Embracing the future: embedding digital repositories in the University of London

Digital repositories can help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop coherent and coordinated approaches to capture, identify, store and retrieve intellectual assets such as datasets, course material and research papers. With the advances of technology, an increasing number of Higher Education Institutions are implementing digital repositories. The leadership of these institutions, however, has been concerned about the awareness of and commitment to repositories, and their sustainability in the future. This study informs a consortium of thirteen London institutions with an assessment of current awareness and attitudes of stakeholders regarding digital repositories in three case study institutions. The report identifies drivers for, and barriers to, the embedding of digital repositories in institutional strategy. The findings therefore should be of use to decision-makers involved in the development of digital repositories. Our approach was entirely based on consultations with specific groups of stakeholders in three institutions through interviews with specific individuals. The research in this report was prepared for the SHERPA-LEAP Consortium and conducted by RAND Europe

HELIN Consortium LORI Grant Final Report HELIN

Final report to the RI Office of Library and Information Services on the work accomplished with the LORI grant received from that agency

Guide to Options for ETD Programs

Dr. Martin Halbert of the University of North Texas documents the spectrum of ETD program implementation and offers guidance for academic decision-makers who are either creating or modifying ETD programs. Dr. Halbert identifies and offers in-depth analysis regarding the five key decisions that ETD programs must make. He also provides a literature review of publications, standards and reports that have been produced to date, and relates these to the key decisions

Reading and company: embodiment and social space in silent reading practices

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice

From the 'Digital Divide' to 'Digital Inequality': Studying Internet Use as Penetration Increases

The authors of this paper contend that as Internet penetration increases, students of inequality of access to the new information technologies should shift their attention from the "digital divide" - inequality between "haves" and "have-nots" differentiated by dichotomous measures of access to or use of the new technologies - to digital inequality, by which we refer not just to differences in access, but also to inequality among persons with formal access to the Internet. After reviewing data on Internet penetration, the paper describes five dimensions of digital inequality - in equipment, autonomy of use, skill, social support, and the purposes for which the technology is employed - that deserve additional attention. In each case, hypotheses are developed to guide research, with the goal of developing a testable model of the relationship between individual characteristics, dimensions of inequality, and positive outcomes of technology use. Finally, because the rapidity of organizational as well as technical change means that it is difficult to presume that current patterns of inequality will persist into the future, the authors call on students of digital inequality to study institutional issues in order to understand patterns of inequality as evolving consequences of interactions among firms' strategic choices, consumers' responses, and government policies.Digital divide, Internet, World Wide Web, computer use, social inequality

Historical Overview: The Parliamentary Library from Past to Present

Parliamentary libraries (also known under various terminologies such as federal libraries, legislative libraries, information resource centers, documentation centers, or reference services) enhance the research and information capacity of parliaments. As their histories show, however, some also came to consider their constituencies as lying beyond the confines of their parent legislature.published or submitted for publicatio

Technology for large space systems: A special bibliography with indexes (supplement 03)

A bibliography containing 217 abstracts addressing the technology for large space systems is presented. State of the art and advanced concepts concerning interactive analysis and design, structural concepts, control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, propulsion, solar power satellite systems, and flight experiments are represented

Cutting out the middle man?: disintermediation and the academic library

Big Deals, open access, and digitisation increasingly mean that selection decisions are being removed from librarians and transferred to the end user. David Ball looks at the forces pushing towards this ‘disintermediation’ and considers the future role of the academic library