A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk An Introduction To UKOLN: What We Are and What We Do Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using ‘ bath-library ' tag Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, Blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, Blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.

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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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)!

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 5 Based: In the Library (L4) In Wessex House (WH L 5) Home workers UKOLN Staff L4 WH Home WH L5 Home

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

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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 9 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 R&D Team

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 10 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, … R&D Team UKOLN has been involved with Dublin Core since its inception and is still actively involved (e.g. Dublin Core for describing collection)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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 …

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 18 Ariadne The Ariadne Web magazine provides coverage of developments, especially within the UK HE sector Ariadne is published 4 times per year

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 20 DC-dot is available at Tools (2) DC-dot is a Web-based metadata authoring tool

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 21 Intuit Subjects gateways (e.g. SOSIG and BIOME) provide access to quality controlled resources The Intute (formerly RDN) provides a coordinated approach to work of the gateways (cross- searching, increased coverage, …)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 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 …

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 23 Finding Out More To find out more about UKOLN and our activities: Visit our Web site at Read Ariadne at Send an request to if you would like to be added to the mailing list for our Newsletter Any questions?