JISC News Web Feed

Blog short-listed for national award

r.obrien@jisc.ac.uk (rebeccaobrien) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:31:00 GMT

This week the UKOLN UK Web Focus blog is short-listed for a national award from Computing Weekly.UKOLN UK Web Focus blog short-listed for a national award

The awards are spilt across different categories and Brian Kelly, who writes the blog, has been short-listed in the ‘Web 2.0 and Business’ category.

Brian is web adviser to the UK’s heritage sector, higher education and further education communities. Commenting on being short-listed for the award he said:

Brian Kelly, UKOLN

“It’s been a great year for me, being awarded a prize as Information Professional of the Year by the Information World Review newspaper and now being short-listed for the Web 2.0 and Business blog award too.

“I’m looking forward to working with JISC and its community to implement best practise for blogging.”

To view the UK Web Focus blog, take the opportunity to view the short-listed nominations and vote visit: UK Web Focus and for more information about the awards visit Computer Weekly

UKOLN is funded by MLA: the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, JISC and support from the University of Bath where it is based.

UK Web Focus blog

Opening access to UK theses

p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk (philippothen) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:41:45 GMT

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As the launch of EThOS (Electronic Theses Online System) approaches in September 2008, researchers and higher education institutions (HEIs) are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the newly updated toolkit launched in June this year.

Kevin O’Leary, project manager of EThOS, explains what the system will enable: “It will allow UK higher education institutions the opportunity to promote their post-graduate research and increase usage of their theses output.

“This will be achieved by offering a single point of access to all UK doctoral theses – the first time this has ever been done - through harvesting e-theses from institutional repositories and by generating e-content through digitisation of paper-theses on a not for profit basis.”

Currently in the UK, it can take up to six weeks from request to delivery if using a thesis for research. One of the values of this system is it will enable individuals to electronically search the system and access, from their desktop, the full text, in a secure format."EThOS will offer a single point of access to all UK doctoral theses – the first time this has ever been done."

Institutions will also benefit from using EThOS as staff time will be saved in producing, borrowing and handling theses. It will also save space and provide extra shelf room within the library environment.

The digitisation costs provide the best value for money for institutions looking to make their paper-theses available digitally. By digitalising information there is also the additional benefit that statistical data is generated to show frequently requested materials, which can help institutions predict future demands and target efforts.
The British Library is also working with higher education institutions to ensure preservation in perpetuity of all theses on EThOS.

The toolkit includes many exemplars, operational material and other supportive documents for higher education institutions, to prepare for the launch of EThOS later this year. The toolkit can be accessed through the EThOS website or directly.

The EThOS project is funded by JISC and RLUK (Research Libraries UK).

The project partners

Your country’s archives need you!

p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk (philippothen) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:40:35 GMT

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People up and down the country – and overseas – have the chance to add personal anecdotes and memorabilia from World War One to the UK’s first online archive of this type.

The call for items comes from the Faculty of English and Computing Services at the University of Oxford and funders JISC, who have set up the archive. Around 5000 items have already been digitally collected, including many items that were are at risk of being lost forever. The First World War archive is part of JISC’s digitisation programme which is unlocking a wealth of unique hard to access materials, to create a permanent digital resources for the widest user base possible within UK further and higher education.

Dr Stuart Lee, Director of Oxford University Computing Services, Member of the English Faculty, and manager of the project explains its uniqueness; “This is the first time that a collection of this nature has been set-up. We have created a website to allow easy submissions of digital photographs, recordings and simple stories from anyone who has materials they want to record.

Contribute your family’s history to the archive

“The stories and images that have been uncovered so far are fascinating and add a very personal dimension to our history. I believe that the archive will enrich our existing social history and enable us to have a greater understanding of what individuals and families experienced.

“Many of the stories are very poignant concerning the death of a loved one, and in one particular case means that a soldier lost in the Great War has, for the first time, some sort of memorial.

“William Robert Jones joined the 32nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers in 1916 and, after attachment to the 10th Royal West Surreys (The Queens), was listed as ‘missing in action’.

George Cravan's last message to his wife and children enclosed in a matchbox


The matchbox thrown from the train window

William Jones in uniform, front row, extreme right

“However, as he died before his paperwork joining the services had been processed, there was no record of him and thus he was not listed on any monument – meaning the only memorial to William Robert Jones is as part of the Great War Archive.”

The Great War Archive will be launched on November 11th, 2008 on the 90th anniversary of the Armistice and will be free to access.

Submissions to the Great War Archive Project must be received before June 30th, 2008 and unfortunately can only be accepted digitally.

For further information contact Dr Stuart Lee or Kate Lindsay at the University of Oxford.

Podcast: Licensing across borders - A round table discussion

h.peebles@jisc.ac.uk (hectorpeebles) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:48:15 GMT

A partnership of four national ICT bodies - from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK - recently announced the successful publishers under its multinational licensing initiative which is seeing online resources made available across national borders. In this roundtable discussion, representatives of the Knowledge Exchange organisations speak about the initiative and about how this work fits in with their wider mission to create a layer of scholarly content for education and research sectors.

Listen to the podcast
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

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Third International Online Conference opens for registration

x.odonnell@jisc.ac.uk (xantheodonnell) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:10:30 GMT

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As the world we live in becomes more dependent on digital information, a major conference will question whether we are really prepared for learning in the digital age.

This key question is among many that will be debated at this year’s Online International Conference – Innovating e-Learning taking place on 4 – 7 November 2008.

This is the third JISC Online Conference run by the e-learning programme which will look at the ‘productive and energising tension between the tired and tested, with the wholly innovative’.

The conference will include a keynote from Gilly Salmon, Professor of E-learning and Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester, who will focus on curriculum redesign. There will also be sessions using Elluminate – real-time online learning and collaborate software and Second Life – ‘a 3D virtual world where users can socialise, connect and create using voice and text chat’.

Presenters and delegates will focus on a number of themes including ‘embracing the future now’ and ‘going bolding into the dark’. These two topics will look at what can be achieved in e-Learning today and will explore what technology may bring to learning in the future. "Are really prepared for learning in the digital age?"

Online conferences work in the same way as a physical conference with participants and speakers – the only difference being that the physical venue is replaced by the Internet and participants computers.

If you are new to online conferencing and want to know more before registering, visit the frequently asked questions section on the Innovating e-Learning online conference page.

The programme will be of interest to those in both higher and further education. The conference will take place in an asynchronous environment which means that participants can take part at any time over the four days.

Please register online

Podcast: Great expectations of ICT

h.peebles@jisc.ac.uk (hectorpeebles) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:42:23 GMT

Great Expectations of ICT: how HE institutions are measuring up? Is a new report that is being published by JISC and Ipsos Mori. The research follows an initial study carried out with sixth form students about their expectations about the use and availability of technology when entering higher education.
This new research shows what their experiences were like during their first year and in particular their use of web 2.0 technologies.
In this podcast Rebecca O’Brien speaks firstly to Charles Hutchings, market research manager at JISC, about the report and then later to one of the students who took part in the study.

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JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

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Supporting diversity and equality through improved access

x.odonnell@jisc.ac.uk (xantheodonnell) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:09:50 GMT

Groundbreaking work will provide support for delivery of resources to disabled students and staff

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The JISC TechDis Service has joined forces with the Publishers Association to provide resources which have the potential to transform the delivery of learning materials to disabled students and staff.

These two resources, developed in collaboration with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) and several major publishers, will support the delivery of materials in alternative formats to meet the needs of people with a range of disabilities, a crucial requirement for equality of access for all students and staff in education and research.

One of the resources – Publisher Lookup UK - will enable education providers and publishers to source electronic formats of textbooks for students with disabilities more quickly and efficiently than existing processes allow. Currently publishers generally provide one of two digital formats – either an e-book or a PDF – but sourcing more accessible formats can be a complex undertaking both from the publishers’ and the users’ points of view. Publisher Lookup UK provides mechanisms for simplifying request, delivery and access processes between the education and research sectors and UK publishers. The site currently provides links to over 150 imprints and additional guidance on making PDFs accessible to users with a range of disabilities.


Sal Cooke Director JISC TechDis

The second resource – Guide to Obtaining Textbooks in Alternative Formats – is designed to provide guidance to teaching, learner support and library staff or anyone who needs to provide text books in alternative formats for reading-impaired learners. Disability law protects disabled learners by requiring institutions to make adequate provision for disabled students, including the provision of alternative formats in a timely manner. People with a range of disabilities benefit from alternative formats and many learners with disabilities are struggling with traditional printed texts despite alternatives being available.

The new guide not only helps institutions fulfil their legal obligations, but also supports staff to better understand and provide for the needs of their disabled students. JISC TechDis will be disseminating the guide to both higher and further education institutional Library teams across the UK by the end of July.

These resources have grown out of JISC TechDis’ long-standing engagement with publishers and The Publishers Association. The ultimate aim of this work is to integrate accessibility into the publishing workflow and thus improve access for disabled people to all publications in a way that is both cost-effective and sustainable. "JISC TechDis is delighted to be working with The Publishers Association to help enhance the learning experience of disabled students."

Sal Cooke, Director of JISC TechDis, said: "JISC TechDis is delighted to be working with The Publishers Association to help enhance the learning experience of disabled students. This work has combined JISC TechDis’ expertise on accessibility with publishers’ determination to make their texts available to all those who need them. It also takes a step towards making the production of a variety of formats part of the publishing mainstream rather than a specialist or ad hoc activity.

Institutional library teams and organisations such as SCONUL, Open Rose, ALIS and CLAUD have been instrumental in highlighting this issue, and will also play a vital role in embedding these resources in the workflow of library and information professionals throughout the education sector, and potentially beyond. This collaborative undertaking exemplifies the synergies between the work of JISC TechDis, library associations and The Publishers Association, and we hope that this collaboration is the first of many.”

Graham Taylor, Director of Educational and Academic Publishing at the Publishers Association, said: “Publishers want to play their part in making learning material available in accessible formats. To achieve this we need to work with the agencies supporting disabled learners, in a climate of collaboration and mutual understanding. These two resources are the result of our work so far – a website to help support staff contact publishers, and a guide on how to approach publishers for alternative formats. This work will continue and we look forward to building on the positive progress achieved so far.”

Dominic Knight of publisher Palgrave said: “Palgrave Macmillan is delighted to have been involved in the scoping and development of these important resources. Publisher Lookup UK and Guide to Obtaining Textbooks in Alternative Formats are practical tools that will help publishers and academic institutions work together to provide publications in accessible formats in a timely manner. We look forward to continuing to work alongside The Publishers Association, JISC TechDis and other stakeholders, to investigate ways in which we can further help bring about a significant improvement in the availability of accessible formats for the reading impaired.”

These resources are launched as part of JISC’s ongoing ‘Libraries of the Future’ campaign.
Further information

Publisher Lookup UK
Alternative formats guide

Experts gather at Strategic Content Alliance home nation forum

x.odonnell@jisc.ac.uk (xantheodonnell) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:28:55 GMT

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A series of forums aimed at developing a better understanding of the regional issues that face government, libraries, museums and business partners around digital content are held every four months by the Strategic Content Alliance.

These forums are held in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales with the most recent taking place during May and June, 2008.

The Strategic Content Alliance’s (SCA) aim is to develop a content framework across a number of strategic partners to look at how to best share and improve access to digital content.

The SCA Home Nations Forum in Cardiff brought together experts in their field to discuss the challenges surrounding intellectual property rights, standards and licensing which will all contribute to the creation of a new content framework.

Guest speaker Dr Rhidian Griffiths, Director of Public Services from the National Library of Wales welcomed delegates to the session before Chris Bate a SCA consultant spoke about the ‘rich and complex landscape’ of understanding audience and ‘getting them involved’ in the design of future services.“There is not going to be a one size solution that fits all. We’re looking to see how we can get the technology to fit the people rather than the people to fit the technology.”

Chris Batt shared the background to the ‘Audience Analysis and Modelling Report’ that looked at the SCA members understanding of their audiences. He raised questions around ‘what intelligence already exists to understand audiences and the existing users’ behaviour?’ as well as looking for ‘common approaches and common languages’ and explained that there is a ‘need to build easy ways for people to feel comfortable in this new arena’. A second Invitation to Tender on Audience Analysis and Modelling has been released.

The speakers moved onto the challenges that are created by orphan works, licensing and how people share information with consent, such as through ‘creative commons’. Anna Vernon from JISC Collections, raised the question ‘what steps can the public sector take to maximise sustainable long term access to content?’.



Naomi Korn IPR Consultant

One possible answer to this question was to look at business and community engagement and how ‘licensing models would need to reflect demand from non-traditional user groups’ – for example extending usage rights to staff not directly employed by a higher education institution but who teach part of the curriculum or retired members of staff.

Naomi Korn, the SCA Intellectual Property Consultant picked up the theme of access to information and spoke about the ‘pragmatic approach to risk’. Naomi explained that legislation can be a ‘blocker’ as well as an ‘enabler’ to the sharing of information and referred to ‘pockets of excellence’ where appropriate risk management has enabled the sharing of content. You can listen to the podcast interview with Naomi where she talks in more detail about these success stories.

The SCA is also involved in talking to the Intellectual Property Office about legislation surrounding this area of work and in particular the SCA’s feedback to the Gower Review. A quantitative study of the extent of the orphan works problem will be launched shortly.

It was clear from the speakers and the delegates taking part in the Welsh Home Nations Forum, especially from the afternoon discussion groups on business models and standardisation - that there is a desire not to ‘reinvent the wheel’ but to develop guidelines which look at ways to work collaborately. There is a need to address the challenges of a vast range of organisations, with different governance structures, with different funding arrangements, using different business models, with different terminology, varying approaches to access and with a range of staff and non-staff.

As Naomi explained, “There is not going to be a one size solution that fits all. We’re looking to see how we can get the technology to fit the people rather than the people to fit the technology.”

SCA’s blog page

Research data takes centre stage at Edinburgh conference

x.odonnell@jisc.ac.uk (xantheodonnell) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:20:10 GMT

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The management and preservation of research data moved centre stage at the SCONUL conference in Edinburgh today. The annual gathering of senior librarians heard from a number of speakers about the information needs of the research community and in particular the role of libraries in managing the increasing amounts of research data being created.

Among the speakers was JISC’s Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who began his presentation by saying that it was important both to libraries and to the research community itself that librarians were responsible for the management of institutional repositories. While subject-based repositories had not come to fruition, institutional repositories, he said, ‘have the greater momentum’ and needed to be aggregated to ‘make sense of the bigger picture’.

He went on to say that there was a growing recognition that a journal article divorced from the data on which it was based was ‘incomplete’; the quality of research is improved when linked to data’, he said, which was why the question of research data and institutional repositories was such an important one and why it impacted on the quality and reputation of UK research.

But there are, he suggested, a number of questions to be dealt with: ‘Who owns the data; how do you select what is worth proving; which resources should be open access, how much will it cost, and so on’. But he said that the ‘managerial issues are such that the library profession is well placed to deal with them.

Another key issue is that of interoperability, he said, in order to exploit the opportunities for inter-disciplinary research. So repositories needed to be built according to standards, and JISC is, he said, investing in such activities and, for example, talking to partners such as the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) about the possibility of supporting the development of cultural repositories. 'The question of research data and institutional repositories is important and impacts on the quality and reputation of UK research.'

Repositories UK is, he said, in the forefront of setting the agenda for technical interoperability (shared standards) and the policy frameworks (shared practice) for the evolving federated network of digital repositories in the UK, the ultimate aim of which was the creation of ‘a layer of scholarly content’ made up of both open access and negotiated content.

Jean Sykes, Librarian at the London School of Economics followed and began by saying that research data is potentially a rich resource but that data are too often unstructured and inaccessible and their use hampered by a lack of policies and standards, formats and disciplines. Echoing Malcolm Read’s point she said that ‘leverage of as much research data as possible would lift the volume and reputation of UK of research.’

She suggested that research data was not just about storage, but about ‘the whole lifecycle – creation, selection, ingest storage retrieval, review, and so on.’ There was a considerable demand for storage of research data, she claimed, and a 360% growth in anticipated data volumes over the next three years.

Anne Bell, SCONUL Chair

The UK Research Data Service, the result of a collaboration between Research Libraries UK (RLUK), RUGIT (Russell Universities Group of IT Directors) JISC, SCONUL and more than 40 stakeholders, would attempt to help tackle this issue, she said. The project was currently developing an understanding of the UK’s current and future research needs, undertaking case studies and developing a detailed business plan for the continuation of the shared service.

Jean Sykes called on delegates to be advocates for the new shared service. It would not, she said, threaten established systems, including existing data centres, but rather, it would ‘leverage additional volumes of research information in order to enhance and improve the reputation of UK research.’

Deborah Shorley, librarian at Imperial College London and head of the UK Research Reserve (UKRR), spoke about the UKRR, which is looking to support the management, storage and preservation of low use printed journals. The results of a current bid to HEFCE of £9.8m to roll out the initiative would be known shortly, she said, one which, if successful, would represent a ‘culture change for the higher education sector.’ The initiative is, she said, ‘part of something bigger, a key part of the UK’s research infrastructure.’

The SCONUL annual conference continues tomorrow.

Further information on the SCONUL conference

Great expectations of ICT: How HE institutions are measuring up

x.odonnell@jisc.ac.uk (xantheodonnell) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:18:01 GMT

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New research commissioned by JISC and carried out by Ipsos MORI suggests that students are starting to mix their social networking sites with their academic studies and inviting tutors and lecturers into their virtual space.

The research builds upon on an initial study – Student Expectations - carried out last year when 500 students were asked to indicate their expectations of technology provision when entering into higher education.

This new data is based on students now that they are studying as first years at higher education institutions, compared to the previous study when they were still at school.

Key findings show that:

General use of social networking sites is still high (91% use them regularly or sometimes). Frequency of use has increased now that they are at university with a higher proportion claiming to be regular users (80%) – up from 65% when they were at school/college
73% use social networking sites to discuss coursework with others; with 27% on at least a weekly basis
Of these, 75% think such sites as useful in enhancing their learning
Attitudes towards whether lecturers or tutors should use social networking sites for teaching purposes are mixed, with 38% thinking it a good idea and 28% not. Evidence shows that using these sites in education are more effective when the students set them up themselves; lecturer-led ones can feel overly formal
Despite students being able to recognise the value of using these sites in learning, only 25% feel they are encouraged to use Web 2.0 features by tutors or lecturers
87% feel university life in general is as, or better than, expected especially in terms of their use of technology, with 34% coming from the Russell Group of universities saying their expectations were exceeded
75% are able to use their own computer on all of their university’s systems with 64% of students from lower income households assuming that they are able to take their own equipment, perhaps due to lack of affordability and ownership.

The research also found that while students on the whole are satisfied with the level of ICT support provided by their institution around a quarter rate guidance on using ICT to support studies as neither good nor poor. This suggests that there may still be a group having difficulty in fully realising the benefits that ICT can bring to their studies. ‘The findings of the research show a great opportunity for universities to enhance their existing technology provision.'

There is also an opportunity to help students understand best practice for validating their work taken from the internet. 69% of students believe that they are validating information taken from the internet whereas the Google Generation report, commissioned by JISC and the British Library and published in January 2008, explains that students ‘do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web’.

Welcoming the publication of the report, Professor Sir Ron Cooke, Chairman of JISC said: ‘The findings of the research show a great opportunity for universities to enhance their existing technology provision and for students to increase their knowledge and understanding of how these channels can help them learn and network.

‘The use of social networking sites which are driven by students could have real value over study periods when students are away from the campus as well as being able to discuss issues with other students at different universities on similar courses.’

Further information on the study

Great Expectations Briefing Paper

The Great Expectations Report (pdf)