Staff publications - Cranfield Library
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Embargo Academic libraries and estates strategy: a library leadership perspective(Facet Publishing, 2024-12-15) Wales, Tim; Everitt, Regina; Everitt, NeilThis chapter draws and reflects on the author’s academic library leadership experiences at five different institutions. Valuable insight is shared for the emerging generation of library leaders on the pros and cons of various leadership styles, influencing and negotiating skills when decisions are being made by senior institutional management on investment in their library estate. The author adopts a matrix approach to identify the key surface and/or latent institutional and external variables that will determine the impact of an Estates Strategy on a refurbishment or new build library project – these include formal customer feedback, senior management perceptions, institutional space constraints, structural surveys etc.Item Open Access CERES Search(Cranfield University, 2023-04-26) Searle, ShannonItem Open Access Item Open Access IRUS-UK: making scholarly statistics count in UK repositories(UKSG, 2012-11) Needham, Paul A. S.; Stone, GrahamIRUS-UK is a new national standards-based statistics aggregation service for institutional repositories in the UK. The service processes raw usage data from repositories, consolidating those data into COUNTER compliant statistics by following the rules of the COUNTER Code of Practice – the same code adhered to by the majority of scholarly publishers. This will, for the first time, enable UK repositories to provide consistent, comparable and trustworthy usage data as well as supporting opportunities for benchmarking at a national level. This article provides some context to development, benefits and opportunities offered by the service, an institutional repository perspective and future plans.Item Open Access Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education(Alpsp Publications Centre, 2005-01-12T00:00:00Z) Swan, Alma; Needham, Paul A. S.; Probets, Steve; Muir, Adrienne; Oppenheim, Charles; O'Brien, Ann; Hardy, Rachel; Rowland, Fytton; Brown, SheridanA study carried out for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee examined models for the provision of access to material in institutional and subject- based archives and in open access journals. Their relative merits were considered, addressing not only technical concerns but also how e-print provision (by authors) can be achieved – an essential factor for an effective e- print delivery service (for users). A 'harvesting' model is recommended, where the metadata of articles deposited in distributed archives are harvested, stored and enhanced by a national service. This model has major advantages over the alternatives of a national centralized service or a completely decentralized one. Options for the implementation of a service based on the harvesting model are presenteItem Open Access The COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works – a primer(United Kingdom Serials Group, 2009-11) Shepherd, Peter T.; Woodward, HazelRelease 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works was published in 2006 and provides an international standard for vendor recording and reporting of the usage of e-books and reference works. By July 2009, 23 vendors were compliant with this Code of Practice. It has much in common with the well-established COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and Databases but it also has a number of important features that take into account the greater diversity of e-books. This article provides a guide to the Code of Practice for both vendors and librarians, and addresses compliance issues relevant to both groups.Item Open Access The Embed Project: Final Report(Cranfield University, 2009-03-31) Harrington, John; Betts-Gray, MaryThe project set out to explore cultural barriers which constrain the engagement of research communities at two different institutions with their respective Institutional Repositories (IRs). Broadly the goals of the project were to identify solutions to these barriers in order to encourage increased content submission, repository enhancement, and the sustainability of the services.Item Open Access PIRUS Final Report(2009-01) Shepherd, Peter T.; Needham, Paul A. S.The aim of PIRUS (Publisher and Institutional Repository Usage Statistics) was to develop COUNTER-compliant standards and usage reports at the individual article level that can be implemented by any entity (publisher, aggregator, repository, etc.,) that hosts online journal articles and will enable the usage of research outputs to be recorded, reported and consolidated at a global level in a standard way.Item Open Access Acquiring E-Books for Academic Libraries(Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services, 2007) Woodward, HazelThis paper outlines the recent work of the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the area of e-books. The JISC Collections Team is responsible for negotiating deals with publishers and aggregators of e-content for all UK higher education libraries - some 180 in total. In other words it acts as a national consortium for the UK academic community, although it should be noted that all deals are negotiated on an ‘opt-in’ basis. The JISC Collections Team is advised by a series of format-based working groups - comprising senior academic librarians and library practitioners - including the E-Books Working Group, the Journals Working Group and the Moving Images Working Group. Recently the working groups have formulated vision statements to help inform both their own activities and the education community as a whole. The vision for e-books in UK education is as follows: “The UK education community will have access to quality e-book content that is of high relevance to teaching, learning and research across the broadest range of subject areas. Flexible business and licensing models will support a diversity of needs, allowing users to do what they want when they want and how they want for education purposes. All e-books will be easily discoverable and consistent standards will allow all content to be fully integrated into library, learning and research environments.”Item Open Access Authors' attitudes to, and awareness and use of, a university institutional repository.(United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG), 2007-11) Watson, SarahThis article reports the findings of an author study at Cranfield University. The study investigated authors' publishing behaviours, attitudes, concerns, and their awareness and use of their institutional repository (IR), Cranfield QUEprints. The findings suggest that despite a reasonable amount of advocacy many authors had not heard of QUEprints and were not aware of its purpose. Once explained, all authors saw at least one benefit to depositing a copy of their work to QUEprints, but many were unsure how to deposit, preferring to depend on the Library to do the work. The authors voiced few concerns or conditions regarding the inclusion of their work in QUEprints, but felt that it would be an extra, inconvenient step in their workload. This research led to the development of the Embed Project which is investigating how to embed the IR into the research process and thereby encourage more authors to deposit their work.Item Open Access The UK's National Electronic Site Licencing Initiative.(Haworth Press, 2001) Woodward, HazelIn 1998 the UK created the National Electronic Site Licensing Initiative (NESLI) to increase and improve access to electronic journals and to negotiate license agreements on behalf of academic libraries. The use of a model license agreement and the success of site licensing is discussed. Highlights from an interim evaluation by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) are noted and key issues and questions arising from the evaluation are identifiedItem Open Access Application for grant to the National Science Foundation, Washington [for] an investigation into the methodology of evaluation techniques based on a test of the MEDLARS system of the National Library of Medicine(1965-06) Cleverdon, Cyril W.A grant of $55,832 is requested by Aslib from the National Science Foundation over a period of two and a half years, for the purpose of the design and direction of an investigation into the methodology of evaluation of information retrieval systems, based on an evaluation test of the MEDLARS system of the National Library of Medicine. The work involved in carrying out the test will be the financial responsibility of the Library, and this application for grant is therefore limited to those activities which will be done in England. Some general problems of evaluation methodology are considered in the paper.Item Open Access ASLIB Cranfield project - report on the first stage of a test on the Library catalogue of The English Electric Co. Ltd., Whetstone(Cranfield Institute of Technology, 1961-06) Warburton, B.; Cleverdon, Cyril W.; Aitchison, JeanAt the request of the Director of the Aslib Cranfield Project, the Library of Engiish Electric Company at Whetstone agreed to allow the Project Staff to carry out a test on their catalogue. This was required in connection with the work of the project, more particularly in relation to the view that it was possible to carry out tests of this nature on existing indexes. From the project viewpoint, it was an experiment; as far as English Electric Company were concerned, it was hoped that the test might produce some information of value concerning their Facet catalogue.Item Open Access Application for grant to the National Science Foundation, Washington [for] an investigation into the performance characteristics of descriptor languages(Cranfield Institute of Technology, 1961-11) Cleverdon, Cyril W.In 1956 the National Science Foundation made a grant to Aslib for the first stage of an investigation into the camparative efficiency of four indexing systems, This stage of the work continued until March, 1959, and a further grant was made to cover the test programme. It is from the results of this work that the present proposals have evolved.Item Open Access Proposals for an investigation into the efficiency of various retrieval systems(1956) Cleverdon, Cyril W.Item Open Access The critical appraisal of information retrieval systems(1968-09) Cleverdon, Cyril W.The paper reviews one set of methods which can be used in the critical appraisal of various stages of an information retrieval system.Item Open Access A comparative evaluation of searching by controlled language and natural language in experimental N.A.S.A. data base(European Space Agency, 1977-07) Cleverdon, Cyril W.An evaluation test was made of an experimental data-base prepared by the Space Documentation Service of the European Space Agency, consisting of some 44,000 items from NASA STAR for 1973 and 1974. With this data-base it was possible to search on natural language terms in the titles and abstracts, in addition to the normal searches on controlled language index terms. The on-line searches were carried out at four centres, each centre being responsible for ten questions, with two searches in the alternative search modes being made by different people for each question. Up to twenty-five documents retrieved in the two searches for each question were sent to the originator of the question for relevance assessment. The results are presented in a number of different ways, but in every case the natural language searches showed a significantly higher recall ratio than the controlled language, with little difference in the precision ratios. It is suggested that the main reason for the superiority of natural language searching is the greater exhaustivity of the abstracts as compared to the indexing.Item Open Access Interim report on an investigation on mechanised information retrieval service in a specialised subject area(Cranfield Institute of Technology, 1970) Cleverdon, Cyril W.; Harding, P.The report covers the work undertaken in establishing and operating for a period of six months an S.D.I. service in the field of precision engineering. The performance and costs of the system are given and the problems which would be involved in a commercial operation are considered. The view is taken that it would be difficult for a system of this type to be economically viable in the short term.Item Open Access Electronic thesis development at Cranfield University(Emerald, 2005-06) Bevan, Simon J.Abstract: Purpose – To describe the issues involved in the introduction of mandatory submission of electronic theses at Cranfield University. Design/methodology/approach – Background information on how the availability of e-theses has developed at Cranfield University is provided along with discussions and advice on issues such as the choice of software, thesis submission workflow and timeframes, particularly in relation to the publication of thesis-related articles. It also looks at metadata issues as well as both retrieval and usage of electronic theses. Finally it describes how the service has expanded from e-theses to other types of material and to the development and expansion of an institutional repository for Cranfield. Findings – It is shown that there are a number of issues that will need to be addressed from the points of view of librarians, academic staff and registry staff and that one effective method of managing the process is to set up a working group with all stakeholders in the process. There is a clear need for administrative procedures to be discussed in detail and a recognition that the time involved in changing regulations may be significant. Practical implications – It is clear that most of the issues that have arisen at Cranfield as outlined in the paper will be mirrored at other institutions that are considering the same changes, and so those institutions looking at the area of e-thesis submission may gain some useful insights. Originality/value – This paper provides useful advice on the issues that will arise as institutions go through the process of introducing the mandatory submission of electronic theses.Item Open Access Licencing e-journals: UK style(Haworth, 2002) Woodward, HazelThis presentation will describe the way in which academic libraries in the United Kingdom (UK) are licencing and accessing electronic journals (e-journals). This process is being facilitated by the higher and further (HE and FE) funding councils through the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC). The presentation will begin by setting the context for national e-journal licencing and explain the wider version of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). It will than go on to describe the achievemants of the National Electronic Site Licence (NESLI) initiative and examine some ot the future developments currently under consideration.