Search results

The purpose of this article is to investigate certain aspects, problems and benefits from the migration to a shared Library Management System (LMS).

A review of the literature and a quantitative survey was conducted, based on a structured questionnaire, with a response rate of 44.7%.

Among the crucial issues that should be taken seriously into consideration when transiting into a new and shared LMS, are the audit of the data quality before migration, the employees' training design and the composition of the LMS central support team. The benefits of a shared LMS are mainly effectiveness in terms of libraries' budgets and time for the employees' day-to-day work.

The survey presented in this article evaluates the merits of a shared LMS and contributes innovative aspects to the existing bibliography by investigating issues and problems that arose during the transition. This way, the professionals involved in similar initiatives will benefit by avoiding possible mistakes and drawbacks when implementing such a project.

University archives (UA) are the bridge between the past and the present and serve as a beacon for highlighting the contribution of academic institutions to society. Although the UA topic was introduced and formalized in the 1950s, the scientific research interest has increased significantly in the past two decades. This paper aims to provide insights into the UA research topic during the previous 15 years.

The combination of two well-established methods for performing literature review was deployed, aiming to identify, select and assess the research documents. Based on the selection criteria, 49 documents presenting research efforts around the UA topic were finally examined from the Scopus citation index. The selected studies have been classified into three main topics: strategic management of UA and the derived challenges, the educational contribution of UA and the strategic information systems for UA.

Some of the main findings are the lack of well-defined administrative policies, the low level of awareness and archival consciousness within the universities, the inadequacy of university archivists’ educational and training background, the need to use UA for building relationships with alumni and society, and finally, the need for metadata standardization by the UA management systems.

As a literature review around UA has not been conducted before, the reader will gain insights into the methods and research designs that other scholars had already applied to designate useful findings and results.

The purpose of this paper is to study advantages and challenges of electronic academic textbook (e-textbook) for the Hellenic higher education and the publishing community. In the higher education domain, the shift to e-textbook adoption entails numerous benefits. However, reluctance is noted in students as well as in publishers, impeding the faster realisation of this change. Decision-makers (such as the Ministry of Education and university administrations) need actual survey data to plan and perform the best strategy plan for the transition to the e-textbook era.

Two different surveys took place among higher education students and academic textbook publishers in Greece. More specifically, the purpose of these surveys was twofold: first, to identify both students’ and local publishers’ views towards the e-textbooks as the near-future successor of printed books. Second, the results of the in-depth study will enable the proposal of certain solutions for the Hellenic higher education textbook system, which has reached an economic and functional deadlock. Our findings will also be easily adopted by other similar educational system across Europe.

Our findings reflect a situation where e-textbooks will replace the printed books, but not in the near future, as both technology providers and publishers have to overcome many technical obstacles. Students are expecting the transition to occur soon, but still remain very reluctant about the inconvenience which might be caused to their reading habits.

The results are unique and in alignment with similar surveys in other educational systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the surface corrosion products of copper alloys by non‐destructive techniques (NDT) and correlate them with their bulk composition.

Specimens of copper alloys, whose compositions were close to those of ancient copper‐based artefacts, were left to be corroded in simulated soil solution containing ammoniacal buffering solution of pH =10 in 1:1 ratio, in order to accelerate the corrosion rate. The elemental compositions of the surface corrosion products were determined versus time using X‐Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy, and the surface morphology by Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X‐Ray Micro‐detector methods, and the results were compared to the bulk composition, as measured by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy and Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy.

During the corrosion evolution of the copper alloys in the corrosive solution, transitional phenomena were observed such as an initial decrease of the copper concentration with a simultaneous increase of the concentrations of the secondary alloying metals (Sn, Zn and Pb). After 30‐60 immersion days, the alloy concentrations were stabilised.

The results of this research could contribute to the non‐destructive characterisation of copper‐based ancient artefacts (from which the taking of samples is not allowed).