The innovation activities of the Digital Infrastructure portfolio contribute to the rich vision of infrastructure for education and research. They contribute to the delivery of JISC’s strategic objectives with particular emphasis on the following objectives as set out in the JISC Strategy:

• Provide cost-effective and sustainable shared national services and resources
• Help institutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their corporate and business systems
• Help institutions to improve the quality of learning and teaching and the student experience
• Help institutions to improve the quality, impact and productivity of academic research

The JISC Digital Infrastructure team oversee a wide range of programmes to support these objectives. Over the years, the team has scoped, funded and steered a number of pivotal reports, such as the Google Generation report  joint with the British Library, and the Houghton Report on the Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models.

We know that these sorts of reports are highly valued and we want to ensure that we produce further timely and quality reports out of our work. The Digital Infrastructure Directions strand focuses on this need and aims to identify and highlight key issues within the team’s work that need bringing to the attention of the sector.

We are currently at the expert review stage of preparing a Digital Infrastructure Directions Report on the Benefits of Text Mining.

Current Funding Opportunities

We are commissioning five new reports that are designed to build on existing work to make it better understood and more widely accessible. These are being commissioned through Invitations to Tender, which is open to anyone to bid for, including international and/or commercial organisations.

• The deadline for bids is 12 noon UK time on Friday 9^th March 2012
• Bidders will be notified of outcomes by 27^th April 2012
• Work should commence by 14^th May 2012

The outline details of each contract are summarised below, but please refer to the ITTs for a full specification of the work required.

Advantages of APIs

• Anticipated effort: 30 Days
• Work should complete by Friday 24^th August 2012
• JISC Lead: Andy McGregor

Embedded Licences: What, Why and How

• Anticipated effort: 30 Days
• Work should complete by Friday 24th August 2012
• JISC Lead: Amber Thomas

Activity Data: Analytics and Metrics

• Anticipated effort: 30 days
• Work should complete by Friday 24^th August 2012
• JISC Lead: Andy McGregor

The Open Landscape

• Anticipated effort: 60 days
• Work should complete by Friday 5^th October 2012
• JISC Lead: Amber Thomas

Access to citation data: a cost-benefit and risk review and forward look

• Anticipated effort: 150 days
• Work should complete by February 2013
• JISC Lead: Josh Brown

It is our intention to release these reports under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) Licence to enable the widest possible reuse.

Please see the JISC Funding Opportunities page for further details, and bookmark this blog post for updates

Netvibes syndicates content from the projects’ blogs and brings them all in one place, so it makes it easier to have a general overview of activities.

My top picks:

- Manufacturing pasts‘ recent posts about how to create engaging learning resources. This project in Strand A: Digitisation and Open Educational Resources is digitising and creating OER around British industrial history during the second half of the twentieth century;

- reflections on selecting content for digitisation from Digitised Diseases (3D digitisation of diseased bones) in Strand B: Mass digitisation together with the New Connections‘ post on using social networks;

- if you know of digital language resources for Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and Old and Middle English, please let the Manuscripts Online project know. This project is part of Strand C: Clustering Digital Content and will provide access and federated search to a range of written and early printed primary sources for the period 1000 to 1500.

A few more projects are still setting up their blog and these will be added soon to the Netvibes pages.

Background

As universities and academic institutions increase the focus and investment on improving the ‘student experience’, so the ‘user’ needs to find their way into the heart of everything the institution does, not just the teaching and learning.

Usability and user experience (UX) have become important considerations in the design and creation of new websites, software and systems for universities. With increasing investments in digital infrastructure and content, addressing the needs of the users is one of the best ways to ensure the uptake of these investments – be it in research, administration or learning.

UX should become a critical tool in the sector’s response to the challenges of rising student fees, the need to make every investment count in the light of reduced budgets and increasing expectations from students and staff who are used to new sleek gadgets and web 2.0 environments.

In light of this context, Torsten and I recently held a two day workshop exploring usability in higher education.

The first day focused on JISC funded projects that were exploring the Usability and Adaptability of User-Interfaces. The second day involved a broad range of delegates from both within and outside universities, including the library, institutional web managers, systems managers, usability consultants and academics.

The workshop resulted in some very rich discussions from the delegates, and we have attempted to capture some of the themes and main topics of conversation below.

Emerging themes

We have grouped the themes under some broad headings:

Affecting the project/development culture

Embedding Usability

It was clear that usability and considerations of the user are usually a ‘bolt-on’ to institutional developments and projects. The workshop reiterated the need for usability to be part of the project from the start – furthermore it should be the framework from within which you undertake your project. This point was echoed by a number of the projects that took part in the JISC usability programme (an example being the British History Online project).

Indeed during a ‘programme design’ session it was suggested that future usability project funding should aim to embed usability into the institution. This could be achieved by a kind of ‘pay it forward’ idea whereby the successful project then initiates its usability lessons into another of the institutions developments.

Strategic buy-in

Connected to the above poin is the need to make strong arguments to the senior managers who make the decisions about resources as there may not always be a strong appreciation of the benefits of a user-centred approach.

An appeal to the usability of the product is a first step, but more may be required. One suggestion was exposing senior managers to the user’s pain – let them watch the UX sessions you undertake. Let them see every grimace and hear all the expletives!

Training and Skills

It was clear that there are a number of significant skills gaps within the current training and teaching of developers and project managers for usability practice and methods. JISC programmes of work are often addressing the skills gaps in their area specifically, and this may be something that any future work in the UX environment should confront.

However, there was agreement that it’s important to be able to share best practice, and enable institutions to have conversations with each other and experts to ensure they’re able to get hold of the right skills externally if necessary (one of the projects: UsabilityUK, has exactly this remit).

Demonstrating Impact

One of the most interesting discussions at the event was the difficulties involved in demonstrating the impact of usability. Functional requirements are easy to quantify (it either does or doesn’t do as requested), non-functional requirements (like usability) are harder to measure.

What potential does including metrics in the National Student Survey, as an example, have to demonstrating the impact usability could have within HE? Maybe more fundamentally having a clearer idea of how you measure impact more generally could help clarify how the user experience is evidenced.

Communication

Usability by any other name…

I am guilty of it in this post, and I even started day two of the workshop with an admission of guilt: I would use the phrase usability without unpacking it. Worse, I used it as a synonym for a group of similar terms (user experience, user-centred design, human computer interaction).

However, this may well be one of the issues that contributes to a misunderstanding of usability, and confusion around the different terms. A number of the delegates felt it would be beneficial to ensure terms were well defined. If you’re communicating with non-experts, such as developers, you need to be sure they’re able to understand you and your requirements.

On reflection, I do wonder whether this is a reflection of usability as a research discipline. Is the real message that the user needs to go at the heart of everything the academy does; it needs to become truly user-centred. Does the concern for semantics get in the way of this goal?

Inter-communication

Connected to the above is the difficulty of communicating with the members of your team or project. While you might be able to capture the requirements of your users, it is essential you’re able to then communicate these directly and precisely to your developer.

One potential answer is a very agile approach to development that sees the developer coding with the user(s). This was an approach that the ALUIAR project took at Southampton, and it worked well for the project.

Not always talking to the converted

One of the interesting aspects of the workshop was that we had a pretty good mix of professional UXers, researchers, institutional system people, librarians and learning technologists. However, most had a very good appreciation of the benefits and importance of UX to their institutional mission.

Indeed, a number of delegates made the point that it was important that we addressed the un-converted.

Usability is dead, long live usability

Finally, two points seem to provide interesting conclusions to the workshops discussions:

In its practical application within an HE environment, usability is closely meshed with other similar issues: impact; accessibility; sustainability. The aim is simply to make software easier for users.

Usability should be the driving principle behind projects within HE (especially in JISC funded ones); but this doesn’t that the only way to address this is through a usability programme. Rather, usability should pervade projects without defining them.

What’s next…?

The workshop was incredibly useful as a way to start thinking about how JISC might continue to help support usability practice within HE.

Indeed, it gave us a clear message that usability/accessibility is one area of the HE picture that is in real need of some focused activity. Torsten and I already have a few concrete ideas we’d like to start developing – if all goes well nthrough JISC-funded activities later this year.

Watch this space for more news!

—–

Many thanks to the delegates and projects who made the workshop so successful and the discussions so rich. And to Addy Pope of Edina and the USED project for the use of his camera and pictures.

However, what happens if I *really* want to know where you are, not where you are from, but where you actually are at this minute? We’ve tended to rely on IP address checking to make this possible, but it has many problems. It means that Service Providers have to maintain and update a list of IP addresses for organisations – JSTOR recently told me that they have up to 3 change requests for IP ranges per day for their services (globally, not from the UK). It’s something that you have to remember to do if your IP range changes, and that depends on the right people being told that changes are occurring. We know it is prone to inaccuracies and human error – a certain provider was for a period of time convinced that the JISC IP range belonged to Bournemouth University. Finally, IP address doesn’t actually give you any interaction with an individual as it applies access indiscriminately to the machine and not to the user, so personalisation, customisation and other identity management features are not possible.

These problems are magnified in the schools sector, where any Service Provider may be dealing with literally thousands of schools customers. There are also even more reasons within the school sector as to why it’s important to know that a logged in student is actually within a specific IP range in terms of serving content to children.

A short while ago, the schools representatives on the UK federation Technical Advisory Group approached the federation staff and asked if it would be possible to include a location assertion in the assertions made by an IdP to support the use cases where geographical location was important. The technical team and EDINA got to work and I’m pleased to say that the UK federation will be commissioning development of a location assertion to meet these use cases. As well as supporting many use-cases within the schools sector we can see places where this could be more broadly used, such as to support walk-in access.

For those interested in learning more, Ian Young recently presented his findings to the TAG and the slides from this talk are below or from slideshare directly. Development work will start shortly, so keep an eye out for further information and updates. If you would like further information on the work, drop a line to the UK federation helpdesk.

*Updated:*

…and here are some useful slides from Owen Stephens on this topic from way back at #FAM09.

We now have an openly available linked data store of our PROD data, which means we can mash up data from with data for other sources. (See this post for more information). An example of this is that we now have integrated geo-locations for every institution in the UK in the triple store, allowing us to create enhanced google maps. As an illustration of this I’ve created maps for both the Design and Delivery programmes. Clicking on the screenshots below will take you to the interactive version of each map which includes a link to each projects PROD entry and Design Studio page.

Design Projects

Delivery Projects

More information how the maps were made is available here.

OSS Watch, in collaboration with Open Directive, are providing licensing, development, community and sustainability support to the project, which is now getting very close to a new release.

Developers have frozen the code and are preparing beta versions of DataStage and DataBank, which will be available for testing as virtual machines. Please keep an eye on the project website and twitter channel for updates on when and where you will be able to access them.

We will hold a launch workshop in Oxford on 2 March with colleagues from the VIDaaS project, who are building an exciting cloud-deployable Database as a Service system.

Attendance is free but places are filling quickly, so book early to avoid disappointment.

OER

The Call for OER Rapid Innovation Projects closed on Friday 27^th January and I’m pleased to say we received 34 bids. Thank you all for your hard work! The bids are out for evaluation now, and in parallel we are looking at how to best present the collection of Use Cases. Bidders should hear back by early March. Note there is likely to be a big UKOER Programme Meeting on 26^th March, venue tbc. So if you’ve bid to run an OER RI project, please pencil it in your diary. You should know a few weeks beforehand if you’re successful, so there will be time to make travel arrangements then.

Other news on the UK Open Educational Resources (UKOER) Programme:

• work commissioned by the HE Academy will be moving ahead, including a set of Case Studies on topics I suggested around OER and student as producer, OER and marketing, OER and public engagement and more.
• the OER Themes projects are steaming ahead, covering a wide range of topics. If you want to start following their early steps, subscribe to the UKOER3THEMES agreggated RSS feed.
• the project to explore visualising UKOER activities and outputs pioneers onwards, producing some really interesting graphics, check out the Mashe blog for the latest progress.
• coming soon … an animated guide to open licensing for OER, from the OER IPR Support team.

OER beyond the UK OER Programme

Our sister strand in the eContent programme, OER digitisation is now underway, and the OER WW1 project will shortly be announced.

Open is a major theme for JISC in 2012. I blogged my individual take on openness in My Story of O(pen) but watch out for future JISC activities in Open, building on the Open Access section and case studies but taking it broader and deeper and drawing on the richness of JISC-supported work. This includes a study I’ll be managing on the Open Landscape (see below). I hope you saw the pieces in the current JISC Inform on  Joi Ito: education is at the core of creative commons and the Round up of what’s happening in open access publishing. There will be more about openness in the next issue.

Globally, March 2012 will see the very first Open Education Week , and April 2012 is the joint OCWC and OER conference, so expect to see more around the issues of supporting open content and open practice.

Developing supporting infrastructure: including two developer challenges!

The JISC Learning Registry Node Experiment (JLeRN)  is coming to life, see their introductory blog post. They ran a Hack Day on 23^rd January for people to understand how they might work with these approaches. They are also sponsoring a Challenge for Dev8D

“Are you interested in capturing, sharing, mashing up or otherwise using paradata, AKA data about the use of open educational resources?

Are you thinking about exploring where and how teachers and learners are using resources, or sharing them via social media, or what they are saying about the resources?”

See The JLeRN Experiment Paradata Developers’ Challenge at Dev8D 2012

The Jorum team are doing so much at the moment its hard to know where to start. See their blog for an inside update. Highlights for me would be they are exploring how best to provide analytics to users, as part of that they are developing a dashboard approach. They are also running a Challenge for developers;

Are you interested in exploring new ways to extract, share, visualise, search, collate or mash up the thousands of open educational resources available in Jorum?

See The Jorum Developers’ Challenge 2012 at Dev8D: Releasing Open Educational Resources into the Wild

Pssst … If you’re a developer working on educational technologies, then I will whisper a rumour at you that it might be worth keeping 29^th & 30^th May pencilled in your diary for our very first DevEd event. Shhhh! We’ll tell you more as we plan it!

Meanwhile, the UKCoRR repository managers community ran a session on OERs on 27^th January. The presentation from Phil Barker is a really useful whistlestop tour of different approaches to managing and disseminating OER

Funding opportunities for digital infrastructure work

There is currently a major Call for Proposals out from the Digital Infrastructure team . Most closely related to the area of digital infrastructure for learning resources, I would flag up the potential of Research Tools – Projects to Develop Sustainable and Open Vocabularies for Research and Information Management  , and also a Synthesis Project. Worth watching also will be the access and identity management projects arising from this Call.

Also due out very soon are a set of Invitations to Tender for a range of Reports on Digital Infrastructure Directions.  I’ll be managing a report on Embedded Licences: What, Why and How, and an Open Landscape study that focuses on how openness supports institutional objectives. Also requested will be a Report on the Advantages of APIs and one on Activity Data: Analytics and Metrics, one on business models around open source, and one on citation.

Sign up to JISC announce to get funding opportunity alerts via email.

Some hot topics

E-books, i-books and open books have been a big topic recently (E,I,E,I,O!). Apple caused a stir with their announcements. If you’re interested in ebooks, there is a wealth of technical material and guidance in the JISCPub Technical Monograph Landscape Study . JISC Digital Media are running a webinar on Getting Started with eBooks on 22^nd February.

There is a growing interest in the role of libraries and librarians for OER. CETIS have been tracking this opportunity . A nice edtechpost sums up what this might mean all for emerging roles. Talking of libraries, my colleague Ben Shower’s post on the future of Library Management Systems, the Squeezed Middle has implications for how the role of content management within institutions might develop.

I had the pleasure of joining a NIACE workshop on open educational resources on 20^th January. I gave a presentation on the benefits of content sharing and reuse . The big take home message of the day for me is that in HE we have a wealth of support, content and tools for both adult learners and the people to teach, tutor and support them. There is so much more we can do to promote open and free learning beyond HE, as highlighted in the soon-to-be-released OER Report on Open Practice across sectors .

JISC has been busy behind the scenes coordinating evidence and responses to Hargreaves review of copyright. That warrants a whole blog post which I won’t attempt here!

… (pause for breath) …

Coming soon …

Major reports due out soon which may be of particular interest :

• a report on the Mobile Web, from the JISC Observatory
• a set of case studies on HTML5
• a report on TextMining
• OER evaluation and synthesis team outputs
• and not quite a report, but watch out for a cute animation from OER IPR Support Team

I’ll be out and about a bit this month too. I’ll be running a session at Dev8D with CETIS’s Lorna Campbell about digital infrastructure directions for learning content, 2-4pm on Wednesday 15^th Feb .  As well as attending the Learning Registry session at the CETIS Conference , I’ll be contributing ideas on the potential of social network analytics for education and research on 23^rd February.

And thus endeth my update for February 2012.

Hope this update is useful! A lot of this work has involved my colleagues in the UK OER Programme, JISC CETIS and Mimas, as well as the many expert projects we are lucky enough to work with. Feedback on this update is very welcome.

This rapid digitisation project was a partnership between Sheffield Hallam University, which brought their expertise in innovative 3D digitisation, and Museums Sheffield, which is delivering the 3D objects on their website.

Highlights of the web site incude:

- 200 beautiful 3D objects, browsable through categories such as Food, Tools, Ornaments, Boxes, Drink, Blades
- zoom-in function to allow zooming in and out of the objects while rotating them
- contextual background information about the objects explaining their use, design and material
- extended learning resoruces inclduing audio descriptions for a selection of objetcs

All 3D objects are licenced under Ceative Commons and high resolution versions of the files can be downloaded from the web site.

For the more technically minded, the project’s final report describes how the 3D scanning was done, detailing the various steps the team went through and the (unforseen) challenges in digitising shiny objects:

Apart from opening up more leanning and research opportunities for students and lifelong learning, this project has already had some tangible benefits for the university.

It has substantially risen the profile of the university’s Research Group concerning their 3D scanning activities which contirbuted to Sheffield Hallam receiving a European award (Research for the Benefit of SMEs) with several partners across Europe in which their contribution will be to scan metallic parts for robotic welding tasks.

Amber Thomas, programme manager at JISC, knows the issues well because she works on our open educational resources programme and gave a presentation earlier in the month (see her slides here) which outlined the benefits of content sharing and reuse.  Amber says, “Personally I welcome the provision of easy content creation tools, and the ability to create attractive usable content.”

However, she also raises concerns about the proprietary nature of Apple’s resources, adding, “What concerns me is that Apple control a ‘technology stack’ through devices, software apps, content collections and delivery platforms. I am not sure that the drivers on them to ensure interoperability will be strong enough to avoid their business model being a form of vendor lock-in.”

There are complex issues around intellectual property when it comes to sharing resources.  Amber says, “We all need to be savvy about the ownership of our content and data these days, so that we are at least aware of the trade-offs we are making, and the effect it has on our ability to share content with each other.”

If you’re concerned about these issues you might be interested to consult the advice in our infokit around the legal aspects of OER.

Doug Belshaw, of JISC Infonet, echoes Ambers concerns.  Doug is a practising teacher and  former Director of e-Learning and he welcomes Apple’s new software.

He says, “Yes, it involves significant vendor lock-in, but so long as you go into it with your eyes open there’s potential for really engaging, contextualised content to be produced by both teachers and learners.”

Doug points out as others have done, that “where Apple leads others tend to follow.”  His hope for the future?  “We’ll end up with equally shiny, but more open, versions of iBooks Author.”  That remains to be seen – but it wouldn’t be the first time that Apple’s announcements act as a catalyst.

Which leaves the final say to JISC programme manager and OER expert David Kernohan, who is a staunch supporter of the move.  He agrees with David Riley who blogs about it here that “the announcement is an outright win for advocates of affordability and open textbooks.”

David explains, “iBooks looks like an attempt to prove that the idea of a text book (the single, codified, unmodifiable, static source of information) is still pedagogically and technologically valid.”

However he does have concerns about using the web effectively for learning and is concerned whether we are simply replicating analogue artefacts.

He concludes, “The question should not be how cheap textbooks should be, or how shiny, but whether we need them at all.”

If you’re new to ebooks, you can learn more by joining in the JISC Advance webinar on ‘getting started with ebooks’ http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/surgery

What do you think about the Apple iBooks?  Have you used any in your classes?  We’d be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Background

Not so long ago the library management system was the neglected sibling of the library world; but the landscape is changing and it is starting to become centre-stage once again. Yet this is a very different world to even just a few years ago.  While it regains its moment in the lime-light, it is constrained on either side by the emerging importance of resource discovery and e-resource management.
Entitled: ‘The Squeezed Middle’ the JISC and SCONUL sponsored event was a chance for directors and senior library managers to review the evolving role and requirements of the institutional Library Management System (LMS).

Specifically the workshop focused on the key developments impacting the shape of library systems, given the current work that is taking place in both Resource Discovery (discovery.ac.uk)  and developments in the management of subscription and e- resources (Knowledge Base+).

Since 2008 and the publication of the JISC LMS landscape report and the jiscLMS programme things have changed significantly in the library systems environment. A number of open source systems are emerging, including Evergreen, Koha and Kuali OLE. More importantly, UK higher education has seen the first implementation of open source LMS at Staffordshire University – open source library systems have become a viable option.

The landscape is also seeing a number of Unified and web-scale systems in development, including: Ex libris’ Alma, and OCLC and Serial Solutions web-scale solutions.

The workshop aimed to explore this complex landscape, and end the two days with a clear direction of travel  for what the future of library systems might look like (and some concrete ways to get there).

Workshop Format

The role and functions of the LMS are, to say the least, fairly well embedded in the workflows and everyday business of the academic library. It’s a cliche to invoke the paradigm word, but it could be argued that much of the discussion within this space is caught up in a historic paradigm that has, for a long time, prevented the evolution (let alone revolution) of this business critical system.

The format of the workshop aimed to disrupt this paradigm.

The workshop began with some contextual information on the current library systems landscape.  The first day of workshop was divided into two group discussion sessions focused around four themes: Space, Collections, Systems and Expertise.

The workshop watched a short video presentation by Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC that provided some business modelling context to the discussions. Lorcan’s full video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzxA4vdJYok&context=C3b48ce9ADOEgsToPDskJJB-K_kohdSvm4fK0yprv9

Each of the break out discussions sessions were interrupted by four ‘provocations’ from within and beyond the library world. These short, provocative presentations were designed to help extend the discussions around library systems, and prevent the groups from falling back on long held assumptions and arguments. These future visions (they were meant to be a vision of the library world in 2020), were both very creative, and helped provide talking points for the groups.

An example of the presentations can be found on Paul Walk’s blog and Paul Stainthorp’s blog. The other two were by Ken Chad (Ken’s provocation can be found here) and David Kay, and all their presentations will be made available shortly.

The day ended with some ‘homework’ where delegates were asked to prioritise and comment upon some 60 ‘objectives’ on the future role and functionality of the LMS.

The second day was focused on cementing the discussions and explorations of the first day – groups prioritised some of the identified objectives from the homework exercise and slowly a number of critical themes emerged.

Emerging Themes and Priorities

A number of core themes emerged during the two day workshop. Below I have very subjectively chosen a couple to highlight. A full list of the prioritised list of library systems ‘objectives’ that was the main outcome from the workshop can be found here. This was very kindly collated by David Kay who helped facilitate the second day of the workshop.

Data Data everywhere, and not a drop to…

I agree with Richard Nurse from the Open University who attended the workshop and blogged about the event here, who said:

It also struck me that a lot of the issues, concerns and priorities were about data rather than systems or processes… I do find it particularly interesting that despite the effort that goes into the data that libraries consume, there are some really big tasks to address to flow data around our systems without duplication or unnecessary activity.

I think this is an interesting point. In the conversations I joined it was clear that a lot of discussion was taking place around the data across the library (and the campus) and how a library system might bring this together. Someone mentioned the LMS as a dashboard that aggregated disparate data sets from across the library and campus.  The system becomes secondary to the data.

This also came out in the discussions around ‘non-traditional assets’ and how libraries are able to integrate services such as reading lists with resource discovery, VLEs and repositories.

Skills and roles

This was a theme that seemed to run throughout the two days. In particular there was significant discussion around the future and transformation of library systems and its impact on current and future staff roles and the skills required.

This issue runs through the library from the practitioner librarians and the new skills and roles that are developing, to managers and senior managers and how they adjust to managing and obtaining these new roles. these new roles may also be frequently outside the physical library, or roles that are not traditionally recognised as part of the library skill-set, and so new ways of working and adaptation to those roles will be required.

Furthermore, there may be a tension between another of the themes, sharing services and systems, and the ability to develop, maintain and justify the relevant skills locally. There was a lot of discussion around whether the outsourcing or sharing of infrastructure (systems in this case), actually affects the local skills the library has. Infrastructure and skills are often thought of as separate, yet the two are more intimately connected than might be expected.

The reality, however, is I suspect more complex than this. Institutions may have already outsourced or shared services and systems; the question is then whether they are able to still develop skills and new roles. Furthermore, there might be some potential for shared services to become central ‘pools’ for developing and deploying these new roles and developing skills.  Deployed locally when necessary: enabling institutions to continue to innovative and collaborate.

Shared Infrastructure

Unsurprisingly this was a big topic of discussion – both in terms of skills as discussed above, and in terms of defining those services and functions that are maintained locally and those that can benefit from above-campus infrastructure.

There was also some interesting suggestions around a UK research reserve for monographs (something that has been discussed at JISC as well), and considerations around national union catalogues and similar initiatives. Resurrecting the notion of a national union catalogue did somewhat divide the delegates; it was clear that discussions around such infrastructure should be driven by requirements, rather than the assumption that a union catalogue is the answer.

While I don’t think it was ever articulated openly, there seemed to be a sense that the large, one size fits all shared LMS (whether local or shared) was no longer viable, or particularly attractive. Instead new models are needed – I don’t know what these are necessarily, but they seem to demand a new vision of shared infrastructure around library systems (and services).

Personalisation

It was clear that any future library system (whether local, shared, above campus etc) would provide the user with the ability to personalise, and to a greater extent, control their library experience. This relates back to the considerations of data earlier, but more significantly the user is able to take that data with them as they both progress within the institution and move beyond it (warning: I may be straying slightly into Paul Walk’s future vision of the library!).

JISC has done significant amounts of work around personalisation, in particular the activity data work could be very instrumental in understanding this area further. Iportant work still needs to be done on simple issue around ownership of the data and legal issues, before the more technical issues can start to be addressed more fundamentally.

Concluding remarks

The discussion was far richer than my abve comments might lead one to believe, but I just wanted to outline some of the highlights.

One of the critical things I took away with me was the need to constantly place these kinds of discussions within wider institutional strategic contexts (research etc). It is easy to deal with these types of issues as if they are hermetically sealed, whereas the reality is much more complex, with various different drivers and barriers.

As I mentioned above, the workshop had a very clear purpose: To help shape a new vision for library systems. This aim was made concrete in a recent funding call I have written and that will be published in very early February: see here for details. This workshop therefore provides a baseline that I can look back on in 12 months time and see what the landscape looked like in early 2012!

[All the presentations and provocations will be made available online as part of the forthcoming Library Systems Programme on the JISC webpages].