UKOLN News

The Cataloguing & Indexing Group of CILIP 2006 Conference, “Immaculate Catalogues”, to be held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, 13-15 September 2006, will focus on taxonomy, metadata and resource discovery.

The Open Archival Information System Reference Model is quickly becoming established as the basis for describing digital repositories. A briefing paper on the model, written by Alex Ball of UKOLN for the KIM Grand Challenge Project, has now been released for public viewing.

UKOLN Events is co-ordinating this meeting between experts from the US and the UK and which will explore and contrast major developments in information systems, digital services and resources for learning, teaching and research in the education community on both sides of the Atlantic.

Brian Kelly co-facilitated a one-day workshop on “Emerging Technologies and the “Net Generation”" at the ALT 2006 research seminar held at the University of Leiden, Holland on 7 April 2006. The workshop outlined a vision for e-learning for the “net generation” and addressed some of the barriers in implementing the vision. A white paper based on the outcomes of the workshop (and two related workshops on life-long learning and digital games) is currently being finalised.

A Call for Presentations and Participation is issued for the 5th European Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop at the 10th ECDL Conference, 21 September 2006, in Alicante, Spain. The deadline for extended abstracts is 11 May. The workshop includes a “Semantic Web Special Session”.

Maureen Pennock of UKOLN will speak on “Email records: From creation to curation” at a DCC workshop entitled “Email curation: practical approaches for long-term preservation and access” over 24-25 April 2006 at the Grey Street Hotel, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

R. John Robertson writes on a project examining the potential benefits of OAI-PMH static repositories to small publishers which will appear in the Spring issue of Ariadne.

The EC has recently published “Study on the economic and technical
evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe” which makes a
number of recommendations for future action, including improving access
to publicly-funded research.

E-mail is now the preferred means of professional communication, radically altering working practices. At the same time it presents organisations with major issues in the management of such information. In her briefing paper, one of a series to appear on the DCC site, Maureen Pennock of UKOLN introduces the issues involved and offers some practical advice for successful curation of e-mail messages.

Michael Day of UKOLN spoke recently on the technical issues of digital preservation at a conference in Madrid entitled “Preservation of Digital Heritage: Basic Concepts and Main Initiatives” organised by the libraries sub-directorate of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. During the conference he also gave a seminar on OAIS applications in digital preservation projects. Slides for both are now available.