Archival Data

This paper contributes to a critical understanding of the production of space through an exploration of notable spatial moments in the 1990s work of the Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC), particularly its role in the creation of new public space. Henri Lefebvre's ideas regarding the production of urban space provide rigorous theoretical grounding for the empirical research. Two chronologically overlapping 20th century discourses: the inner city urban policy discourse from the 1960s and the modernist city planning discourse that peaked in the era of technological optimism after World War Two are shown to be vital for a critical understanding of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) regime. The paper unravels the as yet unproblematised origins of UDCs and CMDC and shows how the reorientation of the 1960s Urban Programme by the Labour government laid the ground for some of the subsequent Conservative government's urban policy shifts. New evidence from archival sources, supplemented by interviews with key informants, is presented which challenges and disrupts some conventional wisdoms regarding UDCs and CMDC. Research findings point to the crucial role of CMDC in stimulating the creation of significant new public spaces akin to differential space, which remain of great importance for Manchester. CMDC's deployment of large scale resources compounded the spatial practice of the previous decade leading to the production of unanticipated public space potentials and the politicised appropriation of urban space. In closing, the paper highlights the unintended and inadvertent legacies of the CMDC for public space in the 2000s.

The Research Overview

[To reveal the production of space] we should have tolook at history itself in a new light. We should have tostudy not only the history of space, but also the historyof representations along with that of their relationships –with each other, with practice, and with ideology. History would have to take in not only the genesis of these spaces but also, and especially, their interconnections, distortions, displacements, mutual interconnections, and their links with the spatial practice of the particular society… (Lefebvre 1991: 42)

- Theoretical framework: Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad
- plus understanding role of capitalist abstract space
- Archival and interview research methodology
- Counter-projects led by civil society groups
- Aspirational urban regeneration
(Leary and McCarthy 2013)
- Five axes of public space
- Public space as crucible of democracy
- Production of differential space through
urban regeneration interventions
- Visual representations of space

The aim of this study is to analyze, evaluate and validate the NSE (National Student Enquiry) as a service quality measure helping both higher education institutions (HEIs) and students in their decision making. Every year the Dutch foundation 'Studiekeuze123' sends out a survey (the NSE) to collect data on service quality regarding education at HEIs in the Netherlands. We used the 2019 NSE-data from the only e-learning university in the Netherlands, the Open Universiteit (OUNL), containing a sample of 1287 students. PLS-SEM was used to analyze a conceptual model in order to understand the service quality factors that promote students' level of satisfaction and willingness to recommend the HEI. Overall, the findings reveal that the quality of the NSE is sufficient to be used for performance analysis. Nine out of twelve service components taken into account for the OUNL are found statistically significant affecting students' satisfaction and willingness to recommend. The results help HEIs promoting and managing students' perceptions of the quality of education and support students in their decision making process. Since many HEIs had to make a transition from onsite to online education within a short period of time, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, service quality became a major concern for HEIs. As online learning systems are expected to stay, analyzing the service quality of the OUNL as a reputed online HEI can help other HEIs getting their online learning systems on track.

"ARCHIVAL  PHOTOGRAPHIC  DOCUMENTATIO AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE  RESEARCH ON STRUCTURES OF BUILDINGS OF THE FORTIFIED SETTLEMENT FROM THE EARLY IRON AGE ON SITE $ IN BISKUPIN"

The settlement of the Lusatian Culture in Biskupin is one of the most well-known archaeological sites in Poland. Excavations at the site, started in 1934 and ended on a vast scale in 1974, brought into light well preserved wooden remains of the fortified settlement dated to the VIII century BC. The remains of constructions were documented in detail by drawings and photographs from the very beginning of the excavations.
The photographs show parts of a building from a short distance, as well as extetensive architectural structures such as ramparts, breakwaters, rows of houses, communication routs. A separate group comprises photographs of plans of wooden structures.
The article discusses the significance of the above mentioned archival photographic documentation in the research on structures of buildings of the Biskupin settlement.

The way in which information technology (IT) impacts firm productivity is an enduring question in organizational research and practice. Rather than adopting the common explanation that IT spending improves organizational performance, we hypothesize that IT spending determines the amount of IT assets, such as IT hardware, IT personnel, IT systems, and IT outsourcing, that can be acquired. These IT assets, in turn, affect productivity. The context of our study is the healthcare industry. Because of the unique set of managerial ...

Britain’s wartime reconstruction plans are considered rightly to be a key milestone in the development of British planning. While some have received a good deal of academic attention others, such as Manchester’s 1945 Plan have been largely overlooked despite receiving high praise at the time as a ‘stupendous feat’. The research here is informed by Henri Lefebvre’s theories regarding the nature of urban space in which a historical perspective is seen as paramount for understanding issues of urban planning and redevelopment.  Archival sources form the principal basis for the empirical research. The paper argues for the importance of placing the Plan in the context of the 20th century modernist planning discourse. A comprehensive, rigorous analysis of the Plan’s production, reception and implementation is presented. The implications for the city generally and the Castlefield area are explored in detail. Through critical investigation the Plan is revealed to have been constituted in part by an influential collection of visual and textual representations of city space. These representations left complex and at times surprising positive and negative legacies. The Plan is seen to have stimulated a notable physical reconfiguration and inhibited the shift to a post industrial reimagining of the city.

Archaeological excavations conducted during the Summer of 2001 in the Roman Theatre of the ancient city of Teate (Chieti, via Pianell, trial trench I) revealed a stratigraphic sequence that contained a large quantity of post-medieval ceramics, which are described in this report. The fragments, which are all datable to the 16th century, give us an idea of the trends in ceramic productions in Chieti during this period, and include regional pottery like Castelli maiolica with decorations that were famous and widespread throughout the Abruzzi region, as well as fragments of maiolica and painted slipwares imitating maiolica from Anversa degli Abruzzi.

SECOMPAX (Scope-Extended COMPressed Adaptive indeX), a new bitmap index compression scheme, can performs better compression ratio and achieves fast encoding speed compared with the state-of-art bitmap index compression algorithm, such as WAH (Word Aligned Hybrid), PLWAH (Position list word aligned hybrid) and COMPAX (COMPressed Adaptive indeX).

The Collaborative for Historical Information and Analysis (CHIA), a large-scale digital humanities project, aims to link world-historical data in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities; allow researchers to draw new connections and new conclusions from analyzing large-scale aggregated datasets; and provide for the long-term preservation of historical data. To accomplish these tasks, CHIA requires a coherent metadata framework to link data to their sources and each other (CHIA, NSF Grant Proposal). Work on geospatial gazetteers and temporal ontologies has already begun; however, in order to ensure the longevity of CHIA data, allow users to understand and access the data, and publish datasets for future use, defining a controlled vocabulary of topical metadata for CHIA’s data is vital. This research aims to define topical metadata practices for CHIA through the creation and definition of a controlled vocabulary that will add value to CHIA data and allow for future growth and change.