March 2004: Volume 9.1
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In this issue:
The UK is to have a Digital Curation Centre, jointly managed by the JISC and the e-Science Core Programme. Funding began on 1 March 2004, as successful outcome to a response to JISC Circular 6/03 by a consortium comprising the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, which together host the National e-Science Centre, UKOLN at the University of Bath, and CCLRC, which manages the Rutherford Appleton and Daresbury Laboratories.
The DCC intends to support expertise and practice in data curation and preservation, prompting collaboration between the Universities and the Research Councils to ensure that there is continuing access to data of scholarly interest. The initial focus is on research data, but the policy intention is to also address the preservation needs of e-learning and scholarly communication.
Scientists and researchers across the UK generate increasingly vast amounts of digital data, with further investment in digitisation and purchase of digital content and information. The scientific record and the documentary heritage created in digital form are at risk, from technology obsolescence and from the fragility of digital media. The JISC and the academic community have already begun to identify a strategic approach and have invested in a number of scoping studies. Building on that work and the expertise already existing in particular disciplines, the task is now to support UK institutions in storing, managing and preserving these data to ensure their enhancement and continuing long-term use.
Digital curation is a new phrase that includes but also goes beyond that of data archiving and digital preservation, to include the active management and appraisal of data over the life cycle of scholarly and scientific interest: it is thus the key to reproducibility and re-use. The overriding purpose of the Centre is continuing improvement in the quality of data curation and digital preservation. The DCC is not itself to be a digital repository, nor an attempt to impose policies and practices of one branch of scholarship upon another. Having relevance across the full range of scholarly and scientific endeavour, unifying themes include attention to provenance and 'data as evidence'. The challenge is to provide the platform for collaboration.
Working with other practitioners, the DCC plans to:
We have embarked upon a programme of start-up activities that should result in the formal launch of the Digital Curation Centre in October 2004. The web site is in place, and the Helpdesk is taking messages at digitalcuration@ed.ac.uk. Over the coming months we will plan to deliver a Web portal, an e-Journal, an advisory service, and programmes of promotion and outreach, and of standards-based development of registries, testbeds and tools.
EDINA and the Data Library are supporting the DCC through Helpdesk and web site activity, and by seconding staff for the set-up phase: Peter Burnhill acts as its Director (Phase One) and Robin Rice as Phase One Project Co-ordinator. Both do so on a part-time basis, and are working eagerly with other partners in an international search for a full-time director, of world-class calibre, to be in place for the launch in October.
On 9 March, EDINA released 2001 Census boundary data for England, Scotland and Wales. Fifty-two distinct 2001 Census boundary datasets are now available for download through UKBORDERS Easy-Download, including:
EDINA has built the various boundary datasets from 2001 Output Areas and all have appropriate names and codes so they can be used with Census statistics or statistical data from other sources.
2001 Census boundary data for Northern Ireland will be available soon.
EDINA's newest multimedia service became available for institutional subscription on 5 January, and is attracting considerable interest in the academic community. The Education Image Gallery service offers images to download from the world-famous Getty Images archive (licensed by the Joint Information Systems Committee JISC).
At the time of writing, over 250 Further and Higher Education institutions have taken up the one-month free trial.
The Education Image Gallery images cover key subject areas across the curriculum, including history, entertainment, sport, science, fashion, politics, music, conflict, film, art, leisure and women's studies.
Obtain a free trial, subscribe or find out about subscription rates.
The Statistical Accounts for Scotland service has an exciting addition to its already fascinating collection of historical documents. The original manuscript of the answers provided for the parish of Dumfries held in the National Archives of Scotland, has been scanned and is now available with a transcript, introduction and additional notes. It was written for the first Statistical Account by William Burnside, Minister of Church in the town, and covers the 1790s.
As the first Statistical Account was produced by a team of clerks and editors, it is additionally intriguing to compare what Burnside wrote with what was actually published (vol 5, pp.119 -144). The Dumfries manuscript is only available in the subscription service either as a link from the front page or via the Dumfries parish page.
GetRef is the name given to the shared service that has been developed as part of the Xgrain project. This JISC 5/99 project, which was part of JOIN-UP, focused on the design and implementation of software to carry out cross-searching of Abstract and Indexing (A&I) and Table of Contents (eToC) databases.
GetRef has an easy-to-use interface, intended to prompt students and staff to make use of the A&I databases licensed for them by their libraries. University and college libraries can opt to provide GetRef as part of their institutional library portals, via Z39.50, or as a direct end user service. There are a variety of options to allow 'look and feel' branding and other configuration.
GetRef provides OpenURL links to institutional resolvers, such as SFX and LinkFinderPlus.
A GetRef web site is in production which will contain background information to the service and details of how to subscribe. To discuss access to a demonstration version of GetRef, please contact edina@ed.ac.uk.
Go-Geo! is designed to help you find details about geospatial datasets and related resources within UK tertiary education and beyond. It is running as a trial service for the academic community until July 2004. As well as allowing you to search for information on geospatial datasets, it contains information on case studies, data format guides, major data providers, terminology, software, research and learning materials, subject resources, education/research, discussion groups and organisations. All sections are regularly updated, particularly news, training courses and conferences/events. To do a quick search of the datasets, type in a keyword or a (GB) place. The advanced search will find specific datasets, pictures, maps and articles of interest.
Try out Go-Geo! We want your feedback on the additional resources you think should be linked from Go-Geo! To encourage you to complete the User Survey by 30 June, there is a prize draw for an Amazon voucher.
In the last issue of Newsline (8.2), we told you about the OpenURL standard, and the OpenURL Router initiative. We are pleased to announce that the OpenURL router is now available for use by UK HE and FE institutions.
The OpenURL standard, and a range of OpenURL resolvers, such as SFX and LinkFinderPlus, help address the 'appropriate copy' problem. The OpenURL Router provides the link to the appropriate resolver, linking to the OpenURL resolver in use at a given users institution.
The OpenURL Router was developed in collaboration with UKOLN as a shared service arising from software written for the JISC 5/99 ZBLSA project, part of the JOIN-UP activities. See www.joinup.ac.uk/zblsa for background details. Activity in ZBLSA focused on linking a bibliographic reference found, say, in an Abstract and Index (A&I) database to the means to obtain a copy of the article.
The OpenURL has become the established means for passing on such information, and the use of OpenURL resolvers has flourished. The OpenURL provides the interoperability necessary for a user who has discovered a journal article or book to then locate a copy. Providers of A&I services simply provide users with links to their institutions' resolver, and choice of copy can then be handled by the local resolver.
The OpenURL Router works by offering a central registry of institutions' OpenURL resolvers. An institution registers details of its resolver just once, in the Router registry. When the resolver has been registered, any service provider can provide users from that institution with OpenURL links to their resolver. If an institution changes the URL of its resolver, the details need only be updated once in the Router registry, and the new resolver will be in service with immediate effect.
More information about the OpenURL Router.
If you are interested in re-usable materials for use in learning and teaching, then you may be interested in JORUM, introduced in Newsline 7.2/3.
The JORUM repository service will gather together and provide learning and teaching materials on behalf of UK Further and Higher Education. EDINA and MIMAS are working together to scope, and ultimately provide, the service in a JISC-funded partnership.
The JORUM repository service will host information assets and learning objects for use by teaching staff in their courses. Information assets are individual items such as images, video clips and chunks of text.
Learning objects may include a number of information assets combined with learning objectives and sometimes assessments, to make stand-alone pieces of work that can be incorporated by teaching staff alongside other resources and made available to students in VLEs and other local learning environments.
Each resource can be re-used by other people, reducing the need for lecturers to recreate similar content. Sharing resources in this way can strengthen links in the education community, enhance teaching partnerships and save teachers time.
JORUM will also host teaching support materials, such as case studies and lesson plans, that are to be published by a number of JISC projects and services.
MIMAS are currently leading the work on behalf of JORUM to procure (under EU legislation) a suitable repository system, which will be installed at a data centre by the end of July 2004. The plan is that JORUM will be launched as a service in 2005/6, for use without charge for at least the first three years.
The report of the scoping study has now been published, and is available on the JORUM web site. Please take a look at it and see how you can get involved in the JORUM service. We need your feedback for setting up the service and providing support to teaching staff within your institutions. We will be discussing this at the Join in with JORUM session at EDINA Exchange on 11 May 2004 (see the back page for details). If you would like to know more about JORUM, please contact the project manager, Moira Massey, at moira.massey@ed.ac.uk.
The National Learning Network (NLN) Materials delivery service offers high quality Becta-commissioned learning materials to the FE community. The materials cover a wide range of subjects and levels, tailored to the FE curriculum. There are currently 1000 objects available, with a further round of materials due to be released on a regular basis over the coming months.
EDINA, MIMAS, Becta and JISC-funded Regional Support Centres (RSCs) are partners in the NLN delivery service which is funded by JISC. MIMAS leads on the technical infrastructure for accessing the materials using the Content Access Tool (CAT) which was created by Becta, whilst EDINA provides the helpdesk, and hosts the back-up CAT service. The RSCs support FE institutions directly and refer any unresolved queries to the EDINA helpdesk.
EDINA support staff have researched and produced extensive documentation on navigation methods, the tools required to assist this process and support for colleges to set up the service. If you have any queries about the NLN materials, please contact your local RSC by following the link in the paragraph above.
The use of digital certificates as a means of authenticating individuals is becoming more widely accepted, and is a specific requirement of many services in the Grid. At present, the UK e-Science programme operates a Certification Authority (CA) designed as a relatively low-volume service for a modest number of researchers, based on open-source CA software.
It is likely that the e-Science framework will be expanded to include other communities, such as the social sciences and bio-informatics, and will require the capability to issue certificates on a much larger scale.
EDINA recently completed a project, TIES, to investigate and implement a pilot Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for Higher and Further Education (see articles in Newsline issues 8.2 and 7.4). A second study has been commissioned to follow up recommendations made in the TIES report. This study, TIES II, will investigate the feasibility of a national certificate issuing service.
The main focus of the original TIES project was the implementation of CAs based on the use of open-source, or out-of-the-box (bundled) software. One broad conclusion was that the open-source solution was insufficiently mature to provide a reliable and cost-effective service in the institutional context.
TIES II will therefore evaluate commercial PKI products to determine the relative costs and effectiveness of in-sourced (software only), or out-sourced (fully managed service) solutions, to help the JISC plan practical options for a longer-term CA service that is capable of satisfying the certification requirements of the extended e-Science community.
For more information about the TIES II project please contact Christine Rees, Project Manager, christine.rees@ed.ac.uk or Sandy Shaw, Technical Manager, sandy.shaw@ed.ac.uk, or visit the TIES II web site.
EDINA has been carrying out a short study for the JISC into two possible shared services for the JISC Information Environment: one on Institutional Profiling and the other on Terms and Conditions.
These service components have been proposed as possible shared services within the JISC Information Environment (IE), providing part of the infrastructure upon which other services may be built. In broad terms, the services provide:
The project seeks to help solve the appropriate copy problem for electronic resources: many information objects (such as journal articles) are available from more than one vendor, each governed by different access policy and conditions of use.
Conventional URL links are static and do not reflect the different rights enjoyed by users according to their institutional affiliation. Third-party services which provide links to information resources require knowledge of institutional rights in order to direct users towards the appropriate service in each case.
The study will attempt:
The study will take into consideration the various users, institutional practice and operational issues.
See the web site for more information about this study, or contact Sandy Shaw, Project Manager, sandy.shaw@ed.ac.uk.
EDINA will be holding its first open day - entitled EDINA Exchange - on 11 May 2004 at the National E-Science Centre in Edinburgh.
After the Director's introduction and overview, the morning will provide the opportunity for service representatives, RSC staff and others to learn about service and project developments at EDINA. In the afternoon there will be parallel sessions, with the emphasis on discussion on a range of our service areas and user support topics. The day will finish with a presentation on the JISC collection strategy.
Further details of the programme and information on how to register for this free event.
| 09:30 - 10:30 | Exhibition, registration & coffee |
|---|---|
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Director's welcome |
| 11:00 - 12:15 | Update on EDINA services and projects |
| 12:15 - 13:45 | Lunch, exhibition, hands on, demonstrations, meet the EDINA staff |
| 13:45 - 14:45 | Birds of a Feather - Parallel Sessions (short presentations, emphasis on discussion - pre-booking required) |
| 14:50 - 15:20 | User Support Issues Parallel Sessions (pre-booking required) (subjects to be provided by attendees) |
| 15:20 - 15:40 | Coffee |
| 15:40- 16:10 | JISC Collections Strategy |
| 16:10 - 16:30 | Q & A session Director's closing remarks |
December 2003 marked the end of the five-year JISC-sponsored CHEST-Ei agreement for access to Compendex data and EDINA's role in providing the service for that period. We would like to thank users and support staff for their use and support of the service.
A new agreement is available from EduServ Chest, with service-provision directly from Ei.
The latest information on events and courses can be found on the EDINA web site at the News and Events page.