Web Magazine for Information Professionals

News and Events

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Digital Preservation – The Planets Way

Royal Library Copenhagen, Denmark
22-24 June 2009
http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/

Does your organisation know what to preserve digitally for the future? Do you want to discuss your strategies for digital preservation with colleagues and experts? Do you know how to preserve your collections for the future? Do you know which tools and services to use for this?

There has been an explosion in the volume of information world-wide which will grow to 180 exabytes by 2011. But if action is not taken, that information can be lost within five to ten years.

Digital Preservation – The Planets Way is an opportunity to understand what may be done to manage digital content for the long-term. The Planets project invites you to take part in the three-day training event which will be presented by members of the Planets project and established experts in the field of digital preservation. The event will take place at the striking Royal Library in Copenhagen on 22-24 June – and is also an opportunity to visit Denmark's capital during the Midsummer's Eve celebrations!

The event has been subsidised to enable attendance. For the cost of 80 EUR to attend day one and 175 EUR to attend all three days, the event will help you to make a start with, or advance, digital preservation activities in your organisation.

You can see the full programme and register at http://www.planets-project.eu/events/copenhagen-2009/

Due to the nature of the event there is an upper capacity of 60 delegates on Day 1 and 40 delegates on Days 2 and 3.

If you have any questions about the event, please send an email to trainingevents@planets-project.eu

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Open Debate: Why Pay for Content?

The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS
24 June 2009, 2p.m.
Open Debate Web page

An open debate sponsored by the Academic & Professional Division of The Publishers Association

Come along to the Royal Institution in London on 24 June to debate these issues first hand with an invited panel of guests - some managing change in established businesses, others looking for more radical alternatives.

The debate begins at 2.00pm and will conclude with a wine reception.

The debate will run in two sessions in sequence, first one on teaching and learning in HE, then one on research and reference. Each session will be led by opposing debaters, then the debate will be open to the floor to interact with the panel. The event will conclude with a plenary looking to draw out ideas and observations from the debate that can help us to achieve our respective missions. How might we act together? How can content be sustainably delivered?

Panellists will include:

Teaching and learning:

Knowledge

Research and reference

The conference will be chaired by David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow, Outsell (UK) Ltd

Who should attend?

The issues will engage all stakeholders in higher education and research: strategy and policy managers, fund holders, library professionals, academics, researchers, publishers and students.

Download the programme & registration form

Nicola Swann
Executive Assistant
The Publishers Association
29B Montague Street
London
WC1B 5BW
tel: +44 20 7691 1378/9191
fax +44 20 7691 9199
nswann@publishers.org.uk
http://www.publishers.org.uk/

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TEI@Oxford Summer School 2009

Oxford University Computing Services
Monday 20 July - Friday 24 July 2009
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/events/2009-07/

The TEI@Oxford team is pleased to announce that we are now taking bookings for our annual summer school.

This five-day course combines in-depth coverage of the latest version of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines for the encoding of digital text with hands-on practical exercises in their application. If you are a project manager, research assistant, or encoder working on any kind of project concerned with the creation or management of digital text, this course is for you.

You should be generally computer literate (web, email, word-processors) for this course. You may already be broadly familiar with the idea of textual editing, perhaps (but not necessarily) with some experience of producing HTML web pages, or of traditional scholarly editing. You should be enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by digital technologies and keen to learn more. You should be prepared to get your hands dirty at the keyboard and you should not be afraid of a little technical jargon.

At the end of the course we hope to have given you:

  1. a good grounding in the theoretical issues underlying the use of text markup, XML in particular;
  2. an understanding of the purpose and principles of the Text Encoding Initiative;
  3. a survey of the full range of modules constituting the TEI's current Recommendations;
  4. experience of how the TEI scheme can be customized for particular applications, and internationalized for different languages.
  5. an introduction to some of the tools and methods in which TEI documents are published and processed

Using OUCS' teaching facilities, we will also provide you with practical experience in:

The course will be taught by the TEI@Oxford team: Lou Burnard, James Cummings, and Sebastian Rahtz, with the assistance of other invited TEI experts.

Further information and online booking: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/events/2009-07/

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Digital Libraries à la Carte 2009

Tilburg University, the Netherlands
28 July - 5 August 2009
http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/services/lis/ticer/09carte/

Modular course to prepare librarians for the future. Some modules are relevant to publishers, researchers, or IT specialists.

Modules are one day each. You can attend one or more modules.

The course is held from Tuesday 28 July up to and including Wednesday 5 August 2009. There is a welcome reception or dinner on Monday evening 27 July and a social programme during the weekend. Sessions start daily at 8.45 AM, end at 5.45 PM, and are followed by a course dinner.

For further information

Web site: http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/services/lis/ticer/09carte/

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NKOS Workshop at the ECDL 2009

Networked Knowledge Organisation Systems and Services: The 8th European Networked Knowledge Organisation Systems (NKOS) Workshop at the European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL)
Corfu, Greece
1 October 2009
http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/research/hypermedia/nkos/nkos2009/

The 8th NKOS workshop at ECDL 2009 (http://www.ecdl2009.eu/) explores the potential of Knowledge Organization Systems, such as classification systems, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, and lexical databases. These tools attempt to model the underlying semantic structure of a domain for purposes of information retrieval, knowledge discovery, language engineering, and the semantic web. The workshop provides an opportunity to report and discuss projects, research, and development related to Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services in next-generation digital libraries.

Modern digital information systems afford more options for mapping and presenting alternative orders of information than traditional physical libraries. The digital environment offers more possibilities of relating information and knowledge structures from different interests and discourses. Thus, the challenge is as much intellectual as technical when we want to develop and map knowledge organization systems that are useful and meaningful for the end-users operating in complex, interdisciplinary knowledge domains.

The workshop would address the general themes presented below, although the workshop is not limited to the predefined topics and remains open to other issues emerging from presentation proposals. Two important new themes for this workshop are Linked Data and KOS development methods. The workshop this year also invites proposals for posters.

Topics

Proposals are invited for the following

  1. presentations
  2. posters

Please email proposals (approximately 500 words for presentations and 200 words for posters, including aims, methods, main findings) by June 19th to Koraljka Golub (k.golub@ukoln.ac.uk). Proposals will be peer-reviewed by the program committee and notification of acceptance will be given by July 3rd. The early registration deadline for the conference and the workshop is July 31st.

For further information

Web site http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/research/hypermedia/nkos/nkos2009/ or contact Koraljka Golub at k.golub@ukoln.ac.uk


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Internet Librarian International 2009

Novotel London West, London
15 - 16 October 2009 – pre-conference workshops 14 October
http://www.internet-librarian.com/

It is now essential to maximise the value of the Internet for our libraries, librarians, and library users - and continue to demonstrate the value and versatility of those library and information centre services within our organisations and institutions. This applies to all types of libraries - public, academic, commercial and government - and for those outside the traditional library, including Web designers, content evaluators, portal creators, systems professionals and independent researchers.

Internet Librarian International shows you how:

Through an extensive range of practical conference sessions, case studies, Keynotes, hands-on workshops, networking events, and a Sponsor Showcase, Internet Librarian International provides a unique professional learning experience for information colleagues from over 30 countries each year.

Coverage includes

Nextgen libraries * inventing the future * inspiring programmes in libraries * future Web strategies * innovative projects * libraries as publishers * library 2.0, 3.0 * evidence-based librarianship * mobile technology * open source * content management * Web design * Web site usability * portal designs * new technologies * marketing techniques * working with non-library departments * business intelligence * collaborative working * corporate libraries * Web search tips * semantic search * federated search * multimedia searching * search as platform * search as service * taxonomies, folksonomies and metadata * digital libraries * digital collections * digital curation * virtual research environments * user needs analysis * managing e-resources * open access * managing digital projects * social media * social software * social networking * blogs * wikis * podcasts * user generated content * information policy * egovernment and information * intellectual property rights and protection * evaluating Web resources * Internet special librarians * distance learning * e-learning * gaming, libraries & learning

Ariadne readers are invited to attend to understand the impact of technological change and development on your information environment, and learn how to better exploit the value of the Internet.

For further information

The conference programme is published in June. To reserve your copy, visit:
http://www.internet-librarian.com/

or contact organisers, Information Today:
E info@internet-librarian.com
T +44 (0)1865 327813


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5th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC 2009)

The DCC invites submission of full papers, posters, workshops and demos to the 5th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC 2009). It also welcomes contributions and participation from individuals, organisations and institutions across all disciplines and domains that are engaged in the creation, use and management of digital data, especially those involved in the challenge of curating data for e-science and e-research. Proposals will be considered for short (up to 6 pages) or long (up to 12 pages) papers and also for demonstrations, workshops and posters. The full text of papers will be peer-reviewed; abstracts for all posters, workshops and demos will be reviewed by the co-chairs. Final copy of accepted contributions will be made available to conference delegates, and papers will be published in our International Journal of Digital Curation.


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JISC SIS Landscape Study Blog

JISC is funding a small study to provide a snapshot of the way the UK academic sector is using Web 2.0 tools and services in its work. Could you help?

Although JISC has funded the development of a number of services (e.g. JORUM, JISCmail) specifically for use within the UK HE sector, people within the sector are increasingly using services developed outside the sector, either in addition to - or in some cases instead of – JISC-provided services. In addition to using such services, people are also engaging in 'mashups' where combinations of services and content are used to provide new services or to provide added value to data already held.

The main focus of the study is to find out the Web 2.0 tools and services that people are using, and the reasons for choosing them (especially if they decided against using a JISC service that was available). A number of approaches will be used to collect evidence from people working in the HE sector – these approaches will themselves include the use of Web 2.0 tools and services.

One evidence collection approach is the study blog. In order to get feedback the blog has been set up with a series of pages, each looking at a different task that Web 2.0 services enables people to do; people can add comments to the various individual pages. The next stage will be to identify and contact individuals who routinely use several tools and services as case studies.

The study team would like to hear from as many people as possible. The study timescale is short, so the team would like people to do the following as soon as possible:

As a thank you, a small number of Amazon vouchers will be awarded to some lucky participants in a draw.

Further information:
See http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/jisc-sis-landscape/
or contact:
Ann Chapman a.d.chapman@ukoln.ac.uk
Rosemary Russell r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk

[Source: UKOLN]

[Received: June 2009]
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Evaluating Tools for Automated Subject Metadata Generation

EASTER (Evaluating Automated Subject Tools for Enhancing Retrieval) is an 18-month project funded under the JISC Information Environment Programme 2009-11. It started in April 2009 and involves eight institutional partners, with UKOLN as lead organisation, University of Glamorgan, Intute, City University London and Dagobert Soergel being major partners, as well as Royal School Library and Information Science, University College London, and OCLC Office of Research as non-funded supporting partners.

The purpose of the project is to test and evaluate existing tools for automated subject metadata generation in order to better understand what is possible, what the limitations of current solutions are, and make subsequent recommendations for services employing subject metadata in the JISC community.

The project is concerned both with the creation and with the enrichment of subject metadata using existing automated tools. Subject metadata are most important in resource discovery, yet most expensive to produce manually. In addition, they are much more difficult to generate automatically, especially in comparison to formal metadata such as file type, title, etc. Also, due to the high cost of evaluation, automated subject metadata tools are rarely tested in live environments of use. There is a huge challenge facing UK HE digital collections, institutional repositories and aggregators of institutional repository content as to how to provide high quality subject metadata for ever-increasing amounts of digital information at reasonable cost.

The information centre chosen as a test-bed for this project will be Intute. Selected tools for automated subject metadata generation will be tested in two contexts: by Intute cataloguers in the cataloguing workflow; and by end-users of Intute who search for information in Intute as part of their research, learning, and information management.

The project will first develop a methodology for evaluating the tools. The methodology will then be implemented in the above contexts. First, all tools will be evaluated for results using a devised 'gold standard'. The best tool(s) for the purposes of Intute will be implemented into a demonstrator that will feed its results into the cataloguing workflow which will then be evaluated. Furthermore, a task-based study of end-users' retrieval actions will be conducted to determine the contribution of automatically assigned terms, and manually assigned terms, both alone and in combination, to retrieval success (i.e. retrieving relevant documents) and failure (missing relevant documents and retrieving irrelevant ones).

Further information:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/easter/

[Source: UKOLN]

[Received: May 2009]
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Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation Join to Create the DuraSpace Organization

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, have announced that they will join up to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities which manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

The combined organization, named "DuraSpace," will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission. The organization will be led by an executive team consisting of Sandy Payette (Chief Executive Officer), Michele Kimpton (Chief Business Officer), and Brad McLean (Chief Technology Officer) and will operate out of offices in Ithaca, New York State and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

"This is a great development," said Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). "It will focus resources and talent in a way that should really accelerate progress in areas critical to the research, education, and cultural memory communities. The new emphasis on distributed reliable storage infrastructure services and their integration with repositories is particularly timely."

Together Fedora and DSpace make up the largest market share of open repositories worldwide, serving over 700 institutions. These include organizations committed to the use of open source software solutions for the dissemination and preservation of academic, scientific, and cultural digital content.

Further information:
More information is available at the DuraSpace Web site http://duraspace.org/ including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

[Source: Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation]

[Received: May 2009]
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Large-scale Study of Collaborative Tools Available

The University of California Berkeley Information Services and Technology Group has made available the results from a large-scale study of collaborative tools that it has undertaken as part of an extensive campus-wide strategy development and implementation.

Further information:
http://collab.berkeley.edu/projects/cctsd/

[Source: CNI]

[Received: May 2009]
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Consultation on Future Policy for Archival Services

Following close work between The National Archives and MLA, the Government is asking people for their views on its proposed new policy on archives, which it published recently.

The consultation document, Archives for the 21st century, seeks to build the foundations for a sustainable future for archival services, responding to the challenges of the digital age and the opportunities to make archives accessible to a wider range of people. The main proposals the Government is seeking views on are:

Archives for the 21st century builds on the progress made following the publication of the last policy on archives in 1999. It reflects the challenges created by the rapidly evolving information and communication world, the need to deliver archives services by more effective and efficient means, and increased public expectation for access to archives' resources.

Comments on the policy proposals are welcome from all parties interested in archives including local authorities, universities, individual information professionals, archival organisations and the general public. The consultation will run for a period of 12 weeks, until 12 August. To take part, see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archivesconsultation/

Further information:
The document can be downloaded from
http://www.mla.gov.uk/

[Source: MLA]

[Received: May 2009]
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Results Available from the Enhanced Tagging for Discovery (EnTag) Project

The Enhanced Tagging for Discovery (EnTag) Project was a 12-month JISC project funded under the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme. While it concluded successfully in October 2008, the work on further qualitative analysis will continue and so will its dissemination activities. All results are made available at the EnTag dissemination Web page http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/enhanced-tagging/dissemination/

The project involved partners from six institutions, with UKOLN as lead organisation, University of Glamorgan, Intute and Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) being the major partners, while OCLC Office of Research and Danish Royal School of Library and Information Science acted as non-funded supporting partners.

The purpose was to investigate the combination and comparison of controlled and folksonomy approaches to support resource discovery in JISC repositories and digital collections. The specific aim was to determine whether vocabulary control and the use of established knowledge organization systems can assist in moving free social tagging beyond personal bookmarking to aid resource discovery.

The Intute digital collection and the STFC repository were used as two test beds. For each a separate demonstrator was developed (see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/enhanced-tagging/demonstrators/) and a user study conducted. Three major methods were adopted to collect user data, namely logs analysis, questionnaires, and interviews. The evaluation of the Intute demonstrator involved comparing basic and advanced systems for indexing and retrieval implications. The test setting comprised 28 students in political science and 60 documents covering 4 topics of relevance to the students. Dewey Decimal Classification was used. The STFC study involved 10 authors and depositors. The ACM Computing Classification Scheme was employed.

The results showed the importance of controlled vocabulary suggestions for both indexing and retrieval in order to: help produce ideas of the tags to use; make it easier to find a focus for the tagging; as well as to ensure consistency and increase the number of access points in retrieval. Much depended on the quality of the suggestions, both in terms of conceptual relevance to the user and in appropriateness of the terminology. The participants themselves could also see the advantages of controlled vocabulary terms for retrieval if the terms used were from an authoritative source.

Further information:
All results are made available at the EnTag dissemination Web page http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/enhanced-tagging/dissemination/

[Source: UKOLN]

[Received: May 2009]
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RCUK Publishes Report on Open Access Study

Research Councils UK has published an independent study commissioned by the Research Councils into open access to research outputs. The purpose of the study was to identify the effects and impacts of open access on publishing models and institutional repositories in the light of national and international trends. This included the impact of open access on the quality and efficiency of scholarly outputs, specifically journal articles. The report presents options for the Research Councils to consider, such as maintaining the current variation in Research Councils' mandates, or moving towards increased open access, eventually leading to Gold Standard.

The study, conducted by SQW Consulting and LISU, Loughborough University, was commissioned and managed by a subgroup of the RCUK Research Outputs Group (ROG). In addition, an independent Expert Panel was set up to advise the consultants, consisting of representatives from the commercial and learned society publishing sectors and university libraries, and chaired by Michael Jubb from the Research Information Network (RIN).

Further information:
More information and a download of the report can be obtained from:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/090422.htm

[Source: RCUK]

[Received: April 2009]
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JISC SIS Landscape Study Blog

Can you help us?

JISC is funding a small study to provide a snapshot of the way the UK academic sector is using Web 2.0 tools and services in their work. Although JISC has funded the development of a number of services (e.g. JORUM, JISCmail) specifically for use within the UK HE sector, people within the sector are increasingly using services developed outside the sector, either in addition to - or in some cases instead of - JISC provided services. And as well as using such services, people are also engaging in 'mashups' where combinations of services and content are used to provide new services or to provide added value to data already held.

The main focus of the study is to find out the Web 2.0 tools and services that people are using, and the reasons for choosing them (especially if they decided against using a JISC service that was available). A number of approaches will be used to collect evidence from people working in the HE sector – these approaches will themselves include the use of Web 2.0 tools and services.

One evidence collection approach is the study blog. In order to get feedback the blog has been set up with a series of pages, each looking at a different task that Web 2.0 services enables people to do; people can add comments to the various individual pages. The next stage will be to identify and contact individuals who routinely use several tools and services as case studies.

The study team would like to hear from as many people as possible. The study timescale is short, so the team would like people to do the following as soon as possible:

As a thank you, a small number of Amazon vouchers will be awarded to some lucky participants in a draw.

Ann Chapman a.d.chapman@ukoln.ac.uk and Rosemary Russell r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk

URL: http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/jisc-sis-landscape/

[Received: June 2009]
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Publication Date: 30-April-2009 Publication: Ariadne Issue 59
Originating URL: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue59/newsline/