Staff publications - Cranfield Library
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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: 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 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 Collection Statement(Cranfield University, 2025-04-11) Library ServiceThe collection statement covering the contents of the CERES repository.Item Open Access CERES Search(Cranfield University, 2023-04-26) Searle, ShannonItem Open Access 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 Consortia in Europe: describing the various solutions through four country examples(University of Illinois, 2006) Hormia-Poutanen, Kristiina; Xenidou-Dervou, Claudine; Kupryte, Rima; Stange, Kari; Kuznetsov, Alexander; Woodward, HazelThis article describes and discusses consortia models in Europe. Emphasis is given to those consortia that support content provision and access to electronic information resources in society. Four country cases are introduced as examples of the heterogeneous solutions chosen by the consortia. The main results and impact of the consortia are discussed. International cooperation has played an important role in the development of consortia in Europe. Regional and global collaboration initiatives are also discussed.Item 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 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 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 effect of variations in relevance assessments in comparative experimental tests of index languages(Cranfield University; Aslib, 1970-10) Cleverdon, Cyril W.It was desired to check whether the unexpected test results obtained in Cranfield II had been influenced by the relevance decisions. Three new sets of relevance decisions were therefore obtained, and the Cranfield II results were re-calculated for nineteen index languages on the basis of the new relevance judgements. A rank order of the index languages was found; in no case did the correlation co-efficient of any of the three new rank orders fall below 0.921 when compared with the original Cranfield II results. The findings of a similar type of test by Lesk and Salton are considered, and the conclusion is reached that the results of Cranfield II had showed that the superiority of the single term index languages were not significantly affected by relevance judgements.