The Guide to Web Preservation published by the JISC-funded Preservation of Web Resources (JISC-PoWR) Project run by UKOLN and the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) has been launched at the Institutional Web Managers Workshop (IWMW2010). Further details are available.
Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category
Guide to Web Preservation Launch at the Opening of IWMW2010
Monday, July 12th, 2010KIM, ERIM and the Silo of Doom
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010Alex Ball will be giving a presentation entitled KIM, ERIM and the Silo of Doom at a Digital Preservation Coalition workshop
on Computer-aided Design, to be held at the British Library Centre for Conservation on Friday 16 July 2010.
UKOLN to Lead on the LOCAH Linked Data Project
Thursday, July 1st, 2010UKOLN has been successful in securing funding for a 12-month Linked Data project in response to the recent JISC Grant Funding Call 2/10 to expose digital content for education and research as linked data. The LOCAH Project (full title ‘Linked Open Copac Archives Hub) will be led by UKOLN in partnership with Mimas, Eduserv, Talis and OCLC, and will be managed by Adrian Stevenson at UKOLN. The Archives Hub and Copac national services provide a wealth of rich inter-disciplinary information that the project will expose as Linked Data. The project will also be investigating the creation of links between the Hub, Copac and other data sources including DBPedia, data.gov.uk and the BBC, as well as links with OCLC for name authorities and with the Library of Congress for subject headings. This project aims to put archival and bibliographic data at the heart of the Linked Data Web, making new links between diverse content sources, enabling the free and flexible exploration of data and enabling researchers to make new connections between subjects, people, organisations and places to reveal more about our history and society.
Metadata Forum: BoFs Gathering at OR 2010
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Part of the Open Repositories Conference in Madrid over 6-9 July 2010 will be a series of Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions to offer delegates with similar interests the opportunity to discuss a particular topic informally. One such session on Wednesday 7 July at 15:45 – 16:45 will be facilitated by Stephanie Taylor of UKOLN to host the first meeting of The Metadata Forum. The Metadata Forum is a new initiative, run by UKOLN at the University of Bath and funded by JISC. It is open to anyone with an interest in metadata, from novice to expert, and anyone in between who has to deal with metadata as part of their day-to-day work. The Forum aims to:
- identify knowledge gaps in the area of metadata within the UK HE community, and fill those gaps
- answer questions on the practical application of metadata in the workplace
- bring together practitioners at every level of experience to discuss and share their metadata experiences
It is hoped that delegates attending this BoF will bring along their metadata hopes, dreams and fears to share at the Forum launch! Regular updates on the activities and outputs of the Forum can be found at the Metadata Forum Blog.
BRTF: Making the Business Case for Digital Preservation
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access (BRTF-SDPA), a new international initiative funded by JISC and other organisations, has recently released its report entitled Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information. Neil Grindley, programme manager at JISC, said, “This report takes a clear-headed and hard look at some of the ideas surrounding preservation ..” JISC is organising a free one-day symposium in London on 6 May 2010 where the Blue Ribbon task force will be presenting its final report alongside responses from the BBC, the Natural History Museum, the British Library, European Bioinformatics Institute and the European Commission. Further information is available.
Digital Curation Centre Announces New Director
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010With the commencement this month of its third phase of evolution, the Digital Curation Centre has also announced the appointment of its new Director , Kevin Ashley, who will succeed Chris Rusbridge upon his retirement in April 2010. Kevin Ashley has been Head of Digital Archives at the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) since 1997. His group has operated the National Digital Archive of Datasets for The National Archives of the UK for over twelve years. He is also a member of the JISC’s Infrastructure and Resources Committee, the Advisory Council for ERPANET and several advisory boards for data and archives projects and services. Liz Lyon, Associate Director, Digital Curation Centre, commented, “My colleagues and I at UKOLN look forward to working with Kevin as partners in the DCC as it takes up the third phase of its activity.”
British Library Warns UK’s Web Heritage ‘could be lost’
Monday, March 1st, 2010Many practitioners in digital preservation and access will have welcomed the recent news item from the BBC Technology News Web site on the UK’s Web heritage. They will be concerned that much of society as a whole remains unaware of the threat to the persistence of digital resources on which we increasingly rely. Commenting on this news item, Dr. Liz Lyon, Associate Director of the UK Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and author of the report Dealing with Data, remarked, “We fully support the work that the British Library has undertaken to address the potential and irredeemable loss of so many Web sites. Moreover, professionals working in digital curation would wish to emphasise that the dangers are not confined to Web heritage. Our research data is in similar peril and assuring its sustainability is at the heart of the work being carried out by the DCC.”
The Panton Principles for Open Data in Science
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010The Open Knowledge Foundation has made an announcement concerning the launch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. The Foundation states that open data should be data that are “freely available on the public internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyse, re-process, pass them to software or use them for any other purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers…” and that accordingly data relating to published science should be available in the public domain. The Principles themselves hold that the legal status of scientific datasets should be explicit and that content licences are not appropriate for data. The first draft of the Panton Principles was written in July 2009 by Peter Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, Rufus Pollock and John Wilbanks and were refined with the assistance of the members of the Open Knowledge Foundation Working Group on Open Data in Science.