March 2006: Volume 11.1
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In this issue:
EDINA and MIMAS, who have worked together with JISC to develop Jorum as the national repository for online learning materials, are delighted to announce that universities and colleges can now register to allow for their staff and students. Over 50 institutions have signed up to Jorum User in the weeks since the launch.
Jorum User allows staff from registered institutions to search, browse, preview, download, review, reuse and repurpose resources in Jorum. This free online repository service hosts a range of learning and teaching resources, covering a variety of subject areas and educational levels, in a format that can readily be used in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
The type, breadth and subject coverage of resources available in Jorum depends upon contributions made by the community. Jorum is built on the support surrounding the service by the team, the long term view taken by JISC and its future success needs commitment and enthusiasm from both Contributors and Users.
Institutions must register first before staff are able to gain access. They can register free for the Jorum User Service on the JISC Collections Web site. A Site Rep and a Technical Rep should be nominated, providing a local point of contact for staff within the institution and for the Jorum Team.
The Jorum Contributor Service, allowing institutions and projects to donate resources to Jorum, was launched in November 2005. Since then an initial collection of resources has been submitted, from over 20 institutions. The current collection reflects the projects and institutions which have contributed material so far; there are a number of sizeable collections including engineering and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Language).
The newly updated Jorum Web site has a comprehensive new section on Jorum User offering support in registering and logging in, as well as a useful selection of support, training and promotional materials.
In September 2005, EDINA was funded by JISC to investigate, through initial scoping activity and then the construction of a demonstrator, the value and feasibility of a national Visual and Sound Material Portal for both time-based media and image collections, intended to operate within the JISC Information Environment. (See the previous edition of Newsline.) The scoping phase of this project is complete. A report from Phase 1 and recommendations for a Phase 2 are currently being reviewed by JISC. EDINA has also secured initial agreement from a range of content-service providers to expose their content through the portal demonstrator.
SUNCAT has reached an important stage towards becoming a full service from August 2006. At the end of March the current pilot service will run on a new server providing much faster access and processing times. Additionally, the SUNCAT database, which up until now has comprised the serials' holdings of the 22 libraries who participated in Phase 1 of the project, will be increased by the holdings of those libraries which began participation in Phase 2. By the end of March the holdings of another 15 libraries will have been added. The next few months prior to August will be extremely busy, adding remaining Phase 2 libraries' data and ensuring the holdings of all participating libraries are as up-to-date as possible.
OS MasterMap image © Crown Copyright/database right 2006. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.
Work has begun on OS MasterMap Topographic, the replacement for Ordnance Survey Land-Line, through the Digimap service.
OS MasterMap is a more complex data product and is structurally different from the Ordnance Survey data currently provided, so delivering it requires considerable investment and development work. Work is now under way to create a separate delivery application which will be available through the current service interface.
OS MasterMap currently contains four layers, each comprising various mapping features. Two of these layers, Topographic and Integrated Transport Network (ITN), will be available through Digimap. Each feature has its own unique identifier or TOID (Topographic Object Identifier), a 16-digit reference number that can be shared with other users across different applications and systems for easy data association and greater accuracy.
The published timetable for development work is as follows:
More details of the timetable will be published on the EDINA web site as the project continues.
Land-Line data will continue to be available via the current Digimap Download facility throughout the OS MasterMap development process and for one year beyond August 2007. This will allow users to complete projects using Land-Line, and allow institutions to make any changes required to support users of the OS MasterMap data. Land-Line maps, however, will cease to be available on 1 August 2007. The final update to Land-Line will be released in September 2006.
Over the last few years, EDINA has spent time ascertaining user requirements for supply of OS MasterMap data. A forum held in January 2006 reconfirmed and established priorities for previously identified requirements, and identified new ones. Further consultation was carried out via a survey on the EDINA web site. The 300+ responses are currently being processed in order to create the final requirements list. EDINA will soon be requesting institutions to volunteer as early adopters. Details of what you need to have and do to take part in the early adopter programme will be forthcoming. Please keep an eye on the web site below.
The latest information on the MasterMap project
The GRADE demonstrator geospatial repository (in its first phase form) is now live and accessible via links from the GRADE web site.
The central aim of the GRADE project is to promote the reuse and sharing of raw and derived Geospatial Information (GI) data, and to investigate the cultural issues of data-sharing (both formal and informal). The project is also investigating issues of digital rights and copyright law of derived data.
The GRADE demonstrator is a web-based test-bed repository designed to understand the issues of handling more complex GI-specific datasets. It has basic functionality to store, upload, search and retrieve geospatial data for use within the GI-academic research community.
The demonstrator has been built as a mechanism to engage with the GI-community and to test technical issues of a geospatial repository such as functionality and interface.
We are now in a consultation and feedback stage and are seeking your input and opinions. If you are a Digimap registered user and are interested in getting involved in testing the demonstrator, please go to the web site to register or fill in a user survey questionnaire. Or, for further details on the project and demonstrator make a request to the GRADE team on grade-support@ed.ac.uk Keep your eyes peeled for some exciting results and a Phase Two demonstrator in the mists!
For some time JISC has been planning a major switch in the access management software which JISC-funded services use, namely from Athens to a technology called Shibboleth, a product of the Internet2 initiative.
Shibboleth is intended as the next generation access management system for UK Higher and Further Education, for use across a wide range of applications, not just those traditionally addressed by Athens.
An important component of the Shibboleth approach is the federation, made up of Service Providers (SP) and institutions with members who wish to make use of services; such institutions are known as Identity Providers (IdP), since their primary task in the context of Shibboleth is to manage the identities of the people associated with them.
While a Shibboleth federation is a technical construct, the main challenges are not technical, but rather legal and ethical. It takes time for the full implications and obligations of a federal structure to develop, and for the participants to appreciate the change of mindset required from a centralised access management system (such as Athens) to one which is truly federated.
The SDSS project was required to set up a development federation to enable JISC-funded Shibboleth projects to have a structure in which to locate their work, and to give everyone involved some experience of the federal way of working.
From the start, SDSS operated their federation on strict guidelines so that it could be used as a model for production operation in due course. The SDSS federation has been seen as a success within the community and has been adopted as the forerunner to the UK national federation, scheduled to come into existence later this year. The best way for an SP or IdP to prepare for membership of the UK national federation is to join the SDSS federation now. A smooth transition has been promised by JISC!
JISC has asked UKERNA, the group responsible for JANET, to manage the UK national Shibboleth federation. SDSS will provide technical support to UKERNA in this work.
SDSS staff have attended Internet2 meetings in the USA. Current areas of activity include:
Further collaborative work is likely.
On 25th January the SDSS federation's WAYF server was upgraded with a new graphic design and enhanced functionality based on the latest Internet2 reference code contributed by SDSS (described above).
Another important part of the SDSS work is to assist in the conversion of EDINA services to Shibboleth access management. This work is substantially complete, and when the UK national Shibboleth federation comes into existence, later in 2006, EDINA services will be ready for the brave new world!
Further Background to Shibboleth
Digimap's Ordnance Survey Data Collection now includes OS Boundary Line data. This can be accessed under the Boundary Download tool and includes GB administrative boundaries in shape, mid/MIF and NTF file formats. GB grid outlines and national boundaries are also available here. More information. (Researchers interested in boundaries should also look at UKBORDERS.)
Digimap Carto is undergoing a face lift. The new version will initially offer the same functionality, but will provide scope for additional functionality in the future. Old and new versions will run in parallel for a short while. Release date to be confirmed.
The first issue of Go-Geo! Metadata News has been released and is available for download. Go-Geo! Metadata News is a biannual newsletter published for UK academics, researchers and students interested in issues and news involving spatial data management and sharing. It will also draw attention to geospatial standards and metadata, plus announce service updates for the Go-Geo! portal and the new Go-Geo! Metadata Editor tool.
We are pleased to report that Culverhouse Collection of classical music files and scores will very shortly be available via the Education Media OnLine (EMOL) service for download and use. The delays associated with preparing the material have finally been resolved and it will be incorporated in to the service as the 17th separate collection. More information.
Data for 2004 for England, Scotland and Wales, has been added to agcensus, the agricultural census service from EDINA. We intend to add further data to the service in the coming months as well as making developments to the interface. More information.
Land, Life & Leisure, the weekly digest of press releases, reports and articles in agriculture, tourism and rural affairs, has a new feature. A leading story will be featured on the main search page from the 300-400 new items added to the index each week. As well as a direct link to the full reference from the database, each item has a preconfigured search strategy to easily retrieve "similar items". In addition an archive will be kept of past week's items. When revisited this also pulls up all new matching items. More information.
Peter Burnhill, Director of EDINA, cuts the anniversary cake in the presence of Derek Law and Mike Tedd, past and present chairs of the EDINA management board.
On 25th January EDINA celebrated ten years of activity as a JISC National Data Centre. Over the last decade the centre has offered UK Further and Higher Education networked access to an expanding library of data, information and research resources.
As part of the anniversary celebrations an afternoon event was held, followed by a Burns Night dinner and ceilidh.
The purpose of the event was to look to the next 10 years, with reflection on past achievement, promotion of present activity, and insight from others to help identify areas in which EDINA could flourish and continue to make a significant difference. EDINA has a broad remit as a JISC National Data Centre and several areas of strategic significance compete for attention.
The centrepiece of the afternoon event was a stimulating 'balloon debate', thoroughly enjoyed by the audience, which featured a number of expert speakers and covered a range of topics. It was recorded and is available to download, along with the programme and copies of the presentations from a link at http://edina.ac.uk/events/edina10th
Looking back on a successful decade, Peter Burnhill, director of EDINA, said: "On behalf of all who have ever worked at EDINA, we are delighted, honoured and somewhat surprised it has been ten years. A special thanks to all our site representatives, project partners and JISC for the continuing faith they have had in us. The next few years look even more exciting and we look forward to working more closely with our sister data centre, MIMAS.
"We see our main task as the delivery of high-quality services to enable academic staff and students, as well as institutional support staff, to excel in what they do. With 10 years' success, we have an opportunity to review how we do this. For that, we need to use this year to listen to what our users want. So please tell us what you think. That invitation extends to all of the partner organisations with whom we work, including the growing number of projects in which we are involved - helping to build the UK digital library."
For the most up to date information on events, see the EDINA Events section.
LILAC (Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference): 27-29th March, University of Leeds
UKSG - Serials Group annual conference: 3-5th April, University of Warwick
GISRUK 2006 (GIS Research UK): 5-7th April, University of Nottingham
Celtic Connections: 16-19th May, Cardiff
EDINA Exchange - a Briefing and Consultation Day: 21st June 2006, University of Leeds
HE Academy - 2nd annual conference: 3-5th July, Nottingham
ARCLIB (Architecture Librarians' Group): 12-14th July, University of Bath
ALLCU (Association of Librarians in Land-Based Colleges and Universities): 12-14th July, Warwickshire College
Go-Geo!, the innovative geospatial portal from EDINA, has been running geospatial metadata workshops over the 2005-2006 academic year, following on from a successful couple of years at 12 universities.
Typically, the workshops run for about two hours and provide an overview of metadata and their relevance to the Go-Geo! portal and to data management and sharing, plus hands-on training for the Go-Geo! portal and Metadata Editor tool.
There are seven more workshops available for this year, so please contact Tony Mathys (tony.mathys@ed.ac.uk) to arrange for one. All that is required is a computer lab with Internet access and facilities for giving a presentation. EDINA can provide all the necessary support to publicise, organise and run the workshops.
More information about Go-Geo! and geospatial metadata.