The Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication hölls nyligen i Lund. Cirka en tredjedel av över 150 deltagare vid denna nordiska konferens, kom från Australien, Belgien, Egypten, Grekland, Island, Italien, Litauen, Nederländerna, Schweiz, Tyskland, UK and US. Världen krymper. Konferensen öppnades av Göran Bexell och programmet var späckat med talare över två och en halv dag.
In the university world, the financial allocations for research are increasingly dependent on bibliometric indicators of faculty publications registered in databases and repositories. Following a decision by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Gothenburg, the allocation of faculty research resources, should from the budget year 2012 partly be based on bibliometric indicators and partly on external funds. Each faculty has had to develop and formulate their bibliometric indicators in a way that best reflects their specific subject field and their publishing culture. The Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts has, beside traditional publications, also decided to focus on the unique excellence that characterizes its field, i.e. artistic works. We will show how it was made possible to use a bibliometric indicator also in assessing art works and how a workflow using the institutional repository as a platform was tried out in practice.
Sundén, Karin: The typography of Swedish novels, 1742-1914
The typography of 53 novels printed in Sweden are analyzed according to technical parameters, such as type and body size, line length etc., title arrangement and use of ornaments. It is observed that 18th century editions, still mostly set in Gothic type, have rather crammed pages, while books at the beginning of the 19th century have fewer and shorter lines and large spaces between words. Mid-century title-pages abound in different type faces. If the 1860s and '70s have dull design, longer lines and close-set pages, the following decades show more care and spacious composition. Details as initials and indentions are obviousley subject to changing fashions. Overall causes of typographical change - economy, education, technology? - are still to be investigated.
The development of screen printed cloth at the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Shiyane in KwaZulu enterprise that was intended to improve the lot of rural African women by developing their creative capacities. One aspect of the venture included the development of printed cloth. The intention was to produce a product that was marketable both nationally and internationally. In the process the cloth both absorbed the Swedish predilections of the Konstfack trained tutors, as well as embracing indigenous propensities and taste. The product of this cultural interface interaction resulted in a remarkable product that indigenised both exoticism in the Nordic regions as much as it implanted Nordic taste in South Africa. This paper scrutinises the product, its history, its inter-cultural roots and its reception.
How is artistic research and practice output within academia to be quality assessed and made available open access on the internet? Is it possible to integrate artistic research within a framework of bibliometrics, to allocate research funding at an institution? At the University of Gothenburg, a model for addressing these questions has been implemented at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, through close collaboration between faculty representatives and the University library. The institutional repository of the university now holds a growing collection of openly available output from artistic research and practice.