UKOLN News

Ariadne 42 addresses some of the current concerns with the Freedom of Information Act with articles by Steve Bailey and Lena Rohan. There are also a clutch of articles on emerging technologies: Michael Daw describes the Access Grid system and its claim to be an Advanced Collaboration Environment. Sebastian Rahtz gives us his evaluation of the Google Search Appliance, while Brian Kelly and Emma Tonkin take a look at Wikis,

assisted by Robert Bristow”s report on Wikis, Blogs and Other Strange Beasts. Patrick Lauke obliges us with a look at Firefox and points out useful features and extensions for Web developers.

All this plus articles on text mining, copyright and more, supported by the usual regular columns, reports on events and reviews.

This position provides an excellent opportunity for applied research into the development of digital libraries. The post-holder will work within the Research and Development Team at UKOLN contributing to two JISC funded projects: the JISC Information Environment Service Registry project and the eBank UK project. The closing date for applications is 11 February 2005.

A lively debate on Web accessibility has begun following the publication of an automated accessibility analysis of the Web sites of various UK disability bodies. The initial debate focuses on the merits of automated versus manual accessibility checks. UKOLN, together with its fellow JISC-funded advisory service TechDis and an e-learning developer at the University of Bath”s e-learning unit Centre for the Development of New Technologies in Learning (CDNTL), has recently published an article on a holistic framework for e-learning accessibility which seeks to provide a wider context for this debate.

The latest issue of the CD Focus newsletter is now available.

The DCC launch was celebrated with a gathering together of a number of supporters and experts from across the UK and beyond. The opening ceremony, talks, poster sessions and demonstrations took place at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh on 5 November.

celebrated with a gathering together of a number of supporters and experts from across the UK and beyond. The opening ceremony, talks, poster sessions and demonstrations took place at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh on 5 November.

Ariadne 41 carries an article from Ann Chapman on the implications of the impending changes to ISBN numbers for all users of ISBNs: publishers, distributors, booksellers, libraries, and suppliers of systems and software to the information community and the book trade. Richard Jones demonstrates how the Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) has provided E-Theses functionality for DSpace, and discusses the developmental methods for writing such third-party tools. Andy Powell gives an overview of VRVS, a collaborative tool which may have an effect on communications between project partners and Michael Day provides a report on the 4th International Web Archiving Workshop which took place alongside the ECDL 2004 Conference which has been covered by Jessie Hey and Angela Joyce.

Pete Johnston and Andy Powell attended the DC 2004 conference in Shanghai (and the meeting of the DCMI Usage Board that took place immediately before it). Each gave a tutorial and ran a meeting of the working group that they chair (Collection Description and Architecture respectively). Pete also presented at a special session about the NISO Metasearch Initiative. All the materials that they presented are now available on the UKOLN Web site.

The JISC-funded CC-interop project completed its work during 2004 and is holding a one-day conference to disseminate the key findings of the project. Registration is now open.

At ECDL 2004 in Bath, Andy Powell gave a half-day tutorial about how to encode DC metadata in XHTML, XML and RDF/XML. The Powerpoint slides and other materials (examples and screen-cams) used in the tutorial are now available.