UKOLN Update

Blog posts

My Predictions for 2012

29 December 2011

Brian Kelly predicts how 2012 technology environments are likely to develop in four areas: open practices, learning and knowledge analytics, social applications, and collective intelligence.

The Need for an Evidence-based Approach to Demonstrating Value

28 December 2011

Brian Kelly reflects upon the need for evidence-based analysis of library performance during this current period of economic turmoil.

My Technological Highlight of 2011

23 December 2011

Brian Kelly looks back on the preceding year and makes some observations on technology in 2011.

The (Technology) Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present and Christmas Yet to Come

22 December 2011

Brian Kelly reflects upon macro trends over the past ten years, considering the case of email as long-standing application more recently competing with social media.

Final Reports from UKOLN’s Evidence, Impact, Metrics Work

21 December 2011

Brian Kelly announces publication of the final report on the outcomes of the ‘Impact, Evidence Metrics’ forum activity taking place during 2010 and 2011, explaining how this work identified best practices for gathering quantitive evidence and supporting metrics on the use of  networked services by projects and institutions.

The Failure of Citizendium

20 December 2011

Brian Kelly compares and contrasts the models of Wikipedia and Citizendium, analysing how the latter failed to establish broad user engagement with its mission to build a ‘wiki encyclopedia project that is expert-guided, public participatory, and real-names-only’.

Detecting Motion: DLP-TILT 2-Axis Accelerometer

15 December 2011

Emma Tonkin provides code that can be used on Linux to set up external accelerometer devices.

DCC Roadshow in Cardiff

15 December 2011

Marieke Guy provides detailed summaries of key sessions at the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC11) in Cardiff.

The Half Term Report on Cookie Compliance

15 December 2011

Six months on, Brian Kelly reviews how UK academic institutions have been responding since the EU Communications Directive came into force on 26 May 2011.

Beyond Blogging as an Open Practice: What about Associated Open Usage Data?

14 December 2011

Brian Kelly evaluates the growing importance of project blogs and considers the need for openness in blog usage data.

Blink Detection and Attention Evaluation: NeuroSky MindWave

13 December 2011

Emma Tonkin explains how to set up Thinkgear Connector, which listens to USB radio links and makes user sensor data available to applications.

30 Seconds to Comply…

13 December 2011

Marieke Guy explains how, responding to the imminent demise of Twitter archive ‘TwapperKeeper’, she used a utility spreadsheet application to extract and preserve a number of Twitter message archives related to the Digital Curation Centre.

Twitter Saved my Hamster’s Life!

12 December 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the (sometimes surprising) practical usefulness of Twitter.

Responding to the Forthcoming Demise of TwapperKeeper

11 December 2011

Brian Kelly considers how to respond proactively to the shut-down of Twapper Keeper Archive Service.

Blog Analytic Services for JISC MRD Project Blogs

9 December 2011

Brian Kelly describes tools that can be used to gather metrics on project blogs.

Disaster Planning for Conferences

8 December 2011

Marieke Guy explains options for coping when (due to an unforeseen emergency) a conference speaker cannot be there as planned.

Smartr for Following JISC MRD Project Twitter Links

7 December 2011

Brian Kelly explains how the Smartr app can be used to provide curated access to content relevant to a particular community.

Paper on Metrics Accepted

5 December 2011

In relation to a recently accepted paper, Brian Kelly discusses how metrics can be developed that fulfil requirements such as validity, reliability, and suitability.

Ebook Reader Basics: File Transfer via USB

3 December 2011

Emma Tonkin provides a detailed review of how data and documents can be transferred via USB links to various eBook readers: Sony PRS-600, Hanvon n510, Xoom, Kindle, iPad.

OPDS: Building an eBook Catalogue

3 December 2011

Emma Tonkin summarises pros and cons of  the ‘Open Publication Distribution System’ (OPDS), designed to facilitate searching and browsing across extensive collections of eBooks.

Publications by UKOLN Staff

Progress in the Data Citation Community

12 December 2011

Writing in Issue 40 of the DPC/DCC publication What’s New, Monica Duke reviews developments and events bringing together practitioners with an interest in scholarly communication, data citation and data publishing. Her editorial ‘The Data Citation Community Gathers Pace‘ observes how this community of practice is growing substantially.

Web Accessibility Metrics for a Post-Digital World

5 December 2011

Brian Kelly  co-authored the recently published paper: Sloan, D.R. and Kelly, B. ‘Website Accessibility Metrics’. Online Symposium. 5 December 2011.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Open Content and Open Events: Professional Development in an Amplified World

22 December 2011

Brian Kelly gave a pre-recorded presentation entitled ‘Open Content and Open Events: Professional Development in an Amplified World’ at the Online Information 2011 Conference.

Blogging Practices to Support Project Work

22 December 2011

Brian Kelly facilitated a workshop session on “Blogging Practices to Support Project Work” at the JISC MRD launch workshop.

Dealing with Very Personal Data

14 December 2011

Liz Lyon and Professor Adam Hedgecoe, Associate Director CESAGEN, gave a presentation to the 7th DCC Symposium entitled Share your genome? Dealing with Very Personal Data. Slides from this presentation are available on the UKOLN Web site.

Introducing the Community Capability Model Project

14 December 2011

Liz Lyon gave a number of presentations during the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC11), including a pre-conference workshop introducing the Community Capability Model Project. Slides from this presentation are available on the UKOLN Web site.

Data Licensing

14 December 2011

Citing Datasets and Linking Them to Publications

14 December 2011

Research Data Management for Mechanical Engineering Departments

14 December 2011

Best Practices for Project Blogs

12 December 2011

Brian Kelly gave a talk reviewing best practices for project blogs at a UKOLN All Staff Contact Day held at the University of Bath.

Linked Data: the Future for Open Repositories

12 December 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a presentation entitled ‘Linked Data: the Future for Open Repositories’ at the Kultivate Workshop organised by HEFCE, London. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

IDCC11 Releases Range of Resources

9 December 2011

At the close of the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC11), a range of resources arising from this event have been made available including  presentations, posters, and videos.

Trip Report: Blogging Practices Session at the JISC MRD Launch Event (#jiscmrd)

1 December 2011

Brian Kelly ran a workshop session on “Blogging Practices To Support Project Work“ at the JISC MRD Launch Event in Nottingham. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Research Data Management with the Digital Curation Centre

1 December 2011

REsearch Data management for Mechanical Engineering Departments (REDm-MED)

1 December 2011

Events

Dev8D 2012 Bookings Are Open

14 – 16 February 2012

DevCSI announced the fourth JISC-funded Dev8D. Places are limited and filling up fast, so make sure you book soon.

Blog posts

1,000 Posts On: UK Web Focus Is Runner-Up in the IT Professional Blogger Award

30 November 2011

Brian Kelly responds, in  his 1,000^th post since his blog was launched 5 years ago, to the news that UK Web Focus has been confirmed as runner-up in the IT Professional Blogger of the Year category of the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards.

Paradata for Online Surveys

29 November 2011

Brian Kelly reflects upon use of ‘paradata’ in relation to Google Scholar Citation’s search facility, making recommendations for rich descriptions in published surveys.

CSS3 Better Late Than Never

28 November 2011

Mark Dewey discusses improvements in selectors available in CSS3.

Google Scholar Citations and Metadata Quality

28 November 2011

Brian Kelly considers what  individual researchers can do to ensure that their papers don’t become difficult to find in tools such as Google Scholar Citations.

Surveying Russell Group University Use of Google Scholar Citations

24 November 2011

Brian Kelly investigates barriers to researchers claiming accounts on Google Scholar Citations, ensuring the accuracy of details on their papers.

Thoughts on Google Scholar Citations

22 November 2011

Brian Kelly compares Microsoft Academic Search with Google Scholar Citations, analysing each service’s indexing methods and evaluating the accuracy of results.

DevXS Student Developer Marathon

21 November 2011

DevCSI reports on collaboration with the University of Lincoln’s DevXS Student Hackathon, which took place 11 – 13 November at the University of Lincoln’s aptly named Engine Shed.  This blog post includes detailed summaries of keynote presentations as well as many of this event’s talks and activities.

What Is Your Blogger Community Talking About?

21 November 2011

Brian Kelly evaluates how the search feature on WordPress blogs can be enhanced by use of the Lijit tool’s ‘network’ search options, which can discover similar posts across a blogging community.

Alliance for Permanent Access Conference

16 November 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the Alliance for Permanent Access (APA) annual conference in London, summarising five presentations at this event and explaining how the APA aims to develop a shared vision and framework for a sustainable organisational infrastructure for permanent access to scientific information.

To What Extent Do Multiple Copies of Papers Affect Download Statistics?

14 November 2011

Brian Kelly investigates whether multiple copies of academic papers are bad for researchers.

Business Models for Video Streaming

14 November 2011

Marieke Guy looks into the details of large-scale conferences now offering some form of streaming of talks or videos of the talks soon after the event. In this blog post she examines some possible business models and analyses some of the challenges within each approach.

AI-Class with Tablet Devices

12 November 2011

Emma Tonkin discusses an experimental course on Artificial Intelligence run by Stanford Engineering, comparing how accessible this course is via iPad, Android, and Xoom tablet devices

Open Research Reports

9 November 2011

Monica Duke calls attention to Open Research Reports, an initiative that aims to make disease research as openly accessible to the people that really need it.

A Starter’s Guide to the Android SDK (on Linux)

9 November 2011

Harsh Khatri offers step-by-step guidance on how to set up the Android software development kit (SDK) on Linux.

Google Street View Arrives on University Campuses

9 November 2011

Brian Kelly discusses the arrival of Google Street View on the campus of Loughborough University, considering benefits and risks as this technology expands.

Sometimes You Just Need to Get Out of the House

8 November 2011

Marieke Guy discusses the usefulness of WorkSnug, a tool that connects mobile workers to the nearest places to work in the major cities of the world.

Signals from Sheffield

7 November 2011

Brian Kelly discusses the importance of willingness to be open and to invite comments and feedback on IT Service Department development plans.

EU Riding the wave report

4 November 2011

Monica Duke calls attention to  Riding the Wave: How Europe Can Gain from the Rising Tide of Scientific Data, the final report of the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data.

Report on Data Sharing

4 November 2011

Monica Duke discusses the importance of Christine Borgman’s report entitled Research Data: Who Will Share What, with Whom, When, and Why?

Motivating the Release of Government Data

4 November 2011

Monica Duke calls attention to a blog post by Jeni Tennison discussing the need for the government and developer communities to open up important data sets.

Patients Participate! Lay Summaries Could Help

2 November 2011

Liz Lyon contributed to the ‘Industry Trends’ section of the online publication Research Information, which reports that lay summaries produced alongside every health-related research article would bring about greater understanding among the general public, as indicated in the findings of Patients Participate! research.

How People Find This Blog, Five Years On

1 November 2011

Brian Kelly celebrates the fifth anniversary of the launch of the UK Web Focus blog by noting that most visitors to his blog seem to come across on Twitter rather than via a Google search or by subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed, and he questions whether social search is beating Google and RSS.

Publications by UKOLN Staff

Open Content and Open Events: Professional Development in an Amplified World

28 November 2011

Brian Kelly authored a paper entitled ‘Open Content and Open Events: Professional Development in an Amplified World’, which was presented by Kirsty Pitkin at the Online Information 2011 conference held from 29 November through 1 December 2011 at the Olympia Grand Hall, London.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Highs and Lows of Library Linked Data

29 November 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a presentation on “Highs and Lows of Library Linked Data” at the Semantic Web in Bibliotheken 2011 conference in Hamburg, Germany. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Intelligent Buildings and Smart Estates

29 November 2011

Mahendra Mahey co-delivered a presentation at the JISC Intelligent Buildings and Smart Estates workshop, together with Daniel Curtis from the University of Oxford.

Data Management at the Daresbury Machine Evaluation Workshop

29 November 2011

Alex Ball spoke at a breakout session on data management as part of the 22nd Daresbury Machine Evaluation Workshop, providing an overview of the tools and support offered by the Digital Curation Centre for research data management and demonstrating how data management plans can be designed using the DMP Online service.

UK CERIF Landscape Study: Work in Progress

17 November 2011

Rosemary Russell gave a presentation at the Research Information Management Group (RIMG) meeting in London. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

The Quandary of Quality

15 November 2011

Brian Kelly contributed to and Marieke Guy ran a seminar entitled Benefits of Amplified Events as part of the Green Impact seminar series at the University of Bath. A full abstract with links to the resources (including a set of short videos created by Brian Kelly) is available as well as presentation slides on Slideshare.

Innovation, Community, Sustainability

14 November 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation entitled ‘Innovation, Community, Sustainability’ to seed an open discussion at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

UK CERIF Landscape

2 November 2011

Rosemary Russell gave a presentation entitled ‘UK CERIF Landscape’ at the euroCRIS membership meeting in Lille, France.

Selected Contributions to Committees

Liz Lyon participated in a new panel entitled ‘Exploiting New Ways of Working Strategy’ at  the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council  (BBSRC). Liz also contributed to the National Science Foundation’s  Office of Cyber Infrastructure Advisory Committee, and she co-chaired the DataONE Strategic Advisory Board.

Events

Dev8D 2012 Bookings Now Open

14 – 16 February 2012

DevCSI announced the fourth JISC-funded Dev8D. Places are limited and filling up fast, so make sure you book soon.

IDCC 11: Further Interviews with Conference Speakers

5 – 8 December 2011

As part of its preparations for the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC 11), the Digital Curation Centre has produced a series of ‘preview’ interviews with main speakers at the Conference:  Ewan McIntosh, CEO of NoTosh; David Lynn, Head of Strategic Planning and Policy at the Wellcome Trust; Mark Hahnel from FigShare, Digital Science; Victoria Stodden, Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics at the University of Columbia. You can book your place for both the IDCC 11  main event and the pre- and post-conference workshops at the Marriott Royal Hotel, Bristol.

IDCC11 Workshop on Domain Names and Persistence

8 December 2011

Technical Foundations blog described the IDCC11 workshop on ‘Domain Names and Persistence’, scheduled for 8 December 2011 in Bristol.

Free Life Science/Open Research Reports Hack Days

6 – 7 December 2011

DevCSI announced a free-of-charge event in London called ‘Life Science Hackdays’ or, alternatively, the ‘Open Research Reports Hackathon’. This event is suitable for: researchers in the Life Sciences; software developers in the Life Sciences; those interested in Open Research Reporting; software developers / researchers developing Semantic Web  applications / tools / mashups / visualisations from the Life Sciences and other domains; anyone interested in developing and using Open Science tools, particularly in the Life Sciences; those offering support for using data sets, APIs and tools to be used for the delegates. For more information on booking, please visit the event booking page,

Featured news item

International Journal of Digital Curation, Volume 6, Issue 2

UKOLN has published Volume 6, Issue 2 (2011) of the International Journal of Digital Curation on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. In his editorial, Chief Editor and Director of the DCC Kevin Ashley collects the eighteen papers – of which eleven are drawn from recent conferences – into four thematic groups.

Education is addressed directly by two papers, with a particular focus on how digital curation curricula and publications prepare (or perhaps fail to prepare) students for a career in the field. Attention is drawn to the perceived gulf in curation publications between research literature which is sometimes seen as over-theoretical and practice publications that display too narrow a scope.

For practising data curators, there are several papers that describe promising technologies and methods. Topics range from format normalisation and rule-based metadata extraction, to analytically-derived preservation plans and data sharing via the semantic web. There is even a paper describing a curation-enabled virtual research environment.

Many of the papers in Volume 6, Issue 2 will interest those looking to improve research data management at an institutional level. The exemplars they present include a university-wide policy for managing research data and a programme of one-to-one support, training and guidance documentation. There is also a wealth of advice that can be gleaned from accounts of designing and embedding institutional services in accordance with the needs of researchers, and indeed from a study of researcher attitudes to data management.

Finally, the editor introduces three specialist curation papers. One describes curation challenges in the area of telehealth, a topic with implications for developed and developing countries alike. The other two describe approaches to preserving video games and virtual worlds, respectively.

Blog posts

How Should the Library Sector Respond to Predictions of Technological Developments?

31 October 2011

Brian Kelly discusses examples of how libraries could be preparing for technological developments, based  on his talk  “What’s on the Technology Horizon?” at the ILI 2011 conference.

What Twitter Told Us about ILI 2011

29 October 2011

Brian Kelly analyses Twitter responses to ILI 2011.

Social Media Sites in China

28 October 2011

In this UKOLN Dev blog post Jenny Luo highlights examples of social media sites in China,  collecting information about their APIs and comparing them to other popular sites.

Learning Analytics and New Scholarship: Now on the Technology Horizon

26 October 2011

Brian Kelly reflects upon early adoption of ‘Learning Analytics’ and ‘New Scholarship’ in mainstream university activities.

Activities for Open Access Week 2011

24 October 2011

Brian Kelly describes Open Access Week, now in its 5th year, as an event promoting a new norm in scholarship and research that provides the “free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need”.

Openness and Event Amplification

24 October 2011

Marieke Guy discusses event amplification as a concept of relevance during Open Access week (#OAWeek).

Why Not Join.Me?

21 October 2011

Marieke Guy explains features of  Join.me, a free screen-sharing programme that enables sharing of your desktop with up to 250 viewers.  Key features include share controls, chat, and options to enlarge the view screen and send files.

Are University Web Sites in Decline?

20 October 2011

Brian Kelly analyses evidence of some decline in traffic to Web sites of leading UK higher education institutions, arguing that data related to these sites should be considered carefully and that strategic responses need to take into account the importance of the coordinated social media across higher education.

Metrics, This Time for Web Accessibility

17 October 2011

Brian Kelly considers a recent call for papers on Web accessibility metrics, considering how BS 8878 guidelines could be applied to institutional repositories.

Blackboard Collaborate at #JISCrmd Webinar

12 October 2011

Marieke Guy reports on her experience in a recent #JISCrmd Webinar, describing her first experience with Blackboard Collaborate and comparing this with her previous experience using Elluminate.

JISC Call for Proposals: Implementations of the Linking You Toolkit

12 October 2011

Brian Kelly explains how the ‘Applications of the Linking You Toolkit’, recently included in the JISC Grant Funding Call 16/11 for the JISC Digital Infrastructure Programme, is relevant to Web Managers at universities.

When Trends Can Mislead: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Apache

11 October 2011

Brian Kelly looks back at data from April 2008 and compares this with recent data from Web server surveys, considering how flaws in the interpretation of data can be corrected.

Thoughts on the Future of the Past of the Web Event (#fpw11)

10 October 2011

Brian Kelly reports on an event entitled ‘The Future of the Past of the Web‘ organised by the British Library, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the JISC.

Recording Skype Interviews with VodBurner

5 October 2011

Marieke Guy explains how Skype conversations can be recorded with VodBurner software.

Things We Can Learn from Facebook

4 October 2011

Brian Kelly considers Facebook development and, taking into account some recent criticisms, makes comparisons with Twitter and Google+.

Publications by UKOLN Staff

New DCC Guide: How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications

21 October 2011

The fourth in a series of how-to guides, How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications has been published by Alex Ball and Monica Duke of UKOLN and the DCC. Explaining how researchers can create links between their publications and the underlying data so that each can be found from the other, the guide provides advice for repository managers and data archivists wishing to make their data holdings easier to cite. This guide is available for online reading or download from the DCC Web site.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

What’s on the Technology Horizon?

31 October2011

Brian Kelly presented a short paper entitled What’s on the Technology Horizon? at the Internet Librarian International Conference 2011, describing the work of the JISC Observatory as featured in the article “Technology Trends to Watch” published in Information Today Europe.  The paper presented at ILI2011 can be downloaded from the Opus Repository.

Evidence, Impact, Metrics: Proposal For Further Work

27 October 2011

Brian Kelly gave a brief review of UKOLN’s “Evidence, Impact, Metrics” work and outlined proposals for further work in 2011/12 that aims to support the JISC Digital Infrastructures team.

2011 Microsoft eScience Workshop: Transforming Scholarly Communication

23 October 2011

Liz Lyon and Michael Day facilitated workshop sessions at the 2011 Microsoft eScience Workshop: Transforming Scholarly Communication, 23-25 October 2011, in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA. The agenda for the workshop sessions is available for download from the Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research web site.

Launch of Patients Participate! Findings

18 October 2011

The JISC-funded Patients Participate! Project released the findings of a 7-month feasiblity study on ‘Bridging the Gap between Information Access and Understanding’ during a ‘TalkScience’ event, chaired by Tracey Brown of the charitable trust Sense about Science, at the British Library on Tuesday 18 October 2011. UKOLN staff collaborated with many other partners in this project, as explained on the Patients! Participate Web site.

Short Presentation on LOCAH Linking Lives at Europeana Tech 2011

4 October 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a brief presentation entitled ‘LOCAH Linking Lives‘ at Europeana Tech 2011 in Vienna on 4 October 2011.

Events

7th International Digital Curation Conference

5 – 8 December 2011

The 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC11) taking place from 5 to 8 December 2011 examines this theme: “Public? Private? Personal? Navigating the Open Data Landscape”. Registration  is now open, with a special institutional discount available before 15 November.

The Benefits of Amplified Events

17 November 2011

Marieke Guy will give a presentation, which includes a pre-recorded video by Brian Kelly,  entitled ‘The Benefits of Amplified Events’ during the Green Impact seminar series at the University of Bath.

W3Conf on Practical Standards for Web Professionals

15 – 16 November 2011

W3C are hosting their first conference, entitled W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals,  from 15 to 16 November 2011 at the Redmond Marriot Town Center, Redmond, USA. The W3C Web site confirms that this event will be free for remote participants: ‘The recordings of the presentations will be freely available …. [and] there will be a live stream of the sessions, with English subtitling. After the event, each session will be archived for future reference‘.

Free IMPACT / myGrid Hackathon

14 – 15 November 2011

Bookings are open for a free 2-day developer workshop / hackathon encouraging take-up and further development of tools developed by the IMPACT Project, the EU project designed to improve access to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This workshop  will take place from 14 to 15 November 2011 at the  University of Manchester and will be run by technical staff from the IMPACT Project in conjunction with the Taverna developers at myGrid. More information on the workshop, including location and programme details, can be found on the Workshop Wiki.

Registration Opens for DCC Cambridge Roadshow

9 – 11 November 2011

Registration is now open for the sixth DCC Roadshow, designed to support institutional research data management planning and training. Organised in conjunction with Cambridge Library, this free event will take place from 9 to 11 November 2011 in Cambridge. Full details of this event and explanations of how to register can be found on the UKOLN Web site.

Featured news item

UKOLN and Microsoft Research Connections in Partnership

Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research Project

Microsoft Research Connections and UKOLN are working in partnership to develop a Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research. One of this partnership’s activities was an event at the University of York, of interest to researchers, digital repository managers, staff from library, information and research organisations, data curators, data centre managers, data scientists, research-funding organisations and research networks.

The ultimate aim of the Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research Project is to provide a framework useful for researchers and funders in modelling a range of disciplinary and community behaviours with respect to the adoption, usage, development and exploitation of cyber-infrastructure for data-intensive research. The speed at which any given discipline advances will depend on how well its researchers collaborate with one another, as well as with others responsible for the computational infrastructure now presumed to be a core part of the research process. The project aims to develop a community capability model framework reflecting a series of maturity factors or parameters, for example:

• an associated set of metrics
• a taxonomy of terms describing the framework
• a supporting suite of visualisations
• case studies

The scope of the project will include technological aspects such as adoption of common data infrastructures, standards, formats and ontologies. Given that social technology aspects have become so ingrained in all researchers do, this scope also includes:

• collaborative approaches and usage of social networks
• influence and reach, including partnerships across sectors and disciplines
• openness including acceptance of open methodologies and tools
• interactions with the public
• socio-legal issues ( i.e. approaches to data licensing, intellectual property, ethical constraints, and scholarly publishing norms)

The project work will build on and extend the principles described in The Fourth Paradigm (2007) by the late Jim Gray. Further details are available on the Community Model for Data-Intensive Research Web site.

Blog posts

DC-2011

30 September 2011

Alex Ball reports on the Eleventh International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, known as DC-2011 as well as by its Twitter hashtag #dcmi11.

Local Developer Success Story: University of Lincoln

29 September 2011

DevCSI presents interviews with Joss Winn and Alex Bilbie regarding the impact of student developers at the University of Lincoln.

I Predict a Riot : Thoughts on Collective Intelligence

29 September 2011

Brian Kelly summarises technologies featured in The New Media Consortium’s report, commissioned by UKOLN and CETIS: Technology Outlook: UK Higher Education. In this blog post Kelly highlights one emerging technology predicted to have a time-to-adoption horizon of 4-5 years and asks: what exactly is ‘collective intelligence’ and what impact might it have on those working in libraries?

Web Archiving and the IIPC

28 September 2011

Marieke Guy calls attention to a video produced by the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) to explain the importance of Web archiving.

Local Developer Success Story: MidKent College

26 September 2011

DevCSI reports on a local developer success story from MidKent College, explaining how enthusiasm for open source solutions helped local developers create a personal development planning tool that met the needs of students, staff and managers at the College.

Is It Time to Ditch Facebook, When There’s Half a Million Fans Across Russell Group Universities?

26 September 2011

Brian Kelly reflects on changes to Facebook announced at the F8 Developers Conference, considering privacy concerns in the light of an updated survey of  Use of Facebook by Russell Group Universities.

We Can’t Ignore Facebook

23 September 2011

Brian Kelly considers potential business and marketing uses of Facebook.

Is It Now Time to Embed Use of Google+?

21 September 2011

Brian Kelly considers how Google+ may deliver benefits as it becomes richer in functionality and its use cases expand.

Will the Real Scott Wilson Please Stand Up

20 September 2011

Brian Kelly evaluates recent developments in the Microsoft Academic Search service, considering its usefulness and overall reliability.

Sharing Job Information More Effectively

19 September 2011

Brian Kelly examines options for publishing and aggregating information about job vacancies in Web teams at universities.

Digital Preservation Featured in Times Higher Education

15 September 2011

In a follow-up letter to a feature article entitled “Memory Failure Detected” in the Times Higher Education of 15 September 2011, Brian Kelly describes how the JISC is part of the coalition of stakeholders helping to engage with preservation of digital resources, summarises UKOLN’s role in managing development of the Twapper Keeper Twitter archiving service, and describes how Twapper Keeper was used to archive over 6,000 tweets posted at the recent ALT-C 2011 Conference.

What’s on the Technology Horizon? Implications for Librarians

15 September 2011

Brian Kelly considers the implications for librarians of a recent post on the JISC Observatory blog presenting the Technology Outlook report by the New Media Consortium (NMC), commissioned by Cetis and UKOLN.

Mediasite at JISCres11

14 September 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the JISC Research Integrity Conference online, examining issues faced by institutions in research data management.

Bath Is the University of the Year! But What If Online Metrics Were Included?

14 September 2011

Brian Kelly considers the importance of metrics tracking ‘social media connectedness’ of leading universities.

Still Sitting at the Desk Too Far

13 September 2011

Marieke Guy discusses new research into the challenges of maintaining morale in remote workers.

Battling Legal, Logistical and Technical Obstacles to Archiving the Web

12 September 2011

Brian Kelly argues that Web archiving should be an active concern for all organisations, calling attention to the JISC event entitled “The Future of the Past of the Web”  on 7 October 2011 at the British Library.

Local Developer Success Story: The South-West Wales HE Partnership

9 September 2011

In this DevCSI case study, Jane Plenderlith explores a local developer success story from South West Wales, where developers helped to customise an open source solution to meet requirements of institutions sharing library resources.

Microattributions, Wikipedia and Dissemination

9 September 2011

Brian Kelly discusses ‘microattributions’, considering the feasibility and usefulness of monitoring contributions to Wikipedia.

Recognising, Appreciating, Measuring and Evaluating the Impact of Open Science

6 September 2011

Brian Kelly reports on the Science Online London 2011 event (SOLO11) which took place in London 2 – 3 September 2011, discussing points raised by its plenary talk on ‘open science’ as well as workshops on social media analytics.

Surveying Our Landscape from Top to Bottom

4 September 2011

Brian Kelly analyses the use of Twitter at the Science Online London Conference (SOLO11), considering available data capture processes, tools, and methodologies.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Dublin Core in Practice: From Application Profiles to the Semantic Web

21 September 2011

Emma Tonkin gave a tutorial entitled Dublin Core in Practice: From Application Profiles to the Semantic Web at DC-2011, the eleventh International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, taking place at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague 21 – 23 September 2011. This tutorial provided an overview of the conceptual landscape of DCMI and the role of Dublin Core in the use of metadata, including practical examples of resource description, application profile development, and consideration of how Dublin Core fits in with the world of Linked Data.

DC-2011: Scientific Metadata for Data Publishing, Citation and Curation

21 September 2011

Alex Ball co-chaired the Science and Metadata Community Workshop at DC-2011, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. He gave an overview of scientific metadata for data publishing, citation, and curation, based on his work on the Scientific Data Application Profile Scoping Study and subsequent developments. This workshop also featured a progress report on the development of a DataCite Dublin Core Application Profile (DC2AP) and discussions about metadata developments, issues, and challenges relating to scientific data. Presentations slides are available for download.

Events

Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research: First Consultation Workshop

28 September 2011

This first consultation workshop on the Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research took place on Wednesday 28 September 2011 at the Ron Cooke Hub, University of York. Workshop discussion explored technological aspects of supporting research, such as common data infrastructure, standards, and ontologies. Social aspects such as collaborative approaches, open and socio-legal issues were also explored. The ultimate aim was to provide a framework useful for researchers and funders in modelling a range of disciplinary and community behaviours with respect to the adoption, usage, development and exploitation of cyber-infrastructure for data-intensive research.

The Future of the Past of the Web

7 October 2011

JISC are running a workshop on “The Future of the Past of the Web” in the British Library on 7 October 2011. Places are free but need to be booked by 30 September 2011. Further information is available from the JISC Web site.

Science as Public Enterprise: Round Table on the Future of Libraries

21 October 2011

Liz Lyon has been invited to contribute to the Royal Society’s “Science as a Public Enterprise” study and will take part in the “Round Table on The Future of Libraries” event at the Royal Society on 21 October 2011.

What’s on the Technology Horizon?

27 October 2011

Brian Kelly will give a talk entitled “What’s on the Technology Horizon?” at the ILI 2011 Conference to be held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London on 27-28 October 2011. This talk has been highlighted in an article published in Information Today Europe and presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Digital Curation Centre Roadshow in Cambridge

9 – 11 November 2011

The UK Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is running a series of free inter-linked regional workshops designed to support institutional research data management planning and training. Registration is now open for the sixth DCC Roadshow which is being organised in conjunction with Cambridge Library and will take place from 9 – 11 November 2011 in the Paston Brown Room at the Homerton Conference Centre, Cambridge. The roadshow runs over three days but each workshop can be booked individually. To find out more about the workshops take a look at the DCC Cambridge Roadshow page. Registration for the workshop is free but places are limited.

VALA2012: eM-Powering eFutures

6 – 9 February 2012

Liz Lyon has been invited to give a keynote presentation at VALA2012 Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

Nordbib: Structural Frameworks for Open Digital Research – Strategy, Policy and Infrastructure

11 – 13 June 2012

Liz Lyon has been invited to speak at the Nordbib International Conference 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Featured news item

Blog posts

Announcing LOCAH Phase 2: Linking Lives

31 August 2011

Adrian Stevenson announces information posted on the Archives Hub blog about the LOCAH continuation project, ‘Linking Lives’, which starts September 2011.

Open Data Hackday

22 August 2011

Kirsty Pitkin provides a detailed report on DevCSI’s Open Data Hackday, an event that brought together web managers, developers and domain experts ahead of this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW).

Offline Time and Olympic Mayhem

19 August 2011

Marieke Guy notes Transport Minister Norman Baker’s proposal that people work remotely during the 2012 Olympics.

Videos from the ICE Forum

19 August 2011

Marieke Guy calls attention to vox pop videos created at the JISC International Curation Education (ICE) Forum.

KRDS Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis Toolkit Version 2

9 August 2011

The JISC-funded KRDS-I2S2 Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis Tools Project announces a new version of the KRDS-I2S2 Toolset (version 2). The project’s worksheets, guidance documentation, and exemplar test cases can be downloaded from the Project Web site.

Scenarios for Writing Lay Summaries

8 August 2011

In preparation for a workshop, the Patients Participate! Project constructs a number of scenarios to help think through examples of how Web-based, biomedical information resources, technologies and communities could support translation of emerging research findings into plain English.

Event Amplifying with Adobe Connect

3 August 2011

Marieke Guy explains how this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop live-streamed all the plenary talks using Adobe Connect, with assistance from Collaborate who support enterprise-wide implementations of collaboration solutions.

Project Sunflower: Evaluation Based on Neilsen’s Heuristics

2 August 2011

Harsh Khatri uses Jakob Neilsen’s ten general usability heuristics to compare the user interface design of the iPad, Kindle and XOOM.

The Economical Way to Amplify Your Event

1 August 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011 session that she facilitated with Brian Kelly entitled “The Economical Way to Amplify Your Event“. This session compared two approaches: 1) amplifying the session using a decent camera and delivering it through Net Vibe; 2) streaming the session using a phone and Bambuser.

Publications

Data Citation and Linking

Alex Ball and Monica Duke have published a DCC briefing paper explaining the process of making datasets citable. Although a culture of citing datasets has been slow to develop, they show how it is vital that researchers cite the datasets they use if datasets are to be regarded as legitimate academic outputs in their own right.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Linked Open Data: Opportunities & Barriers for Archives

26 August 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a talk  at Archives 360, Society of American Archivists conference, Chicago, USA on 26 August 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

SageCite Project

26 August 2011

Monica Duke gave a presentation on SageCite at the International Symposium and Workshop: Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards. Presentation slides are downloadable from the event programme.

LOCAH Project Show and Tell

2 August 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a talk on LOCAH at the eResearch South “Linked Data Workshop”, based in the Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford on 2 August 2011. Presentation slides are available on SlideShare.

The Strategic Developer at IWMW11

Paul Walk’s closing plenary presentation at IWMW outlined the idea of the Strategic Developer and the work of the DevCSI Project on 2 August 2011. A video of this presentation is available on Vimeo.

Events

Registration Opens for DCC Oxford Roadshow

14 – 16 September 2011

Registration is open for the 4th Digital Curation Centre Roadshow taking place 14 – 16 September 2011. Full details are availble in a news feature on the UKOLN Web site.

JISC Research Information Management Projects Final Event

20 September 2011

JISC and UKOLN are organising a free conference at the Manchester Conference Centre on 20 September 2011 to showcase highlights from the second round of JISC-funded Research Information Management (RIM) projects: Brunel Research Under a CERIF Environment (BRUCE) – Brunel University; CERIFy – UKOLN, University of Bath; Measuring Impact under CERIF (MICE) – Centre for e-Reseach (CeRch), Kings College London; Integrated Research Input and Output System (IRIOS) – University of Sunderland.  Further information, a draft programme and a booking form are available from the UKOLN Events Web pages.

The IMPACT Project Conference

25 October 2011

Bookings are open for the IMPACT Project final conference taking place on 24 – 25 October 2011 at the British Library, London. The conference is entitled Digitisation & OCR: Better, faster, cheaper. Full details are available in a news feature on the UKOLN Web site.

What’s on the Technology Horizon?

27 October 2011

Brian Kelly will give a talk at the ILI 2011 conference taking place at the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London 27 – 28 October 2011. Brian’s talk is entitled: “What’s on the Technology Horizon?”

Features

Ariadne 67 Now Available

Ariadne Issue 67 was published recently and contains its usual mix of feature articles, event reports and reviews. There are features on a broad range of subjects including a JISC-funded project investigating the link between library usage and student attainment as part of the Activity Data strand of the wider JISC Information Environment Programme, as well as two contributions from the University of Bath on piloting ElluminateLive! and introducing social media to research students.

A pan-European dimension is addressed in the article on the META-NET’s initiative to accelerate Europe-wide language technology research. Contributors from South Carolina provide an overview of a digital library infrastructure that affords canonical citation for ‘quoting’ images, while librarians at Harvard and other institutions on the U.S. East Coast describe results from a study to identify and develop a cost-effective and efficient large-scale digitisation workflow for special collections library materials.

Other featured contributions from the UK include a description of one systems librarian’s battle with link rot in the library catalogue and the evolution of the Digital Educational Resource Archive, while we can read about the progress made by the MyMobileBristol Project in the exchange of time- and location-sensitive data around the Bristol area. This issue of Ariadne also includes the usual range of reports and reviews.

Issue 67 of Ariadne is planned to be the last issue to appear in the look and feel to which readers will have become accustomed for some time. The intention is to display this issue as well as previous issues in a new and more user-friendly format while ensuring uninterrupted access to the journal.

It is possible to keep track of upcoming items of content in forthcoming issues by following Ariadne on Twitter.

Blog posts

OR11 Developer Challenge Videos

29 July 2011

DevCSI blog presents videos of entries for the DevCSI Developer Challenge at OR11.

Project Sunflower: XOOM Usability Study

29 July 2011

UKOLN Dev blog publishes a detailed usability analysis of the Motorola XOOM, the first tablet to run on Android 3.0.

Project Sunflower: Kindle Usability Study

28 July 2011

UKOLN Dev blog publishes a detailed usability analysis of the Kindle DX.

Institutional Web Management Workshop Time

25 July 2011

Marieke Guy provides an overview of the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011 (IWMW 2011).

Project Sunflower: iPad Usability Study

25 July 2011

UKOLN Dev blog publishes a detailed usability analysis of iPad.

Project Sunflower: Comparative Usability Study

22 July 2011

UKOLN Dev blog publishes a comparative eBook usability study, examining three devices: Apple iPad 2, Amazon Kindle DX, and Motorola XOOM.

Google+: It’s All Swings and Circles

18 July 2011

Marieke Guy reviews Google + from a remote-worker perspective.

Co-referencing

13 July 2011

Adrian Stevenson reports on the Co-referencing meeting held in Manchester as part of the jiscEXPO programme.

Time to Launch Application, Open a Book, and Flip Page

12 July 2011

UKOLN Dev blog presents a study of how much time is taken, respectively, by the Apple iPad 2, Amazon Kindle DX, and Motorola XOOM in rendering eBooks (specifically, comparative performance in opening the app, opening a book, and flipping a page).

Putting the Case for Linked Data

12 July 2011

Adrian Stevenson reports on a break-out group discussion at the jiscEXPO Programme meeting looking at “Skills Required for Linked Data”.

Accessibility Hack Days

7 July 2011

DevCSI blog provides an in-depth report on Accessibility Hack Days in Birmingham, explaining how this event brings together developers, user experience designers, accessibility specialists, and first-hand users of assistive technologies.

What Can We Learn from Download Statistics for Institutional Repositories?

6 July 2011

Brian Kelly explains ways in which evidence-based approaches can make use of metrics to develop best practice and demonstrate impact.

Closing the Digital Curation Gap

6 July 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the “Closing the Digital Curation Gap” Meeting, part of the International Collaboration to Integrate Best Practice, Research & Development, and Training in Digital Curation.

Request for Proposals for HTML5 Case Studies

5 July 2011

Brian Kelly explains the UKOLN Request for Proposals (RfP) for HTML5 Case Studies describing best practices and scenarios for making use of HTML5 and related Open Web Platform standards in the Higher Education and Further Education sectors.

Final Product Post: Archives Hub EAD to RDF XSLT Stylesheet

1 July 2011

Adrian Stevenson describes the latest delivery produced by the LOCAH Project: Archives Hub EAD to RDF XSLT Stylesheet.

JISC International Curation Education (ICE) Forum

1 July 2011

Marieke Guy provides an in-depth report on the JISC International Curation Education (ICE) Forum held at University College London, explaining how this event provided an international meeting place for educators, trainers, students and practitioners of digital curation to discuss, evaluate, swap knowledge, and potentially improve practice.

How Twitter Expertise Helps Your Writing and Dissemination

1 July 2011

Brian Kelly considers how Twitter can assist with the collaborative writing process.

Publications

Draft Version of Briefing Paper on Remote Working

20 July 2011

Marieke Guy published a draft UKOLN Briefing on Remote Working and invited feedback on Scribd.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

IWMW 2011: Conclusions

27 July 2011

Brian Kelly facilitated the closing session at the IWMW 2011 event held at the University of Reading.

IWMW 2011: The Strategic Developer

27 July 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation at IWMW 2011 discussing a new role in the sector for The Strategic Developer who, with both technical and domain experience, contributes to strategic planning and decision making. Presentation slides entitled “Strategic development in a local HEI context” can be viewed on Slideshare.

Doing Drupal: Quick Start Deployments via Distributions

27 July 2011

Thom Bunting facilitated a computer-based session at IWMW 2011 focusing on use of ‘distributions’ in Drupal. Presentation slides entitled “Doing Drupal: Quick Start Deployments via Distriutions” can be viewed on Slideshare.

The Web Management Community: Beyond IWMW and JISCMail Lists

26 July 2011

Brian Kelly facilitated a workshop session on “The Web Management Community: Beyond IWMW and JISCMail Lists” at the IWMW 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

The Economical Way to Amplify Your Event

26 July 2011

Marieke Guy and Brian Kelly facilitated a parallel session at IWMW 2011 entitled “The Economical Way to Amplify Your Event“. Presentation slides are available via the session abstract page.

IWMW 2011: Welcome

26 July 2011

Brian Kelly gave the introductory presentation at IWMW 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Metrics for the Social Web

25 July 2011

Brian Kelly gave a presentation on “Metrics for the Social Web” at the DevCSI workshop on Open Data and the Institutional Web on the day preceding the IWMW 2011 event at the University of Reading.

JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Tools Project Dissemination Workshop

18 July 2011

Presentations from the JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Tools Project Dissemination Workshop held at London South Bank University have been made available via the UKOLN Web site.

Report on the International Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit

14 July 2011

At the “Linked Data and Libraries 2011″ event held at the British Library in London, Adrian Stevenson reported on the International Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit held in San Francisco, California.

Enterprise Information Integration at LondonMet

12 July 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation on “An Enterprise Information Integration at London Metropolitan University”. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Explaining Linked Data to Your Pro Vice Chancellor

12 July 2011

Adrian Stevenson facilitated a session at the jiscEXPO Programme meeting entitled: “Explaining linked data to your Pro Vice Chancellor”.

Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for Use and Impact

12 July 2011

Brian Kelly facilitated a workshop on “Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for their Use and Impact” held at the University of Reading.

Welcome to the Metrics and Social Web Services Workshop

8 July 2011

Brian Kelly gave an opening presentation on “Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for their Use & Impact” at the Open University on 11 July 2011. A summary of the presentation is available on the UK Web Focus blog.

Surveying Our Landscape from Top to Bottom

11 July 2011

Brian Kelly presented on “Surveying Our Landscape from Top to Bottom” at the Workshop on Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for their Use and Impact at the Open University, Milton Keynes.

The Challenges for Libraries and HEIs at SCURL AGM and AwayDay

5 July 2011

Liz Lyon delivered a presentation at the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries AGM and AwayDay held at the University of Glasgow. Presentation slides are now available on the UKOLN Web site.

Presentations from Patients Participate! Workshop

1 July 2011

All Patients Participate! workshop presentations have been made available, including the opening presentation by Liz Lyon entitled “Crowdsourcing Lay Summaries: Bridging the Gap in Health Research”.

Events

7th International Digital Curation Conference Extends Call for Papers

IDCC11 Programme Committee Co-chairs (Kevin Ashley, Director; Liz Lyon, Associate Director of the DCC; Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of CNI) announced the extension until 3 August 2011 of the Call for Papers for the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) to be held in Bristol 5-7 December 2011.

Free DevCSI Event: Apache SOLR

DevCSI announced a free one-day DevCSI / Sourcesense workshop providing a thorough introduction to SOLR at the London Mathematical Society on Monday 15 August 2011. Further information and a booking form are available on the UKOLN Web site.

DevCSI Repository Hackathon/Challenge at Repository Fringe 2011

DevCSI announced a free Repository Hackathon / Challenge at Repository Fringe in Edinburgh on Wednesday and Thursday 3-4 August 2011. Further information about the Hackathon is available on the UKOLN Web site.

Features

The recent CERIFy Data Surgery in Bath brought together those involved in business intelligence, marketing, research information management and analysis from the four partner institutions (Queen’s University Belfast, Aberystwyth University, University of Bath, and University of Huddersfield) and the project’s commercial partner, Thomson Reuters. The event was designed to follow a series of site visits and stakeholder interviews, in which the project team collected information about the partner institutions’ current business processes associated with research information management and their key strategic objectives. The results of these site visits were formalised into generic “as is” and “to be” processes, which the group was asked to analyse and evaluate as part of the workshop activity. The four priorities areas identified for examination were:

• InCites Exchange
• Measures of Esteem
• Pre-Awards Management
• Benchmarking

During the Data Surgery talks were given on a range of topics of interest to the partners. Josh Brown from JISC explained the history and context of the CERIFy Project within JISC’s Research Management funding strand and argued the business case for greater engagement with CERIF. Rosemary Russell from UKOLN presented an overview of the CERIF standard, beginning with the origin of CERIF as an EU recommendation to member states, and now maintained by a task group within euroCRIS. She explained CERIF enables institutions to collect research information in granular detail. Kirsty Taylor (University of Huddersfield), Josh Brown (JISC), Katy McKen (University of Bath), Niamh Brennan (Trinity College Dublin), Ricky Rankin (Queen’s University Belfast), Mahendra Mahey (UKOLN) and Patricia Brennan (Thomson Reuters) gave their perspective on the benefits of CERIF and the CERIFy Project.

Prior to the Data Surgery workshop, the CERIFy team conducted site visits to each of the partner institutions. There, team members spoke to all of “the usual suspects” working in research information management, and anyone else who had any sort of interest in research information, in order to get an idea of what they wanted out of their systems. In the first of a series of presentations, Stephanie Taylor of UKOLN provided a snapshot and summary of the user requirements identified during these site visits to provide a context for the work of the Data Surgery.

The event concluded with a summary of the project plan following the Data Surgery. This will involve providing all partner institutions with a health check to help inform their decisions about CRIS systems or their current status in terms of engaging with the CERIF standard. The Project will then focus on two institutions to take in a selected area of data, map it to CERIF, and exchange data between their two different systems.

Full details of the report on the CERIFy Data Surgery are available on a blog post on the CERIFy Project Web site.

Blog posts

Social Analytics for Russell Group University Twitter Accounts

28 June 2011

Brian Kelly surveys how Russell Group universities are making use of institutional Twitter accounts, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches.

Supporting Researcher Engagement with Social Tools

27 June 2011

Marieke Guy evaluates and reports on the on-line Netskills talk entitled ‘Supporting Researcher Engagement With Social Tools‘, which Alan Cann of the University of Leicester presented on Elluminate!

Government to Force Universities to Publish Data: Hurrah?

26 June 2011

Brian Kelly examines the range of opinions on the UK government announcement that UK universitities must release a new range of information on the learning experience, including detailed data on numbers of lecture and tutorial ‘contact hours’ students can expect to receive from departments offering specific courses.

First Experiments with Adobe Connect

23 June 2011

Marieke Guy compares web conferencing options currently available in Adobe Connect with those available in Big Blue Button and Elluminate!

What Twitter Tells Us about #DevCSI #a11yhack Event

23 June 2011

Brian Kelly explains how Twitter tools help track community engagement with events such as DevCSI Accessibility Hackdays.

Institutional Strategies for the Mobile Web

22 June 2011

Brian Kelly reviews the implications of using dedicated apps or HTML5 when engaging with the ‘Mobile Web’.

Serving Linked Data

20 June 2011

Adrian Stevenson offers in-depth explanations of how the LOCAH Project serves RDF datasets as Linked Data, using software libraries supporting ‘Cool URI’ recipes for content negotiation.

Evidence for the #UniWeek Campaign

19 June 2011

Brian Kelly uses Twitter analysis tools to evaluate activity in the #UniWeek Twitter Marathon, set up to highlight the importance of UK universities to the wider community.

Reflections on UKOLN’s Activities at #UniofBath during #UniWeek

17 June 2011

Brian Kelly summarises, as part of the #UniWeek Campaign, UKOLN’s role in supporting innovation and research across the Higher Education sector.

Don’t Just Embed Objects, Add Links to Source Too!

16 June 2011

Brian Kelly offers practical advice on how to facilitate users’ following links to embedded media resources, even when these resources cannot be displayed on some mobile devices.

Fancy a Jelly?

14 June 2011

Marieke Guy reports on the development of ‘Jelly’ casual working events, explaining how these have become popular in the UK and the US.

Survey on Institutional Plans for the Mobile Web

14 June 2011

Brian Kelly announces the launch of a joint UKOLN / CETIS survey on institutional plans for the provision of mobile access to resources and services.

A Pilot Survey of File Formats in Institutional Repositories

14 June 2011

Brian Kelly uses the advanced search functionality of ePrints software to gather data on the numbers of full-text items held in UK research repositories. He argues that managers of repositories should openly publish ‘paradata’ including information about how many repository resources are available for download in HTML, PDF, or Postscript formats.

Is Smartr Getting Smarter or Am I Getting Dumber?

13 June 2011

Brian Kelly reports on features of the Smartr personalised news service (for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad), analysing privacy issues raised by this tool’s ability to let users who are following someone see not only the articles that person has posted on Twitter but also articles that person has read on Smartr.

Digital Archaeology

13 June 2011

Marieke Guy calls attention to an exhibition on the history of the Web and Web design, noting how this shows Web preservation has at last hit the mainstream.

Numbers Matter: Let’s Provide Open Access to Usage Data and Not Just Research Papers

9 June 2011

Brian Kelly considers the importance of numbers and metrics for academic digital resources, arguing that data related to in-house services should be made available (ideally in an open and easily reusable format) so that we won’t be reliant solely on usage data provided by commercial services.

Videoconferencing Case Studies

8 June 2011

Marieke Guy reports on a series of case studies produced by Sustainable Information Technology in Tertiary Education (SusteIT), highlighting best practice in universities, colleges and research organisations that are ‘greening’ their scientific computing and videoconferencing projects.

Mustering: Pitching for the DevCSI Developer Challenge at Open Repositories 11

7 June 2011

Mahendra Mahey and Peter Sefton report on promotion of the DevCSI Developer Challenge at Open Repositories 11

DevCSI Developer Challenge OR11: The Judges

7 June 2011

Mahendra Mahey presents interviews with some of the judges in the Developer Challenge, recorded at the Open Repositories 11 event.

A Pilot Survey of the Numbers of Full-text Items in Institutional Repositories

6 June 2011

Brian Kelly discusses the implications of a survey of full-text items in UK respositories, suggesting ways that developers can engage with the process of analysing research repository content.

DIY Touch-sensitive Surfaces

4 June 2011

Emma Tonkin presents a video explaining how to set up touch-sensitive surfaces.

Report on euroCRIS Membership Meeting, Bologna, 26-27 May 2011

3 June 2011

Michael Day reports on event activities and highlights a presentation on UKOLN Research Information Management (RIM) work, including CERIFy, at the euroCRIS Membership Meeting hosted by CINECA at their offices in the suburbs of Bologna, Italy. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Cuboid Tetris

3 June 2011

Emma Tonkin presents a video explaining development of a Cuboid Tetris.

Update on the LOC Twitter Archive

3 June 2011

Marieke Guy calls attention to an article providing updates on development of the Library of Congress Twitter archive.

Publications

Openness Should Go Deep

16 June 2011

Brian Kelly argues in a recent Research Information magazine article that the higher-education community should go beyond open access to published research in the pursuit of openness, challenging the community to provide open access to data about research publications listed in institutional repositories.

Key Meetings and Advisory Activities

NSF Advisory Committee for Cyber-Infrastructure (ACCI)

Liz Lyon represented UKOLN and the Digital Curation Centre at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Advisory Committee for Cyber-Infrastructure (ACCI) in Washington DC. ACCI is an NSF-wide committee, which informs research and development programmes from the Office of Cyber-Infrastructure. More information is available on the NSF Web site.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Evolution or Revolution? The Changing Data Landscape

24 June 2011

Liz Lyon gave a presentation entitled ‘Evolution or Revolution? The Changing Data Landscape’ at the 3rd DCC Regional Roadshow, Glasgow. Presentation slides are available on the UKOLN Web site.

Aggregation Using Linked Data: LOCAH Project Experiences

22 June 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a presentation on ‘Aggregation Using Linked Data: LOCAH Project Experiences’ in a workshop with Paul Walk and Herbert Van De Sompel at OA17, Geneva. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Metadata Aggregation Services

22 June 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation on ‘Metadata Aggregation Services’ in a workshop with at OA17, Geneva. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Welcome and Introductory Presentation by Liz Lyon at Patients Participate! Workshop

17 June 2011

Monica Duke presents a video recording of the introductory presentation by Liz Lyon at the recent Patients Participate! Workshop.

Linked Data: The Future for Open Repositories?

8 June 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a presentation on ‘Linked Data: The Future for Open Repositories?’ at Open Repositories Conference 2011 in Austin, Texas, USA on 8 June 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Events

7th International Digital Curation Conference: Key Speakers Announced

The IDCC11 Conference Committee has announced opening and closing keynotes by Ewan McIntosh (Founder and CEO of NoTosh), Professor Philip E Bourne (Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology), and Professor Stephen Emmott (Head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research) at the IDCC11 conference to be held 5-7 December 2011. Full details on the conference and programme are available on the UKOLN Web site.

IWMW 2011

The fifteenth in UKOLN’s annual Institutional Web Management Workshop series (IWMW 2011) is scheduled over two days at the University of Reading, 26-27 July 2011. See the event programme and registration for more information. We are pleased to announce that we are now able to offer one-day tickets for the event for those who are unable to attend for the two days. The one-day tickets are available for £100. Tickets for the full event (which cost £250, including accommodation and meals) will continue to be available for a short period.

DevCSI Workshop on Open Data

A two-day DevCSI workshop on ‘Open Data and the Institutional Web’ will be held on 25 and 26 July 2011, immediately prior to the IWMW 2011 event. This free-of-charge DevCSI workshop gives developers and non-developers with an interest in providing access to and using institutional data an opportunity to get together over two days to hear some examples of how institutional data is being reused.  Attendees can also engage in lightweight development activities whilst at the workshop. Attendance at this workshop is available for free. Although this is a self-contained workshop, the subject area may be of interest to those attending the IWMW event. Further details and registration information on this DevCSI workshop are available on the DevCSI Web site.

Digital Preservation Benefits Toolset Workshop

Registration has opened for the Digital Preservation Benefits Toolset Workshop, designed to disseminate to the research community useful tools for digital preservation and accompanying materials such as user guides and factsheets. Information on the workshop programme, venue, and free-of-charge registration can be found on UKOLN Web site.

Features

A new TechWatch report entitled Augmented Reality for Smartphones has been released. Commissioned by UKOLN as part of JISC Observatory work and written by Ben Butchart of EDINA, this report is primarily designed for developers and content publishers who want to take advantage of the latest developments in smartphone and augmented reality (AR) technology to create novel and exciting new learning experiences. Offering a comprehensive overview of AR browsers and Points of Interest (POI) authoring and publishing tools, the report has been through an open review process and peer-reviewed by experts in the field. During the review process, science fiction writer Bruce Stirling commented on the report in the online magazine Wired: “This is a fine piece of comprehensive research work. If you’re an AR developer or content guy, you’re gonna want a printout of this lying around, so you can brandish it at people. You’ll look like you know what you’re talking about!”

The report is the first in a series of TechWatch reports currently being commissioned by the JISC Observatory. The JISC Observatory is a JISC-funded initiative to systematise the way in which the JISC anticipates and responds to projected future trends and scenarios in the context of the use of technology in Higher and Further Education, and Research in the UK. The development and management of the JISC Observatory represents the first major collaboration between CETIS and UKOLN in their role as JISC Innovation Support Centres. The final report is available from the JISC Observatory Web site.

Blog posts

Evidence of Slideshare’s Impact

31 May 2011

Brian Kelly discusses the implications of usage statistics for a event’s use of Slideshare over a period of four years.

The Future of the Past Report

28 May 2011

Marieke Guy calls attention to availability of reports on the 4-5 May 2011 event hosted by the Cultural Heritage and Technology Enhanced Learning Unit, featuring invited experts in the field of digital preservation. This event was attended by around 60 representatives from universities and research centres, memory institutions, industry and other organisations such as foundations dedicated to digital preservation.

Local Developer Success Story: University of Cambridge

27 May 2011

In this DevCSI blog post, Michelle Pauli considers tangible business benefits of a local developer success story from the University of Cambridge, explaining  how  systems support librarian with developer experience Huw Jones improved the online reporting services for college and departmental libraries within the institution and provided valuable education about future software sourcing.

Linking Library Data Workshop Report

27 May 2011

Adrian Stevenson filed a brief report on the Linking Library Data Workshop at ELAG 2011

Local Developer Success Story: University of Exeter

26 May 2011

In this DevCSI case study, Michelle Pauli reports on a local developer success story from the University of Exeter, where local developer Jamie Aylward created an online Student Ambassador system to manage the process of advertising and allocating student ambassador opportunities. This post explains how a local developer turns a time-consuming and resource-intensive process into an efficient, flexible system that exactly meets the user’s needs.

How Should UK Universities Respond to EU Cookie Legislation?

26 May 2011

Brian Kelly analyses the legal and practical implications for UK Higher Education of the new EU’s Privacy and Communications Directive, which requires a user’s consent before using cookies – the text files used for various purposes including storage of browsing information.

Local Developer Success Story: British Antarctic Survey

25 May 2011
In this DevCSI case study, Michelle Pauli explores the successful work of the local developer who created the British Antarctic Survey SOUTH Travel Database.  This post explains how Dave Connor used trust to overcome requirements disconnect, creating a system that saves time and helps staff to make smarter decisions.

My Thoughts on Running an Elluminate Meeting

25 May 2011

Marieke Guy provides an in-depth description of how she ran an online meeting using Elluminate on-line meeting and conferencing service.

Privacy Settings For UK Russell Group University Home Pages

24 May 2011

In advance of the EU privacy legislation coming into force on 26 May 2011, Brian Kelly surveys the range of cookie settings currently maintained by Russell Group University Home Pages.

Local Developer Success Story: University of Edinburgh

24 May 2011

In this DevCSI case study, Jane Plenderlith explains how collaboration between LEAPS (Lothian Equal Access Programme for Schools) and developers at the University of Edinburgh helped build an online accessible database system improving on a paper-based data management system, creating greater efficiency, and opening further possibilities for enhancing business processes.

Local Developer Success Story: University of Leeds

23 May 2011

In this DevCSI case study, Jane Plenderlith explains how developers in the Module Reading Lists Project create an online reading list system that saves time and offers a more efficient service to students and academics.

#OIIimpacts11 and Evidence-Gathering for JISC Reports, Events

23 May 2011

Brian Kelly reports on the Digital Impacts: How to Measure and Understand the Usage and Impact of Digital Content workshop,  hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute to mark the launch of a report entitled Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources.

Twitter and the #iamspartacus Trend Revisited

22 May 2011

Brian Kelly reflects on the #superinjunction incident on Twitter.

Local Developer Success Story: University of Bristol

20 May 2011

Jane Plenderlith describes how developers from the University of Bristol made a positive impact by providing students with useful information via their mobile devices.

Supporting Developer Success: The List8D Story

18 May 2011

Kirsty Pitkin explains how higher education developers from University of Kent created an innovative tool List8D to help academics, students and librarians to manage reading lists.

Historical Perspective on the Debate about the Future of Cloud Infrastructure in UK HE

16 May 2011
Brian Kelly reports on an Eduserv event focusing on Virtualisation and the Cloud: Realising the benefits of shared infrastructure.

Ariadne Is Getting Smartr

13 May 2011

Brian Kelly explains how UKOLN’s Ariadne ejournal is using Twitter and services like Smartr to improve access options via mobile devices.

How do you move a remote worker office?

11 May 2011

Marieke Guy explains how remote working can continue when moving house tomorrow.

Archives Hub Linked Data Release

9 May 2011

Adrian Stevenson announces the release of http://data.archiveshub.ac.uk, the first Linked Data set produced by the LOCAH Project, in which the data and content is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 licence.

JISC and DevCSI Know the Value of Local Developers

9 May 2011

Paul Walk considers the value of local developers and the “Strategic Developer”  in Further and Higher Education, describing how the JISC-funded DevCSI Project is working to expose and maximise this for the sector.

Thoughts on the Purpose (and Future) of Education

7 May 2011
Brian Kelly looks back on the first face-to-face meeting of the Purpos/ed campaign, reflecting on the future of education.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

UKOLN Activities on Research Information Management

26 May 2011

Michael Day gave a presentation entitled UKOLN Activities on Research Information Management at the euroCRIS membership meeting, hosted by CINECA at their offices in the suburbs of Bologna, Italy. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Lifting the Lid on Linked Data at ELAG 2011

25 May 2011

Adrian Stevenson and Jane Stevenson gave a presentation entitled Lifting the Lid on Linked Data at the ELAG European Library Automation Group Conference 2011 in Prague.

Understanding Use of the Social Web

20 May 2011

Brian Kelly gave a presentation on Metrics for Understanding Personal and Institutional Use of the Social Web at the Digital Impacts: How to Measure and Understand the Usage and Impact of Digital Content workshop, hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute. Further information on Brian’s talk is available from his recent blog post and on SlideShare.

CERIFy Data Surgery

19 – 20 May 2011

Mahendra Mahey, Talat Chaudhri, Stephanie Taylor, and Rosemary Russell gave presentations at the CERIFy Data Surgery, which brought together experts involved in business intelligence, marketing, research information management and analysis from four partner institutions (Queen’s University Belfast, Aberystwyth University, University of Bath, and Huddersfield University) and the CERIFy Project’s commercial partner, Thomson Reuters. For more information, see the event programme and the presentations available on Slideshare.

The Strategic Developer: How Local Developers Can Make a Difference

14 May 2011

Paul Walk and Mahendra Mahey presented a session at the JISC11 Conference where they discussed the ideal of the Strategic Developer having “both technical and domain experience, and who can contribute to strategic planning and decision making”. Slides from this session are available as a virtual goody bag at the JISC Web site.

Data Citation Principles

16 May 2011

Monica Duke presented some findings from the SageCite Project, concentrating on examining the domain of disease modelling, at the Data Citation Principles Workshop hosted by Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Building a Data Citation Demonstrator for Bionetwork Models

18 May 2011

Liz Lyon spoke on the SageCite Project and the new Patients Participate! Project at the recent Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress in San Francisco. She gave a presentation entitled Building a data citation demonstrator for bionetwork models which is now available.

Events

JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Tools Project

A workshop on Digital Preservation Benefits Toolset takes place on Tuesday 12 July 2011 at London South Bank University. Workshop registration is free but please that note places are limited and early registration is advised. At least 24 hours notice of cancellation is required, otherwise a fee of £50 will be charged to recover costs. To book for the event, please use the Eventbrite booking system.

Metrics and Social Web Services Workshop

UKOLN is organising a one-day workshop entitled “Metrics and Social Web Services: Quantitative Evidence for Their Use and Impact” to be held at the Open University in Milton Keynes on Monday 11 July 2011. The workshop will explore ways in which metrics related to the use of Social Web services can be employed to provide evidence of how the services are being used. It will also allow delegates to make comparisons with their peers and enable them to identify trends in usage. Attendance at the workshop is free. Bookings can be made using the online Eventbrite booking system.

The Patients Participate! Workshop: Bridging the Gap between Information Access and Understanding in Health Research

A workshop on 17 June 2011 at the British Library Conference Centre will explore what role Web-based biomedical information resources, technologies, and communities can play in translating emerging research findings into plain English so that all interested parties can trust, understand, and access biomedical and health information.

Features

UKOLN has a long history of engagement with the cultural heritage sector, dating back to  1977 when the British Library became the original and sole funder of UKOLN (funding from JISC started in 1992).  UKOLN’s core funding from the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council)  officially finished on 31 March 2011.

We have been pleased to have such a long-standing involvement with the cultural heritage sector over the past 34 years. Even though the government has announced the abolition of the MLA, our engagement with the sector will continue including our involvement with the Strategic Content Alliance, the LOCAH Project, the W3C Library and Linked Data Incubator Group, and our shared research interests with the British Library.

For more information, see the extended overview of UKOLN’s involvement with the cultural heritage sector published in the Cultural Heritage blog.

Blogs

Report on Augmented Reality on Smartphones: Feedback Invited

28 April 2011

Feedback is invited on a TechWatch report entitled Augmented Reality for Smartphones. Commissioned by UKOLN and written by Ben Butchart of Edina, this report has been mentioned in the April issue of Wired. Comments on the report are invited until Friday 6 May 2011, after which date the final version of the report will be released.

What I Like and Don’t Like about IamResearcher.com

27 April 2011

Brian Kelly reviews the Iamresearcher.com service, a new repository of information about researchers and their research activities. Analysing how this new service might provide innovative UI design paradigms, this blog post examines the service’s new features and the implications of its business model.

BO.LT Page Sharing Service and OERs

22 April 2011

Brian Kelly reports on a recently launched Bo.lt, presented as a service that  ”Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage“.

Archiving Blogs and Machine-Readable Licence Conditions

21 April 2011

Reflecting on the process of archiving UKOLN’s Cultural Heritage blog, which has recently been frozen following the cessation of funding from the MLA (a government body which is soon to close), Brian Kelly considers practical arrangements for managing content licences and making them machine-readable in ways that facilitate reuse in Open Educational Resources (OER).

ACCI Task Forces Report

20 April 2011

Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN and Associate Director, Digital Curation Centre, is a member of the ACCI Task Force on Data and Visualization, which recently issued six reports available from the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) Web site. Topics addressed by these reports are: Campus Bridging, Cyberlearning and Workforce Development; Data and Visualization; Grand Challenges; High Performance Computing; and Software for Science and Engineering.

UK Government Will Impose Compulsory Open Standards

20 April 2011

Brian Kelly looks again at government plans to expand interoperability and security by requiring the use of open standards across 23 designated areas. This blog post examines planning  and ‘information-gathering’ documentation related to two key areas: ‘Accessibility and usability’; and ‘Computer workstations’.

Are Russell Group Universities Ready for the Mobile Web?

19 April 2011

Following up on Nominet’s launch event for the W3C UK and Ireland Office, where Dr. Rotan Hanrahan warned against many assumptions about Web sites based on desktop browser experiences, Brian Kelly examines whether major university are preparing their Web sites for the ‘Mobile Web’.

Open Educational Resources Hack Day

18 April 2011

This UKOLN DevCSI blog post includes in-depth reports on the OER Hack Day event, jointly organised by JISC CETIS and DevCSI. Participants came from a variety of backgrounds and levels of technical expertise, and included academics, learning technologists, repository managers, developers, and librarians from many leading UK institutions and other organisations.

Zapd Opportunity or Threat?

15 April 2011

Brian Kelly investigates whether the free and highly rated  Zapd app, designed to create “Websites in 60 seconds from your iPhone”, could be used in a professional context, questions the underlying technical approaches, and considers legal and brand implications.

Introducing the Project Partners: UKOLN

13 April 2011

Monica Duke and Liz Lyon explain UKOLN’s active interest in ‘citizen science’ and its current involvement with the Patients Participate! Project, where three important elements of citizen science come together.

New HTML5 Drafts and Other W3C Developments

13 Apr 2011

Brian Kelly calls attention to recent developments in key areas of Web standards: HTML5, RDFa, Provenance Working Group, and Emotion Markup Language (EML or EmotionML).

Thoughts on the New WebGL Open API Standard

7 April 2011

In this  blog post Brian Kelly examines the recently released WebGL, considering the openness and suitability for teaching and learning of this ”graphics library that basically extends the functionality of JavaScript to allow it to create interactive 3D graphics within ye olde browser”.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

Education: Is It about Cradling Happiness or Making Us Anxious?

30 April 2011

Brian Kelly gave a talk at the “Purpos/ed Summit for Instigators” on 30 April 2011 at Conference 21, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield. A 3-minute slidecast of a rehearsal of this talk is available on Slideshare.  For more information, see the blog post explaining the context of this conference presentation as well as the report on conference discussions.

Technical standards and the Resource Discovery Task Force Vision: Some Considerations

18 April 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation at the Resource Discovery Task Force  (RTDF) “Open data advocacy” workshop. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Building a Data Citation Demonstrator for Bionetwork Models

18 Apr 2011

Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN and Associate Director, DCC spoke on the SageCite Project and the new Patients Participate! Project at the recent Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress in San Francisco. Slides from this presentation, entitled “Building a data citation demonstrator for bionetwork models”, can now be viewed on the UKOLN Web site.

Screencasting for IMPACT

12 April 2011

Marieke Guy and Ed Bremner ran three sessions in Munich at the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) Project’s all-staff meeting. During this event they introduced the idea of screencasting and created a Prezi presentation on why people should make screencasts, explaining best practice in screencasting.

Aspects of the Sustainability of Software

12 April 2011

Paul Walk gave a presentation on “Aspects of the Sustainability of Software” in the higher education sector at the ANDS Invitational Infrastructure Workshop in Prato, Italy. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

How to Become a First-Class Citizen of the Web

4 April 2011

Adrian Stevenson and Jane Stevenson gave a presentation at UKSG 34th Annual Conference, in Harrogate, UK on “How to Become a First-Class Citizen of the Web”. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Publications

Data Management Planning at ICED11

A paper written by the ERIM Project team has been accepted for presentation at the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED11), to be held 15-18 August 2011 in Copenhagen. This paper, entitled “Data Management Planning in Engineering Design and Manufacturing Research” and written by Mansur Darlington, Alex Ball, Tom Howard, Chris McMahon and Steve Culley, explains how the ERIM Project characterised the nature of engineering research data and developed a modelling technique for visualising its context.

Events

IDCC11: Call for Papers

The theme of the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC11) will be: Public? Private? Personal? Navigating the Open Data Landscape. Taking place from 5 to 7 December 2011 in Bristol, UK, this conference will bring together practitioners who create information, those who curate and manage it, and those who use it together with those who research and teach about curation processes. The Call for Papers invites submissions on current concerns in digital curation and specific concerns arising from this year’s conference theme.

Features

Volume 6, Issue 1 of The International Journal of Digital Curation Now Available

UKOLN has recently published Volume 6, Issue 1 (2011) of The International Journal of Digital Curation on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. In his editorial, Chief Editor and Director of the DCC Kevin Ashley remarks how the sixteen peer-reviewed papers and five general articles in this issue reflect the maturation process of the DCC as activities in digital curation become much more integrated.

Along with the editor, we invite readers to send comments to ijdc@ukoln.ac.uk as “we refine and test the ideas we are collectively exploring in digital curation.”

Farewell to Ann Chapman, UKOLN Research Officer, 1987-2011

Ann Chapman retired from UKOLN on 31 March 2011, after more than 24 years of dedication, commitment, and excellent standards. Since joining UKOLN in 1987, Ann has made significant contributions to UKOLN and to the wider HE and library communities. As explained on the UKOLN Web site, Ann’s career progression closely reflected the development of UKOLN from a centre for cataloguing research to the centre of excellence in digital information management that it is today.

Blogs

ILI 2011 and the New Normal

31 March 2011

Brian Kelly considers the Internet Librarian International conference (ILI 2011)  in London on 27-28 October 2011, which will address how the use of innovative technology can help open up access to information, data, and knowledge in the ‘new normal’ context of budget cuts and austerity .

Introducing the Partners: The British Library

30 March 2011

Opening the Patients Participate! Project Blog, Monica Duke explains the range of stakeholders in the project and presents an introductory statement from The British Library.

Thoughts on Facebook, Linked Data and Other Developments

29 March 2011

Brian Kelly analyses the wide-ranging implications of Facebook developments for academic institutions and developer communities.

Fixing the Web for People with Disabilities

28 March 2011

Brian Kelly examines how the Fix the Web initiative has been set up to enable end-users to report problems and for such problems to be evaluated by Web experts and, where appropriate, for such problems to be reported to service providers.

Twitter Export Functionality Returns to Twapper Keeper

23 March 2011

Brian Kelly reports on recent changes in Twitter’s terms of service and evaluates impact on features such as exporting data to spreadsheets.

Seminar on Mobile Technologies: Why Library Staff Should Be Interested

21 March 2011

Brian Kelly reports on a recent seminar on ”Mobile Technologies: Why Library Staff Should Be Interested” and considers potential for maximising return on investment and increasing dissemination of knowledge through various uses of mobile technologies.

UKOLN’s Involvement with the Cultural Heritage Sector

21 March 2011

This post from the Culltural Heritage blog reviews noteworthy developments in UKOLN’s long history of engagement with the cultural heritage sector, from 1977 through the present.

Digital Preservation Benefit Analysis Tools

21 March 2011

As explained in this I2S2 blog post, UKOLN is helping to launch the Digital Preservation Benefit Analysis Tools Project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to run from 1 February to 31 July 2011.

There’s No Business Like No Business Case

18 March 2011

Adrian Stevenson provides a detailed report on sessions at this year’s JISC Conference in Liverpool, analysing the business value to the institution of linked data.

Reflections on the Amplified Events Session at #JISC11

16 March 2011

This blog post reflects on how ‘amplified events’ technologies can extend the reach of workshop presentations, such as the one this month by Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy at the JISC 2011 Conference.

A Fool and Her Password Are Easily Parted

16 March 2011

Marieke Guy warns of the danger of losing passwords and considers the benefits of password managers.

Dev8D Interview: Steve Coppin

14 March 2011

This DevCSI blog post presents an interview with Steve Coppin, discussing the value of the DevCSI Project to the work of his department.

When Technology (Eventually) Enhances Accessibility

10 March 2011

Brian Kelly explores whether an institution should make use of video technology in cases where it can’t provide captions that help make video accessible to people with disabilities.

UK Government Survey on Open Standards: But What Is an Open Standard ?

6 March 2011
Brian Kelly reviews the challenges of defining ‘open standards’, in response to the UK Government’s Open Standards Survey.

Selected Presentations by UKOLN Staff

LOCAH Project and Considerations of Linked Data Approaches

29 March 2011

Adrian Stevenson gave a presentation given at JISC ’Managing Research Data International Workshop’ in Birmingham on 29 March 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Mobile Technologies: Why Library Staff Should be Interested

19 March 2011

Brian Kelly gave a presentation on “Mobile Technologies: Why Library Staff Should be Interested” at a seminar for University of Bath Library staff on 21 March 2011. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Amplified Events, Seminars, Conferences: What? Why? How?

15 March 2011

Marieke Guy facilitated a workshop session on Amplified Events, Seminars, Conferences: What? Why? How? at the JISC 2011 conference. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

The Value of Local Developers

15 March 2011

Based on their work on the DevCSI Project, Mahendra Mahey and Paul Walk presented a session at the JISC Conference 2011 entitled The value of local developers: innovating in difficult financial times.

BS 8878 and the Holistic Approaches to Web Accessibility

7 March 2011

Brian Kelly gave a talk entitled BS 8878 and the Holistic Approaches to Web Accessibility at a recent JISC CETIS Accessibility SIG meeting held at the BSI Headquarters in London. Video of the talk and access to the slides are available from the accompanying blog post.

Evolution or Revolution? The Changing Data Landscape

2 March 2011

Liz Lyon gave a presentation entitled Evolution or Revolution? The Changing Data Landscape at the UK Digital Curation Centre’s 2nd DCC Regional Roadshow, Sheffield. Presentation slides are available on the UKOLN website.

A Risks and Opportunities Framework for Exploiting Social Web Services

28 February 2011

Brian Kelly gave a talk on “A Risks and Opportunities Framework for Exploiting Social Web Services” at an online event on “Ask the Experts: Web 2.0 Policies and Frameworks” organised by the Best Practice Models for e-Learning community and hosted by the Staffordshire University Learning Development and Innovation Team. Presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Events

Data Infrastructure Challenges Workshop: 5 May 2011, Leicester

The Infrastructure for Integration in Structural Sciences (I2S2) Project is pleased to announce a half-day workshop exploring research data management challenges in a range of contexts. This workshop, entitled Data Infrastructure Challenges: Working across Scale, Disciplinary and Institutional Boundaries, will take place on 5 May 2011 at the University of Leicester. Full programme and registration details can be found on the I2S2 events page.

Free AQuA Events QA for Digital Preservation

Marieke Guy calls attention to free events in April and June for coders, technical experts, collection curators and digital preservation practitioners, as part of the JISC Automating Quality Assurance Project (AQuA).