UKOLN News

UKOLN”s QA Focus project made use of the log validator tool developed by W3C to identify HTML validation problems on the QA Focus Web site. The tool helped to prioritise the fixing of problems by reporting on the most visited invalid pages. The tool was integrated within a quality assurance framework, which ensured that invalid pages were not only fixed, but the underlying causes of the problems were addressed. A testimonial about use of the tool has been published on the W3C Web site.

The UKOLN Annual Report 2004-2005 is now available.

Information about the joint UKOLN/UCISA/CETIS workshop on “Initiatives & Innovation: Managing Disruptive Technologies” which will be held at the University of Warwick on 24 February 2006 is now available.

The International Journal on Digital Libraries (IJDL) [http://www.dljournal.org/], published by Springer, has issued a Call for Papers for a Special Issue on eScience. Initiatives, which go under a variety of names including eScience,
eResearch, and cyberinfrastructure, are a response to the changing nature of scientific research. Research issues being addressed include
information retrieval, information modeling, ontologies, systems interoperability, and policy issues associated with providing transparent access to complex data sets.
The purpose of this special issue is to critically examine the role that digital libraries can and should play in this emerging eScience
computational infrastructure. Bringing the digital library and the emerging scientific infrastructure worlds together can lay the foundation for providing truly integrated support for the entire process of science, from formulation of research questions to the publication of the outcomes. For further information please contact editor Traugott Koch at: t.koch@ukoln.ac.uk

Although the QA Focus project has finished, we are continuing to release new QA Focus briefing documents. In order to help users find out about new documents, an RSS feed providing a summary of new document is available.

UKOLN is participating in a new Aslib half-day
workshop providing a basic introduction to Creative Commons and its implications for the information professional. The workshop will be held on Monday 21 November at the Aslib Training Department in London.

The Autumn issue of Ariadne was published on 30 October and includes an article by Paul Miller who explores some of the recent buzz around the concept of “Web 2.0″ and asks what it means for libraries and related organisations. Chris Awre and co-authors write on using JSR 168 and WSRP to enable search within portal frameworks, Balviar Notay and Catherine Grout contribute on developments in digitisation programmes, online delivery services and specialised search engines from a JISC perspective, while Morag Greig and William Nixon describe findings of the DAEDALUS Project and the Glasgow ePrints Service. The issue also contains an article on online repositories for learning materials together with two perspectives in relation to digital repositories from colleagues in the Netherlands. Michael Day reviews for us another volume of the mighty ARIST.

Revealweb received a “Getting the Message Across Award” at the National Information Forum Awards ceremony on 19 October 2005 at the Law Society, London. The awards acknowledge excellence and imagination in the provision of information to disabled people and others severely disadvantaged by lack of appropriate information. The citation noted “the selection panel were impressed by the innovatory aspect of the service, the fact that it is free and the sheer scale of the resource”. UKOLN supports Revealweb by providing advice and help on bibliographic issues.

A paper on “A Standards Framework for Digital Library Programmes”, written by staff from the JISC-funded UKOLN, CETIS, AHDS and TechDis services, was presented recently at the international ichim05 conference.

Places are still available so, to avoid disappointment, please register now for PV 2005: “Ensuring long-term preservation and adding value to scientific and technical data”, to be held at The Royal Society, Edinburgh, from 21-23 November 2005.