Overview of content related to 'eduserv'

Eduserv Symposium 2012: Big Data, Big Deal?

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:48:45 +0000

Marieke Guy attended the annual Eduserv Symposium on 10 May 2012 at the Royal College of Physicians, London to find out what are the implications of big data for Higher Education Institutions.

The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management.

Book Review: Getting Started with Cloud Computing

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:42:54 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on cloud computing that attempts to clarify the technology and its applications for librarians and information professionals.

I will admit to having read very little in the way of fiction writing over the last half-century though perhaps as a chemist by training I do enjoy science fiction from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle. All were distinguished scientists, none more so than Fred Hoyle, who was Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

UK Reading Experience Database

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Bethan Ruddock reports from the launch event for the UK Reading Experience Database, held at the Betty Boothroyd Library, the Open University, Milton Keynes, on 24 February 2011.

I was invited down to the Open University (OU) Betty Boothroyd Library in Milton Keynes for the launch of the UK Reading Experience Database (UK RED) [1]. I had been asked to attend to talk about the LOCAH Project and Linked Data, but I was also looking forward to learning about the RED Project.

This was the first of two launch days, and was designed for librarians, archivists, and information managers. A second launch day for teachers in Higher Education was to be held in London the next day.

What Is UK RED?

The tagline for UK RED is 'the experience of reading in Britain from 1450 to 1945', and the database brings together reading experiences, making them both searchable and browsable. What is a reading experience? It is evidence of anyone alive between the mid-15th and 20thcenturies having read and interacted with a book or other piece of writing, such as magazines, newspapers, letters - even playbills and advertisements. Ownership alone is not enough; there must be something to show that the person in question actually read the work or at least part of it.

This information can be found in a number of places - a printed book review would be an obvious example. The RED team also find many entries in diaries. Such entries can range from simple lists of books that someone has read over the course of a year, to detailed descriptions of when and where they read a particular book, and how they felt about it. Often diary entries are not actually about the book; it is mentioned in passing and in the context of a number of other activities.

While the owner's name on the flyleaf is not itself enough to justify a 'reading experience', annotations to the text are, as they show that the person has actually interacted with the text. Of course, you then have to consider whether the person whose name is on the flyleaf is the same as the person doing the annotating!

RED is much more than a list of 'people who have read books'. The database aims to bring out as much information as possible about the reading experience. The interface to submit a new entry allows you to specify where the reading was taking place, all the way down to a particular room in a particular house. It also aims to identify if the reading was silent or aloud, alone or with other people; whether the book was owned by the reader, a library book, borrowed, or even stolen. All these data are then used to build up a rich database of information on who was reading what (and how!) in Britain.

UK RED is not just concerned with reading experiences within Britain: team members also look at the reading experiences of citizens abroad. Edmund King, Research Associate, Reading Experience Database, OU, told us that, as a consequence, there are fascinating examples of what captured British soldiers were reading in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps as well as examples of what they were not allowed to read. Books in Welsh and Pakistani were banned, as well as atlases and anything about the Russian revolution. I do not know if there are corresponding records for what prisoners in UK POW camps were forbidden to read, but it would be very interesting to find out.

10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy describes new tools and services that can help you get your event heard.

In 2007 Lorcan Dempsey coined the phrase 'the amplified conference' [1]. He used the term to refer to how event outputs (such as talks and presentations) were being amplified 'through a variety of network tools and collateral communications'.

Survive or Thrive

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay reports on a two-day conference organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC to consider growth and use of digital content on the Web, which was held in Manchester in June 2010.

Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources.

Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Keith Doyle provides a personal perspective on a conference organised by UKOLN for those involved in the provision of institutional Web services.

This was the 13th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1] to be organised by UKOLN [2] held at the University of Sheffield from 12 to 14 July 2010. The theme was 'The Web in Turbulent Times' [3]. As such, there was a healthy balance of glass-half-empty-doom-and-gloom, and glass-half-full-yes-we-can.

Eduserv Symposium 2010: The Mobile University

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Shailey Minocha reflects on the one-day symposium organised by Eduserv in May 2010. The aim of the event was to discuss whether and how mobile technology will play a significant role in the delivery of UK Higher Education in the future.

Intranet Management: Divine Comedy or Strategic Imperative?

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Martin White suggests that a failure to recognise the value of intranets is a symptom of a failure to recognise information as a strategic asset.

According to Dante in his Divine Comedy the inscription above the door to Hades reads "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". For many this could also be the sign on the home page of their organisation's intranet as, with business-critical decisions to make, they begin the daily hunt for information that they are sure should be somewhere in the application. It could just as easily be the sign on the door of the intranet manager of the organisation, though this door usually also carries a number of other job descriptions, all of which seem to be given more priority by the organisation than the care and development of the intranet. Most organisations of any size will have a full-time web manager, often with a support team, but this is rarely the case with the intranet.

There are a substantial number of intranets in the UK. Statistics from the Office for National Statistics indicate that 22% of all businesses have an intranet [1]. As the size of the business increases so does the level of penetration, and most businesses of more than 500 people will now have some form of intranet. Given the number of businesses in the UK the author estimates that there are probably around 300,000 intranets in the commercial sector, and at a guess a further 100,000 in the public sector, charities, Higher Education institutions (HEIs) and other organisations. Only over the last few years has any reliable statistical information become available on intranet use and development, and this is a in-depth global survey of only around 300 intranets [2]. In the UK HEI sector a major opportunity was lost in a survey commissioned in 2009 by Eduserv into the management of web content in the HEI sector as no account of intranet use of CMS applications was included in the scope of the survey [3]. A survey of SharePoint use in HEIs undertaken for Eduserv in late 2009 [4] did indicate that a number of institutions were using SharePoint for intranet applications but the survey did not look in detail at intranet implementation.

It is also only over the last few years have forums been set up in which intranet managers are able to share experiences and challenges with others. The work of the Intranet Benchmark Forum [5] is focused on providing services to large organisations, but there are also other virtual and physical discussion forums, such as the Intranet Forum [6] run by UKeiG for its members. It is probably reasonable to suggest that the majority of intranet managers have seen very few intranets from which to gain a sense of good practice, whereas web managers have an almost unlimited supply of sites from which to gain ideas for their own use. This is as true in the HEI sector as in other sectors. Given the installed base of intranets in the UK it is also surprising that there is no 'intranet conference' event even though intranet management does feature in events such as Online Information [7]. Most countries in northern Europe have an intranet conference [8], often with several hundred delegates, so why there is no equivalent in the UK is a mystery.

Intranets Are Different

All too often an intranet is regarded as an internal web site. The reality is that about the only commonality between an intranet and a web site is the use of web browser technology. Many very successful intranets do not even use a web content management application but instead are based on Notes technology or portal applications. Intranet content contribution is usually highly distributed, with individual members of staff publishing content direct to the intranet perhaps only a few times a year. This means that the web content management system has to be highly intuitive, and enable Word documents to be rendered into clean HTML code to create web pages. The teams supporting public web sites are using the systems every working day, working often in HTML and having a much more limited range of content to cope with. Many of the problems that arise in keeping content current on an intranet are a result of staff having to use a complex Web publishing system that was specified for Web site management and not intranet management.

Another factor to be considered is that increasingly intranets are federated applications [9]. This is often the situation in HEIs where each department wants to have its own intranet, and on top of all these individual intranets there is some form of top-level 'corporate' home page and navigation. Often there is no central coordination of these intranets, and so each adopts some or none of the visual design standards of the HEI.

As far as enterprise applications are concerned, intranets are different because they are not based on business processes or work-flow. Finance, registry, personnel and most other applications support well-defined processes, usually within a specific department, and where the content requirements are usually specified in database terms. Anything approaching text content is usually relegated to a single field in the database. Intranets exist because there is a substantial amount of information in any organisation that is not based on business processes and cannot be managed within a formal database structure, such as policies, procedures, campus maps, events, staff notices and hundreds of other information formats produced by every department and location within the organisation.

As a result the intranet becomes an information dumping ground. Under-resourced intranet managers do not have the resources to maintain content quality, and so multiple versions of documents with no visible ownership or provenance proliferate. Employees leave or change responsibility but the intranet is based on a 'file-and-forget' principle and no effort is taken to ensure that document ownership is transferred to another member of staff. Very quickly the information architecture of the intranet, based usually on the structure of the organisation at the time of the last WCMS (Web content management system) deployment, is not fit for purpose. The decision is taken to implement a search engine, and only then does the scale of the problem of information decay become apparent. It can also be an interesting exercise to search for 'Confidential' and see just how many documents are returned!

Eduserv Symposium 2009: Evolution Or Revolution: The Future of Identity and Access Management for Research

editor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Shirley Williams reports on the Eduserv Foundation Symposium which took as its theme investigate the intersection between identity management, access management and scholarly research collaboration across institutional and geographic boundaries.

Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008: The Great Debate

editor — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Adrian Tribe reports on a three-day conference designed for professionals involved in the provision of institutional Web services, organised by UKOLN and held at King's College, University of Aberdeen in July 2008.

'Aberdeen??!! Make sure you take some woolly jumpers and a sou'wester then.'

Saving Energy in the Workplace

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Eddie Young outlines some of the issues faced by a Systems Administrator when trying to save energy in the workplace.

Exploiting the Potential of Blogs and Social Networks

editor — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Gill Ferrell reports on a one-day workshop about Blogs and Social Networks, held in Birmingham in November 2007.

The Second Life of UK Academics

editor — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

John Kirriemuir introduces a series of studies investigating how the Second Life environment is being used in UK Higher and Further Education.

Digital Repositories: Dealing With the Digital Deluge

editor — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Pete Cliff gives an overall view of the multi-stranded JISC conference held in Manchester over 5-6 June 2007.

Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007: Virtual Worlds, Real Learning?

editor — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Paul Walk reports on the Eduserv Foundation Symposium which took as its theme 'Virtual Worlds, Real Learning?' and which was primarily concerned with educational uses for Second Life.

OpenID: Decentralised Single Sign-on for the Web

editor — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Andy Powell and David Recordon take a brief look at OpenID and ask what relevance it has to e-learning.

The JISC Annual Conference 2007

editor — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Philip Pothen and colleagues provide an overview of the proceedings of this Spring's JISC Annual Conference.

Opening Keynote Address

The 2007 JISC conference began with a welcome from JISC Executive Secretary Dr Malcolm Read who thanked the more than 600 delegates for attending the conference, held for the fifth year running at the ICC in Birmingham.

A Dublin Core Application Profile for Scholarly Works

editor — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson, Pete Johnston and Andy Powell describe a Dublin Core application profile for describing scholarly works that makes use of FRBR and the DCMI Abstract Model.

In May 2006, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) [1] approached UKOLN [2] and the Eduserv Foundation [3] to collaborate on the development of a metadata specification for describing eprints (alternatively referred to as scholarly works, research papers or scholarly research texts) [4].

What Happens When We Mash the Library?

editor — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Paul Miller looks at recent attempts to make library resources more appealing, including the Talis competition to build library 'mashups'.

Over the summer of 2006, there was much talk about extending and enriching the online offerings of the library. Reports for the Library of Congress [1] and University of California [2] were still being cogitated upon. North Carolina State University's [3] Endeca-powered catalogue was attracting a lot of interest [4].

DC 2006: Metadata for Knowledge and Learning

editor — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Julie Allinson, Rachel Heery, Pete Johnston and Rosemary Russell report on DC 2006, the sixth international conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, held 3 - 6 October 2006.

IWMW 2006: Quality Matters

editor — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Adrian Stevenson reports on the 10th Institutional Web Management Workshop held at the University of Bath over 14-16 June 2006.

The 10th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2006) [1] returned to its spiritual home in Bath this year, headquarters of the workshop organisers UKOLN [2] and the venue of the fourth IWMW workshop held in 2000. It was the first workshop to be chaired by Marieke Guy following nine years with Brian Kelly at the helm from its inception in 1997.

News and Events

editor — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

UKeiG Training: Developing and managing e-book collections

The UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), in co-operation with Academic and National Library Training Co-operative (ANLTC), are pleased to present a course entitled 'Developing and managing e-book collections', to be held in Training Room 1, The Library, Dublin City University, Dublin 9 on Tuesday, 12 September 2006 from 9.30a.m. to 4.30p.m.

The Digital Library and Its Services

editor — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Neil Beagrie and Rachel Bruce report on a two-day invitational conference on The Digital Library and its Services sponsored by The British Library, JISC and UKOLN under the aegis of the British Library/JISC Partnership, held in the British Library Conference Centre on over 6-7 March 2006.

Over the past decade there has been substantial progress in the use and delivery of digital resources. This evolving area has now reached a point of maturity where digital library providers, be they national libraries, universities, or bodies co-ordinating and delivering distributed national and global services, have begun to identify common service requirements and service frameworks. These emerging digital library services might be delivered in a distributed manner or shared centrally.

Projects Into Services: The UK Experience

editor — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Peter Brophy reviews the experience of the UK academic sector in turning digital library projects into sustainable services.

Introduction: The First Wave

It is worth remembering that there is a long history of successful commercialisation of digital library R&D projects in the UK. While there are probably even earlier examples, the obvious instances are the Birmingham Libraries Co-operative Mechanisation Project (BLCMP) and the South-West Academic Libraries Co-operative Automation Project (SWALCAP) from the 1960s.

Joint Workshop on Future-proofing Institutional Websites

editor — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Maureen Pennock reports on a two-day workshop on Future-Proofing Web Sites, organised by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the Wellcome Library at the Wellcome Library, London, over 19-20 January 2006.

This DCC [1] and Wellcome Library [2] workshop sought to provide insight into ways that content creators and curators can ensure ongoing access to reliable Web sites over time.

Integration and Impact: The JISC Annual Conference

editor — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy has collated reports on sessions from the JISC Annual Conference held in Birmingham.

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.

Installing Shibboleth

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Simon McLeish describes the experience of Shibboleth installation in a Higher Education environment, and suggests ways to make this experience more user-friendly.

What and Why Is Shibboleth?

One of the major issues that faces all today's Internet users is identity management: how to prove to a Web site that you are who you claim you are, and do so securely enough to prevent someone else being able to convince the Web site that they are you. There are many initiatives attacking the problem, with approaches both technical and legal.

EuroCAMP 2005

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Masha Garibyan and Ann Borda report on the first Campus Architecture Middleware Planning workshop in Europe hosted by the Politecnico di Torino.

The rapid expansion of the Web and Internet in recent years has brought many benefits. It has never been easier to access scholarly information from anywhere in the world in real time. However, this information is often held in disparate systems and is protected by a variety of access control mechanisms, such as usernames and passwords. Many users have to struggle with increasingly complicated access control systems in order to access information they require. This is especially the case in Higher and Further Education.

News and Events

editor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Netskills Workshops in May 2005

Web: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/

Netskills will be running the following workshops at North Herts College in Letchworth Garden City in May 2005:

10 May : e-Assessment: Tools & Techniques

Focuses on the tools available for creating e-assessment and the practical techniques required to use them effectively. The tools are considered both in terms of their functionality as well as their interoperability with other systems.

News and Events

editor — Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

The 7th Institutional Web Management Workshop :

Supporting Our Users

[April 2003]

Supporting Material for Database Training, or 'Here’s One I Prepared Earlier'

editor — Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Alison McNab looks at the wealth of resources available for trainers provided by the information service and content providers within JISC-supported services.

Subject librarians will recognise the following situation: you have spent years trying to persuade Department X to let you run some information skills training for their students, but they’ve always said No! Suddenly you get a phone call asking you to provide training next Tuesday afternoon. You know that you’re being asked to “babysit” and in an ideal world you would negotiate a more sensible time that suited the students’ learning experience. However, you also realise that if you turn this opportunity down you may never be asked again!

Newsline: News You Can Use

editor — Thu, 21 Jun 2001 23:00:00 +0000

Ariadne presents a brief summary of news and events.

Tessa Jowell, new Culture Secretary

Tessa Jowell has recently been appointed Minister for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) replacing Chris Smith. Tessa has been a minister since Labour won its first landslide four years ago.

As minister for public health, Ms Jowell was embroiled in the Bernie Ecclestone affair, when the government gave Formula One motor racing an exemption from the ban on tobacco advertising after its boss, Mr Ecclestone, gave an anonymous £1m donation to the Labour Party.