The images have been digitised and catalogued by the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent, following a grant from JISC.
The seaside postcards are among a collection of 1,300 cards confiscated under the obscenity laws from 1951-61. Other images available online for the first time include British political cartoons from the last ten years, recent ‘pocket’ cartoons by cartoonists such as Matt of the Daily Telegraph, and images from Reg Smythe’s Andy Capp artwork for the Daily Mirror.
The new images come from the world’s largest collection of cartoons on political and social comment published in British press and held by the British Cartoon Archive. The Archive now offers free and easy access to more than 170,000 cartoons by by over 350 cartoonists, dating from 1790 to 2011 and featuring Prime Ministers from Pitt the Younger to David Cameron.
Also newly available are research and teaching aids on cartoons, including video interviews with leading cartoonists such as Stan McMurtry (Mac) of the Daily Mail, Nicholas Garland of the Daily Telegraph, Peter Brookes of The Times, Dave Brown of The Independent and Nick Newman of the Sunday Times and Private Eye.
Head of the archive Dr Nick Hiley said: ‘Our online catalogue already attracts more than 15,000 visitors a month, looking for cartoons for teaching and research, or just for enjoyment. The sheer volume of material - 19,000 cartoons from the 1970s alone - means that users can see several cartoons from the same day and on the same subject, by cartoonists from quite different newspapers.’
JISC programme manager Paola Marchionni said: ‘It's not just researchers who are demanding access to these collections; increasing numbers of teachers and lecturers are interested in using cartoons as a learning resource. The new tools to help teachers embed the cartoons into their lessons, both physical and virtual, will make these archives even more valuable for teaching, learning and research.’
Dr Hiley added: ‘Among our online cartoons are 1,594 Margaret Thatchers, which, perhaps surprisingly, is more than our 1,225 Winston Churchills. Of course, some of the cartoons of Mrs Thatcher show her dressed as Winston Churchill, but there are not as many as the cartoons showing Tony Blair dressed as Mrs Thatcher!’
A new walking tour for the iPhone is set to help prospective students get to know a university virtually and help them settle in once they arrive – helping the institution meet its widening participation targets.
As part of its work to support open innovation, JISC funded the University of Bristol’s MyMobileBristol project in collaboration with Bristol City Council.
Mike Jones, senior developer in IT services research and development at the University of Bristol, said: “We are pleased that it has been so popular - the walking tour achieved 160 downloads from 21 countries in the first eight days of becoming available on the Apple iTunes website.”
The University plans to produce a printed version of the tour for people who can’t access the app, which is designed for iPads, iPhones and iPods.
Mark Newman, senior business analyst at Bristol City Council, said: “"The project to build a mobile website for central Bristol has helped forge greater links between Bristol City Council and Bristol University, created a great resource not only for all students studying in Bristol but visitors and the citizens of Bristol with a bonus of a fantastic Walking iPhones app."
It integrates information from partner websites and provides users with time and location-sensitive data helping them to get around the campus and the city more effectively.
Simon Whittemore, JISC programme manager, said: “This project is an excellent example of a University working in partnership with an external organisation – in this case Bristol City Council - for a shared objective and new business opportunities. The demonstrator delivered is an innovative use of web and mobile technologies that has already brought new benefits to – students, staff and visitors to the University’’.
If you’re interested in applying to run a similar project linking up with business or your local community, JISC has a call out now for bids
The code that the team used to design the software is now open source and other institutions have also been invited to a workshop to see how they could apply this to their own institutions.
The project is one of a series funded by JISC that challenged universities to use their ability to innovate to impact positively on their communities, working in partnership with outside organisations, by demonstrating the potential of integrated web services and online marketplaces.
The MyMobileBristol project also built a mobile website optimised for smartphones to assist people in finding their way around the University precinct and giving them information about buildings and facilities in the University and the wider city.
Download the walking tour from iPhones now
Read about the project on their blog
What are the best strategies for engaging with business and the community? Find out how JISC can help support your institution
Would you like to help save the UK’s horse chestnut trees from a destructive moth?
A JISC-funded smartphone app developed by the University of Bristol and Hull University, will appear on the BBC’s One Show this evening to encourage everyone to help save conker trees by using their mobile devices.
Horse chestnut trees, whose conker seeds are responsible for hours of autumn fun, are under attack from a moth which arrived in London in 2002 and now covers half the country. The moth’s caterpillars eat the tree’s leaves from the inside.
The research teams at the Universities of Bristol and Hull have devised a mobile phone app allowing people to upload a photo of any horse chestnut leaves they come across, either with or without the indication of alien moths, which will pin-point their location and help to build up a picture of which areas of the country are suffering most, and how bad the problem is.
Dr Darren Evans from the University of Hull said: “This is an exciting opportunity to take part in a real scientific experiment on a national scale. It’s a big mission for which we’re reliant on the public’s help. Dr Michael Pocock from the University of Bristol added: “We’ve developed the mobile phone app to make it even easier for people to take in this research project. We have over 8000 people involved so far and we’re hopeful that they will play their part in discovering more about the threat to the future of our much cherished conker trees.
“We know that the moth moves at about 30 miles a year across the UK’s horse chestnut tree population. We’d like people in south west and northern England, Wales and Scotland to take part our conker tree science project so we can understand how far the moth has travelled, and people elsewhere else to report how bad the damage is in their area,” added Dr Pocock.
David Flanders JISC’s programme manager for the project says: “Science is for everyone and now anyone carrying around a smart phone can take part. The power of involving citizens scientists by utilising new technologies is only going to get more exciting in coming years as every one of us will be carrying around scientific tools in our pockets, which means we can help scientists and have fun doing it.
“The conker tree science - leaf app demonstrates how scientists are going to need to innovate new science techniques around tools like GPS (Geospatial Positioning Software) in combination with their science so we can all be citizen scientists working in a laboratory (virtually) beside them.”
Stephen Fry, one of the most prolific and followed twitterers with just under 3 million followers, tweeted about the app last month.
The study, the largest of its kind in the UK, will give the most up-to-date picture of the spread of the moth. The records will be checked by the project team and then passed to Forest Research to add to its national database, which has been recording the spread of the moth since its arrival and now covers half of the country, including most of south-central England, East Anglia, the Midlands and has most recently spread to Tyneside and Cornwall.
Take part in the experiment and download the app from the project website.
Conker Tree Science is supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (www.nerc.ac.uk) and the development of the Conker Tree Science app is supported by JISC (www.jisc.ac.uk).
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JISC is live streaming its research integrity conference today, 13 September, looking specifically at the importance of good research data management.
The aim is to bring together the current thinking on effective practice and give senior staff and researchers an opportunity to debate the thornier issues, like whose responsibility this is and how to manage freedom of information requests.
You are welcome to participate by submitting questions via twitter by using #jiscres11 or emailing jiscevents@gmail.com and your questions will be put to our panel.
There’s no need to register – simply join us online today from 09.45.
View resources and information about how JISC is supporting research excellence
Ahead of JISC’s conference on ‘Research Integrity: the importance of good data management’ next week, a new study by JISC and the Research Information Network has found that data centres have been instrumental in developing a culture of data sharing among researchers.
‘Data Centres: their use, value and impact’: conclusions and implications
1. Data centres are a success story for their users, and funders and policy-makers should continue to support and promote existing national data centres.
2. Data centres are important both for reference purposes, and for novel research. Both these uses should be maintained and encouraged.
3. Data centre staff manipulate, interpret and support use of data sets, and this is highly valued by researchers. The role of data centre staff should be supported, and perhaps investigated further to support advocacy for data centre services.
4. Data centres should continue to collect information about users and usage for planning and advocacy purposes.
5. Although deposit levels are promising, researchers need more encouragement to deposit data. National and international initiatives in this area should be monitored and factored into any consideration of how to improve deposit rates.
6. If data centres are to support the grand challenges of modern research, they need to do more to facilitate interdisciplinary working. Improving facilities for data discovery across data centres may help.
7. The national data centres are just one part of a broader landscape for data curation and storage. Further work needs to be done to investigate how they can work most effectively with local, national and international services.
As part of a wider body of work, this evidence will help to build a case for improving data sharing practice in the UK. Although deposit levels are promising, the study concluded that researchers need more encouragement and support to deposit data in these centres.
Making data available for reuse helps maximize the value of publicly funded research in the UK by providing researchers with essential references, avoiding duplication, and allowing repurposing of information for new enquiries.
The report concludes that research data centres perform an important role by making high quality and reliable research results available in a way which makes it quick, easy and cheap for researchers to access.
Simon Hodson, programme manager at JISC, said: "This is a significant report which underlines the important role that data centres play in support of modern research. The study demonstrates that data centres offer many benefits to researchers and their work, and provides some evidence of benefits to wider society and the economy. It is clear also that researchers believe that many of the benefits of research data centres emerge because they are large, centralised and offer a range of services beyond simply providing access to data. The conclusion is that funders and policy-makers should continue to support and promote existing national data centres as a necessary part of the 21st century research infrastructure."
The study found that usage of data centres is high: most support thousands of researchers and millions of downloads each year. Data from every centre supports a variety of research activities, ranging from original research analysis, through combination and integration with other data, to reference purposes.
Simon Hodson adds: "Research data centres provide an essential service and perform valuable outreach and training, which researchers appreciate. The JISC Managing Research Data Programme – which involves partnerships with a number of national data centres – is helping develop capacity in terms both of skills and technical systems for improved data management in UK universities as part of a coherent national data infrastructure."
The study aimed to demonstrate the importance, relevance and benefits of effective sharing and curation of research data for the UK research community. It looked at the long-term usage and impact of data curated by a cross-disciplinary selection of established data centres. These included the Archaeology Data Service, the British Atmospheric Data Centre and the Economic and Social Data Service, which is part funded by JISC.
JISC’s ‘Research Integrity Conference’ on 13 September will explore the issues that universities and other organizations face when they are maintaining their research integrity - especially as it relates to the management and sharing of research data.
Watch the event onlineA new report ‘The value of reuse of open educational resources’ produced by the HEA and JISC, highlights the need to support learners and academic staff alike in the referencing and the reuse of online resources.
Open educational resources (OER) are materials which educators make the content available online to learners and also to other educators, to share, re-use and remix. The report claims, that their use in teaching offers new and better ways to engage with learning anytime anywhere and raising the richness the course.
Given the huge volume and diversity of content on the Internet, the report suggests that ‘students are often nervous about their ability to critically evaluate...becoming lost in the web and risk wasting significant amounts of time engaging with resources which prove later to be off topic or unreliable.’
David White, senior manager development technology-assisted lifelong learning at the University of Oxford author of the Value of Reuse report says, “The report advises staff to help develop students’ digital literacy skills especially in the area of critical analysis of resources – for example by making them aware of citation standards that exist for online videos and podcasts.
“There is a challenge for providers of open content because the resources are out there on the web and open to all, it can be difficult to know how they are actually being used. We’ve used the analogy of an iceberg to show the extent of hidden use. It emphasises how many openly licensed and non-licensed resources may actually be being re-used in the classroom but invisible to the original resource authors.”
Amber Thomas programme manager at JISC explains why these reports were commissioned, “OER has a range of benefits, and we wanted to better understand its benefits to users as well as releasers, so the study on ‘the Value of Reuse’ was designed to analyse the relationship between use and impact.
Sean Mackney, HEA senior deputy chief executive, said, “OER is a fantastic example of how technology can be used to share innovation and excellence in teaching practice, not just here in the UK but right across the world. This report gives those involved in higher education teaching, particularly those who may not have considered the potential value of OER before, ideas around how they can make the most of the opportunities OER can provide.”
JISC will be enhancing the knowledge of UK universities and colleges in how to approach open educational resources and technology-enhanced learning through its digital literacies programme and oer work.
View David White's video blog at: http://bit.ly/prKyD9
Listen to a podcast with David White, the author of the value of reuse report (Duration 11:15)
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Colleges and universities now have a toolkit to help them make confident, informed decisions about the legal issues surrounding cloud computing.
JISC Legal has responded to a growing demand for guidance on cloud solutions by creating a comprehensive ‘Cloud computing and the law’ toolkit. The aim of this resource is to guide educational professionals through the legal aspects of implementing cloud computing solutions in their institutions.
Dr Stuart Brough, director of Information Services at the University of Strathclyde, welcomes its release: “Up till now it’s been difficult to find a practical toolkit on cloud computing and the law created specifically for the education sector. This timely new JISC Legal resource will fill that gap,” he said.
Colleges and universities have a particular responsibility to protect the intellectual property, research data and confidential records of staff and students. Compiled by JISC Legal’s team of ICT law experts, the toolkit contains accessible, up-to-date information about cloud computing in an educational context. It’s designed to meet the needs of a range of educational professionals, including academic, research and support staff.
Alex Hawker, JISC programme manager, said: “In this challenging economic environment, universities and colleges are now looking at new ways to provide services for their students and staff including using cloud-based technology. At JISC we’re aware that with innovative new technologies like cloud, many organisations will need support to understand the intricacies of how it works and what the legal implications are - so this guidance aims to build confidence among staff in working with a cloud provider.”
According to JISC Legal service director, Ralph Weedon: “We created this toolkit in response to a growing demand from the FE and HE sectors for up-to-date guidance on cloud computing in this area. It’s designed for a range of educational professionals and we hope that it will help them to feel more confident in their understanding of the legal aspects of cloud services.”
The five publications in the toolkit are:
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Access the toolkit and introductory video
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JISC Advance is furthering its work with adult learning providers by signing a memorandum of understanding with The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).
The memorandum sets out how the two organisations will work together to raise the quality of learning experiences for adults across the UK.
Guy Lambert, Managing Director of JISC Advance, said: “It is particularly important for JISC Advance to work in a complementary manner with membership organisations. Combining our expertise in technology with NIACE’s deep understanding of adult learning provides a unique capability to support learning providers and learners to get the best results from their endeavours.”
JISC Advance and NIACE already share a common commitment to ensure that adult learning, and access to it, is enhanced and enabled through the use of technology.
Sal Cooke, director of JISC Techdis and the stakeholder engagement lead for JISC Advance, said: “It is vital that work continues between these two key organisations to help the education sector meet the many challenges to come. This memorandum will help create a powerful synergy and ensure that even more providers benefit from the many services offered under the JISC Advance banner.“
The commitment is proven by their strong relationship to date; the nationwide network of Regional Support Centres work together with NIACE to provide advice and guidance on how technology can both improve the learner experience and increase efficiencies for providers.
This is further enhanced by the work of the JISC Advance services, such as accessibility experts, Techdis and training providers, Netskills.
Alastair Clark, digital lead for NIACE, said: “This document really does give us a firm footing on which to continue our excellent relationship. We already have plans for a programme of activities with JISC Advance’s Regional Support Centres and JISC Techdis, and can now look forward to extending this to include more of the JISC Advance services.”
After 35 years of working in post-16 education and research, Dr Malcolm Read executive secretary at JISC will retire in January 2012.
Malcolm joined JISC in 1993 and has been central to championing digital technologies for education and research. His achievements include setting up the UK’s academic computer network JANET(UK) and being a passionate advocate of making publicly funded research widely available for everyone to benefit.
Alan Langlands HEFCE’s chief executive said, “Malcolm’s contribution both on driving policy and strategic development not only in the UK but across Europe and internationally has been tremendous. This was also recognised in 2010 when Malcolm was awarded an OBE for his services to further and higher education. We wish Malcolm well with his future plans.”
Dr Read has been central to setting up partnerships with The Knowledge Exchange, The British Library and the Higher Education Academy to create knowledge sharing as well as publishing papers and contributing to books, with his most recent publication being a chapter in The Tower and Cloud an e-book on the future of technology for education.
Upon retiring Dr Read will be following his passion for glaciology and will be travelling around Antarctica for two months.
HEFCE is now looking to recruit an executive secretary (CEO) for a fixed term for JISC’s transition period. To find out more and to apply for the post visit HEFCE’s careers website.
At a time of economic constraint it is essential that libraries can evaluate usage and make a compelling case about the value of journal subscriptions.
But obtaining and analyzing usage data can be extremely labour intensive for librarians, with each library having to visit each publisher's website and download their own statistics.
Now 100 libraries are benefiting from the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) which offers single sign-in access to this crucial information.
The JUSP Portal provides a single point of access for usage statistics, meaning that users can easily and quickly compare usage across various publishers, subscription or academic years and journal titles.
Ben Showers, programme manager at JISC, said, "Libraries that use JUSP can now download usage statistics at the click of a button, transforming what used to be an arduous and time consuming task into an opportunity to interrogate and analyse business critical statistics. Librarians will be able to ensure that their management decisions are based on evidence and the evolving needs of their users.”
If you are a UK university and would like to participate please complete two copies of the Library Participation Agreement and return to Anna Vernon at JISC Collections.
If you are a publisher or intermediary interested in participating please contact Anna Vernon on 0203 006 6008.
The portal is a JISC-funded service which is operated through a consortium including JISC Collections, Mimas at the University of Manchester, Evidence Base at Birmingham City University and Cranfield University.
Cliff Spencer, librarian at Newcastle University, said, "Evidence-based library decisions rely on the timely analysis of usage statistics. JUSP has quickly matured into a highly valued service largely due to the team's skill in solving problems and presenting complex data within a clear and well-structured user interface.”
He added that the portal saves time and money by reducing the administration load on libraries and fitting in with workflow patterns.
Sarah Weston, data manager at the University of Portsmouth, said, “The project has a real community feel to it, in that it actively responds to user input and I think it is a really good example of collaborative working - something we should be striving towards to avoid us needing to reinvent the wheel! I think the team has worked very well with libraries in seeking their input."
"The more publishers you can get on board the better!” said Kate Newell, e-resources and serials team leader at the University of Exeter, adding, “The JUSP portal is already proving to be invaluable to us."
Visit the project website or contact Jo Lambert for more information.
MPs recently recommended improvements to the way scientific papers are checked before they are published, calling for the peer review process to be more transparent - see the BBC article.
The recommendations came out of a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report which also urged that researchers make their scientific data publicly available, and that reviewers have formal training.
Executive secretary at JISC, Dr Malcolm Read, said, “At JISC we strongly support the recommendations of the House of Commons Committee report. Though most researchers agree with the principles of peer review, many feel there is room to improve how it is implemented. Recently there have been suggestions about alternatives, like open peer review and JISC has funded universities to look into open access academic journals which are compiled from other openly available material.”
JISC is already acting on a number of the recommendations - including funding the Dryad project mentioned in the report. Dryad-UK provides a repository for the data underpinning research articles, encouraging greater research openness. The BMJ Open journal and titles from BioMedCentral and PLoS have become partners, integrating their submission process with Dryad and strongly encouraging authors to deposit research data.
Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, said, “We are also engaged in productive collaboration with innovative publishers such as PLoS, as well as industry bodies, for example on standardising the way usage statistics for articles are reported.”
The government report describes access to data as ‘fundamental’ for researchers to reproduce, verify and build on each others’ results.
This spirit of openness is something JISC supports, through its work with the UK Research Councils.
However, there are challenges, as JISC’s programme manager for data management Simon Hodson explains, “These objectives will be difficult to realise unless research practice and supporting systems and infrastructures are developed to make good practice easier. Similarly, researchers will feel little motivation to make data available in a timely way unless conventions of recognition and reward evolve to encompass the effort required to ensure data quality and reusability. The JISC Managing Research Data Programme is helping universities support researchers in responding to these challenges.”
What does JISC think about open-ness in research?
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JISC is delighted that the Government has decided to endorse all the recommendations made by Professor Ian Hargreaves outlined within his independent review of Intellectual Property (IP) and Growth.
The fundamental aim of the consultation was to identify barriers to growth within the IP framework, which consists of the rules and regulations covering how IP is created, used and protected in this country. Using evidence based responses, its aim was to create a picture of how well the current IP system serves to help promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth, social and commercial innovation.
Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary at JISC says, “We submitted an evidence-based response to the consultation and are encouraged that crucial recommendations have been included. Such as the need for exceptions for data/text mining, library archiving and parody to support research, teaching, learning. We also highlighted the need to prevent contracts from over-riding the exceptions to copyright, possible solutions for orphan works as well as the streamlining of the processes to clear rights - which have been supported by the Government.”
Copyright law risks becoming a law that is ignored, or viewed with contempt by users in the near future if policy measures and legal reform are not put in place to reflect education’s and research’s bona fide use of digital media and technologies. Ultimately, copyright law needs to be re-cast in order to reset the balance between the public and private sector, creators, educators, researchers, the creative industries and end-users.
Ultimately, the UK needs a modern copyright system that puts economic growth, competitive markets and commercial and social innovation at its heart. It should ensure creators, innovators, researchers and consumers can all capture the full range of benefits offered by the Internet and digital technologies. UK copyright law needs to be modernized and simplified to recognize and enable British entrepreneurs and creators to make the most of the opportunities provided by the digital age.
Dr Read added, “We believe that the implementation of the recommendations such as including the commitment to furthering easy, widespread access to information and resources, will ensure that technology and information management are placed at the heart of research and education.
“JISC supports the swift implementation of these recommendations to help create a robust IP framework which can optimise the impact of UK research and enable our world class universities to fully contribute towards the UK’s innovation and growth.”
| Read JISC’s previous statements on the Hargreaves report. See the Government’s response. |
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