+ peer-reviewed journals in which all research content is freely accessible.
Dr Alicia Wise, Head of Development at JISC, explains the commitment by JISC to fund open access publishing for the entire UK Higher Education community:
“This ground-breaking deal represents a major shift in the way that research is undertaken and its outputs published and shared. The implications for research and for our educational institutions beyond the health and medical field are immense.”
This is the first step of many that funding bodies are taking to ensure the success of open access. For the academic and clinical research communities working in UK Higher Education institutions, one of the biggest hurdles to publishing in open access journals - cost - has been removed. Funding bodies are now moving to acknowledge that authors who publish in open access journals are providing a service to the scientific community.
The JISC deal means that 180 universities in the UK will now become BioMed Central members. Together with the recent NHS England membership agreement1, the vast majority of research produced in the UK could be published in open access journals at no cost to the individual author.
Publisher Jan Velterop explains the significance of this development for BioMed Central:
“JISC’s support is of huge significance. The UK is taking the fastest and the largest steps to become a completely open access environment for the sharing of biology and medical research results. Unrestricted access to the majority of UK biomedical research output is now a very real possibility. This represents our largest deal to date, and is a sure sign that the tide has turned to embrace open access.”
BioMed Central now has more members in the UK than in any other country. The UK is a major contributor to the global advance of knowledge. With just 1% of the world’s population, Britain funds 4.5% of all scientific research, and produces 8.5% of the research articles that are published worldwide.2 BioMed Central and JISC look forward to seeing a fast-increasing proportion of these articles published with open access, for the benefit of science and society at large.
Publication date: 30-July-2003
Publication: Ariadne Issue 36
Originating URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/newsline/