Millions of historical records have become more accessible to the public today (4 April 2011). Connected Histories provides a single point of access to a wide range of distributed digital resources relating to early modern and nineteenth-century British history.
Connected Histories brings digital humanities research to a new level by providing integrated access to several key resources, moving beyond simple keyword searching to allow structured searching of millions of pages of text by names, places, and dates.
In the process, at the click of a mouse, researchers can find rich bodies of evidence for virtually any topic in British history; whether royal weddings, parliamentary reform movements, famous criminals, or the lives of plebeian Londoners.
The Connected Histories website is fully searchable and provides access to millions of pages of text, hundreds of thousands of words and tens of thousands maps and images. It incorporates the following digital sources:
• British History Online
• British Newspapers 1600-1900
• Charles Booth Online Archive
• Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835
• London Lives, 1690–1800
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674–1913
• Origins Network
• Parliamentary Papers
• Printed Ephemera from the Bodleian Library
• Strype’s Survey of London
The resource will grow substantially over time as new sources are added. The first update, due in September, will include 65,000 British Library books from the Historic Books Platform, 19th century pamphlets from JSTOR, and abstracts of wills from The National Archives.
Connected Histories was funded by JISC, and created by academics from the Universities of Hertfordshire, London, and Sheffield. Technical work was carried out at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield and the website was developed by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
The project used natural language processing to identify names, places and dates in unstructured texts, and combined these with structured databases to create a single resource searchable by names, places and dates, as well as by keywords and phrases. Users can save results in their own workspace and document connections between sources.
Professor Robert Shoemaker, from the Department of History at the University of Sheffield and co-director of the project, said: “Connected Histories represents the next big step in digital humanities research. By enabling integrated searching of diverse electronic resources it will allow everyone conducting historical research to work more efficiently and productively.”
Co-director, Professor Tim Hitchcock, from the University of Hertfordshire, added: “Connected Histories creates a one-stop-shop for historical information. It will allow us to search newspapers and trial reports, parliamentary papers and images across fifteen different scholarly websites, at the click of a mouse. In the process it will change how we do research."
Dr Jane Winters, Head of Publications, Institute of Historical Research, said: “Connected Histories marks an enormous step forward for historians of Britain, and will transform the ways in which they engage with the wealth of digital material now available. It is also a model of cross-sectoral collaboration to further the UK research agenda.”
Alastair Dunning JISC programme manager, said: “Connected Histories provides a new type of tool for scholars, not just allowing them to find people, names and places from disparate digital resources, but create intelligent links between them. For JISC such projects are vital, permitting users to make sense of the rich and copious troves of primary sources available on the web.”
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A new elearning module from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance is to help update people dealing with intellectual property rights in universities, colleges, museums, libraries and other public bodies.
The module will help them understand the implications and roles of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and licensing – all crucial to their institution’s role as a provider, aggregator and/or publisher of digital content.
After completing the module, they will be better able to create, exploit and manage digital content with confidence, and most importantly, using a risk managed approach.
To help make these complex areas more understandable, the module is divided into six learning objects with a range of supporting case studies, video and animation:
1. Introduction to IPR and licensing
2. Creative Commons licences
3. Orphan works and risk management
4. Digital Economy Act
5. Accessing and using third party content
6. Protecting and managing rights
Naomi Korn, one of the authors of the resource, said: “The module has been developed to directly address those people in institutions who may be new to the issues around intellectual property rights and licensing or for those who want to learn more about specific issues. We anticipate that people will want to customise, reuse and share the information so it is has been developed in an open source platform and the content licensed under Creative Commons licences, making the resource as flexible as possible.”
The module supplements and forms part a range of products and tools to support the management of IPR created by the Alliance.
Sarah Fahmy, manager of the Strategic Content Alliance, said: “Whilst there is little current case law, the education sector risks reputational damage and loss of trust with publishers and other rights holders in the event that copyright and other IPRs are not handled appropriately.
“Universities and colleges need support to ensure that their own rights are adequately protected, contractual agreements with any funding bodies are upheld and the ramifications of using digital content for which rights holders are unknown or cannot be traced - so called 'orphan works' - are thoroughly considered.”
The module has been developed for the Strategic Content Alliance by IPR consultants Naomi Korn and Emma Beer, and by Robert Stillwell and Dr Neil Witt in the department for technology enhanced learning at Plymouth University.
Read more advice and guidance on IPR and related issues through the toolkit
Stay up to date with the work of the Strategic Content Alliance
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JISC welcomes the ‘Heading for the open road: costs and benefits for transitions in scholarly communications report’, which adds to the growing knowledge into the different publishing models for UK research.
JISC co-funded the report with the Research Information Network, the Publishing Research Consortium, Research Libraries UK and the Wellcome Trust, to look at the UK scholarly communications system; particularly the five possible routes for academics and researchers to disseminate their work.
The report suggests that encouraging open access appears to be a good way forward for the UK’s scholarly communications community and in particular via gold or green routes. It is consistent with previous research in coming to this conclusion.
Neil Jacobs programme director digital infrastructure says: “This report looks at how gold open access (OA) is particularly viable for the UK in the longer term but only if average charges are under £2000 making journal prices more competitive. This can already be seen with Nature Scientific Reports, Sage Open and BMJ Open all being created the in last year to meet the demands of an ever growing knowledge economy looking to access information. In the meantime, and alongside these developments, the UK’s network of repositories offers clear value for money in maximising the impact of UK research.
“Through JISC’s work with the UK’s Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) we are building on this report, to look at the benefits of deeper open access for the private, public and third sectors as well as for an academic audience. For this report, 'access' has been defined as reading onscreen and being able to download and print information, whereas the OAIG is looking broader and focussing on how research can be reused, repurposed and managed with the appropriate IPR statements.”
via Jisc news
Millions of historical records have become more accessible to the public today (4 April 2011). Connected Histories provides a single point of access to a wide range of distributed digital resources relating to early modern and nineteenth-century British history.
Connected Histories brings digital humanities research to a new level by providing integrated access to several key resources, moving beyond simple keyword searching to allow structured searching of millions of pages of text by names, places, and dates.
In the process, at the click of a mouse, researchers can find rich bodies of evidence for virtually any topic in British history; whether royal weddings, parliamentary reform movements, famous criminals, or the lives of plebeian Londoners.
The Connected Histories website is fully searchable and provides access to millions of pages of text, hundreds of thousands of words and tens of thousands maps and images. It incorporates the following digital sources:
• British History Online
• British Newspapers 1600-1900
• Charles Booth Online Archive
• Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540–1835
• London Lives, 1690–1800
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674–1913
• Origins Network
• Parliamentary Papers
• Printed Ephemera from the Bodleian Library
• Strype’s Survey of London
The resource will grow substantially over time as new sources are added. The first update, due in September, will include 65,000 British Library books from the Historic Books Platform, 19th century pamphlets from JSTOR, and abstracts of wills from The National Archives.
Connected Histories was funded by JISC, and created by academics from the Universities of Hertfordshire, London, and Sheffield. Technical work was carried out at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield and the website was developed by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
The project used natural language processing to identify names, places and dates in unstructured texts, and combined these with structured databases to create a single resource searchable by names, places and dates, as well as by keywords and phrases. Users can save results in their own workspace and document connections between sources.
Professor Robert Shoemaker, from the Department of History at the University of Sheffield and co-director of the project, said: “Connected Histories represents the next big step in digital humanities research. By enabling integrated searching of diverse electronic resources it will allow everyone conducting historical research to work more efficiently and productively.”
Co-director, Professor Tim Hitchcock, from the University of Hertfordshire, added: “Connected Histories creates a one-stop-shop for historical information. It will allow us to search newspapers and trial reports, parliamentary papers and images across fifteen different scholarly websites, at the click of a mouse. In the process it will change how we do research."
Dr Jane Winters, Head of Publications, Institute of Historical Research, said: “Connected Histories marks an enormous step forward for historians of Britain, and will transform the ways in which they engage with the wealth of digital material now available. It is also a model of cross-sectoral collaboration to further the UK research agenda.”
Alastair Dunning JISC programme manager, said: “Connected Histories provides a new type of tool for scholars, not just allowing them to find people, names and places from disparate digital resources, but create intelligent links between them. For JISC such projects are vital, permitting users to make sense of the rich and copious troves of primary sources available on the web.”
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The Academic Integrity Service (AIS) managed by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) with JISC, has today published a report to enable higher education institutions to review and develop their policies relating to student plagiarism.
"Policy works: recommendations for reviewing policy to manage unacceptable academic practice in higher education", includes an overview of previous guidance and research work on this topic.
The report then focuses on 12 recommendations that can be used by staff to aid the review and continued development of institutional policy.
These recommendations include:
• establishing a cross-institutional group;
• making explicit the responsibilities of the institution, staff and students;
• considering terminology and definitions;
• providing detailed procedures for reporting and managing cases;
• establishing a set of penalties and associated guidance.
Dr Erica Morris, senior adviser at the HEA and lead author of the report, said: “There are many challenges facing higher education and students may well have higher expectations about their experience at university in the future.
More than ever before it's vital that HEIs have up-to-date policies in place for managing issues including student plagiarism, collusion and data fabrication.
“The recommendations in this report can be used or adapted by universities and colleges to suit their own particular academic integrity needs. Each of the recommendations is illustrated with examples and case studies so lecturers and policy makers across the sector can benefit from the experiences of others.
“All institutions take academic integrity seriously, and this report will provide practical information on how they can continue to review and develop their policies for managing unacceptable academic practice.”
Policy works is the second report published by AIS this academic year. Published in November 2010, "Supporting academic integrity: approaches and resources for higher education", brought together educational resources on academic integrity to provide the sector with a range of perspectives on plagiarism and associated issues.
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JISC executive secretary Dr Malcolm Read has called for more investment in cloud computing in front of an international audience today.
Speaking to policy makers, funders, vendors and researchers at a workshop in Belgium run by e-Infranet, which develops policies to promote world-class ICT infrastructures, Dr Read said: “In an uncertain funding climate it’s essential that we prioritise. Cloud computing can give universities access to economies of scale which offers real financial benefits – as well as the potential to improve your carbon footprint and deal more flexibly with the changing needs of students and staff in the fast-moving university environment.”
He added: “Our studies show that many universities and colleges in the UK are interested in harnessing cloud computing power – but fewer are actually using it.”
JISC’s studies last year revealed that few universities have formal polices on the adoption or use of cloud computing - even though it is widely accepted that a centrally managed approach to contracting cloud computing services is required for real efficiency benefits.
Dr Read said: “Researchers and higher education staff need to be able to trust the reliability and integrity of the cloud they use so we need to invest in better services and ensure that they meet the very specific needs of our academic communities.”
JISC is currently funding 11 pilot cloud projects together with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to look into the usefulness of the cloud for research in more detail and find out what the benefits and issues are.
JISC is also funding projects that are transitioning service solutions into the cloud in research management, core and corporate information management and student services. These projects will be reporting in July 2011.
JISC is also managing HEFCE’s university modernisation fund to establish a central brokerage service for a central UK higher education cloud.
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JISC seeks to ensure the widest possible dissemination of UK research outputs and through its membership of the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) is calling on UK researchers to check their publishing rights.
The OAIG group says: "Recently, some publishers have sought to negotiate directly with universities and research institutes on the terms and conditions under which the authors can deposit manuscripts of their own papers into repositories.
"JISC as part of the OAIG therefore wish to state our concern with publishers who seek to limit access by imposing unacceptable embargo periods on the deposit of authors' manuscripts in local, institutional or subject-based repositories.
"Authors should retain their right to deposit their own manuscripts, and this right should not be dependent on the later agreements to publish agreed with publishers. In particular, publishers should not seek to supersede any agreement between authors and their funders or institutions. These funders and institutions wish to see wide dissemination, with no artificial delays or embargoes – delaying the wider release of research papers for a pre-agreed period of time ie six months.
"Furthermore, where collective arrangements for licensing exist that can already cover these issues (such as in the UK with clauses in the JISC Collections Model Licence), then such direct negotiation with individual universities is doubly unhelpful and risks undermining those collective arrangements.
"The Open Access Implementation Group calls on universities not to enter into one-to-one negotiations with publishers on self-archiving rights for their staff, and instead to rely on publicly declared rights as shown on the Sherpa-RoMEO website."
The OAIG membership includes:
Guild HE, Universities UK, UCL, Wellcome Trust, The University of Salford, The University of Edinburgh, SCONUL, Research Libraries UK, Research Councils UK, Public Library of Science, JISC, Association of Research Managers and Administrators.
Find out more about the work of the OAIG and JISC's work in open access.
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JISC11 saw over 600 people attend in Liverpool and an additional 270 join us online to make 2011 our most successful conference to date. JISC11 trended on Twitter at one point being one of the most popular hashtags on the internet.
Robert Haymon-Collins JISC director of communications and marketing said: “As the physical conference was taking place the online programme live-streamed to participants unable to attend in person, we essentially ran two conferences; one online and one physical.”
One of the online participants Richard Haggerty, an e-learning technologist, commented on his experience. “Thank you for such an incredible virtual online experience. It is the most effective and useful online event I have yet attended, and the live stream was almost seamless on my laptop. The quality of the guest speakers was, without exception, of the highest quality. And it had a plethora of relevant case studies. I have taken away a lot of ideas for further consideration.”
Watch specific presentations by selecting the i icon (bottom left) and choosing Chapters (top right)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
Mediasite classic player version
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Today, eight international research funders are jointly announcing their participation in round two of the Digging into Data Challenge, a grant competition designed to spur cutting edge research in the humanities and social sciences.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “We are delighted to continue our involvement in the Digging into Data challenge. Digging into Data offers the arts and humanities and the social sciences the opportunity to explore new frontiers in research, forging not only international partnerships but new relationships between traditional scholarship and cutting edge computer science.”
The challenge asks researchers these provocative questions: How can we use advanced computation to change the nature of our research methods? That is, now that the objects of study for researchers in the humanities and social sciences, including books, survey data, economic data, newspapers, music, and other scholarly and scientific resources are being digitized at a huge scale, how does this change the very nature of our research?
How might advanced computation and data analysis techniques help researchers use these materials to ask new questions about and gain new insights into our world?
The first round of the Digging into Data Challenge sparked enormous interest from the international research community and led to eight cutting-edge projects being funded. There has also been increased media attention to the question of so-called 'big data' techniques being used for humanities and social sciences research, including a recent cover article in the journal Science.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of round one, the Digging into Data Challenge is pleased to announce that four additional funders have joined for round two, enabling this competition to have worldwide reach into many different scholarly and scientific domains.
The eight sponsoring funding bodies include JISC, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK; the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation in the US; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada.
Applications are due by 16 June 2011.
Find out more about the competition and the application process.
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Professor Eric Thomas, vice chancellor of Bristol University, today highlighted the importance of colleges’ and universities’ use of technology in encouraging student applications.
He said: “An integrated, sophisticated use of [new technology] is going to mean that the university is seen as cutting edge and more attractive. I see JISC’s role as assisting us in making the university look as attractive as possible.”
JISC’s deputy chair Professor David Baker agreed: “Over the next 5-10 years JISC will have an ever more vital role to play not just in the education sector but across the UK. I don’t believe that JISC or higher or further education can afford to slow down.”
Against the backdrop of an increasingly demanding student body, Professor Thomas predicted that within ten years there would be more students studying in their home towns to save costs, and that they would also have the choice of non-degree entry to traditional careers like accounting.
Professor Thomas also highlighted recent scrutiny of universities’ connections with Libya as an example of how the public see education as operating within a different value system.
He said: “It’s essential that we see ourselves as educational institutions and that we retain our values. People expect higher education to have different value set. It’s really important that we maintain that.”
Professor Thomas’ talk opened the JISC11 conference in Liverpool today, which is attended by nearly 700 delegates from across further and higher education in the UK, China, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and Sweden.
It introduced a day of advice, guidance and future-gazing on the theme of ‘financial challenges, digital opportunities’ to help colleges and opportunities reduce costs and improve their efficiency.
Follow the conference online using the hashtag #JISC11
Watch the live streamed sessions
online
via Jisc news
As senior managers are looking for more information about finance and costs, a fresh toolkit from JISC is helping them source hard evidence to support decision making.
The popular strategy infokit has been revamped to include a major new section on ‘business intelligence’ and the role it can play in enabling institutions to make informed evidence-based decisions.
Steve Bailey from JISC Infonet, the service that developed the kit, explained why this approach is becoming increasingly popular among institutions:
“Higher education is going through a great deal of change at the moment; consequently the need for institutions to have access to detailed and accurate information about their activities and the environment in which they operate has increased markedly.
“There are many routes available to an institution when seeking to improve their business intelligence capability and many potential pitfalls to avoid along the way. Hopefully through this infoKit we can help institutions to plan and implement their chosen business intelligence strategy as smoothly and productively as possible.”
The infokit also now includes the experiences of four institutions who used aspects of the Strategy infoKit within their institutions - the University of Sheffield, Edinburgh University, Cambridge Regional College and Beaumont College, Lancaster.
Each of these pilot institutions tried out aspects of the infokit in ‘real world’ contexts and their reflections have been integrated within the main infokit, as well as each being available for download in their entirety.
Beaumont College is one institution where senior staff have used the advice to inform their strategy planning meetings.
Rohan Slaughter, head of technology at Beaumont College said: "Having the kit as a reference point for everyone kept the task focussed, indeed the excellent structure of the kit was mentioned several times as being very useful. It was also noted by new leadership team members that the kit really helped them as they 'found their strategic feet' and provided a good way to benchmark their activity."
Access the Strategy infokit and related pilot resources
Visit the new business intelligence resource direct
via Jisc news
JISC Inform 30 Spring 2011 is in a new interactive format full of video interviews, comment and advice on how digital technologies can help you address today's financial and business challenges in your college or university.
Professor Eric Thomas, vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol and keynote speaker at JISC’s annual conference next week, shares his views on why universities need to find a unique selling point in times of austerity.
The theme of leadership continues as Ewart Wooldridge, chief executive of the Leadership Foundation, addresses whether leaders should direct from the front or seed decisions through their staff.
Putting this ethos into practice Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, outlines her vision for the future and why partnerships are one of the keys to success.
We also answer your questions on how digital technologies can help your trim your budgets through digital technologies and look at RSS feed readers, which channel news and information for you so you can keep on top of your inboxes.
JISC’s director of communications and marketing Robert Haymon-Collins explains why JISC Inform has gone digital. “As universities and colleges are under increased pressure to reduce their costs, moving printed materials online is one way to achieve possible savings, not just financial but also environmental.
“This edition of Inform has been created so each article can be forwarded and shared with colleagues. There are also comment boxes so readers can add their own thoughts and links to other articles creating a valuable set of resources to refer to.”
The new Inform is a beta version so if there are areas that don't work as you would expect, or you think could be improved, please let us know on informeditor@jisc.ac.uk
Read and comment on JISC Inform 30 now
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
via Jisc news
A 350-year-old notebook describing the execution of innocent women for ‘consorting with the Devil’ has been published online with JISC funding by The University of Manchester’s John Rylands library.
The notebook was written by Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington who describes how a supposed coven of witches lived in the Suffolk village of Manningtree.
Unfortunately for them, Manningtree was also home to the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, notorious for his brutality against women.
In 1645 the Witchfinder General examined one of the suspected witches Elizabeth Clarke for ‘devil’s marks’ like warts or moles.
Under torture, Elizabeth then named other women as witches including her own daughter Rebecca, who later confessed to being a witch.
19 women were eventually hanged, though Rebecca was saved thanks to her confession.
The witchcraft trial is just one of the fascinating episodes contained in Wallington's notebook, one of only seven remaining out of the 50 he wrote, which documents his attitudes to life, religion and the civil war.
Caroline Schofield, collections manager at Tatton Park Mansion which holds the notebooks, said: “Nehemiah Wallington, a turner by trade and a Christian by religion, was an intelligent working man battling with the adversities of life in the seventeenth century. At times he doubted his salvation to the degree that he suffered a mental breakdown and tried to take his own life. He began to keep his diaries in an effort to record his own sins and God’s mercies. The Wallington manuscripts are hugely important primary sources for scholars of the period.”
Last year a team of experts from the John Rylands’ Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care (CHICC) at the university of Manchester funded by JISC spent a week capturing the document on camera.
James Robinson, senior photographer at the John Rylands Library, said: “Our work at Tatton Park involved careful documentation of each and every page of this fragile and important notebook. We’re delighted the public, free of charge, will now be read for themselves the horrors of that period.”
Paula Marchionni, programme manager at JISC, explained why JISC is supporting the work: “Future generations of researchers will need more and better access to precious documents like Wallington’s notebooks so digitising them is a real investment. But even then, it’s not always easy to sustain these collections. Through the eContent programme, JISC has supported the John Rylands Library in setting up the CHICC to investigate how the right business models can help them maintain and further develop their digital assets.”
See and search Wallington’s notebooks close up
Find out more about JISC’s investment in CHICC
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JISC is delighted to announce that this year’s live-streaming partner Sonic Foundry will make JISC11 its most interactive conference to date. With over 600 delegates expected to attend JISC11 on 14 and 15 March in Liverpool, those unable to attend will still have the opportunity to participate in the conference thanks to a new online experience through Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite.
Those unable to attend JISC11 will still have the opportunity to participate in the conferenceSean Brown, Vice-President of Education, Sonic Foundry says, “Mediasite is the first of its kind to bring real-time picture capture. We take video, audio and visual and join all of that data together to bring it to your browser in real-time.”
Robert Haymon-Collins, JISC Director of Communications and Marketing, explains the value that Sonic Foundry is able to bring: “Past conferences have used social media and live-streaming, the difference this year is that Sonic Foundry is helping us to offer our online participants a truly inclusive experience and as though they are physically here with us in Liverpool. The video, audio and presentations, alongside the Twitter feeds, will all be streamed to their computers in real-time, and there will also be opportunities to ask questions, take part in online polls and contribute to the sessions taking place.
“Although there isn’t a replacement for attending an event in person, our live-streaming highlights, combined with delegate and speaker interviews, do provide the opportunity to take part in JISC11.
“It is our aim that in the future, wherever appropriate, our events will be delivered through these multi-media channels so that as many people as possible have the chance to learn about digital technologies for education and research.”
JISC11 – financial challenges – digital opportunities offers managers within education and research practical solutions to solving their business challenges.
Find out how you can be an online participant at JISC11
Get the most of your online experience by seeing how to use Mediasite
Find out more about Sonic Foundry
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
(Duration: 4.42)
Alternative YouTube Version
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The Wellcome Library is one of the world's major resources for the study of medical history and provides access to a growing collection of contemporary biomedical information resources relating to consumer health, popular science, biomedical ethics and the public understanding of science.
Stuart Dempster, project director of the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance says: “The expertise and knowledge from the Wellcome Library will strengthen our work in bringing publicly funded content online. The IPR issues around the sensitive nature of scientific and medical images which the Wellcome Library manages will boost our ability to provide best practice advice and guidance for UK colleges and universities.”
Among its current digital projects, the Wellcome Library is curating an online audio-archive of 2,400 interviews with the ‘plinthers’ involved in Anthony Gormley’s ‘One and Other’ art project, and undertaking a joint JISC-funded project with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt to provide access to the Wellcome’s unique collection of Arabic manuscripts. In August 2010 the Wellcome Library launched a £3.9m project to digitize collections relating to the history of modern genetics, including Francis Crick’s original sketches of the DNA double helix.
Simon Chaplin, head of the Wellcome Library says: “Being part of the Alliance will allow us to share expertise and resources with other key public-sector content providers. We are looking forward to working with JISC and fellow members of the Alliance to develop innovative partnerships and reduce the barriers that currently inhibit access, use and re-use of digital content.”
The Alliance comprises of organisations across the public sector, including the British Library, the BBC, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and The Wellcome Library.
Find out more about the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It supports the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. The Trust’s breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. It is independent of both political and commercial interests.
About the Wellcome Library
The Wellcome Library is based on the collections created by the Trust’s founder, Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936). The Wellcome Library holds over a million books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day. The Library is responsible for Wellcome Images, one of the world’s largest publicly-accessible medical image collections, and Wellcome Film, a partnership with JISC Collections to make over 450 medical films freely available online.
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Cybercrime is costing the UK around £1000 a second according to the Government’s new report and now JISC is highlighting six key resources to help universities and colleges ensure they do not fall victim.
Institutions have a right - and sometimes a duty - to ensure that their computer systems are not being used for inappropriate purposes, like storage of pornographic images on university computers. They also have a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of students and staff.
Jason Miles-Campbell, manager of JISC Legal, said: “Universities and colleges undertake a balancing act between open access to world-class technology, and ensuring the security of their systems. Institutions must make sure their systems aren’t used as instruments of illegality by criminals, in an age when cybercrime is often conducted through innocent users’ hijacked computers.”
Computer crime can be classified as:
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Jason added: “For trust, resilience and reliability, managers need to have the knowledge, policies and procedures in place to ensure illegal activity isn’t happening on the university or college’s servers. Getting it right means learners, researchers and staff can be confident in avoiding the time and trouble that often comes with illegal activity.”
If you're looking at how to make sure your students, staff and systems are protected, take a look at these:
Read the government's cybercrime report
via Jisc news
From August 1st 2011 the UK Access Management Federation will be operated on behalf of JISC by a partnership of JISC Collections and EDINA, assuming the role of federation operator from JANET(UK).
Until July 31st 2011 JANET(UK) will continue in the role of managing operator, with the support from EDINA in its role as technical operator.
As the new operator from August 1st 2011, JISC Collections will be responsible for the enrolment of new members, both those who wish to join as service providers and those who wish to join as 'identity providers', typically institutions in education with staff and students.
The role of EDINA, who manage the metadata and provide technical support for the UK federation, remains unchanged and federation members will see no alteration to their service.
For further information contact service@ukfederation.org.uk
via Jisc news
Two JISC-funded projects which make life easier for students have won accolades this week as examples of international good practice.
Sarah Porter, JISC head of innovation, said: “Good use of innovative technology can have a positive impact on the way students perceive an institution and on their learning experience. We are delighted to see innovation being recognised and anticipate that other universities will glean useful findings and inspiration from these JISC projects.”
A clever mobile app which gives University of Oxford staff, students and city residents real-time transport information, find local amenities and leisure facilities has won the 2010 UCISA Higher Education Award for Excellence sponsored by Eduserv.
Mobile users can also find books by library location, access the University’s iTunes U podcast catalogue and get notifications when their exam results are released.
On hearing of the Mobile Oxford success, Dr Stuart Lee, director of computing systems and services, commented: “We are thrilled at Oxford to receive such an award as it shows that our work has been valued by our peers. We hope that this leads to more people looking at the free source code behind the project, and would like to thank JISC and the funders within the University for allowing us to take this innovative service forward."
Meanwhile another JISC project at the University of Newcastle has received US acclaim for allowing students flexible and detailed control over access to their personal information on the web.
The ‘student managed access to online resources’ or SMART initiative allows university students to log their preferences about security in a single authorization manager – an idea which other universities can now use as it is open source.
The SMART project won the Kantara Initiative identity deployment of the year award in the emerging applications category which showcases innovation in digital identity management.
Maciej Machulak who leads the project said: “With the increased number of services available on the web, the end user is no longer able to easily control access to their distributed data and is often paying the price in both privacy and convenience. User-Managed Access and SMART aim to provide a solution to this problem. These approaches allow people to apply the necessary security and privacy controls to their personal data while retaining all the benefits of social interactions and data sharing that the web environment offers.”
Find out more about how JISC can help you better support your students
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The independent review chaired by Professor Sir Alan Wilson and carried out over a four month period concludes that, ‘JISC is an invaluable national resource which has evolved in response to increasing demands over 20 years’. It recommends that due to the breadth and complexity of JISC’s activity its structure, processes, projects, programmes and governance need to be simplified and reshaped, ensuring that it continues to deliver world-class leadership in the innovative use of technology for education and research, for which it is renowned.
Dr Malcolm Read, JISC executive secretary says, “Given the changes in the economic climate and the current reshaping of the UK education system, the time was right for HEFCE to conduct a review of JISC to make sure that we are in the best position to carry on delivering excellent services to the higher education and research communities.
“Since JISC was set up technology has become an essential part of the business of every university and college. We have worked hard over the years to develop our capabilities, frequently embracing new challenges and have a reputation as a quality partner that is capable of making a real difference. This review gives us a chance to look at how we operate in a very different environment to that which existed when JISC was formed, we can take stock of where we are and what we have achieved, and use this information to drive the organisation forward.”
The review gives areas and recommendations for JISC to consider how it rises to this challenge, all of which will need thorough investigation and consultation before deciding which will be implemented. These include:
Dr Read added, “We have a lot of work to do in consultation with the education and research community to help us build upon our successes and make JISC even stronger for the future. JISC will be more agile, focus on delivering best practice to colleges and universities at grassroots level and continue to look to the future digital technology needs of the UK education and research community.
“We will need to explore the recommendations, consult with partners and institutions to develop a programme to make the recommendations reality. This will be done through a range of consultation routes from direct discussions with sector representative bodies, to online for individuals and organisations to make their preferences and suggestions.
“Implementing the recommendations after this work will ensure that JISC can continue to be responsive to the ever changing needs of further and higher education by helping them exploit technology and by funding a world class infrastructure.”
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Universities and colleges in England stand to benefit from a new programme of services and investment to deliver efficiencies through shared services in cloud computing infrastructure and applications.
The £12.5 million programme is part of a suite of activities under the University Modernisation Fund (UMF), a HEFCE fund that aims to help universities and colleges deliver better efficiency and value for money through the development of shared services.
This new programme, which will be managed by JISC, supports colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies. The programme has two core elements:
David Sweeney, HEFCE Director – Research, Innovation and Skills, said: "At a time of pressure on university resources, it is critical that technology is used in a collaborative and cost-effective way, to deliver services that will benefit the sector. Cloud computing has the potential to do this in ways which will serve the academic community leading to improvements in research, teaching and administration."
Shared IT infrastructure
A broker will be established for institutions’ procurement of shared virtual servers and data centre capacity. It will act both within the higher education (HE) sector and between the HE sector and commercial suppliers. This will be set up under the auspices of JANET(UK).
A core virtual server infrastructure (a ‘cloud’) will be set up to offer discounted data management and storage services to HE institutions. It will be deployed in data centres starting with a pilot at Eduserv, which will work in collaboration with the Digital Curation Centre.
Up to £5.1 million will be invested in this aspect of the shared IT infrastructure programme, including funding to develop a sustainable financial model for the brokerage beyond the life of the UMF.
Up to a further £4.9 million will be invested in developing HE research data management applications to be deployed in the shared services environment.
Shared services for administration
HEFCE will invest up to a further £2.5 million to develop shared services in administrative systems that support the delivery of learning and teaching and of research. They will help universities and colleges achieve efficiency savings in terms of cost, time and quality improvement. Such shared services will allow them to benefit from aggregated purchasing and reduced implementation and hosting costs, and streamlined processes.
The key components of this shared services programme will include creating:
The whole programme has been developed with strategic input from a HEFCE advisory group including members with wide IT experience from within the HE sector. The group considered the case for investment in each component of the programme, taking account of evidence of demand from institutions and the likely benefits and savings.
The programme will start in March 2011 and finish in March 2012.
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Further and higher education institutions need to make increasingly tough choices about how they operate and it is often difficult for institutional managers to justify and measure the impact of new initiatives.
JISC’s Impact Calculator is designed to provide a robust, transparent and consistent means of predicting and measuring the impact of a new process or system on an organisation.
Steve Bailey from JISC infoNet explains: “The calculator is a great tool to aid you in the decision making process, particularly when it comes to considering which initiatives to fund. It provides both a solid evidence base for assessing proposed initiatives and also contributes to the financial/impact transparency of those projects which are then funded. “
Produced in Microsoft Excel the Impact Calculator can be used to define and measure the benefit achieved through any process improvement. The tool comprises four main sections which provide the user with the opportunity to document the business process they are seeking to improve; to define the nature of the benefits they are trying to achieve and how they intend to measure them; to capture detailed performance data for each of the benefits defined both prior to and at intervals after the completion of the change initiative and to record the costs associated with realising that change. Once the relevant data has been entered into the Calculator it will then chart the level of improvement realised and determine if and when a ‘return on investment’ (ROI) will be - or was - realised.
Six JISC-funded pilot projects have just tested the Impact Calculator within a records management context – the Universities of Nottingham, Cardiff, Aberdeen, Huddersfield, Oxford and King’s College London - ranging from improvements to email management and enhancements to the retrospective appraisal of HR records.Download the Impact Calculator
Read the outputs from the six pilot projects
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What does internationalisation mean for universities now and how should they respond? Ahead of the Leadership Foundation summit on 11 February 2011, JISC spoke to their chief executive Ewart Wooldridge to find out why the global perspective is so important for institutions and where their senior managers can look for inspiration and guidance.
Internationalisation - where JISC can help
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
(Duration: 2.24)
Alternative YouTube Version
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As part of an ongoing discussion with readers on how research is changing and their expectations of the future role of libraries, the British Library has released initial findings from the first interim evaluation report of its exhibition Growing Knowledge, the Evolution of Research.
Part of a broader evaluation study funded by JISC, initial findings developed by UCL’s Ciber Research Group show that visitors to Growing Knowledge are not only interested in the initiative but also impressed that the library is attempting to learn from and meet the needs of its researchers.
Charles Hutchings, market research manager at JISC, said: “As we’re discovering in our Researchers of Tomorrow study, younger researchers only use new tools and applications in their work once they see their immediate utility. So what’s really interesting is how the Growing Knowledge exhibition is encouraging researchers of all ages to try out new technologies. It’s important that JISC and the BL continue to demonstrate the potential value of these technologies for researchers.”
Specifically, visitors to the exhibition are impressed by the resources and tools on show and their usefulness to the research process. Findings show that visitors are rating the applications on show as ‘very useful’ or ‘possibly useful’. For example, 68% of visitors surveyed found the UK Web Archive very or possibly useful, whilst 50% found one of the most popular tools, Mendeley very or possibly useful.
Mendeley caught the attention of many visitors to the interactive research pod content of the exhibition and was highly rated. Mendeley was praised for meeting the many and complex requirements of researchers such as: organising disparate papers; providing an Amazon-style facility whereby users can see what others with similar research interests are doing; synchronising itself with other reference management software; including a web archive system and generating bibliographies and indexes from papers being written.
The research also shows that the exhibition has shifted perceptions and provided researchers with food for thought in terms of tools and applications they might not previously have considered. Examining some of the key applications such as visualisation tools and audio search, 58% and 63% of visitors surveyed stated that they are not using these features currently but may do so in the future.
Aleks Krotoski, Growing Knowledge researcher in residence, commented on these findings: “What’s interesting is that Growing Knowledge has already started to seed interest amongst non-Library users. The aim all along was to test the water with the research community and these early findings show that perceptions of digital research tools are slowly starting to change, both within the sector and beyond.”
Growing Knowledge has also attracted a diverse audience. Interestingly, over half of the visitors to the exhibition have been over 40, suggesting that digital technology and research is not only the province of the young. Further, the exhibition has reached a large percentage of visitors who are not registered library readers. 69.4% of all visitors do not hold a library readers pass therefore demonstrating the appeal of the exhibition to a broad range of visitors.
Richard Boulderstone, the British Library’s director of e-Strategy and Information Systems said: “Growing Knowledge was developed to allow visitors to interrogate, both physically and online some of the tools that are making waves today and will capture the researcher’s imagination in the future. Whilst these results are tentative, the Library is using this interim report to examine the findings, positive and negative, so that we start to determine some of the patterns that exist in understanding how researchers will use these tools and spaces in the future.”
Interact with the exhibition online
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Among the issues faced by UK universities and colleges, the carbon emissions from their ICT loom large. One cause of the growth in these emissions is demand for computing and in particular the ever-growing demand for data storage and data centres.
One way of tackling this demand has been explored by a JISC-funded project at Cardiff University. The team at Cardiff’s Information Services Directorate have been studying ways of storing computer files that can reduce the amount of energy used by computers for storage by over 80%.
Dubbed Planet Filestore, the project has developed an approach to storing data on disks with different energy consumption depending on the frequency with which the data is accessed. Data which is not used very often is moved to a disk which uses less power, thus saving electricity and money while still allowing users near instant access.
When put into full production at Cardiff University, it is anticipated that this will save the university 87600KW.h (or approximately 51 tonnes of CO2) per year which, at current prices, would cost around £10,000 per annum. These savings are likely to increase significantly with escalating storage requirements and energy costs. Environmental savings are also likely to be made in terms of space occupied, procurement, shipping, disposal and hazardous waste reduction.
Rob Bristow, JISC Programme Manager, said: “The approach piloted by Cardiff Information Services has the potential to make a real difference to the carbon footprint of universities if it is adopted across the sector. The more than £100 Million that electricity for ICT costs the sector every year is likely to rise in the future and initiatives like this can make a real difference”.
The project has intentionally used techniques and technologies that will easily transfer to a wide range of corporate systems across the world, including those in education, research, public bodies and commercial companies.
Project leader Paul Rock said: “The greatest benefit will be felt if many more organisations were to use this kind of approach to minimise the energy footprint of their filestore. This would mean that the electricity and carbon savings arising from this project would scale dramatically”.
To help make this approach more widely available, JISC is funding Cardiff University Information Services to develop a web-based tool that universities and colleges can use to model the benefits of different scenarios of file storage in terms of environmental and economic savings.
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Universities and colleges need to make online learning a central part of their strategies if they are to stay competitive globally, says a new report.
The report argues that those UK higher education (HE) institutions that are prepared to make online learning a central focus will be able to develop responsive, engaging and interactive education that is both high quality and cost-effective.
They will also need to take advantage of rapidly developing technology and rich sources of content, and invest in high quality learning, if they are to remain globally competitive against the challenge from international and private providers.
The report is published by the online learning taskforce, which includes JISC's chair Professor Tim O'Shea, and showcases 14 innovative approaches to online course delivery in the UK.
Dr Malcolm Read, JISC's executive secretary, said: "Online learning is an increasingly important element of teaching particularly to support learners at a distance in both space and time. We look forward to working with the Higher Education Academy and others to support higher and further education exploit the opportunities to improve the learner experience offer by on line learning."
The report makes six recommendations to institutions and the wider HE sector. They include use of online learning to enhance student choice and meet learners’ expectations; realignment of training and development to support academics to play a leading role in online provision; and the development and sharing of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality.
The chair of the task force, British Library chief executive Dame Lynne Brindley, said: "The HE sector has been talking about the potential of online learning for well over 10 years. The moment has come to move online learning more centre stage. Only by doing this will UK higher education remain and grow as a major international force. Our report offers pointers towards achieving this goal."
Sir Alan Langlands, chief executive of Higher Education Funding Council for England, said: "At a time of increasing expectations from students, universities should be using learning technology appropriately and delivering online programmes that are high quality and flexible. Prospective students from the UK and overseas require clear and easily accessible information about online learning."
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