Rosemary Russell

Institutional Repository Interaction With Research Users: A Review of Current Practice

The article reviews research that has examined scholarly users and institutional repository interaction within the wider scholarly communications environment. The focus is on research users as repository content creators and as eventual content users. The text explores how institutional motivations for implementing repositories match against user needs, and how consultation with users might be conducted. Some examples of innovative tailored services resulting from user needs analysis are described. The benefits of early consultation are highlighted, as well as the importance of tailoring advocacy to the needs of specific scholarly subject contexts. Understanding and engaging users mean that the benefits of repositories are more likely to be more fully realized. The article then sets out some of the current and future challenges for repository development. This includes briefly looking at opportunities for institutional and subject repositories to work together in complementary ways and consideration of research data requirements. Finally, the key area of integration is considered, first, in terms of embedding repositories in research practice, so that they become part of the researchers daily work environment; and second, repository integration with other institutional information systems is explored to enable the sharing of repository content across other services.

A utopian place of criticism? brokering access to network information

The management of autonomous, heterogeneous network resources and services provides new challenges which libraries are now addressing. This paper outlines an approach based on the construction of broker services which mediate access to resources. It outlines a framework – the MODELS Information Architecture – for thinking about the components of broker services and their logical arrangement. It describes several development projects and services which show how brokers are developing. It uses examples drawn from the serials environment to describe some of the issues. Technologists understand that they must build more stable and unobtrusive media. They must establish more coherent contexts into which the technology may disappear.

Clumps or ... organised access to printed scholarly material: outcomes from the third MODELS workshop

The MODELS (MOving to Distributed Environments for Library Services) project is based around a series of five workshops. The third of these, “Organising access to printed scholarly material”, proposed a co‐ordinated approach to providing access to a managed, distributed bibliographic resource. This article has two main ambitions: firstly it explores the influential outcomes of the third workshop, and secondly, it places this discussion in the wider MODELS context.

Realising the Hybrid library

In a recent D‐Lib Magazine article, Chris Rusbridge, the Director of the UK Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme, argued for the adoption of the ‘hybrid library’ model of information provision.’ This paper, following on from and engaging with his remarks, outlines a number of projects, currently being funded by eLib, which are investigating ways in which the hybrid library can be implemented. It discusses key technological and managerial issues emerging from these projects.

Managing access to a distributed library resource: report from the fifth MODELS workshop

Recommendations for increased resource sharing between libraries have been emerging from a range of sources in recent years. However, the majority of local library management systems currently in use do not inter‐operate, so resources are fragmented and there is no unified access. The situation is complicated by organisational and business issues. This was the basis for the fifth MODELS (Moving to Distributed Environment for Library Services) workshop, which explored more effective management of access and resource sharing, and the development of a supporting systems framework. The focus was on public library developments and cross‐sectoral cooperation. The paper develops some of the key issues, together with discussion of the emerging MODELS Information Architecture.

The emergence of distributed library services: a European perspective

This article discusses the emergence of distributed library services drawing on recent European initiatives to describe developments. It focuses on Z39.50-based services. It outlines a descriptive framework for such services and briefly introduces developments in other domains. Projects funded through the EU Telematics Application Programme are highlighted and some recent developments in U.K. higher education are introduced.

From VINE to UKOLN — four months on…

With Rosemary Russell, the library systems specialist at the Library Information Technology Centre, taking over the VINE editorship for issue 94, VINE once again became an all LITC affair. Until taking up a new post at UKOLN earlier in 1995, she became adept at juggling VINE, consultancy contracts and other LITC projects, somehow managing to keep all airborne simultaneously! In her five issues she unravelled the mysteries of topics such as EDI, Z39.50 and electronic copyright as well as continuing the VINE tradition of reviewing new systems including Genesis, Calm 2000 and Innopac. In this article she looks at the current role and work of UKOLN.