Deployment of quality assurance procedures for digital library programmes

Many digital library programmes have a development philosophy based on use of open standards. In practice, however, projects may not have procedures in place to ensure that project deliverables make use of appropriate open standards. In addition there will be occasions when open standards are not sufficiently mature for deployment in a service environment or use of open standards will require expertise or resources which are not readily available

Beyond “appropriate” technology. Mobilizing education for development

Having established that technology mediated instruction of some kind\ud has potential and a valuable role to play in education for on the move and remote\ud area learners the paper looks at practice as documented and suggests that social\ud and cultural barriers are a greater challenge than technological ones. It concludes\ud by suggesting that successful implementation may depend both on use of familiar\ud technology i.e. phones rather than internet, and establishing for users a social and\ud cultural validity for using that technology for the delivery of education

Digital archiving of manuscripts and other heritage items for conservation and information retrieval

Expression of cultural heritage looking from the informatics angle falls into text, images, video and sound categories. ICT can be used to conserve all these heritage items like; the text information consisting of palm leaf manuscripts, stone tablets, handwritten paper documents, old printed records, books, microfilms, fiche etc, images including paintings, drawings, photographs and the like, sound items which includes musical concerts, poetry recitations, chanting of mantras, talks of important persons etc, and video items like archival films historical importance. To retrieve required information from such a large mass of materials in different formats and to transmit them across space and time, there are several limitations. Digital technology allows hitherto unavailable facilities for durable storage and speedy and efficient transmission / retrieval of information contained in all the above formats. Hypertext and hypermedia features of digital media enable integrating text with graphics, sound, video and animation. This paper discusses the international and national efforts for digitizing heritage items, digital archiving solutions available, the possibilities of the media, and the need to follow standards prescribed by organizations like UNESCO to enable easy exchange and pooling of information and documents generated in digital archiving systems at national and international level. The need to develop language technology for local scripts for organizing and preserving our cultural heritage is also stressed

Libraries and the management of research data

A discussion of the role of university libraries in the management of digital research data outputs. Reviews some of the recent history of progress in this area from a UK perspective, with reference to international developments

E-learning Series No. 1: A guide for senior managers

This guide to e-learning for senior managers in universities outlines the context for e-learning and its use in higher education, both nationally and internationally. It identifies potential benefits and addresses the key issues in implementing e-learning successfully, including costs. It also highlights likely future developments