Portals and university libraries

Section 2: Chapter 8Postprin

Cataloguing the World Wide Web: CORC at Edinburgh University

This article examines Edinburgh University Library’s experience of using OCLC’s Co-operative Online Resource Catalogue (CORC). It discusses the project phase of CORC, its functionality, including automatic metadata harvesting and its ability to map between MARC and Dublin Core metadata formats. It also looks at how CORC fits into Edinburgh University Library’s policies regarding web resources, highlighting benefits and concerns associated with the system.Postprin

An ETD Submission System for the UK

Theses Alive! is one of the projects funded by JISC within the FAIR Programme. Theses Alive! is taking a practical route, by developing ETD submission software customised for use by UK HE institutions, and piloting that software within a number of institutions. The Project is currently evaluating open source software for use in the Project, and a decision will be made by end-April 2003. With its pilot group, the Project will concentrate on developing an interface to the chosen software which achieves the following objectives: * Is simple to use by both theses authors and their supervisors * Permits secure storage of work in progress, and version control * Allows interaction between supervisors and authors * Allows for the generation of metadata records to meet the following requirements: + A MARC record for local OPAC + A standard record for the commercial Index to theses publication + A standard record for the British Thesis Service + A Dublin Core record for the theses repository In addition to the development of a submission system, the Project will run an ETD help service with an 'ETDs FAQ' as its central component. This knowledge base will assist institutions to move towards creating their own ETD services, by addressing issues such as IPR, advocacy with academic staff, publisher policies, digital preservation and other key issues in addition to technical questions regarding software and hardware requirements. This presentation will concentrate on the evaluation of open source software, giving the reasons for the choice which will by then have been made, and discussing the technical considerations involved in customisation for use in the UK. It will go on to discuss the requirements of UK theses authors in respect of an ETD system, and the main concerns which are being addressed in creating the FAQ service

Towards a shared print collection in UK research libraries

This paper describes a recent project by Research Libraries UK to analyse the ‘collective collection’ of its member libraries, in order to understand the implications for the community of a collectively-managed print resource in the future. It discusses the work of OCLC Research in using the OCLC WorldCat database for this analysis, taking account of inaccurate data matching and its effects, and considers how the RLUK analysis feeds in to broader work across the UK, led by Jisc, to create a UK National Bibliographic Knowledgebase. It compares the findings of the OCLC Research study to those of an earlier similar analysis of the collective Association of Research Libraries collection in North America. The governance and funding complexity of the UK is described to account for the challenges inherent in taking a national approach to the problems of managing a collective collection. The UK Research Reserve is described as an example of a shared print approach, thus far only applied to journals, which has over the last 10 years been a successful initiative for a number of participant libraries in allowing them to free up shelf space by removing duplicate holdings. The collective collection work of a subset of RLUK, the White Rose University Consortium in Yorkshire, is described as an exemplar of an implementation of the findings of the RLUK-wide study within a regional context.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Resource Discovery Services for Grid Computing Training

Resource discovery is a core function of e-learning. While initially confined to library environments, it has become pervasive, partly due to the advent of web-based searching and also service-oriented approach. The latter is the focus of this paper as resource discovery (web) services enable existing resources to be identified from a source (library) and re-purposed for educational purposes in other systems such as virtual learning environments. This paper describes the development of such resource discovery services developed as part of an initiative to pilot e-learning and a shared digital library infrastructure for Grid Computing training projects in Europe. The development is also related to a project funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) on publisher metadata interoperability. The resource discovery services correspond to an emerging international service-oriented framework for developing e-learning. This paper also provides an overview of the framework and the use-scenarios in which the resource discovery services have been deployed

Impact of regulatory safety notices on valproate prescribing and pregnancy outcome among women of child-bearing potential in Scotland: a population-based cohort study

Objective: To examine the impact of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) safety alerts on valproate prescribing among women aged 14–45 years in Scotland and examine trends in pregnancies exposed to valproate. Design: Population-based cohort study. Participants: 21 983 women of all ages who received valproate between January 2011 and December 2019. Methods: All valproate prescriptions issued to women in Scotland between January 2011 and December 2019 were identified and prevalence/incidence rates per 10 000 population derived. The impact of regulatory safety alerts on prescribing was analysed using Joinpoint models. Linked pregnancy records for January 2011 to September 2019 were identified and annual rates of pregnancy per 1000 valproate-treated women aged 14–45 years were calculated for each pregnancy outcome: live birth, stillbirth, miscarriage and termination. Results: Annual prevalent and incident rates of valproate prescribing declined in women aged 14–45 years between 2011 and 2019 from 40.5 to 18.3 per 10 000 population (54.8% reduction) and 7.9 to 1.3 per 10 000 population (83.5% reduction), respectively. Statistically significant changes occurred around the times of the MHRA safety alerts. The number of valproate-exposed pregnancies conceived each year fell from 70 in 2011 to 20 in 2018, a 71.4% reduction, and the number of live births fell from 52 to 14, a 73.0% reduction. Expressed as a rate this was a 46.4% decrease from 15.3 to 8.2 per 1000 valproate-treated women aged 14–45 years in 2011 and 2018, respectively. Live birth was the most common pregnancy outcome. Conclusion: This study demonstrates, for the first time, the capabilities of national data sets to identify drug exposure and derive pregnancy outcome at scale across Scotland. Building on this as part of an evolving national/UK surveillance capability will continue efforts to minimise in-utero exposure to valproate; enabling ongoing surveillance to understand better long-term outcomes, and to inform better provision of health and wider support services

Case study: The Edinburgh Research Archive

This chapter discusses the many real-life issues encountered during the development process of a combined e-theses and e-print repository which ultimately became the Edinburgh Research Archive

The institutional repository in the digital library

We begin by looking at the concept of institutional repositories within the broader context of digital libraries. ‘Digital libraries’ can mean many things, but we consider them to be libraries first and foremost, and built upon the enduring principles of information management which have lain at the heart of the practice of librarianship for hundreds of years. We look also at the significance of the qualification which defines the scope of this book – the institutional repository. Libraries are themselves repositories, and have always dealt in the management of repositories for their users. With libraries now routinely managing repositories of various types in digital format, what does it mean to qualify ‘repository’ with ‘institutional’

Förster energy transfer between neighbouring chromophores in C-phycocyanin trimers

The excitation-energy transfer in C-phycocyanin (C-PC) trimers and monomers isolated from phycobilisomes of Mastigocladus laminosus has been studied by polarization femtosecond laser spectroscopy. Excitation with 70-fs pulses at 615 nm gave rise to a 500-fs energy-transfer process that was observed only in trimeric preparations. The rate of the process is in agreement with earlier calculated Förster energy transfer rates between neighbouring α-84 and β-84 chromophores of different monomeric subunits. This process is most clearly seen in the anisotropy decay kinetics. As a result of femtosecond excitation-energy transfer, the anisotropy relaxes from 0.4 to 0.23. The final anisotropy value is in fair agreement with the results of calculations based on the crystal structure and spectroscopic data of C-PC trimers. Our results support the conclusion that Förster energy transfer can occur between excitonically coupled chromophores