Copyright Literacy in the UK: a survey of librarians and other cultural heritage sector professionals

Based on a survey of UK library and information professionals and those who work in the cultural heritage sector, carried out in December 2014, this research sought to examine the levels of copyright „literacy?. The survey aimed to obtain responses from all sectors, however most responses were received from academic libraries. The research examined their knowledge of national and international copyright issues as well as copyright policies at an institutional level. The survey also explored the need for copyright education for new and existing professionals and suggested topics for inclusion in training activities. The findings suggest that levels of knowledge amongst UK professionals are higher than those in other countries who participated in the first phase of the project. UK institutions are also more likely to have a copyright policy and an individual with responsibility for copyright. The results should be of interest to library managers, library educators and those with responsibility for staff training

A Generative Model of Group Conversation

Conversations with non-player characters (NPCs) in games are typically confined to dialogue between a human player and a virtual agent, where the conversation is initiated and controlled by the player. To create richer, more believable environments for players, we need conversational behavior to reflect initiative on the part of the NPCs, including conversations that include multiple NPCs who interact with one another as well as the player. We describe a generative computational model of group conversation between agents, an abstract simulation of discussion in a small group setting. We define conversational interactions in terms of rules for turn taking and interruption, as well as belief change, sentiment change, and emotional response, all of which are dependent on agent personality, context, and relationships. We evaluate our model using a parameterized expressive range analysis, observing correlations between simulation parameters and features of the resulting conversations. This analysis confirms, for example, that character personalities will predict how often they speak, and that heterogeneous groups of characters will generate more belief change.Comment: Accepted submission for the Workshop on Non-Player Characters and Social Believability in Games at FDG 201

UK Copyright Literacy Survey: summary report

The Copyright Literacy Survey aimed to gather data of copyright awareness amongst UK librarians and those working in related cultural heritage organisations, such as galleries, archives and museums. The data was gathered in late 2014 following several significant changes to UK copyright law, including several new exceptions of relevance to librarians and those working in the education and cultural heritage sectors. The survey instrument was developed in Bulgaria and findings from phase one of the project from four countries (Bulgaria, France, Turkey and Croatia) were presented at the European Conference of Information Literacy in 2014. In order to allow cross-country comparisons, the questions were devised by the original project team and only minor changes to reflect UK terminology and institutions were made. This report provides a high level summary of the key findings from the UK survey. The researchers will undertake further analysis to compare the findings to other countries and to draw conclusions from the data. Further publications and conference papers are planned later in 2015, but due to the high level of interest in the survey it was considered appropriate to release a summary of the data at this stage

Laser-assisted electron-argon scattering at small angles

Electron-argon scattering in the presence of a linearly polarized, low frequency laser field is studied theoretically. The scattering geometries of interest are small angles where momentum transfer is nearly perpendicular to the field, which is where the Kroll-Watson approximation has the potential to break down. The Floquet R matrix method solves the velocity gauge Schr\"odinger equation, using a larger reaction volume than previous treatments in order to carefully assess the importance of the long range polarization potential to the cross section. A comparison of the cross sections calculated with the target potential fully included inside 20 and 100 a.u. shows no appreciable differences, which demonstrates that the long range interaction can not account for the high cross sections measured in experiments.Comment: 2 figure

The publishing trap! A game of scholarly communication

In a complex, evolving scholarly communications environment, it is more important than ever for researchers to have access to information and support resources relating to copyright and intellectual property rights. However, many among the academic community continue to view copyright as something of a problem and difficult to engage with. Experimenting with new ways to communicate and critically examine the challenges and opportunities copyright presents to researchers, Chris Morrison and Jane Secker have created The Publishing Trap, an exciting new board game through which players learn about the relationship between knowledge, impact, and money, and how choices they make about their intellectual property will prove central to their academic success

From anxiety to empowerment: supporting librarians develop copyright literacy

Copyright is a subject that increasingly has a major impact on the library and information profession, particularly as librarians create, preserve and provide access to digital collections. However, it is a subject that many librarians shy away from providing advice about. In higher education most universities now employ a copyright officer or nominate someone to be the copyright specialist to deal with queries of this nature. While it is highly valuable to build up expertise in the many complexities of copyright, this approach can create a gulf between library staff and the specialist copyright officer. The consequences are that many librarians feel justified in passing on their queries to their dedicated specialist and don’t build up their knowledge and understanding in this field. In this short article we present emerging findings from an exploratory study to examine librarians’ experiences of copyright in their professional lives

E-learning at University of the Arts London

This report is a systematic exploration of staff relationships with e-learning. It presents a renewed evidence base from which e-learning provision and related support can be planned particularly in a rapidly changing HE terrain and an institutional context where e-learning and academic structures are emerging from large change programmes. The research is based on 25 interviews with programme directors (PD) evenly distributed across the 4 colleges, with representatives from all discipline groups, and levels of study. The interviewees provided rich insights into attitudes to, practices in and aspirations for e-learning, but in some instances, were also limited by the newness of the PD role. While some PDs had an intimate understanding of their programme areas, others, understandably, given the newness of posts, were in the process of familiarising themselves with the work of their teams

Design and development of Taeneb City Guide - from paper maps and guidebooks to electronic guides

This paper reports the design, development and feedback from the initial trial of the Taeneb City Guide project developing tourist information software on Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) handheld computers. Based on the users' requirements for electronic tourists guides already published in the literature, the paper focuses on the three main technology features of the systems, which would give the advantage over the existing paper publication: query-able dynamic map interface, dynamic information content and community review systems and users' forum. The paper also reports the results of an initial trial of a City Guide for Glasgow conducted as part of the EMAC 03 conference