Archive for the ‘team-outreach’ Category

Launch of the Research Data Alliance

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

UKOLN has welcomed the announcement of the launch and first plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an organisation that supports research data sharing and exchange. The purpose of the Research Data Alliance is to accelerate international data-driven innovation and discovery by facilitating research data sharing and exchange, use and reuse, standards harmonisation, and discoverability. This will be achieved through the development and adoption of infrastructure, policy, practice, standards, and other deliverables.

As “big data” achieve international importance, the RDA has issued an open invitation to all interested parties to its first plenary, entitled Open Access Research Data without Barriers, to be held over 18-20 March 2013 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The RDA will be launched by sponsors from the European Commission, the US Government and the Australian Government, and by leaders in the data community. The Plenary will be a working meeting to accelerate discussion, Working and Interest Group interaction, and data community development.

Confirming her own attendance at the RDA’s first plenary meeting, Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, remarked, “As the importance of careful management of Big Data becomes increasingly evident, the appearance of the Research Data Alliance on the scene after just a few months of start-up activity can only be regarded as lending further support to the essential task of institutions worldwide in their role as stewards of large-scale data.”

The work of the Research Data Alliance will primarily be undertaken through its working groups. Participation in working groups, starting new working groups, and attendance at the twice-yearly plenary meetings is open to all.

IDCC13 Previews: Scott Edmunds and Herbert Van de Sompel

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

Two further preview blog postings on the forthcoming 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13) have been made available.

The first has been written by Herbert Van de Sompel, team leader of the Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His team is engaged in research on various aspects of scholarly communication in the digital age. Herbert has played a major role in creating the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse & Exchange specifications (OAI-ORE), the OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, the SFX linking server, the bX scholarly recommender service, and info URI. Herbert is currently working with his team on the Open Annotation, Memento and ResourceSync projects.

Herbert’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The second preview is by Scott Edmunds of GigaScience/BGI HK. Working with the British Library and DataCite, GigaScience published its first data (the genome of the deadly German outbreak strain of E. coli) in June 2011, and is currently developing an integrated data analysis platform to support  publication of executable papers. After postdoctoral positions on Cancer Molecular Pathology at the WHO International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyons and Institute of Cell and Molecular Sciences in London (Queen Mary), Scott became senior scientific editor for the BMC Genomics and Bioinformatics journals at BioMed Central.

Scott’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

The final version of the TechWatch report entitled Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education is now available.

Updated in light of feedback received from a preview version released in September, this report is a primer to help academic librarians, managers, and members of faculty respond effectively as ebooks become mainstream and the percentage of academic publications delivered as ebooks rises steadily.

The report aims to support the adoption of ebooks by:

  • introducing the historical and present context of ebooks
  • reviewing the basics of ebook technologies
  • considering scenarios for ebook adoption and usage
  • addressing current challenges
  • considering future developments.

Published by JISC Observatory and written by commissioned author James Clay (Gloucestershire College) with production editing and project management provided by UKOLN Innovation Support Centre, this is the fourth in a series of TechWatch reports published since 2011.

Ariadne Issue 70 Now Available

Monday, December 17th, 2012

Ariadne Issue 70 was published recently with a wide range of feature articles, event reports and book reviews. A summary of the principal material is now available in a news feature on the UKOLN Web site.

Possible Interruption to UKOLN Blog Services

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

All UKOLN blog services, including this newsfeed, may be subject to interruption due to routine maintenance operations during the morning of Thursday 13 December 2012.

IDCC13 Previews: Stephanie Wright and Patricia Cruse

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Two further preview blog postings on the forthcoming 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13) are now available.

The first has been written by Stephanie Wright who is currently the Data Services Coordinator at the University of Washington Libraries and is responsible for developing and implementing a data services programme to support the research data management needs of UW faculty and students. Her focus is to promote collaboration on data management resource development, service provision and education which she does by building relationships between the Libraries and research data-related entities both on and off campus.

Stephanie’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The second preview is by Patricia Cruse, the founding director of the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library and who is responsible for all services within UC3. Trisha works collaboratively with the ten UC campuses to develop sustainable strategies for the curation and preservation of digital content that supports the research, teaching, and learning mission of the University. She has developed and oversees several of CDL’s major initiatives, including the NDIIP-funded Web Archiving Service, micro-services, a new and innovative approach to building infrastructure, the Merritt Repository, and the EZID Service.

Trisha’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

IDCC13 Symposium: What Is a Data Scientist?

Friday, December 7th, 2012

Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN and Associate Director, DCC, will chair a symposium to address this question in a session during the 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13).  What Is a Data Scientist? will be held on Tuesday 15 January 2013.

She will be joined by panel members Francine Bennett, Data Analyst,  Mastodon C,  Louise Corti, Data Steward, UK Data Archive,  Scott Edmunds, Data Publisher, Gigascience and  Stephanie Wright, Data Librarian, University of Washington Libraries.

Please note that the current registration fee will increase from Tuesday 11 December 2012,  so remember to register now.

Speakers Look Forward to IDCC13

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

The 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13) is just around the corner and the DCC has been asking some of the key speakers to preview the event both in terms of their own contribution as well as whom they are most looking forward to hearing. Kevin Ashley, Director of the DCC, has started us off with his perspective on the conference while Anthony Beitz from the Monash eResearch Centre and Kaitlin Thaney from Digital Science give us their insights into some of the current issues.

Registration for the workshops and main conference is still open, so don’t forget to register now to take advantage of the current registration fees and to book for the workshops of your choice. Please note, some are limited in terms of delegate numbers.

Finally the DCC would like to encourage all delegates, speakers, authors, poster and demo presenters to share their attendance via Lanyrd and of course to tweet using the conference hashtag #idcc13

A Revolution in Open Science

Tuesday, November 27th, 2012

Liz Lyon will be taking part in a panel on open data entitled ‘Reasserting the primacy of data’ during the 10th anniversary conference of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) in Brussels on 30 November 2012. The theme of the special conference is Open Horizons: A Revolution in Open Science.

LERU was founded in 2002 as an association of research-intensive universities sharing the values of high-quality teaching in an environment of internationally competitive research.

IDCC13 Workshop Programme Now Available

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

Details of the International Digital Curation Conference 2013 Workshop Programme are now available. The workshops will be held on Monday 14 January and Thursday 17 January 2013 at the Mövenpick Hotel in Amsterdam City Centre.

The workshops will cover a range of different areas including:
• Building capacity and capability for Global Data Science
• Data Management Planning
• The use and reuse of digital data in the Humanities
• Data publishing, peer review and repository accreditation
• Designing Data Management Training Resources
• Sustainability and the APARSEN Network of Excellence

The majority of the workshops will be free of charge and include refreshments and lunch for all attendees. Places may be limited due to room capacities so book now to avoid disappointment.

Registration for both the conference and the workshops can be completed using the same registration form.

Further details about the workshops can be found on the IDCC13 Workshops page which will be updated regularly as more information is made available.