http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/buzz/uportal/ Recent content in Uportal on Ariadne Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/59/dolphin/ The e-Framework for Education and Research was founded in 2005 as a partnership between the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK, and the then Department of Education Science and Technology (DEST) in Australia. Since the foundation of the e-Framework, a major government reorganisation in Australia has replaced DEST with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), and the initial partnership has expanded to include SURF in the Netherlands, and the New Zealand Ministry of Education/Te Tahuhu o te Matauranga. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/54/green-awre/ In the spring of 2005, the University of Hull embarked on the RepoMMan Project [1], a two-year JISC-funded [2] endeavour to investigate a number of aspects of user interaction with an institutional repository. The vision at Hull was, and is, of a repository placed at the heart of a Web services architecture: a key component of a university's information management. In this vision the institutional repository provides not only a showcase for finished digital output, but also a workspace in which members of the University can, if they wish, develop those same materials. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/ja-sig-2007-06-rpt/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/ja-sig-2007-06-rpt/ JASIG, the organisation formerly known as the Java Architectures Special Interest Group, but which now is known more simply by its acronym, celebrated its 16th conference in Denver in June. JASIG was in many senses the first of the small wave of ‘Community Source’ organisations formed within Higher Education, mainly in North America, and largely spinning out of Andrew J Mellon Foundation-funded projects, in the first half of the decade. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/knight/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/52/knight/ Background: Identifying a Need SPP phase I [1] was largely devoted to considering how five Resource Discovery Network (RDN) hubs might be turned into subject portals, but at this stage did not include the development of portlets. During the course of phase I it became clear that many potential users of these portals would choose to access content from within their local institutional portal or a virtual learning environment (VLE). The choice of functionality for these portlets was in part determined by the results of user testing on users of the BIOME Web site, which gathered feedback about various potential portlets and the ways in which they might deliver information [2]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/51/stanley/ Researchers in all disciplines increasingly expect to be able to undertake a variety of research-associated tasks online. These range from collaborative activities with colleagues around the globe through to information-seeking activities in an electronic library environment. Many of the tools which enable these activities to take place are already available within the local IT infrastructure. However, in many cases, the tools are provided through discrete, bespoke interfaces with few links between them. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/49/escience-lancaster-rpt/ This workshop was held at the University of Lancaster Centre for e-Science. The organisers were Rob Crouchley, Rob Allan and Caroline Ingram, there were 17 other attendees. The main aim of this workshop was to explore the relationship between digital repositories, e-Research and Portals in the UK with a view to discovering e-infrastructure gaps and articulating requirements. The hosts had been commissioned by JISC to undertake the ITT: JISC Information Environment Portal activity - supporting the needs of e-Research [1]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/46/dempsey/ We have recently come through several decennial celebrations: the W3C, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, D-Lib Magazine, and now Ariadne. What happened clearly in the mid-nineties was the convergence of the Web with more pervasive network connectivity, and this made our sense of the network as a shared space for research and learning, work and play, a more real and apparently achievable goal. What also emerged - at least in the library and research domains - was a sense that it was also a propitious time for digital libraries to move from niche to central role as part of the information infrastructure of this new shared space. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/45/awre/ Under the aegis of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee's (JISC) Portals Programme [1] development projects have taken place to investigate the use of portals as the presentation path for a variety of search tools. A major output from these projects has been the development of a portal interface, a Web site that users could come to in order to make use of the functionality that the portal provided, particularly searching. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/oss-watch-rpt/ When people get together and talk about open source, there are three things that come into the conversation early on. Firstly, they argue about open source licences; secondly, they ask "but is it really free?"; and thirdly, they state that "it's all about the community". That last one is definitely worth unpacking further. When a new project starts, or an existing project is being assessed, everyone will ask "what sort of community does it have? http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/jisc-conf-rpt/ The 2005 JISC Conference took place on 12 April at the Birmingham International Convention Centre (ICC) which this year - inexplicably - had a giant Ferris wheel thirty yards from the main entrance, entirely unconnected with the main event. The annual conference [1] is a chance for JISC to showcase the breadth of its activities [2] in providing support for the use of ICT in education and research, and as usual it was a bustle of networking and learning. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/44/fraser/ Virtual research environments (VREs), as one hopes the name suggests, comprise digital infrastructure and services which enable research to take place. The idea of a VRE, which in this context includes cyberinfrastructure and e-infrastructure, arises from and remains intrinsically linked with, the development of e-science. The VRE helps to broaden the popular definition of e-science from grid-based distributed computing for scientists with huge amounts of data to the development of online tools, content, and middleware within a coherent framework for all disciplines and all types of research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-cree/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/41/awre-cree/ The JISC-funded PORTAL Project [1] examined and established which services users wished to have made available through an institutional portal. The results of this project have provided firm guidance to institutional portal developers in planning the services they wished to present. In particular, there was common demand amongst users for access to library-based services and resources within a portal environment. Portal technology developments at the time of the PORTAL Project were not, unfortunately, at a stage that allowed full testing of the findings from this research. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/newsline/ Seminar Invitation from DEF - Danish Electronic Research LibraryThe DEF XML Web Services project invites you to participate in the seminar: Building Digital Libraries with XML Web Services on Friday 27 August 2004 from 9:30 to 16:00 at the Technical University of Denmark, Building 303, DK-2800 Lyngby. The headlines of the seminar are: § Setting the scene: XML - tools, visions, initiatives - Introduction to XML and Open Source Web Services http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/oss-watch-rpt/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/oss-watch-rpt/ OSS Watch's [1] second national conference focused on an often articulated anxiety concerning how an institution will answer the question of support when considering the deployment of open source software. OSS Watch is a pilot advisory service set up by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to provide UK Higher and Further Education with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software. Whereas OSS Watch's inaugural conference in December 2003 [2] presented an overview of the entire field, this event concentrated on what is sometimes thought to be the single most significant barrier to institutional take-up of open source software. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/chudnov/ Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/40/chudnov/ 'Library groupware' - a set of networked tools supporting information management for individuals and for distributed groups - is a new class of service we may choose to provide in our libraries. In its simplest form, library groupware would help people manage information as they move through the diversity of online resources and online communities that make up today's information landscape. Complex implementations might integrate equally well with enterprise-wide systems such as courseware and portals on a university campus, and desktop file storage on private individual computers. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/oss-watch-rpt/ Fri, 30 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/38/oss-watch-rpt/ OSS Watch [1] is a pilot advisory service set up by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to provide UK higher and further education with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software and related standards. Although it is rather small, (a staffing of 1.25 full-time equivalent (FTE)), this new service has stakeholders ranging from IT directors and managers developing institutional IT strategies that acknowledge the role that open source software does (and will continue to) play; to IT staff deploying software across universities and colleges; and to software developers seeking advice on how to release their work as open source. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/martini/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/martini/ One of the aims of all JISC 7⁄99 projects has been to explore technologies that are generic in nature in support of improved learning and specifically, to “Identify the generic and transferable aspect of the development projects”. In pursuit of this aim, the MARTINI Project has been specifically standards-driven. One of the standards that we have employed is the IMS Enterprise Person Object Model for representation of student information. As has been discovered, however, there are two fundamental obstacles to overcome with the use of the IMS standard; one, the standard only covers a small subset of the information any institution holds about a student, and two, there is a diverse array of systems and architectures that hold this data within each institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/browning/ Tue, 29 Jul 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/36/browning/ The JISC-funded programme ‘Building Managed Learning Environments (MLEs) in HE’ [1] was of three years’ duration and concluded in July 2003. The aim of the programme was to explore developments that test, evaluate, and prove (or in some circumstances disprove) the generic deployment of technology in support of improved learning. The programme has developed good practice and shared ideas and experiences across FE and HE sectors. The specific objectives were to: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/spp/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/spp/ Portals are widely suggested as important tools to facilitate the hard task of finding and accessing useful information for learning, teaching and research [1]. In this context, the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) [2] is enrolled in the Subject Portals Project (SPP) [3] with the aim of developing and deploying subject-based portals to provide the UK's HE and FE communities with integrated access to distributed resources within the JISC Information Environment (IE) [4]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/miller/ Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/35/miller/ There is, unsurprisingly, an increasing recognition that digital resources of all kinds are eminently suitable to repurposing and reuse. The Iconex Project [1], for example, was funded under JISC's 5/99 Programme to look at the creation, storage and dissemination of reusable learning objects. Service providers of the Arts & Humanities Data Service [2] concern themselves with collecting the digital outputs of scholarly activity in order to preserve them for posterity, but also with facilitating their ongoing use and reuse by learners, teachers and researchers across the community [3]. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/ramsden-perrot/ Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/34/ramsden-perrot/ The interest in personalisation began with online commerce and the need for one-to-one relationships with customers in the early 1990s. Higher education is rapidly moving towards online delivery and mass education, so students could benefit from more personalised services, hence the recent interest in institutional portals, such as uPortal (1), which can personalise and present information. Within this context, the libraries of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and The Open University are embarking on a new programme of work to investigate personalised library environments through their respective projects, PESIC and MyOpenLibr@ry. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/33/portals/ Judging by the number of articles written and conferences organised around them, portals are undoubtedly a hot topic in higher education, and seem likely to remain so for some time to come. This article reports on two portal-focussed conferences held in Canada and the UK during the summer of 2002. It also introduces some of the work underway at Hull to build an institutional portal, and the way in which a JISC-funded project shared between Hull and UKOLN will demonstrate the role of institutional portals in bringing resources provided by the JISC and others to the attention of those working within an institution. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/portal/ Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/30/portal/   portal[...] a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals. Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/clark/ Tue, 02 Oct 2001 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/29/clark/ The vision that created the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) grew out of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)s history of engagement with Higher and Further Education Institutions and significant research libraries in the UK. The DNER has an ambitious goal - to empower the HE/Post-16 community by providing quick, coherent and reliable access to a managed information environment that is geared to supporting learning and teaching activities. The JISC has established a great number of services that are helping to fulfil this vision of an integrated information environment.