Practitioners in the field of digital repositories familiar with the document Digital Repositories Roadmap: looking forward 
by Rachel Heery, UKOLN, University of Bath, and her former colleague Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundation, may be interested by an announcement by JISC of the publication of further work by Rachel Heery. The original Roadmap, published in April 2006, presented a vision for the role of digital repositories in 2010. Given the significant developments in policy, practice and technology relevant to digital repositories that have occurred since the original Roadmap, JISC funded Rachel Heery, Assistant Director and Team Leader for Research and Development at UKOLN until her retirement, to produce a review of the original Roadmap and to extend the vision until 2013. The new review, entitled Digital Repositories Roadmap Review: towards a vision for research and learning in 2013, makes a number of recommendations for consideration by the JISC Executive and goes on to identify milestones of relevance to the wider community that might act as a measure of progress towards the broader vision of enhanced scholarly communication. Full details are available on the new JISC Web site .
Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
The Cutting Edge of SWORD at OR 2009
Friday, May 1st, 2009Adrian Stevenson of UKOLN and former UKOLN colleague Julie Allinson, University of York, will give a presentation entitled The Cutting Edge of SWORD at the forthcoming 4th International Conference on Open Repositories (OR 2009 ) at the Georgia Institute of Technology over 18-21 May. The presentation will look at how the original SWORD (Simple Web service Offering Repository Deposit)) Project and the current SWORD 2 Project have realised the vision of a standard deposit protocol. The presentation will also consider the future of SWORD and look at recent activity.
Debate on Repositories and Open Source
Monday, April 20th, 2009Michael Day and Alex Ball of UKOLN have contributed to a recent discussion of the role of open source software for institutional repositories as part of a special section on Institutional Repositories: The Great Debate published in the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (Vol. 53, No. 4 , April/May 2009 ). Paul Jones of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported the initial motion that Institutional repositories should be built on open source software, arguing passionately that any other choice would be “un-archival and unsustainable in the long run.” In their response, the UKOLN contributors recognised the value of the open source development paradigm, while arguing that the main focus of repositories should be fundamentally pragmatic and primarily focused on the stewardship of institutional content. The special issue includes three other discussion topics, with contributors including Stevan Harnad, Nancy McGovern and Soo Young Rieh.
IEMSR at JISC 2009
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
The JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry Project gave a demonstration of the registry and a suite of associated software tools at the recent 2009 JISC Conference. Slides and screenshots from the presentation are available on the IEMSR Web site.
SaaSy APIs at Museums and the Web 2009
Thursday, March 26th, 2009A paper by Paul Walk of UKOLN entitled Software as a Service and Open APIs has been accepted for the M2009 Museums and the Web Conference to be held in Indianapolis, USA over 15-18 April 2009. This paper will form the background to a mini-workshop APIs – how and why which will be conducted by his colleague Brian Kelly. The workshop will consider ways in which open APIs and Software as a Service (SaaS) are being exploited within the sector and seek a better understanding of the best approaches to take to maximise the potential benefits of this technology.
Software as a Service and Open APIs by Paul Walk
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/walk/walk.html
Conference Biography: Paul Walk
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/bios/au_440016873.html
e-Science Institute Workshop: Use Cases for Provenance
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/983/
The e-Science Institute (eSI) has announced a workshop entitled “Use Cases for Provenance” to take place in Edinburgh on Monday 20 April in Edinburgh. The aim of the workshop is to identify usage scenarios, open problems and ambitious goals for research concerning provenance in eScience and scientific data management. The workshop will be of interest to: scientific disciplines in which sophisticated database, Grid, or eScience technology is already in widespread use; disciplines where such technology is not widely used but conceivably will be in the future, and; to researchers and developers working on provenance and scientific data management or eScience technology. Speakers will include Alex Ball of UKOLN who will be presenting on the role of provenance in Engineering industries. The registration deadline is 13 April.
Launch of OPuS, the online archive for University of Bath research publications
Monday, February 9th, 2009http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/the-launch-of-opus/
The University of Bath’s OPuS (Online Publications Store) service, the online archive for University of Bath research publications, was launched on 3 February 2009 by Professor Jane Millar, the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research).
As described in a blog post UKOLN staff were in attendance at the launch and captured the talks about this new service on video.