An Introduction To UKOLN: What We Are and What We Do

1. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/bath-library-2007-07/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/bath-library-2007-07/ An Introduction To UKOLN:What We Are and What We Do Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using email, instant messaging, Blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk Resources bookmarked using ‘bath-library-2007-07' tag UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

2. Funders / Stakeholders Projects Some of the key technologies An Acronym Factory?! MLA ARCO JISC FP5 TFL EU NSF E-Bank FP6 IST UoB DCC Is this your view of UKOLN? IE DCC RDF KIM CSS SVG XML SWORD HTML DC Reveal XSLT SMIL

3. Contents • About UKOLN • What we are • What we do • Selected UKOLN Activities • Research Activities:Dublin Core and OAI* Metadata • Facilitating Events:IWMW / DCMI / … • Dissemination:Publishing e-journals • Metadata tools • National services and service support * OAI stands for Open Archives Initiative. Please remind me if I use any unknown TLAs (or XTLAs)!

4. About UKOLN • UKOLN: • A national centre of excellence in digital information management • Based in the University of Bath • About 30 FTEs • Funded by: • JISC • MLA • EU and other project funding streams

5. UKOLN Staff • Based: • In the Library (L4) • In Wessex House (WH L 5) • Home workers WH L5 Home WH Home L4 WH L4

6. What Do We Do? • UKOLN is involved in a range of activities at a local, national and international level Events Research DCC workshops & conferences ESRC-funded KIM project to ensure long-term access to engineering data UKOLN Dissemination Ariadne and IJDC e-journals Development Development of DCdot and RSSxpress metadata tools

7. Who Are We? The Research & Development Team carry out research in a range of aspects of digital information management The Policy and Advice Team provides outreach services to our communities and manages dissemination channels such as Ariadne The Admin Team provides administrative support for UKOLN R&D Admin PAT DSS The Distributed Systems Support Team manages UKOLN’s computing infrastructure and provide technical support

8. Examples Of Our Activities • We will now briefly review a number of our activities: • Metadata activities, including involvement in development of metadata standards and deployment of metadata • Dissemination of our activities • Use of metadata in our dissemination • Support for national services

9. R&D Team Metadata • Metadata: • Data about data • “This metadata - it’s just catalogue records … isn’t it?” • Resource discovery metadata: • Information about Internet resources which helps users to find the resource • “Catalogue Records for the Web” • So what’s so special about metadata? • The size of the Web & the range of resources (text, images, sound, video, virtual resources, …) • The distributed, uncontrolled nature of the Web • The nature of the Web

10. R&D Team Dublin Core • Background: • Cross-sectoral meetings (libraries, museums, galleries, etc) held to agree on approaches to resource discovery for Internet resources • Agreed core set of 15 elements, known as Dublin Core (after Dublin, Ohio) • Elements include Creator, Title, Publisher, Date, Rights, … UKOLN has been involved with Dublin Core since its inception and is still actively involved (e.g. Dublin Core for describing collection)

11. Digital Repositories • An important aspect of UKOLN’s work centres around digital repositories: • Advising JISC on its funding for repository work • Supporting JISC’s programmes • Supporting institutional repositories • JISC-funded project work • …

12. Other Research Work • Other research activities include: • eBankUK: exploring the scholarly knowledge lifecycle for research data e.g. use and reuse of crystallographic data published in scientific journals • KIM (Knowledge & Information Management): finding robust ways of handling information and knowledge e.g. design models, processes and rationale over the lifetime of project-services such as PFI hospitals, schools & military equipment • Consultancy work: Data report

13. Dealing with Data: Roles, Rights, Responsibilities & Relationships (1) • Outcomes of a recent JISC-funded study by UKOLN • Institutions (repositories) and data centres • Roles, rights, responsibilities, relationships • High-level data-flow models • Positioned in the UK context • 8 perspectives from Strategy to Practice • Examples of best practice • Recommendations

14. Dealing with Data: (2) • Synthesis • Funder support for data curation is (still) patchy • Gaps in infrastructure support • High level and strategic • Operational level and practical : data services & data centres • Within and between institutions • Within and between disciplines : globally • Recommendations • Datasets Mapping & Gap Analysis • Data Curation & Preservation Strategy for the UK • Data Audit Framework for institutions • Data Networking Forum for data centre staff

15. Dealing with Data: (3) • Synthesis • Limited formal links between programme planning and support infrastructure but examples of good practice • Formal data policies are essential • Web 2.0 influence: data sharing using social software • Better joint planning for data management • Recommendations • Funders should openly publish, implement and enforce a Data Management, Preservation and Sharing Policy • Research projects should submit a Data Management Plan for peer-review • Universities should implement an Institutional Data Management, Preservation and Sharing Policy

16. Brokerage • UKOLN provides brokerage and facilitation services • In the area of metadata: • UKOLN involved from start in contributing to discussions, facilitating events, etc. • Continuing involvement in Dublin Core events • Metadata as important aspect to support the preservation of digital resources The brokerage role typically involves organising events such as workshops in which experts contribute to the development of solutions in a particular area

17. Dissemination • A wonderful solution to a problem is of no use unless the community knows about it! • UKOLN’s dissemination activities include: • Organising conferences, workshops and seminars • Giving presentations at conferences, workshops and seminars • Writing articles, papers, etc. • Providing Web-based resources

18. Ariadne • The Ariadne Web magazine provides coverage of developments, especially within the UK HE sector • Ariadne is published 4 times per year http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/

19. Tools • To support the take-up of metadata, UKOLN has developed a number of tools which are freely available DCassist is a Web-based tool which provides information about Dublin Core elements DCassist is available at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcassist/>

20. Tools (2) • DC-dot is a Web-based metadata authoring tool DC-dot is available at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/>

21. The Intute (formerly RDN) provides a coordinated approach to work of the gateways (cross-searching, increased coverage, …) Intuit • Subjects gateways (e.g. SOSIG and BIOME) provide access to quality controlled resources

22. Today’s Challenges • Web 2.0: • Identifying appropriate areas of use • Embedding best practices • Managing the services and resources • … • Let’s now look at some examples: • UK Web Focus blog • Blogs in the library sector • Finding resources – Technorati • Wikis • Social networks such as Facebook and Ning • New applications such as Twitter • Mashups and innovation • …

23. Finding Out More • To find out more about UKOLN and our activities: • Visit our Web site at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/> • Read Ariadne at <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/> • Send an email request to info@ukoln.ac.uk if you would like to be added to the mailing list for our Newsletter Any questions?