Table of contents: issue44

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.

IWMW 2005

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

Miles Banbery reports on the 9th Institutional Web Management Workshop held at the University of Manchester, UK, over 6-8 July 2005.

The 9th Institutional Web Management Workshop [1], a three-day event held at the Manchester Conference Centre [2], Manchester University [3], UK, 6-8 July 2005 had as its theme this year 'Whose web is it anyway?'. How apt at a time when we are all continuing to attempt delivery of systems and services to meet users' needs and requirements within institutional demands and pressures on resource.

Building Open Source Communities: 4th OSS Watch Conference

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

Sebastian Rahtz and Randy Metcalfe report on a one-day conference on open source software development communities organised by OSS Watch held in Edinburgh on 4 July 2005.

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.

DCC Workshop on Persistent Identifiers

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

Philip Hunter gives a personal view of this workshop held in Glasgow, 30 June - 1 July, supported by NISO, CETIS, ERPANET, UKOLN and the DCC.

A Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Meeting on Persistent Identifiers was held over 30 June - 1 July 2005 at the Wolfson Building at the University of Glasgow. This is a new construction (2002) just opposite the 1970s Boyd-Orr building, mentioned before in Ariadne's pages. The architecture of this building is quite unlike the Boyd-Orr building however, being light and airy, with more imaginative use of space: the lecture theatre in which the meeting took place is in the shape of an eye, situated at the edge of the main open space.