Digital Scotland, the relevance of library research and the Glasgow Digital Library Project

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co-ordinated 'virtual Scotland' and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co-operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini-Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co-operation

START SPREADING THE NEWS. A journey in social media usage for outreach in a cooperative digitization project

Social media is an excellent outreach tool that can be an effective and cost-friendly way to be heard and tell people about valuable primary resources. However, as major projects go, they are part of a larger institution – or cooperative group of institutions – and that entails a look at broader or related procedures and collaboration between partners. Ensuring that social media efforts are in accordance with institutional guidelines and policies is crucial. Creating a social media framework and guidelines to focus outreach and communication for a particular project is highly recommended. It is also important to focus guidelines in the context of collaborating institutional or organizational partnerships. This alignment can provide a roadmap between social media efforts for the project and the larger outreach and educational efforts with collaborating institutional partners. The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project, part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, is on a journey of social media spreading-the-news activities while at the same time, developing an approach that fits into existing or in-progress institutional policies. In this presentation, the author will present on the project\u27s social media activities and channels. We will explore the challenges and opportunities that arise from coordinating social media efforts between different areas of the organization, the project, the partners, and the users. The author will also share his experience in developing social media policy and guidelines

Digital information and the 'privatisation of knowledge'

Purpose of this paper: To point out that past models of information ownership may not carry over to the age of digital information. The fact that public ownership of information (for example, by means of national and public library collections) created social benefits in the past does not mean that a greater degree of private sector involvement in information provision in the knowledge society of today is synonymous with an abandonment of past ideals of social information provision. Design/methodology/approach: A brief review of recent issues in digital preservation and national electronic heritage management, with an examination of the public/private sector characteristics of each issue. Findings: Private companies and philanthropic endeavours focussing on the business of digital information provision have done some things - which in the past we have associated with the public domain - remarkably well. It is probably fair to say that this has occurred against the pattern of expectation of the library profession. Research limitations/Implications:The premise of this paper is that LIS research aimed at predicting future patterns of problem solving in information work should avoid the narrow use of patterns of public-private relationships inherited from a previous, print-based information order. Practical implications: This paper suggests practical ways in which the library and information profession can improve digital library services by looking to form creative partnerships with private sector problem solvers. What is original/value of the paper? This paper argues that the LIS profession should not take a doctrinaire approach to commercial company involvement in 'our' information world. Librarians should facilitate collaboration between all parties, both public and private, to create original solutions to contemporary information provision problems. In this way we can help create pragmatic, non-doctrinaire solutions that really do work for the citizens of our contemporary information society

How to achieve high customer satisfaction in Sabancı University Information Center

The Sabancı University is a young private university, which started providing education in 1999 in Istanbul. A “Search Conference” had been organized in order to find out “what kind of a university the country needed” and of its structure had been established on this understanding. At the first stage, the vision, the mission and the design of the university were completed, and the foundation of administrative infrastructure and selection of technology systems were materialized. Starting from the days of its foundation, the planning of the information services and facilities had been one of the main issues of the project. The university, which aims to become a world university, was accepted to be a member of the “European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM)” regarding its activities in the stage of its foundation. A “Student and Staff Tendency Survey” which was implemented in 2001 indicated that the Information Centre was the strong side of the university. At the same time the Center's the statistics covering period of 1999-2007 also indicated that the targets were achieved under the strategic planning of the Center. In 2007, an user satisfaction survey in order to evaluate the conformity of the services and facilities, to identify its strong and weak areas, opportunities and threats through comparison and SWOT analysis for the future, and set up 2007-2011 five-years strategic planning and operational activity plan. The survey indicated that 95% of the participants are satisfied in general with the Center. In addition to these, the results of usage statistics between the years 1998-2009 indicated that utilizing of the services and facilities of the Information Center has increased from year to year. On the other hand, the results of the survey after the orientation programs show that the customer satisfaction is very high. We believe that the followings are the reasons of high user satisfaction. The Centre has a user and process focused pro-active management, learning organization structure, the availability of the suggestion system, continues benchmarking with the competitors and observing management and technological developments in the world. This paper presents to share our applications and plans on high user satisfaction rate, customer relation management activities and future planning

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants

SPEIR: Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research. Final Project Report: Elements and Future Development Requirements of a Common Information Environment for Scotland

The SPEIR (Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research) project was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). It ran from February 2003 to September 2004, slightly longer than the 18 months originally scheduled and was managed by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR). With SLIC's agreement, community stakeholders were represented in the project by the Confederation of Scottish Mini-Cooperatives (CoSMiC), an organisation whose members include SLIC, the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the Scottish Further Education Unit (SFEU), the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), regional cooperatives such as the Ayrshire Libraries Forum (ALF)1, and representatives from the Museums and Archives communities in Scotland. Aims; A Common Information Environment For Scotland The aims of the project were to: o Conduct basic research into the distributed information infrastructure requirements of the Scottish Cultural Portal pilot and the public library CAIRNS integration proposal; o Develop associated pilot facilities by enhancing existing facilities or developing new ones; o Ensure that both infrastructure proposals and pilot facilities were sufficiently generic to be utilised in support of other portals developed by the Scottish information community; o Ensure the interoperability of infrastructural elements beyond Scotland through adherence to established or developing national and international standards. Since the Scottish information landscape is taken by CoSMiC members to encompass relevant activities in Archives, Libraries, Museums, and related domains, the project was, in essence, concerned with identifying, researching, and developing the elements of an internationally interoperable common information environment for Scotland, and of determining the best path for future progress

JISC Preservation of Web Resources (PoWR) Handbook

Handbook of Web Preservation produced by the JISC-PoWR project which ran from April to November 2008. The handbook specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community”. The project was undertaken jointly by UKOLN at the University of Bath and ULCC Digital Archives department

Ideabook: Libraries for Families

The IDEABOOK is a research-based framework to guide and broaden family engagement in libraries.The framework helps libraries move beyond thinking of family engagement as random, individual activities or programs, but rather as a system where library leadership, activities, and resources that are linked to goals. The framework represents a theory of change that begins with a set of elements—leadership, engagement, and support services—that build a pathway for meaningful family engagement beginning in the early childhood years and extending through young adulthood.This IDEABOOK was developed for anyone who works in a library setting—from library directors and children's and youth librarians, to volunteers and support staff—and shares many innovative ways that libraries support and guide families in children's learning and development

espida Bibliography

This is the bibliography pulled together during research for the espida Project