Cranfield PSU and Library Services
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Item Open Access 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 Acquiring E-Books for Academic Libraries(Igitur, Utrecht Publishing and 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 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 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 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 Aslib Cranfield research project - A report on a test of the index of metallurgical literature of Western Reserve University(1963-10) Aitchison, Jean; Cleverdon, Cyril W.For many years the index to metallurgical literature at the Center for Documentation at Western Reserve University has been recognised as one of the most advanced indexing systems in use. It has been developed over many years with the assistance of grants from the American Society of Metals, and was put on an operational basis in 1960, when it was made available to members of the Society by subscription. At Cranfield, a by-product of the test on the efficiency of indexing systems had been the development of a method for testing existing systems. The opportunity of trying-out this method on the W.R.U. index was greatly appreciated by the Cranfield group; that it was an experiment in the use of the technique, equally as much as a test of the W.R.U. index, was accepted by both groups from the start. However, as the work developed, it became clear that the test was also becoming a research investigation in its own right, and that it was making significant additions to our knowledge of the operation of indexing systems. The following report covers all three stages of the work.Item Open Access Aslib Cranfield research project - Factors determining the performance of indexing systems; Volume 1, Design; Part 1, Text(1966) Cleverdon, Cyril W.; Mills, Jack; Keen, MichaelItem Open Access Aslib Cranfield research project - Factors determining the performance of indexing systems; Volume 1, Design; Part 2, Appendices(1966) Cleverdon, Cyril W.; Mills, Jack; Keen, MichaelThe appendices which follow provide complete information concerning the collection of documents and the set of questions used in the investigation, and are included with the intention that it should be possible for anyone - if they should wish to do so - to repeat the test.Item Open Access Aslib Cranfield research project - Factors determining the performance of indexing systems; Volume 2, Test results(1966) Cleverdon, Cyril W.; Keen, MichaelThe test results are presented for a number of different index languages using various devices which affect recall or precision. Within the environment of this test, it is shown that the best performance was obtained with the group of eight index languages which used single terms. The group of fifteen index languages which were based on concepts gave the worst performance, while a group of six index languages based on the Thesaurus of Engineering Terms of the Engineers Joint Council were intermediary. Of the single term index languages, the only method of improving performance was to group synonyms and word forms, and any broader groupings of terms depressed performance. The use of precision devices such as links gave no advantage as compared to the basic device of simple coordination. All results have to be considered within the context of the experimental environment, but they can be said to substantiate or clarify many of the findings of Cranfield I. It is conclusively shown that an inverse relationship exists between recall and precision, whatever the variable may be that is being changed. The two factors which appear most likely to affect performance are the level of exhaustivity of indexing and the level of specificity of the terms in the index language. For any given operational situation, the optimum levels cannot be categorically stated in advance, but can only be determined by an evaluation of the system, the main consideration probably being the subject field. It would be unusual if the characteristics of the subject field used for this test were such as to make it unique, so the high performance obtained with the single terms in natural language can be considered to be of some importance in regard to the use of natural language text as input to mechanised systems.Item Open Access ASLIB Cranfield Research Project: report on the first stage of an investigation into the comparative efficiency of indexing systems(College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, 1960-09) Cleverdon, Cyril W.It was in 1953 that the train of events started which brought about my participation in the investigation which is the subject of this report. R. G. Thorne, of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and I had been closely associated with the development of the Nationaal Luchtvaart- laboratorium Card Catalogue of Aerodynamic Data (Ref.1). This was an index designed for the retrieval of information in answer to very specific requests, and was far removed from the systems used in conventional library indexing. In that the average time taken to index each document was 1.5 hours, it was comparatively expensive, although the cost was shared out on a subscription basis amongst a number of organisations. Clearly, however, such an index could only be used for a relatively limited range of documents that were of particular significance, and Thorne and I were prepared to accept the possibility that in certain circumstances an organisation might be economically justified in maintaining two different types of indexes covering an overlapping range of documents. The Universal Decimal Classification was widely used in England and, in spite of many criticisms, was on the whole meeting the requirements of its users for a general indexing system. We were looking for another system which would fulfil the same function as the NLL scheme, but which might be less expensive and therefore more attractive economically for a single organisation to operate.Item Open Access Aslib Cranfield research project: report on the testing and analysis of an investigation into the comparative efficiency of indexing systems(1962-10) Cleverdon, Cyril W.This volume continues the account of the Aslib-Cranfield project as given in the "Final Report of the First Stage of an Investigation into the Comparative Efficiency of Indexing Systems". The major portion of the two years spent on this present stage has been involved with the analysis of the considerable amount of data which was obtained from the main test programme. A difficulty in this work was in deciding on the type of analysis which would be most likely to yield valuable information. In order to keep this volume within reasonable limits, it has been necessary to select from the analysis that was done, and even so in many cases only brief examples are given. The major emphasis has been placed on the reasons for failure to retrieve source documents, for this is considered to give some of the most interesting results of the project and has not, to our knowledge, been previously attempted. Of possible equal importance, but certainly more difficult to evaluate, is the reason for the retrieval of non-relevant references. This analysis has not been attempted within the present work, but will be one of the matters to be investigated in the continuation of the project.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 Benchmarking and library quality maturity(Emerald Group Publishing, 2005-10-26T17:55:04Z) Wilson, Frankie; Town, J. StephenIt remains unresolved from the literature whether benchmarking is a useful and appropriate tool for the library and information services sector. The aim of this research was to gather evidence to establish whether benchmarking provides a real and lasting benefit to library and information services. The study investigated the long term effects of a benchmarking exercise on the quality level of three UK academic libraries. However, an appropriate framework for assessing the quality level of libraries is not present in the literature, and it was therefore necessary for such a framework to be developed. This article describes and provides initial characterisation of the framework developed - the Quality Maturity Model. The evidence from the investigation showed that the two libraries which were at stage one on the QMM before the benchmarking exercise remained there; and the library which scored at the penultimate level, level four, before benchmarking, was, four years afterwards, at level five. The tentative conclusion drawn were that benchmarking may only be appropriate for organisations with a existing high level of quality maturity. Much further work is proposed.Item Open Access Benchmarking of Online Information Literacy Tutorials to Identify Lessons Learnt and Best Practice.(2005-10-26T17:59:52Z) Hunn, Ruth A.; Elliott, Amanda C.; Town, J. StephenThis paper reports the process and findings of a benchmarking exercise conducted on 10 online information literacy tutorials from around the English speaking World. The benchmarking exercise comprised site visits and the completion of an online survey. The aim of the exercise was to establish best practice and to gather any lessons that could be learnt, with the overall purpose of determining ways that our information literacy tutorial could provide the best quality and performance through the identification of user requirements. The method of selecting the tutorials to benchmark against and the areas to include in the review is described. A summary of results from each of the benchmarked areas is included for: pedagogical issues; design, development and user feedback; content; interactivity; and look and feel.Item Open Access BIODOC - the transition from research project to fully fledged service(UKSG, 1998-07) Bevan, Simon J.; Evans, Janet; Harrington, John; Turner, EmmaThis is the third in a series of papers describing BIODOC, a service now in its fourth year that addresses the access versus holdings debate in a University library. The main aims of the study were to evaluate the cost effectiveness of a wholly access based information service, to analyse user perception/receptivity and the impact of such a service, as well as to improve upon the existing service to the staff and students involved. As part of the project the Library also wished to compare document supplier performance and disseminate all findings among the academic and research communities.Item Open Access Caught in the Crossfire(2004-05-24T13:02:09Z) Harrington, JohnThe new ‘Open Access’ model of scholarly communication exploits both the internet and new publishing technologies to free up research literature to the benefit of authors, readers, students, libraries, funding bodies, and society as a whole. Two OA strategies could be used to move towards a fairer and more efficient communications system; self-archiving, by which scholars deposit their publications in free electronic repositories, and open access journals, which do not charge for access to the papers, but make them available to all electronically and look to other financial models to cover the costs of peer-review and publishing. The article which looks at the origins of Open Access, traces its development, and highlights the growing dilemma faced by academic authors on whether to support these new models of publication and dissemination in preference to their traditionally favoured high profile, but expensive to buy, subscription-based journals.Item Open Access CERES Search(Cranfield University, 2023-04-26) Searle, ShannonItem Open Access Item Restricted Changes in the research support landscape over the last ten+ years: reflections on the DARTS conference series 2005–2018(SCONUL, 2018-12-31) Barefoot, Anna; Cooksley, Hilary; Crossley, Jenni; Heath, Abigail; Sleat, Alastair; Smith, Mandy; Stevens, ClaireThe ‘DARTS’ conferences began back in 2005, instituted by the South West branch of what was then the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals’ University, College and Research (UC&R) Group (now ‘Academic and Research Libraries Group’ – ARLG) with the aim of providing a dedicated event for librarians and information professionals with an interest in research support. The topic had been covered as a one-day conference in the West Midlands, but there hadn’t been a research event in the south west, or anything residential. It seemed appropriate to put the ‘R’ back into UC&R!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.
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