Paul Ayris

• PhD
• Director of UCL Library Services, UCL Copyright Officer, and Chief Executive of UCL Press at University College London

The 2nd LIBER-EBLIDA Digitisation Workshop took place in The Hague between 19–21 October 2009 and was hosted by Bas Savenije as National Librarian of The Netherlands. In six sessions, the workshop considered a wide range of issues from business models to persistent identifiers. The papers were all of high quality, marking out the LIBER-EBLIDA Digit...

The 2nd LIBER-EBLIDA Digitisation Workshop took place in The Hague, hosted by Bas Savenije as National Librarian of The Netherlands, between 19-21 October 2009. In 6 sessions, the Workshop considered a wide range of issues from Business Models to Persistent Identifiers. The papers were all of high quality, marking out the LIBER-EBLIDA Digitisation...

This paper presents an overview of ways in which LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries) and its members are working towards embedding Open Access approaches to the dissemination of research outputs. It does this in three ways — by looking at current debates in which LIBER has become interested, on the economics of Open Access; by highli...

EuropeanaTravel is a targeted project for cultural content in the target area digital libraries of the eContentplus 2008 Work Programme funded by the European Commission.1 Its overall objective is to digitise content on the theme of travel and tourism for use in Europeana2 as requested by the EDL Foundation.3 The themed content will come from the w...

Digital curation and preservation represent new challenges for universities. LIBER has invested considerable effort to engage with the new agendas of digital preservation and digital curation. Through two successful phases of the LIFE project, LIBER is breaking new ground in identifying innovative models for costing digital curation and preservatio...

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess current developments in scholarly publishing in Europe. Current models for disseminating content have limitations and Open Access models of publishing have been endorsed by the European Universities Association. The Harvard mandate for the deposit of materials in Open Access repositories is a bold...

This paper looks at a snapshot of the current state of digitisation in the information landscape. It then looks at what LIBER can contribute to that landscape through portal development, funding, identifying and documenting best practice, lobbying at a European level, and managing the transition from paper to digital delivery, including the issue o...

95 participants from 23 countries attended a Workshop on the Digitisation of Library Material in Europe, from 24 to 26 October 2007 in the Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark. The Workshop was jointly organised by LIBER and EBLIDA. In a full report on the Workshop on the JISC website, the JISC highlighted that ‘high on the agenda were moves towards...

Executive summary: The first phase of LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation; an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. The LIFE work models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for future ye...

Digital preservation is concerned with the long-term safekeeping of electronic resources. How can we be confident of their permanence, if we do not know the cost of preservation? The LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) Project has made a major step forward in understanding the long-term costs in this complex area. The LIFE Project has dev...

Extract: This document draws together feedback, discussion and review of the LIFE Model from a number of sources: 1. The LIFE and LIFE2 Project Teams, and the staff of their institutions 2. Feedback from review by independent economics expert 3. The LIFE Project Conference 4. Early adopters of the Life Model (particularly the Royal Danish Lib...

Over the past seven years, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee have hosted a forum exploring scholarly communication issues at the ALA meetings. This June in Washington, D.C., three open access publishers were invited to provide a “course check” and to discuss issues of s...

This paper continues an earlier published history of the OAI Workshops, organised under the aegis of the LIBER Access Division, in CERN Geneva. It discusses the OAI5 Workshop, held on 18-20 April 2007, which underlines the emerging importance of Open Access to support information provision and exchange across Europe.

This paper will seek to re-address the nature of the Scholarly Communications debate in the Arts and Humanities. It will do so by briefly examining the nature of that debate in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) and then posit the nature of the discussion for Arts and Humanities. The paper will look at the nature of E-Books and questions around...

The Bologna Process started on 19 June 1999, when 29 European Ministers responsible for Higher Education signed the Bologna declaration, in which they undertook to create a European Higher Education Area. The creation of the European Higher Education Area should be completed by 2010. The main objectives of the Bologna declaration are to increase th...

This paper discusses the formation of the NHS-HE Forum by Professor Roland Rosner in 2001. It looks at the aims and objectives of the Forum and maps current progress. The second part of the paper looks particularly at the NHS-HE Procurement Group and the later JISC NHS-HE Procurement Group, which are part of the Forum. These groupings have been par...

The UK Higher Education library and information environment and the impact of the Open Access movement The purpose of this paper is to look at the information landscape in the academic sector in the United Kingdom, and then to attempt to draw some tentative conclusions from the study on the impact of the Open Access movement. It will do this by con...

Thomas Cranmer's register in Lambeth Palace Library is a document which is little understood and as yet unpublished. Episcopal registers trace the work of bishops and archbishops in their dioceses and provinces. As such, they are fundamental primary source documents. In a series of two articles, the author will first examine the composition and his...

The purpose of this article is to comment on methodological approaches to the use of original documents in the early English Reformation. Primary sources, such as episcopal registers, are in manuscript and in Latin—all of which makes them remote from the modern scholar. This article constructs a guide, consisting of ten precepts, to using such docu...

This article marks the author's first attempt to examine the impact of the Reformation in all the dioceses of England, as reflected in the surviving diocesan and capitular archives across the whole country. A number of events in the history of the English Reformation are studied in detail: the royal visitation of 1535-37, the royal Injunctions of 1...

This article discusses issues surrounding the move towards electronic delivery of journals within the UK. Ayris looks at the problems faced by academics, libraries and institutions as a whole and examines the need for anational electronic archive in the UK. Current development towards new models of electronic provision are highlighted, and future o...

The principal source for information on the public career of Thomas Cranmer is his archiepiscopal register in Lambeth Palace, and the author is currently editing this document for publication. Nonetheless, important material concerning Archbishop Cranmer's role in church and state also survives in episcopal and capitular archives around the country...

In the summer of 1543 King Henry VIII promised that he would send 40,000 ducats, the equivalent of £10,000, to Ferdinand, king of the Romans and of Hungary, archduke of Austria, to help his brother, Emperor Charles V , in his defence of Christendom against the Turk. Europe witnessed a strange alliance between Henry, himself a schismatic monarch, an...

This paper sets the context by examining recent publications which look at the role of selection in the digitisation work flow and finds very little in the UK library literature. It then identifies the questions that need to be answered to formulate guidance. The four areas, in which the questions need to be posed, are in: aassessment, gains, Stand...

Thomas Cranmer's register is important in shedding valuable shafts of light on the nature of the episcopal office in Tudor England. Despite the government's break with Rome in the 1530s, much of the archbishop's routine administration continued unaltered. Nonetheless, there were profound changes in Cranmer's role. Royal commissions, proclamations,...

Intervention au 36e congrès LIBER qui s'est tenu à Varsovie du 3 au 7 juillet 2007. Perspectives des archives ouvertes dans le cadre des débats OAI5.

Having confidence in the permanence of a digital resource requires a deep understanding of the preservation activities that will need to be performed throughout its lifetime, and an ability to plan and resource for those activities. The LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) Project1 has advanced understanding of the short and long-term cost...

This paper will look at future perspectives for scholarly communication. It will look at the institutional information landscape, assess the library context, analyse the concept of Open Access, look at Open Access implementations in the UK, evaluate the strengths of the Open Access approach, identify drivers for change, speculate on possible weakne...

All universities have a clear view as to how they must develop. In terms of research, electronic delivery is now embedded for researchers and access from the desktop is taken as a given. However, in terms of e-Learning, most students still do not feel that this mode of delivery is important. Open Access has the power fundamentally to change the way...

This paper looks at the role of the Ex Libris Strategy Group of UK and Irish Chief Librarians. It then analyses the role of Information provision at a strategic level in Universities in the UK. The paper identifies a Top Ten Wish List for development and partnership working with Ex Libris, comprising: Back to Basics, the Corporate Context, E-Journa...

This paper looks at the House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology in the UK through their report Scientific Publications: Free for All? and analyses the underlying serials crisis affecting academic libraries. The paper then looks at the role of SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) as a major...

This paper will report on the new European theses project DART-Europe. The purpose of this project is to align institutional and national e-theses developments across Europe with the wider open archives movement by the construction of a European portal for research theses, thus enabling a global view of European institutional research assets. This...

Overview: in writing this paper and the accompanying presentation, I was asked by my Italian hosts to provide an overview of current library developments in the UK, to look at Open Access developments here and to evaluate the success or otherwise of that work. This paper attempts to provide a snapshot and evaluation of these issues as they exist at...

This Report is a record of the LIFE Project. The Project has been run for one year and its aim is to deliver crucial information about the cost and management of digital material. This information should then in turn be able to be applied to any institution that has an interest in preserving and providing access to electronic collections. The Proj...

The LIFE Project has developed a methodology to calculate the long-term costs and future requirements of the preservation of digital assets. LIFE has achieved this by analysing and comparing three different digital collections and by applying a lifecycle approach to each. From this work LIFE has identified a number of strategic issues and common ne...

An overview of DART-Europe and its progress to date.

This document is a Report from UCL Library Services to UCL on Master Planning activities and outputs which have been undertaken to quantify use and development of estate in UCL Library Services. Prioritised options have been identified for the UCL Main and Science Libraries, and for a new central site option. This work has also addressed the needs...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role and content of digital strategies in European research libraries. The paper will look at current developments in UCL (University College London) in the UK in terms of strategic directions at an institutional level. It will then examine how UCL Library Services is developing its own strategy to meet t...

Introduction: The first phase of LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation; an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. The LIFE work models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for future years....