7th International Digital Curation Conference Extends CfP

July 22nd, 2011 by lisrw

IDCC11 Programme Committee Co-chairs Kevin Ashley, Director, Liz Lyon, Associate Director of the DCC and Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of CNI, have announced they are extending the Call for Papers of the 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC). In their announcement they stated, “Following widespread demand, we have extended the closing date for submissions to this year’s International Digital Curation Conference, IDCC11.”

Mindful of the very international nature of the Conference, they were careful to stipulate the deadline according to the provenance of Conference submissions. “The new closing date and time is Wednesday 3rd August at 08:00 UK Time. That’s .. early hours of Wednesday morning for those on the US East Coast, late Tuesday night for those far West and Wednesday afternoon for those far enough East.” They also made it clear that no further extension could be entertained, stating, “Holidays and other scheduling constraints mean that we can’t consider any further extensions: this date is final.”

The IDCC11 CfP included the following topics:

* Lessons learned from the inter-disciplinary use of open data:
examples of enablers, barriers and success stories
* Curation of mixed data collections, with open and sensitive or private content
* Gathering evidence for benefits of data sharing
* Building capacity for the effective management, sharing and reuse of open data
* Scale issues in the management of sensitive data
* Tensions between maintaining quality and openness
* Linked data, open data, closed data and provenance
* Technical and organisational solutions for data security
* Developing new metrics for open data
* Ethical issues and personal data
* Legislation and open data

to which has subsequently been added an extra issue:
* Data quality

Further information:
Call for Papers:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/call-papers
Submission template:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/submissions
Draft programme:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/programme

The 7th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC): Public? Private? Personal? navigating the open data landscape will take place over 5-7 December 2011, at the Marriott Royal Hotel, Bristol, UK.

Free DevCSI Event: Apache SOLR

July 21st, 2011 by lisrw

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

This workshop is an introductory tutorial on Apache Solr, an open source enterprise search engine with a restful Web interface. The event will be run by Sourcesense.

The tutorial will start by looking at basic searches, and go on to consider some more sophisticated queries such as highlighting, spellchecking, faceting, etc. The focus will then move to indexing and how to make use of the sample data within SOLR. It will also examine a small Java application to index sample content from Wikipedia.

Further details are available on the UKOLN Web site.

Certain UKOLN Services Affected by Scheduled Downtime

July 21st, 2011 by Julian Cheal

UKOLN is advising users of the following services that there will be a scheduled period of downtime on Thursday 21  July 2011:

This newsfeed service, UKOLN News, together with all the UKOLN blogs, namely:
UKOLN Update
LOCAH Project blog
The Metadata Forum blog
SageCite blog
Patients Participate! blog
I2S2 blog
JISC Beginner’s Guide to Digital Preservation
eFragments Blog
Cultural Heritage Blog
JISC IE Technical Foundations blog
Digital Curation Blog
Application Profiles Support Blog
UKOLN Dev

Rest assured that the UKOLN Web site, Ariadne Web Magazine and the International Journal of Digital Curation will remain available while email contact will also be unaffected.

JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Tools Project Dissemination Workshop

July 18th, 2011 by lisrw

Presentations from the recent JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Tools Project Dissemination Workshop held at London South Bank University are now available on the UKOLN Web site.

DevCSI Repository Hackathon/Challenge at Repository Fringe 2011

July 15th, 2011 by Mahendra Mahey

DevCSI will be organising a free Repository Hackathon/Challenge at Repository Fringe this year between Wednesday 3 and Thursday 4 August 2011, in Edinburgh.

Its purpose is to encourage repository developers, repository managers and experts in the domain, many of whom are attending RepoFringe11, to come up with ideas, and then for some to work on these prototypes during a ‘hackathon’. The ideas/prototypes will be presented to an audience and the best ones will receive prizes.

We are looking for entries that reflect the conference theme this year, Repositories Building Bridges & Social Innovation.

Further information about the Hackathon is available. To book for Repository Fringe 2011, a booking form is also available.

DevCSI Workshop on Open Data and the Institutional Web

July 11th, 2011 by Marieke Guy

The Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011 and DevCSI are collaborating on a free event for developers looking at hacking content, systems and services for institutional/open data. The workshop, to be held at the University of Reading, will begin on Monday 25 July and end at lunch-time on Tuesday 26 July. Accommodation will be provided but places are limited. Further details on the workshop are available from the IWMW 2011 blog.

UKOLN Update June 2011

July 8th, 2011 by Thom Bunting

The recently released issue of UKOLN Update, a monthly newsletter, provides an overview of UKOLN work during June 2011.  It highlights key news features, blog posts, presentations, and events related to staff activities.

Most frequently used words in UKOLN blogs, June 2011

Most frequently used words in UKOLN blogs, June 2011

JISC Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis Tools Project: Dissemination Workshop

July 6th, 2011 by lisrw

Some places remain for the workshop to disseminate the Digital Preservation Benefits Toolset and accompanying materials such as user guides and factsheets to the research community. The event, organised by UKOLN, will take place in London on Tuesday 12 July 2011. Full details are available in the news feature about the dissemination workshop on the UKOLN Web site.

Request for Proposals for HTML5 Case Studies

July 5th, 2011 by Brian Kelly

UKOLN invites proposals for HTML5 case studies and demonstrators which describe best practices and scenarios for making use of HTML5 and related Open Web Platform standards for supporting activities of relevance to those working in the Higher and Further Education sectors.

A sum of up to £5,000 is available for each accepted submission (although please note that the sum available to respondents based outside the UK may be less than this due to VAT complexities – please get in touch to discuss if this is a concern).

The closing date for submissions is 18 July 2011, and successful proposers must agree to provide final case studies by 16 September 2011.

Further information is available on the UKOLN Web site.

The Challenges for Libraries and HEIs at SCURL AGM and AwayDay

July 5th, 2011 by lisejl

Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, delivered a presentation at the recent Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries AGM and AwayDay held at the University of Glasgow. Her talk described the research data landscape and the associated challenges for libraries and Higher Education institutions. This event was followed by a Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Roadshow at the same location. Liz’s slides are now available.