A vacancy has arisen at UKOLN for a Research Officer (Text Digitisation). The post holder will be a major part of UKOLN”s contribution to the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) project, and would be responsible for the specification and provision of high-quality documentation on text digitisation topics and an integrated training programme. The closing date for applications is 30 January 2009.
Vacancy at UKOLN
December 12th, 2008 by Thom BuntingUKOLN blog nominated for Edublog 2008 Award
December 8th, 2008 by Thom BuntingThe UK Web Focus Blog, published by Brian Kelly, has been nominated for an award in the “best educational tech support blog” category of the 2008 Edublog Awards. Voting is now open.
New Issue of The International Journal of Digital Curation Available
December 3rd, 2008 by Thom BuntingIssue 2, Volume 3 of The International Journal of Digital Curation is now available. The peer-reviewed papers offer a variety of topics. They include an exploration of data practices in the long-standing Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) setting, a description of experiences in the area of curating engineering information, how one group has dealt with migration problems in a long-term archive of US Government Printing Office datasets, a description of tools from the SCOPE (Scientific Compound Object Publishing and Editing) system which is designed to enable scientists to author, publish and edit scientific compound objects, together with research analysing the current parlous state of preservation of computer games in the UK. General articles include reports from iPRES 2008 and the 3rd Annual WePreserve Conference, experience from American Memory, another covers an international copyright study with implications for curation and preservation, while another describes steps being taken in Australia to establish a national distributed data service. We have also received articles from DCC staff working on both the Digital Audit Framework and DRAMBORA. The IJDC is produced by UKOLN on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre.
Realising The Potential of Web 2.0
December 2nd, 2008 by Thom BuntingBrian Kelly gave the closing keynote plenary talk on “Realising The Potential of Web 2.0″ at the “Nordlib 2.0 – Get Inspired by Web 2.0 for
Libraries” conference held at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Stockholm,
Sweden on 21 November 2008. The slides of the talk together with an
accompanying video are now available.
Ariadne Issue 57 (Autumn 2008) Now Available
November 16th, 2008 by Thom BuntingThe Autumn Issue (57) of Ariadne Web Magazine is now available with a wide range of articles on topics of interest to information professionals in archives, libraries and museums in all sectors. In this issue there is discussion of the tensions between copyright, the quest for prestige and cost control in open access publishing together with coverage of Europeana, a Best Practice Network under the eContentPlus Programme. We also offer the second part of Marieke Guy”s discussion of remote working in which she addresses the technologies that support it. Ariadne also provides articles on Implementing e-Legal Deposit from a British Library Perspective, How Metaphors from Ecology Can Articulate the Messy Details of Repository Interactions, A Selection of Social Media Search Engines, how Jakob Voss combines OpenSearch and unAPI to enrich catalogues through SeeAlso, A Simple Linkserver Protocol and a description of OAI-ORE and how it can contribute to digital preservation activities. Designers and developers will be interested to read Jane Stevenson”s coverage of the results of usability testing for the Archives Hub Web site. And more besides.
Repository Curation Service Environments (RECURSE) Workshop
November 11th, 2008 by Thom BuntingThis workshop, jointly supported by OGF-Europe and DReSNeT, aims to address the specific requirements for digital repository curation service environments. It will take place in Edinburgh on 1 December prior to the 4th International Digital Curation Conference. As repositories become
part and parcel of e-Science environments in all disciplines, individual repositories are converging both technologically and organisationally into federations of multiple repositories, often offering external services for tasks such as print-on-demand and preservation as well as out-sourcing storage. This RECURSE workshop will focus on highlighting application
environments where both e-Science and repositories have much to gain,
coupled with the benefits of open standards. Principal discussion points
will include: benefits of digital curation for e-Science and user
requirements; interoperability of technologies; workflow integration;
views of long-term digital curation; benefits to user communities of the
adoption of distributed computing.
Conclusion of Terminology Registry Scoping Study
November 6th, 2008 by Thom BuntingAs part of its Capital Funding Programme, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)has supported additional research to create a rich information environment within the learning and research communities. The Terminology Registry Scoping Study analyzed issues related to the potential delivery of a terminology registry as a shared infrastructure service within the UK”s further and Higher Education information environment (IE). The project has now ended and the dissemination documents, which include a conference poster and an ECDL NKOS presentation, as well as an excerpt on metadata are now online and available for comment; the final report is available on request.
Preservation of Web Resources Handbook released
November 5th, 2008 by Thom BuntingVersion 1.0 of the PoWR Handbook is now available. The Handbook is the main deliverable of the JISC Preservation of Web Resources project and offers valuable advice for those embarking on a Web resource preservation strategy or interested in issues related to improving long-term access to Web resources. The handbook includes case studies, scenarios and a glossary. It is available in PDF and from Web 2.0 services issuu and Scribd.
UKOLN staff asked their views on Institutional Repositories in the latest CILIP Update
November 5th, 2008 by Thom BuntingEditor of CILIP Update, Elspeth Hyams spoke with UKOLN Research Officer Peter Cliff to find out his opinions of developments and challenges faced by Institutional Repositories and has reported on them in the JISC supplement to the latest edition of CILIP update.
Repositioning the Library for the Petabyte Era
October 17th, 2008 by Thom BuntingLiz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, spoke recently in Arlington, Virginia
at a forum called “Reinventing Science Librarianship: Models for the Future”, co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). Liz” presentation, entitled “Transition or Transform? Repositioning the Library for the Petabyte Era”, addressed the theme “Data Curation:
Issues and Challenges” and is now available.