Helping ourselves: the role of self-help groups in poverty alleviation through aquaculture

Self-help groups (SHGs) are ways for farmers and fishers, especially those who are poor, to come together and work together. They can be a useful entry point for outsiders, promote a supportive local environment, strengthen voices in decision-making and in negotiations with more powerful forces, increase the effectiveness of local actions, and provide easier access to micro-credit and other resources and services. This case study describes a rural aquaculture development context, in India, the development of SHGs and the concept of a ‘one-stop aqua shop’, set up and run by a federation of self-help groups in Kaipara village, West Bengal (a pilot state along with Jharkhand and Orissa). It outlines testing new ways to share information, as part of a series of revised procedures and institutional arrangements for service delivery recommended by farmers and fishers and prioritized by government, with support from the Department of International Development, London (DFID) Natural Resources Support Programme (NRSP) and the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA) to the Support to Regional Aquatic Resources Management (STREAM) Initiative (10 p.)

Journal of a voyage to Brazil and residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823

Maria Graham, escritora inglesa, nasceu perto de Papscastle em 19 d e junho de 1785 e morreu em Londres, em 28 de novembro de 1842. Casada com o capitão Thomas Graham comandante da fragata Doris fez em sua companhia a sua primeira viagem ao Brasil, em 1821, quando se dirigia ao Chile. Em 1824, já viúva, retornou ao Rio de Janeiro como preceptora de D. Maria da Glória, filha do Imperador D. Pedro I e de Dona Leopoldina. Permaneceu no país até setembro de 1825, quando retornou para Londres por motivos políticos. Mais tarde, casou-se com Augustus Earle Calcott e passou a assinar suas obras literárias como Lady Calcott. ‘Journal of a voyage to Brazil’ relata as viagens da autora ao Brasil. Descreve o país, seus habitantes e os costumes das diferentes classes sociais, principalmente em Pernambuco, na Bahia e no Rio de Janeiro. Constitui importante fonte de informações sobre a época da independência e uma das melhores publicações do século XIX. As ilustrações, com desenhos da autora, são excelentes. De acordo com Borba de Moraes ‘a Catholic University Library em Washington (Oliveira Lima Collection) possui um exemplar que pertenceu à própria autora, onde ela fez correções e anotações para uma segunda edição, mas que nunca chegou a ser publicada. Essas anotações são muito importantes, sobretudo para a história da revolução de Pernambuco e a atuação de Cochrane. Quanto aos acontecimentos de sua vinda ao Rio de Janeiro como preceptora de Dona Maria da Glória, existe um diário que foi publicado por Rodolfo Garcia com preciosas notas e prefácio no volume 60 dos Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, assim como uma biografia de D. Pedro I e correspondência entre Maria Graham e a Imperatriz’

Blackburn College: DIY! College departments catalogue their own technologies on Library Management System for loan

Blackburn College is making use of its Heritage Library Management System (LMS) for a wide variety of loans beyond that of books; this has enabled them to better manage the growing numbers and types of technologies that are being used in teaching and learning. In an additional pilot development, they have taken the bold step of training college departments in cataloguing their own technologies to add to the LMS for loan. This has enabled the departments to keep track of their own equipment easily, and provided a more consistent approach to equipment loan within the College.

Good practice guidance for library and information professionals - moving towards accessible e-book platforms

Good practice guidance for publishers and procurers of e-book platforms based on the benefits and barriers identified by robust testing using real people with disabilities

Promoting the institutional repository at the University of West London

Implementing resource discovery techniques at the University of West London Promoting the institutional repository at the University of West London

Authority files: Breaking out of the library silo to become signposts for research information

Authority files serve to uniquely identify real world ‘things’ or entities like documents, persons, organisations, and their properties, like relations and features. Already important in the classical library world, authority files are indispensable for adequate information retrieval and analysis in the computer age. This is because, even more than humans, computers are poor at handling ambiguity. Through authority files, people tell computers which terms, names or numbers refer to the same thing or have the same meaning by giving equivalent notions the same identifier. Thus, authority files signpost the internet where these identifiers are interlinked on the basis of relevance. When executing a query, computers are able to navigate from identifier to identifier by following these links and collect the queried information on these so-called ‘crosswalks’. In this context, identifiers also go under the name controlled access points. Identifiers become even more crucial now massive data collections like library catalogues or research datasets are releasing their till-now contained data directly to the internet. This development is coined Open Linked Data. The concatenating name for the internet is Web of Data instead of the classical Web of Documents.