JISC SIS Landscape Study

Now that the study is completed and the reports published, this blog is closing down.

Time for reflection. We made seven posts (this one is number eight) making various announcements about the progress of the study. We created 47 Pages in all, 16 of which were used to collect evidence based on specific work tasks; these attracted 186 comments from a wide range of respondents. We also used a Page to record the findings of our literature survey and share it with viewers, and used Pages for the 22 Case Studies we published.

With a short timescale for this study, we felt it was not practicable to create and send out a traditional questionnaire, either in print format or email, because of both time contraints and not having an identifiable contact base to mail out to. Simply putting up an online survey ran the risk of not attracting sufficient responses. Using a blog enabled us to email specific email lists and contacts who were known to use Web 2.0 tools – they were our target respondents. The blog enabled us to be more flexible in collecting the evidence – comments allowed respondents to give rich information. It also enabled us to share our findings as we went along, rather than simply putting a digest in the report. And in itself, being blog owners gave Rosemary and myself a new insight into the potential uses of blogs.

The blog will remain visible for the next three years (a condition of the JISC funding) but will be frozen in terms of adding new content and viewers will not be able to add any further comments.

Thank you all for your help and best wishes for all your endeavours in the Web 2.0 world.
Ann Chapman and Rosemary Russell

Thanks to everyone for their help with this study. As promised at the start of the project, in December we had a draw of those people who submitted comments for the Amazon vouchers and five lucky people had a surprise Christmas present. Sorry we couldn’t give vouchers to everyone, but thank you all for your contributions.

Rosemary and I finished the report and submitted it to JISC in December 2009. An additional part of the work was a parallel study on the situation in Australia; this was undertaken by Prof. Jane Hunter of the School of ITEE, University of Queensland and also submitted to JISC in December. The Australian work used a different evidence collecting strategy, but came to very similar conclusions. Both reports have now been published by JISC and are available in the JISC Repository.

The UK study is at http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/438/ and the Australian study is at
http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/439/

It’s the final stage of the study, so we are in the process of writing up the report. This will draw on the comments submitted on the Task Pages and on the case studies; these have all been both interesting and thought-provoking. So thanks to everyone who has contributed comments on the Task Pages and to all the case study subjects, including those most recently published and featuring Karen Anderton, Birmingham City University, Marieke Guy, David Harrison, Nicola Osborne, and Christine Sexton. If you’ve only just discovered this blog and the study, comments can still be added to the Task Pages in the left-hand sidebar.

Using this blog to collect evidence is a new experience for us, and probably for most people, so we’ve written a piece for Ariadne Issue 60 reflecting on how it has worked compared with other methods we might have used.

And we’ve published some more case studies, so thanks to: Amanda Hill, Sarah Lewthwaite, Yvette Morey, Paula Roush, Stephanie Taylor and Sheila Webber. Thank you if you’ve just contributed some comments, its really good to see them still coming in – if you haven’t done so yet, why not go to the pages listed on the left-hand sidebar to add your thoughts. (And don’t forget that anyone who comments will be entered into a draw for some Amazon vouchers.)

The case studies section is expanding. We’ve added several more case studies – so many thanks to our subjects: Manish Malik, Martin Weller, Jamie Wood, Gareth Johnson, Cameron Neylon, Brian Kelly and the University of Bradford. More case studies are in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for our next posting about this.

Glad to see the comments are still coming in – but please do mention it to colleagues. We’d really love to have some feedback from researchers, lecturers and administrators in a wider range of subjects – so if your area is anatomy or archaeology, music or metals (or anything else), please add your comment.

We’ve added some new features – why not have a look. Firstly, there’s Related Resources, which has come out of our literature search, where we are listing what we’ve found – and if you know of something else, you can let us know via the comments box on that page. And secondly, we’ve published the first two in our case studies section – many thanks to Anne Welsh and Sheffield University Library for their help. We’re working on some more case studies, so watch this space. We’re on the lookout for more case study subjects, especially outside the library and information community, so please contact us if you’re using several different Web 2.0 tools or services.

A big thank you to everyone who has sent in comments so far. It’s been very interesting to see what people are using and it is starting to build up the picture for us. However, we do need more comments, so please:

• If you haven’t sent in any comments yet, please see if you can spare some time to do this.
• If you’ve visited this blog (and, we hope, commented), please spread the word about it amongst your colleagues by whatever means you have: at the coffee break, by email, blog, Twitter, etc.

If you’re reading this blog, you might also be interested in looking at the Mashed Oop North event blog, set up for the Mashed Library event at the University of Huddersfield on 7th July 2009. This event is a nice example of building an audience for a conference beyond those actually able to attend. In the run-up to the event the blog is featuring daily interviews with speakers and delegates, there’s the Mashed Library site on ning.com (including a discussion Forum) and  event tags (for blogs, Delicious, Flickr and Twitter).

Do you work in the UK HE sector? Are you using any of the Web 2.0 tools and services as part of your work? We are collecting evidence for a small JISC funded study and we’d really like to hear from you. We’ve set up this blog to get your feedback; we’ve created a set of pages (see the left hand side bar) – one for each of the topics we are interested in – and we’d like you to contribute information by submitting comments.

For each of the topics, we’d like to know what services you are using and why you chose them (i.e. what are the specific features that make them work well for you.)

We only have a short time to complete this study, so please start commenting now in the pages in the left hand bar. We’d also appreciate it if you would pass the blog URL to your colleagues and work contacts at other UK academic institutions, and encourage them to add their comments too.

As a thank you, we will be awarding some Amazon vouchers to some lucky participants in a draw.

And for those who were wondering, SIS stands for Shared Infrastructure Services.