This Annual Report contains review of service and project activity in the financial and academic year, 1 August 2003 to 31 July 2004. The structure of the report is in accordance with the JISC National Data Centres' Memorandum of Understanding with the JISC, with initial specification of EDINA's Mission Statement, Aims and Objectives. Future plans, based on appraising present activities, are reported in Section 18.
EDINA plays its part to support the UK information environment for researchers, teachers, students and information professionals. EDINA offers relevant and reliable data services to staff and students in an increasingly wide range of disciplines in further and higher education.
The past year, the academic year 2003/4, has seen an increase in the level and diversity of activity at EDINA, both for the delivery of online services and project activity, and in the importance of working with partners. The purpose, content and user base for EDINA as National Data Centre continues to broaden. The purpose is clear. EDINA exists to enhance productivity of research, learning and teaching. This it does directly for staff and students in over 180 institutions by delivering up to twenty national online services, meeting accessibility requirements and exceeding performance indicators for 24/7 availability over the year. EDINA does this indirectly by providing relevant materials to assist academic support staff in their work, and equally as important now in financial terms to EDINA, carrying out projects as part of collective effort to build the JISC Information Environment.
Content of services and projects is becoming more varied, with words, numbers, pictures and sounds all now accessed as digital objects: for example, the new EMOL film and EIG image services have attracted rapid uptake in license/subscription, of 180 and 58 institutions respectively. EDINA delivers reference services, to find what exists, together with links to its own and to third party supply of services on full content, and increasingly is a provider of facilities that make for ease of use and lowered costs in the information infrastructure.
Our user base is also becoming more varied, with colleges as well as universities, with researchers more generally defined as well as from specialist research centre. We have worked hard over the past year to make our services more useful for teaching purposes, and have reviewed and improved support documentation. We must also review what would be required to serve the still more varied Adult Community Learning user base, given the experience that the two national data centres, EDINA and MIMAS, have had providing support to the National Learning Network for further education.
Two major services are in the making: JORUM, as national repository for learning materials for use in virtual learning environments (VLEs); SUNCAT, as national locate facility for journals and other serials held in UK research and university library, for use in library portal, alongside GetRef and GetCopy. Project involvement in the JISC Core Middleware programme to bring Shibboleth into action for service delivery in 2006/7 underscores the technical content of recent project work, on the national OpenURL Router, on geoXwalk and similar.
EDINA has had new engagement during 2003/4 as a contributing partner in the Digital Curation Centre, with the University of Edinburgh leading a consortium of UKOLN (University of Bath), HATII (University of Glasgow) and the Central Laboratories for the Research Council. In addition to seconding staff for its set-up, EDINA provides helpdesk, web and advisory services for what must be regarded as of major significance for all information professionals. As a National Data Centre, we wish the DCC well for its launch on 5 November and look forward to a close working partnership in the coming years.
Partnership is an essential part of success, with those who provide services within institutions that subscribe to EDINA services, with data and software suppliers, and with our sister organisations who work with the JISC to provide common services within the UK digital library.
EDINA seeks to enhance the productivity of research, learning and teaching in UK Further and Higher Education as a JISC designated National Data Centre delivering specialist data services.
To increase the overall utility and relevance of EDINA services, by
To widen access to online services, by
To continue to move to an open technological and service environment, by
To sustain and develop a healthy and well-found UK National Data Centre, by
To sustain an effective blend of service orientation and development capability, by recruiting, retaining and developing a flexible complement of able, skilled and well-motivated staff by providing staff development opportunities and attractive and appropriate terms and conditions.
To develop and maintain an exceptional ICT capability, by
In 2003-2004 EDINA hosted the following national services, a detailed list and description of which is given in Appendix 1:
Throughout the period the aim was for EDINA services to be available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, and our target of 99% uptime was surpassed. The EDINA Helpdesk was staffed during normal office hours.
The national services offered by EDINA during 2003-2004 were funded from several sources. The majority were funded by JISC (via SHEFC), but funding was also provided by ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council), the University of Edinburgh, and by subscription directly from UK Further and Higher Education Institutions. A list of subscribing institutions is shown in Appendix 3.
JISC funded the provision of services for Education Media OnLine, the Education Image Gallery Pilot, Digimap, Compendex, The Index to the Times and UPDATE. UKBORDERS was funded jointly by ESRC and JISC. All other services were funded by direct subscription. All online services were available free at the point of use by staff and students at subscribing institutions for UK academic purposes. The University of Edinburgh provides necessary infrastructure, thereby assisting cost-effective delivery of service.
The various aspects involved in the operation of EDINA national services was undertaken by the appropriate team identified in the Data Library structure of management and operation:
The Infrastructure Services of EUCS provided EDINA with support in the installation, operation and maintenance of the hardware and operating system components of multiple SUN servers, the UNIX computing platforms used to host the EDINA services, and the connection to the internet.
The JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) has become the centrepiece of the JISC's collections policy. The overall aim of the JISC IE is "to develop a framework that will support the creation of an easily accessible, comprehensive information resource that can be used by teachers, learners and researchers within and beyond the UK Higher Education community". EDINA works in support of that aim, contributing to the JISC IE through project and service development work.
EDINA services covered a range of academic disciplines resulting in a heterogeneous user community and target audiences with different user requirements. As EDINA does not have staff with specialist knowledge in all subjects covered by its databases, some specialist support was sought from appropriate experts, such as the data vendors, relevant University departments and the subject-based Information Gateways (e.g. BIOME, artefact and HUMBUL). We continued to have good working relationships with subject-based data organisations, such as the Arts & Humanities Data Service (AHDS) - particularly the AHDS Visual Arts (previously Visual Arts Data Service) and the History Data Service (HDS) - and with other non-JISC organisations involved in information infrastructure development, such as HE Academy.
EDINA maintained a series of 'web rooms' on its web site:
The purpose of the web room representation in the EDINA web site, since revised at http://edina.ac.uk, has been to allow the end-user (staff or student) to view the EDINA services within the perspective of a larger 'information landscape'. This alerted the actual or prospective user to the national services provided by EDINA, through links to other services and facilities of relevance, including other JISC-sponsored services and the subject-based resource discovery facilities.
Where appropriate, services were also grouped by subject, thus:
EDINA has deployed three types of technology, both commercial and open source: to host and manage content; to deliver services across the Web; to facilitate inter-operability.
As one of its key objectives, EDINA is moving towards a more open technological/service environment. EDINA is a major component of the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) and has a commitment to use software and protocols to support such interoperability within the JISC IE. To date this has been employed mainly in the areas of bibliographic databases. As the number of spatial data sets available to higher education increases, consideration has been given to how these data become part of the JISC IE. There is a growing demand from users for information services, through a single user interface, that retrieve spatial data from remote spatial databases, and then integrate the data for display to the user.
The principal software products used for hosting services were mainly proven commercial products: OpenText BASIS, OCLC SiteSearch, OVID Web Gateway, Laser-Scan, ESRI ARC/INFO and Ingres. The first two software products have specialist use as database management systems for the bibliographic datasets: BASIS has relational and transactional functionality; OCLC SiteSearch is particularly suited for use within the distributed environment, supporting web access and Z39.50 v3 interoperability. The OVID software similarly provides web and Z39.50 access to bibliographic databases. Laser-Scan and ARC/INFO were used for geographic information systems (GIS) applications. Ingres is a relational database management system.
EDINA maintained its use of selected open source products such as Indexdata's Zebra, MySQL, Postgres, Apache::ASP and Minnesota MapServer. In many instances the reliability and support offered for these products exceeded that of similar commercial products. Zebra is a database engine accessed only via the Z39.50 protocol, whilst MySQL and Postgres are relational databases using SQL as the main interface. Apache::ASP is a module for the Apache web server and provides a scripting environment for developing web interfaces to the underlying technology. MapServer is an OpenSource development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. OCLC SiteSearch became a fully open source product (renamed OpenSiteSearch) in January 2004 when OCLC commercial support ceased. An existing community base, including one member of OCLC staff, provides support through a mailing list.
Apache was used as the World Wide Web server sometimes in combination with Jakarta Tomcat. Perl and Java (mainly server side) are used extensively for data processing and in the implementation of user interfaces.
Web Services using the SOAP mechanism have been used during project development as a solution for interoperability requirements and are beginning to be used in services, e.g. Digimap and UKBORDERS. OpenURL has been adopted as EDINA's linking technology for bibliographic services. In the wider geospatial community, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is at the forefront of developing and promoting open standards for the exchange, discovery and exploitation of geographic information. These standards subsequently become ISO standards. EDINA has been an associate member of the OGC for several years and is actively engaged in implementing OGC interoperability standards.
EDINA's policy on provision of documentation and help facilities is as outlined in our Service Level Definition available from the JISC's Monitoring Unit (MU) - www.mu.jisc.ac.uk.
As described in section 5.2 EDINA services have been organised into 'web rooms' on the web site (rooms containing either data types or subject areas) as well as having separate service-specific pages. Links to other information services in the JISC IE and the broader information environment are included to alert users to the existence of other services and facilities of relevance.
Publicity material in the form of the well-established EDINA A5 flyers and A3 posters was produced and distributed. As with our existing services, new services were documented by means of A4 gatefold 'Quick Reference Guides', and with support material on the EDINA web site. In addition, individual posters were produced for exhibitions and to supplement the standard range of materials.
Screencams continued to act as service demonstrations for new services. These have superseded PowerPoint presentations, used previously for training purposes. Initially using Lotus Screencam software, we have switched to using Camtasia to produce service demonstrations in a wider variety of formats.
EDINA's quarterly newsletter Newsline continued to play an important role in helping academic support staff and others with an interest in our services to keep abreast of developments at EDINA. From time to time we have also included articles from individuals in UK academia, to gain a wider perspective on trends in the community and EDINA's role within it.
The EDINA Helpdesk continued to act as the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning EDINA services and responded to enquiries from both end-users and support staff. It also has a role, on a cost-recovery basis, in support of the National Learning Network and the Digital Curation Centre. Helpdesk staff categorise queries and enter them into a call-logging system, noting those to be included as an intrinsic part of our user feedback system for the purpose of future developments. Calls were mostly solved directly by the helpdesk staff or referred to 'experts' inside and outwith EDINA as appropriate.
During the reporting period, EDINA offered a number of formal workshops and seminars, mainly covering new services. Ten Education Media OnLine, ten Education Image Gallery and three Digimap workshops were run over the year
Education Media OnLine and Education Image Gallery workshops have been run throughout the country. As Education Media OnLine is now a mature service, training sessions were shortened to a half day and held alongside Education Image Gallery as a full day workshop. This proved popular and helped to cross-publicise the services.
See Appendix 6 for a summary of courses run by EDINA during 2003/2004.
In addition to EDINA organised events, BIOSIS and Education Media OnLine workshops took place at four JISC organised "Health and Life Sciences Online" days. EDINA services were particularly well received at these events, which are detailed in appendix 2.
A major change during the year was EDINA's increased collaboration with the JISC Regional Support centres. The RSCs have helped to arrange, and advertised approximately half of all the workshops run over the year. This continues to be a relationship EDINA would like to build on and is further explored in the section Relationship with the FE community.
Evaluation forms for all courses continued to be very positive; all sessions were given an average overall rating of "good" or "excellent". Full evaluation reports are available from EDINA on request. Comments from evaluation forms included:
We continued to work with the JIBS User Group as an appropriate forum for input from users of EDINA bibliographic and multimedia services. The Group's JISCmail list was used in addition to communication directly with EDINA's site reps to keep users informed of service news. During 2003-2004, EDINA staff attended two meetings of the JIBS User Group and presented reports when invited to do so.
UKBORDERS users receive information directly from EDINA via email and continue to be represented through the ESRC Census Advisory Committee which comprises a broad cross-section of relevant groups within the academic community.
EDINA continued to make use of JISCmail to keep Digimap users informed of service changes, and to encourage discussion about Digimap between users in different institutions and disciplines. EDINA also uses JISCmail lists to contact a small group of site representatives and technical support staff who assist in the provision of local support for the Digimap service.
Throughout the year EDINA consulted with institutional user support staff for a range of services, as well as other representatives of the user community, e.g. on issues surrounding interface changes for BIOSIS, Education Media OnLine, Education Image Gallery and in connection with the withdrawal of the Ei Compendex® service.
The EDINA office at St Helens College in Merseyside has been very successful in terms of engagement in FE concerns, and has led to several fruitful collaborations, including regionally-based collaborations, in an effort to provide services that are more relevant to FE. This office was established in July 2001 and now has three members of EDINA staff based there, including the EDINA Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator and one member who has an FE background and used to be an ILT Co-ordinator in a college. A further appointment is to be made shortly.
Through the National Learning Network (NLN) Learning Materials Hosting Service, EDINA maintains close links with the RSCs, keeping them informed about developments and providing technical support and training materials. The NW RSC Manager and Technical Support Officer attend all NLN operational meetings, representing the other RSCs.
The Digimap service is now available to FE colleges. St Helens College has provided a case study for the Ferl web site, detailing the experience of using Digimap in various subject areas in the College. The case study is available at ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=7886
EDINA provides helpdesk facilities and training workshops for its services that are available to both FE and HE. FE colleges are notified via the RSCs whenever workshops will be held in their particular areas. The services currently provided by EDINA of greatest interest to FE institutions are Digimap, EMOL (40% of subscribers are FE colleges), Update (an index of farming, countryside and environmental journals) and Education Image Gallery, where 63% of subscribers are FE institutions. EDINA is constantly working in business development activities in areas that it is hoped will provide more content of interest to FE.
The JORUM/NLN Technical Officer provided a well-received talk to the RSC technical staff about interoperability, demonstrating the re-purposing of learning materials downloaded from JORUM using the JISC-developed free Reload tool, and deposit in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). He has been invited to give a similar talk to the next meeting of the RSC Curriculum Group, and to an RSC Learning Technologists Forum.
EDINA provides a range of promotional materials, including flyers and posters, and contributes regularly to relevant JISC and other awareness-raising activities. EDINA staff have attended the Ferl conferences for the past four years and will be in attendance at this year's wider Post-16 e-learning conference. EDINA staff recently presented and assisted at the Scottish RSC e-Olympics event. A number of training workshops have also been organised through the RSCs. These include five joint Education Media OnLine and Education Image Gallery workshops, one Education Media OnLine workshop and one Education Image Gallery workshop.
The EDINA Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator continues to serve on the JISC's Post-16 Operational Group, which discusses matters of relevance to the post-16 sectors. JISC and Becta are discussing the extension of the NLN Hosting Service to the Adult and Community Learning sector, and potentially to other sectors funded by the Learning and Skills Council.
We continued our efforts to market our services to academic staff and students at subscribing institutions. As in previous years, we did this by assisting site representatives and other support staff in their local promotional activity, by providing copies of posters, flyers and other informative material, either free or on a cost-recovery basis. The first EDINA Exchange - an open day and information exchange event - was held in the National E-Science Centre in Edinburgh on the 11th May 2004. After the EDINA Director's introduction and overview, the morning provided the opportunity for service representatives, JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) staff and others to learn about service and project developments at EDINA. In the afternoon there were parallel sessions, with the emphasis on discussion on a range of our service areas and user support topics. The day finished with a presentation on the JISC collection strategy. In all, the event was well received by the attendees, opportunity was taken to provide the Principal of the University of Edinburgh, Professor Tim O'Shea, with an overview of the work of EDINA.
EDINA continues to collaborate with other related providers in promoting and marketing our services. Examples include the Census Registration Service (CRS) for UKBORDERS and the BUFVC for publicising the Education Media OnLine (EMOL) service.
A further area of expansion was the closer links with the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs). During the period, we ran several workshops in collaboration with them (see Appendix 6).
During the year EDINA identified a number of relevant specialist conferences at which attendance was appropriate, e.g. Cofhe, CHART and ALLCU. A full list of conference presentations and exhibitions attended is given in Appendix 6.
Highlights in EDINA's calendar included:
Flyers and posters were distributed at a number of other events.
The following means were used to promote EDINA services and to keep users informed of developments:
Registration and authentication for most EDINA Services is carried out using Athens.
EDINA continued to advocate the use of personal Athens user accounts to allow us to offer user-level options. However, EDINA did offer access to bibliographic web services from individual and group Athens accounts. Authentication procedures for EDINA services continue to comply with Athens Single-Sign-On (SSO) and Athens Devolved Authentication (DA). Access to Digimap via Athens DA was made available in December 2003.
In July 2004, EDINA introduced IP access to the Education Image Gallery (EIG) to complement Athens access. Besides being a requirement included by JISC in their tender, a number of FE institutions had specifically requested this type of access. Of the 183 subscribing institutions 52 now have IP access in addition to Athens access.
EDINA has a substantial body of work to undertake under the Core Middleware: Infrastructure Programme, which runs from April 2004 until March 2006. The focus of this work is to transfer all EDINA services to the new access management system, further develop the national components of the infrastructure, and provide resources and support for implementation of middleware components within UK HE and FE. The conversion of EDINA services will progress under a rolling programme involving a variety of technical staff to ensure that EDINA acquires a depth of expertise in Shibboleth technology.
The number of institutions having license to use the services delivered via EDINA in 2003/4, and in previous years is shown below:
| Service | 2003/4 | 2002/3 | 2001/2 | 2000/1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BIOSIS Previews | 28 | 27 | 29 | 29 |
| Digimap | 85 | 76 | 66 | 53 |
| Ei Compendex * | 75 | 73 | 76 | 73 |
| Education Media OnLine | 184 | 126 | - | - |
| Education Image Gallery | 58 | - | - | - |
| Index to The Times | 21 | 20 | - | - |
| Inspec | 16 | 35 | 35 | 33 |
| UKBORDERS | 116 | 109 | 126 | 126 |
| UPDATE | 36 | 34 | - | - |
| Art Abstracts | - | 51 | 58 | 53 |
| Art Index Retrospective | - | 9 | 13 | 12 |
(* discontinued Dec. 2003)
This table shows increase for all but three services. There is steady increase in uptake for Digimap, which has been successfully renewed for 2004/5 and beyond, and further uptake for EMOL. It also shows the introduction this year of EIG and the loss of Art Abstracts which is now delivered by its rights holder, H W Wilson, and the loss, part-year, of Ei Compendex for the same reason. The decrease is for Inspec, which once was offered exclusively, and it now faces competition from other commercial service providers. The institutional uptake of the NLN service is not counted here, nor is that for the Statistical Accounts for Scotland, nor for the small number of services, such as EconLit and CAB Abstracts, that have been delivered in partnership with Ovid.
Log-in statistics are given in Appendix 2.
Content of the UPDATE service expanded during the academic year as did the number of subscribing institutions (to 36). Coverage of environmental, leisure and tourism subject areas was extended in line with the growing scope of the UPDATE service in response to rural diversification. Following subscriber request, the coverage of horticulture was also extended and there are currently plans to expand further into the area of small animal husbandry before December 2004.
The range of titles covered by the service is steadily expanding with some 70 new journals being indexed since early 2003, including many in the new subject areas. Recent interface enhancements include the addition of author entries and a current journals list.
The Inspec service offered using the Ovid platform was moved to a host machine at the Ovid Regional Data Centre in July 2004. EDINA continues to offer and support the service to HE and FE and to provide help and support.
The interface to BIOSIS was updated in 2004 ready for introduction in the 2004-05 academic year. This was to provide consistency with other EDINA services, in particular the new EDINA-developed CAB Abstracts service.
EDINA ceased to be the service provider for access to Ei Compendex in December 2003. Under the terms of the new CHEST agreement the service was to be provided exclusively by Ei via their Engineering Village interface.
Although not a JISC-supported service, there is a free service which can be accessed by all via the Web. There is also a 'value-added' subscription service. A transcription of the questions asked of ministers by Sir John Sinclair, digitised images and an annotated transcript of the 'Dumfries manuscript', and the original correspondence received by Sir John Sinclair regarding the parish of Dumfries, were added to the subscription service.
Delivery of the films and videos that make up the collections in the Education Media OnLine (EMOL) service has continued to be a gradual, rolling process. The films are of high quality, are fully downloadable and cover a broad range of subjects from medicine to 20th Century history. By October 2003 material from all ten of the collections in the original contract were represented in the service. In March 2004 JISC funded EDINA to include further collections in EMOL until 31 July 2005, the end of the current service. In June 2004 the first films from the Amber and Open University Worldwide collections entered the service. Between February and July 2004, in consultation with the user community, the Managing Agent and Advisory Service (MAAS) and JISC, EDINA developed an updated user interface for EMOL, to be fully implemented in August 2004 in time for the start of the next academic year. EDINA's principal aim was to update the look-and-feel of the EMOL user interface, leaving any radical overhaul of the service's functionality to be undertaken in 2005 - guided by the user requirements studies planned by JISC in relation to both EMOL and NewsFilm Online. EDINA was, however, prepared to implement minor improvements to EMOL's existing functionality. By the end of July 2004, the service had 180 subscribing institutions.
In July 2003 EDINA was successful in its tender to develop and host a pilot service offering 50,000 images licensed from Getty Images until 31 July 2004. EDINA tendered to host the full EIG service and this has now been extended for a further 3 years. By the end of July 2004, the pilot service had 58 subscribing institutions.
The collection of images covers a diverse range of subject areas such as sport, fashion, major events, buildings, politics, social history, key personalities, transport, industry, work, leisure and music. The pilot service initially offered only 40,000 images, the subsequent 10,000 to be chosen in consultation with the academic community during the full EIG service.
In early April 2004, JISC and the Ordnance Survey (OS) announced the renewal of the agreement which provides access to a range of OS products for the Further and Higher Education communities. The new agreement will be for a period of five years.
The range of products to be offered through Digimap will increase under the new JISC/OS agreement. Two new raster data sets and a new, more detailed, height dataset will be available:
Digimap comprises a range of facilities that allows users to perform different tasks. Digimap Classic is a simple-to-use mapping tool, creating ready-made, customisable, maps at six predefined scales. Digimap Carto allows the advanced user to carry out further customisation and to print maps at any size up to A0. Ordnance Survey vector and raster data is available for the GIS specialist from Digimap Download: users can select data using grid coordinates, a gazetteer or a map search, and retrieve it in a variety of appropriate formats for use in GIS and CAD applications. Digimap also provides various other tools which assist the user in locating and identifying places and postcodes; gazetteer and postcode data are also offered for users to download.
In May, EDINA was awarded the contract to continue the operation of the Digimap service. Launched in January 2000, Digimap will continue to provide students and academic staff in UK universities and colleges with web-based access to OS digital map data products. At the end of August 2004, some 17,000 active registered users from 85 universities and colleges were using Digimap. The service is now successfully embedded as a research and teaching tool in the academic sector, broadening the use of geographic information and encouraging research that previously would have been difficult for reasons of access and data costs. Digimap is being used all day and every day, with around 12,000 sessions per month. Over the last 12 months users have created 130,000 maps for printing. We have calculated that the commercial value of data downloaded in 2003 through Digimap was some £6 million.
During the summer of 2003, and in response to user feedback, work began to re-design the Digimap interface. This was done to improve the navigation, and to raise the profile of facilities that feedback indicated some users were unaware of, such as the Postcode Query tool. The new and old interfaces were both available for the autumn term, to allow for updating of local documentation and teaching materials. While making these changes, Digimap was also modified to use Athens Single Sign-On (SSO). At the same time, and with the agreement of the Ordnance Survey, the registration process was streamlined. Registration is now an entirely online process, a change much welcomed by the user community. Over the autumn term, Digimap was also modified to accept users from institutions which had converted to Athens Devolved Authentication. This change was released in December 2003.
Ordnance Survey are replacing their Land-Line.Plus product with the OS MasterMap® topographic layer. OS MasterMap is a suite of products and part of the framework within which all future OS products will be released. The central concept of the OS MasterMap framework is the closer relationship between real world objects and features held in the OS spatial database. MasterMap is 'object-oriented': it is organised and structured in a very different way and is provided in a very different format. This represents a fundamental change in the way in which OS spatial data are available. More information on MasterMap can be found on the Ordnance Survey web site.
The new JISC/OS agreement includes two of the MasterMap layers - Topography and the Integrated Transport Network (ITN). The former is the replacement for Land-Line.Plus and the most detailed topographic information available in Great Britain; the latter is a multimodal overview of Britain's transport infrastructure comprising the roads network and road routing information.
As stated in the last annual report, MasterMap will bring significant benefits to users but will create challenges for EDINA, JISC and OS with regard to its delivery and the support of users. To understand the nature of these challenges, in January 2004, EDINA submitted the findings of a second scoping study to the JISC. This covered the following areas:
No decision has yet been made by JISC on how and when the OS MasterMap datasets will be delivered to the academic community.
This service is run as part of the ESRC JISC Census Programme, for which EDINA UKBORDERS acts as the Geography Data Unit. Over the last year the UKBORDERS service has expanded its range of facilities through the introduction of the Boundary Data Selector tool, as well as by providing direct access for downloading postcode directories. The Boundary Data Selector service will allow users to 'drill down' to local levels and to take geographic subsets of the data, with a more intuitive interface, comprehensive help system to assist novice users and a map preview capability showing the boundaries on an Ordnance Survey backdrop map. This service complements the Easy Download service which provides users with quick access to the most commonly requested datasets in the most popular spatial data formats.
The addition of the Postcode Directories download facility follows agreement with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to provide academic access to these data and is conditional on quality assuring and providing feedback on them to ONS. Additionally, an extensive library of derived datasets based on the key 2001 census geography outputs has been created and made available to users. Creation of comprehensive metadata is ongoing and will be made available via the service at the earliest convenience.
There are currently over 13,000 users registered with the Census Registration Service eligible to use UKBORDERS - approximately 3% (and growing) come from the Further Education sector. Average numbers of dataset extractions has increased and is currently around 900 per month with peak periods (heavy class use) supporting almost double that number.
The new UKBORDERS service utilises a range of Web Map Servers (WMS) developed and supported by the EDINA Geoservices team for the purposes of allowing contextual mapping of the census boundaries. Interface via a Web Feature Server (WFS) has been developed which will allow 3rd party clients to develop their own extraction clients for subsets of the UKBORDERS data holdings. Currently supporting the operation of the Boundary Data Selector tool, this is due for release once authentication and authorisation issues have been resolved.
EDINA has continued its work in 2003-2004 in the high profile JISC work area of learning and teaching. Of particular importance are JORUM and the National Learning Network where EDINA and MIMAS work collaboratively with the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS).
The JORUM has two main purposes. First, it offers a place in which JISC-funded content for learning and teaching can be stored, managed and made available on a long-term basis to the community. In the past publicly-funded content has been lost to the community when project teams have dispersed, and institutions have not always maintained the local servers in which it was deposited. Secondly, the existence of JORUM will enable the re-use and re-purposing of learning and teaching content across the UK. This breaks new ground by offering not only opportunities for teaching staff to download and use the materials, but also opportunities to deposit re-purposed and institutionally developed materials.
In December 2003, EDINA received the welcome news from JISC that funding would be made available to launch the JORUM service to the whole of the UK FE/HE community from August 2005. The funding awarded included a sum to undertake a procurement under European Union (EU) rules of a learning and teaching materials repository system to underpin the JORUM service. As a result of the procurement exercise and the contract was awarded to Intrallect Ltd for the intraLibrary repository software system. The system is now installed at EDINA.
JORUM is currently working on a subscription and licensing system to support institutions wishing to use and/or deposit in JORUM. Opportunities for teaching staff to annotate materials deposited by other staff will also be available in the system. We have established sound relationships with the new HE Academy (which comprises the former Learning and Teaching Support Network and the Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education) and the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSCs). The JORUM team is also working with the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde, which has been funded by JISC to suggest models for creation and quality assurance of the discovery and educational metadata used to describe the materials in the system.
EDINA and MIMAS are still supporting the content-producing projects in the JISC's Exchange for Learning (X4L) Programme. This work continues until July 2005, using two repository systems, in which R&D work is trialled prior to the services going live. Intrallect and Xtensis e-Learning Ltd are supplying the learning object repository database software systems used as working tools in the R&D project.
The NLN Learning Materials Hosting Service is funded by JISC to provide the infrastructure for delivery of the NLN online interactive learning materials. These have been commissioned by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) from a number of consortia of commercial suppliers and FE colleges.
EDINA provides helpdesk support to the Regional Support Centres (RSCs), which in turn support FE college staff. MIMAS hosts the Content Access Tool; a back-up service is provided by EDINA. One of the major challenges currently faced by the service is the widening user base for the NLN, with materials in NLN Round 4 developed for the Adult and Community Learning Sector.
Through this project, which began in January 2001, staff at EDINA designed and developed an online Learning Resource Centre (LRC), that houses the learning materials, and an online learning Content Management System (CMS), that allows tutors to customise content, geographic extent and tools to their own needs. The project also developed a Virtual Placement (VP), a problem-based learning system, using a real-life work-based case study through which students can work, receiving emails from their tutors that appear to come from a virtual workplace. The VP can be used as a preparation or substitute for a real-life work placement, or as a student project.
During 2003/4, JISC funded a follow-up (Phase 2) study for e-MapScholar to undertake market research and examine the viability of making all of the e-MapScholar products available to the JISC community. The report to the JISC in July 2004 presented the business case for e-MapScholar and offered several scenarios for consideration by the JISC Committee.
The report found that experts consulted believed that the e-MapScholar project had created a content service suitable for use in various educational levels including undergraduates, FE/HE progression and as an introductory resource for postgraduate students. The LRC/CMS was in advance of other online services by providing a way in which real-time data could be streamed to learning objects, and as such is a real example of interoperability between learning environments and digital libraries. Furthermore, the LRC/CMS has the potential to become a repository for a community of practice integrated with the JISC Information Environment - e.g. a community teaching spatial skills that could form part of a JISC system of distributed repositories. The experts consulted also stated that the VP combines creative simulation with game-play opportunities in a tool that supports learning about real-world application of digital geographic information in the work-place, offering a novel approach to learning that should be of widespread interest in the community.
The follow-on study also undertook user requirements work, which demonstrated that there is substantial interest in both the FE and HE communities in having all the products available to them on a long-term basis.
EDINA also undertakes work to develop learning and teaching materials in support of other work areas. Examples include the Xgrain project (which has now become the GetRef service) and the Education Media OnLine service.
The Xgrain ('cross-grain') project has produced a fully functional cross-searching tool that enables the user to present a simple search string to multiple services, such as Abstracts and Indexing databases and Library OPACs in the JISC Information Environment, and receive the matching results from each. EDINA plans to launch this tool as the GetRef service to the UK FE and HE communities. GetRef has both infrastructure to support learning and teaching, and online learning and teaching materials.
During the project, a number of Learning and Teaching Associate Sites undertook a requirements analysis for, and participated in the development of, learning and teaching materials to support the use of the cross-searching facility in the classroom, and other learning environments. These materials have been updated and are available as GetRef learning materials. They cover a range of topics including support for the development of research skills and explanations of why students may wish to use a cross-searching tool; an introduction to the concepts behind cross-searching; and two case studies assisting students to research essays within particular subject areas, the first in Arts and Humanities, and the second in Biology.
Education Media OnLine is a JISC-funded set of collections of film and video, hosted by EDINA and cleared and digitised through the JISC's MAAS (Managing Agent and Advisory Service). One component of the JISC funding to EDINA is the development of appropriate learning and teaching materials or case studies to support and encourage the use of this type of media. Work to develop materials in the Science and Engineering subject areas has commenced.
Still a new area, it is important that EDINA works closely with other groups active in various aspects of Learning and Teaching. Our partners include:
EDINA's Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator is a member of the Round Table of the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service, which is based at IMRI. The Round Table acts in an advisory capacity to the service.
The JORUM team is establishing contacts with prospective Centres of Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CETLs), currently bidding in Round 2 for funding from HEFCE. HEFCE plans to fund around 70 CETLs, which will be appointed in January 2005 and commence work in March 2005.
The JORUM/NLN Technical Officer has been invited to several high profile conferences, including the ALT/SURF conference in April 2004, to demonstrate interoperability between JORUM, the JISC-developed free content packaging tool Reload, and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
Members of the JORUM team attended the LTSN Conference in March 2004. This is a conference that is by invitation only. The LTSN (now HE Academy) was keen to understand ways in which we could work together. This led to an invitation to a meeting at York attended by the LTSN Programme Director and the Directors of EDINA and MIMAS, to prepare for formalisation of links between JISC and the HE Academy.
The JORUM team:
EDINA's Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator, as project manager of JORUM, is a member of JISC's Exchange for Learning Advisory Board, which meets twice yearly.
Awareness meetings were also held with the Chair of the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Committee and the Business Manager of education.au in Australia.
The TIES I project, which EDINA completed in October 2003, investigated the task of deploying a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) capable of issuing digital certificates to all users in Further and Higher and Education. Since then, Shibboleth technology has emerged as the preferred solution for large-scale authentication and authorisation in FE/HE. Nevertheless, a substantial requirement remains for a certificate issuing service, and a further study, TIES II funded by the JISC Middleware Studies Programme, was commissioned to follow up recommendations made in the original report.
Digital certificates are required on an increasing scale for a variety of purposes. The two most important areas investigated by the project are:
The study investigated options for creating a national service capable of issuing certificates on a large scale and any implications associated with each option. These included:
The project ran from January to July 2004.
The aim of the SDSS project, which runs from April 2004 until March 2007, is to provide support for projects in the Core Middleware Technical Development Programme by developing a prototype Shibboleth framework to enable project interworking. SDSS will implement prototypes for service elements required to support a national Shibboleth infrastructure. These include:
These prototype services will eventually be replaced by industry-strength solutions well before the end of the Programme in 2007. In the meantime, they are intended to provide a live testbed which will enable interworking between Core Middleware projects within a development environment.
This project, part of the JISC Shared Services and Middleware Studies Programme, ran from January 2004 for three months. It considered options for the realisation of two services that had been defined in the Shared Services Development Plan, but not yet addressed. These are defined as:
The study considered the roles of these services, the types of data available, the sources of these data, rights management issues, service provision options, and made a number of recommendations to the JISC as to the scope of these services and how their deployment might be progressed.
EDINA is responsible for three projects in the JISC IE infrastructure for serials at both title and article level. These include the project to develop SUNCAT, the UK National Union Catalogue of serials, and two of four projects in the JOIN-UP cluster of the Infrastructure Programme. These four individual projects have been combined with a view to each contributing separate but compatible, and interoperable, component parts to the four-part structure of Discover/Locate/Request/Access. Thus JOIN-UP addresses the linkage between references found in discovery databases (such as A&I databases and Table of Contents databases) and the services that provide the full-text material (typically journal articles), in printed or electronic form. The three lead partners in the JOIN-UP Programme are EDINA; Docusend (led by King's College, London, in partnership with the LAMDA electronic document delivery service); and the British Library. During this reporting period EDINA was also successful in receiving funding to investigate and scope the requirements for an Institutional Profiling and Terms and Conditions service.
The project to build SUNCAT, the UK National Catalogue of Serials has two principal aims: to be a key resource for locating journal titles in UK research libraries; and to be a source of high-quality records that may be downloaded by cataloguing staff in contributing libraries as a means of upgrading their local catalogues. SUNCAT will be developed and built in three phases. During Phase 1 (February 2003-December 2004), EDINA has been responsible for developing a scalable architecture and populating it with the CONSER database, the ISSN Register and the serials records of 22 of the UK's largest research libraries. The project brings us into partnership with Ex Libris and with the National Library of Scotland and the libraries of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford, as well as a close working relationship with the British Library and the ISSN Network. With Phase 2 commencing in January 2005 we have the prospect of delivery of service and the extension of scope to include research libraries beyond those of the largest 22.
The Xgrain project has developed a broker for cross-searching abstracting and indexing services and electronic tables of contents services within the JISC Information Environment. The tool developed is now available to the community under the brand name 'GetRef'. It facilitates discovery of journal articles from bibliographic services thus fulfilling the first function of a joined-up journals service.
A simple GetRef interface for shallow searching makes abstracting and indexing databases more accessible for learning and teaching. GetRef also facilitates use of these bibliographic services in learning and teaching by providing a range of documentary materials and including 'content-level' descriptions within the service. GetRef has added a Z39.50 interface which has been tested by the Subject Portals Project (SPP). Continued collaboration with the SPP, and more recently with the Discovery+ project, has further developed the functionality and usefulness of the Z39.50 server and will lead to the development of another machine-to-machine interface using the SRW protocol.
The user interface has been reengineered for enhanced performance and reliability, and features have been added to enable institutional profiling and preferences. The use of authentication/authorisation credentials for targets which do not support Athens is now possible for institutions with a profile. In January 2004, EDINA started working closely with the University of Stirling in order to explore the issues of using GetRef as a service within an institutional portal, and to broaden the range of end-resources configured within GetRef in a way useful to institutions. The University of Stirling has been preparing to introduce the GetRef web portal to students. This has proved to be a highly beneficial collaboration.
The ZBLSA Project developed a linking tool that provides portals with the means to locate services pertaining to journals. The tool developed is now used by EDINA under the brand name 'GetCopy'. It connects discovery of a reference to a journal article with services providing the most appropriate full-text copy in printed or electronic form. The main client communities of GetCopy are the A&I database services that operate at the JISC National Data Centres and the RDN subject portals. They will use GetCopy to locate appropriate copies of journal articles whose existence has been discovered by the end-user. GetCopy has been designed to be lightweight and business-neutral by operating on existing permissions; this eliminates the need to be involved in the authorisation or authentication required for document delivery transactions. GetCopy simply determines the location of appropriate copies, and directs the end-user accordingly. It is intended that GetCopy will be a primary mechanism for directing end-users from the UK FE/HE sector to publisher web sites.
The Balsa user interface developed during the ZBLSA project, and being launched as GetCopy, provides some performance enhancements and large improvements in accessibility for users with special needs. Along with LitLink at MIMAS, GetCopy will provide a default service for users who are directed to the OpenURL Router, but whose institutions do not have a registered OpenURL resolver.
The OpenURL Router has been conceived and successfully implemented.
This addresses the issue of allowing linkage from bibliographic services to OpenURL resolvers. Although the OpenURL standard provides an encoding bibliographic metadata, enabling 'referrer' services to link to OpenURL resolvers, there is no mechanism that aids the referrer in determining to which resolver the link should be addressed.
Because OpenURL resolvers are generally deployed to provide onwards linkage to full text services and libraries, the access to which depends on the end-user's institutional membership, resolvers are typically set up for and maintained by individual institutions. For example, a university library will purchase and configure a resolver to reflect the journal subscriptions and full text access rights owned by that library.
This means that the resolver is of a great deal of use to members of that institution, and any OpenURL link that is not addressed to that resolver is of little use to them.
The only solution to this problem has been direct contact between all service providers and their customer institutions, to separately configure linkage to each resolver. These many-to-many relations are an administrative burden on all concerned. This system also restricts OpenURL linkage to subscriptions services, which have a business relationship with customers; without this, there is generally no mechanism in place for a service to recognise users and the institutions of which they are members.
The OpenURL Router provides a central registry detailing OpenURL resolvers, the institutions to which they belong, and certain details (Athens identifiers, IP addresses and domain names) that help in identifying members of that institution. This allows a referring bibliographic service to address OpenURL links to the correct resolver for each end user, without any prior knowledge of the user or their institution.
This project is funded under the JISC Portal Programme and is led by the University of Hull (Feb 04 - Jul 05). EDINA's role is to investigate the JSR 168 and WSRP specifications, and document the adaptation of existing EDINA search tools (namely GetRef) so that they are compliant with one or both of these standards. This fits with the wider aims of the project, the documentation of user requirements of portal-embedded and non portal-embedded search and resource-push interfaces, and the practical integration of these tools with reference portal implementations. Currently work is progressing on creating a JSR 168 portlet for the GetRef service . A first version of this portlet has been distributed to the CREE team at Hull for integration into their uPortal framework instance. The intention is to further develop and refine this portlet and, if the existence of a serviceable reference implementation allows, to develop a WSRP compliant GetRef portlet so that the relative merits of the two specifications can be compared.
Edinburgh University Library is the lead in this project funded under the JISC e-Learning framework Programme (elf). The project is developing a software toolkit to mediate the discovery of deep resources in distributed and heterogeneous repositories. EDINA is building a component of the toolkit to search the resources presented by the GetRef service as a single repository. The first version of this component makes use of the Z39.50 interface presented by the GetRef service. Later versions will make use of the OCLC reference SRW client and will have additional functionality to take advantage of the rich feature set of the GetRef service.
The Phase II geoXwalk project was aimed at producing a digital gazetteer service for supporting enhanced geographical searching within the JISC IE. It followed on from successful Phase I and Phase II projects which scoped the requirements for such a service and subsequently built a prototype demonstrator service. Phase III, which reported to the JISC in July 2004, has concentrated on consolidating the technical aspects of the gazetteer as well as trialling it with 3rd party service consumers.
Most of existing resources have some form of implicit geographic reference such as place name, county name, postcode etc. The problem faced when using geography as an access point into such resources is that there is no commonly agreed geography type that is universally employed. The geoXwalk facility provides a mechanism by which one geography can be 'crosswalked' into another representation - e.g. place names into postcodes, counties into parishes. The basis for this is a digital gazetteer of geographic features: the geoXwalk gazetteer holds geo-footprints, and by a process of geometric computation, spatially complex queries can be resolved; for example, 'which rivers are near Banbury?' This provides a much richer potential query environment to end-users and makes possible forms of resource querying which were previously not possible.
The project has built a comprehensive GB-wide gazetteer database of over 700,000 objects and provided a mechanism by which geographical queries from another service may be issued and resolved by the geoXwalk server - a shared service capable of servicing geographic queries from other services and demonstrated by reference implementations such as Go-Geo!, HIERPORT (Common Information Environment pilot) and SCRAN. Tools to assist in the creation of geographic indices for resources have also been developed in the geoparser, software to perform a specialised form of text mining that utilises the gazetteer service to assist in the geo-referencing of documents.
The technical aspects of geoXwalk are largely resolved, what remains is how best to exploit the service within the architecture of the JISC IE.
Go-Geo! (www.gogeo.ac.uk) is a portal that supports geospatial searching by interactive map, grid co-ordinates and place name, as well as the more traditional topic or keyword forms of searching. This has been the result of a cooperative effort between EDINA and the UK Data Archive. Using an ANSI standard, Z39.50-1995, the portal undertakes simultaneous searching across many resources including the national GIgateway service and its network of catalogue services.
A key feature is the ability for users to find other related resources, such as books, photographs, projects and maps for their geographic area of interest. These resources are discovered by cross-searching the JISC Information Environment and other online information services. The focus of the portal is therefore on 'where' a resource is about and less on the 'what' it is about, which is the focus of other JISC portals. An important aspect of the portal is the resources section, which provides comprehensive information about geographic information resources in the UK. This includes links to information about training courses, learning materials, organisations, books, journals and software which may be of interest to the user.
To date there have been three phases in the development of Go-Geo!, all funded by JISC. In July 2004, Phase 3 came to an end. This current phase had the twin aims of developing the portal to a point where it is suitable for roll-out as a full service and trialling it with the user community. A trial service was launched in November 2003 and there has been steady use since then. The results from an ongoing programme of evaluation found that users liked the service, that they would use it again and that it could be an extremely useful facility for both researchers and teachers.
A number of specific technical developments were undertaken. These included linking to metadata catalogues provided such as the Archaeology Data Service and the UK Data Archive, the implementation of a 'people search' facility and metadata record creation tool, and the development of a portlet which can be plugged into other portals and permits the Go-Geo! network of catalogues to be cross-searchable from those portals.
As national data centre, EDINA recognises the international dimensions to its work. Much of the raw material deployed in building and operating the digital library, data, software and hardware is international, and vendors view the UK market within the context of their global strategy. The business of academic research and teaching has comparable international context. The UK has a contribution to make and itself benefits from international engagement.
EDINA continues to develop this side of its work, with Europe having significance alongside global, especially American, context. Listed below are some of those developments, including that for staff development, as information professionals. One particular highlight last year was agreement that preparation should be made to host the annual conference of IASSIST in Edinburgh in May 2005.
For many years Data Library staff have been active members of the International Association of Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST), 'an international organisation of individuals who are engaged in the acquisition, processing, maintenance and distribution of machine-readable text and/or numeric social science data'. The membership of IASSIST, which was founded some 20 years ago, includes information system specialists, database librarians or administrators, archivists, researchers, programmers and managers. Peter Burnhill is immediate past President, Alison Bayley is Assistant Treasurer and Robin Rice chairs the IASSIST Web Site Committee of which Stuart Macdonald is a member. IASSIST holds an annual conference in the USA or Canada for three years out of four and in Europe in the fourth year. The 2004 conference was held in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The Data Library is to play host to the annual IASSIST Conference in Edinburgh in May 2005, based in the Holyrood Hotel.
Thus far, EDINA has engaged in international standards work on an informal basis only, the formal involvement on committees and working groups being judged to have high opportunity cost. Activity during 2003/4 has caused us to review this. There is growing involvement in OGC, for geographic inter-operability, on OpenURL and on the successor to Z39.50, on ISSN and emergent standards for the exchange of subscription information as part of digital rights management.
Active participation in the ISSN Network, including attendance at the ISSN Directors' Meeting in Madrid, has been an important factor in the development of SUNCAT as a national union catalogue of serials. The ISSN is undergoing its review as an ISO standard, and revision to take account of electronic publication within the context of FRBR: the relation between 'work' (or Title) and 'manifestation' (Product) is key for the success of SUNCAT as it builds on item records. Productive contact has been made with the Library of Congress and with national union catalogues of serials, especially across Europe. This activity builds upon ground-work achieved through EDINA's earlier participation in the EU-funded CASA Project.
This initiative, described in more detail in sections 9 and 12 in this report, is necessarily international. There has been contact with Internet2 and with SWITCH, the Swiss implementers.
It was at presentations in Portland, Oregon (USA) that it was confirmed that EDINA's work on this and related projects was 'world class'. Digimap is also recognised as having been a world first in providing web-based access to national mapping data for academic use. There was much activity in 2003/4 to lay the grounds for engagement in a suitable EU-funded project, building on relationship established with the international steering committee for global mapping (ISCGM).
The Data Library, as a host of EDINA BIOSIS and other life science services, is a partner in E-BioSci, a three-year EU Fifth Framework project led by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). E-BioSci is an initiative to set up a platform that will provide services relating to access and retrieval of digital information in the life sciences, ranging from bibliographic or factual data to published full text. Its objectives are to explore technologies and protocols that will permit the establishment of a European-based research infrastructure of global significance and, where appropriate, to act in a co-ordinating capacity to achieve these goals. The Data Library role is to host the UK node of a tool (Doc2Loc) providing a many-to-many mapping of document identifiers to literature text, and to use experience gained from the JISC IE programme through the Xgrain and ZBLSA projects to help develop future strategies for document location. The project is due to complete in May 2005.
This Committee did not meet during the reporting period, 2003/4. The role and function of the EDINA Steering Committee is under review. This is triggered by three main factors. The first is the formal relationship that the University of Edinburgh is entering into with the Higher Education Funding Councils, in parallel to relationship that the University of Manchester will have with respect to MIMAS. The second has been the decision of Professor Derek Law, Librarian and Director of Information Strategy at Strathclyde University, to step down as its Chair. The third has been the problems encountered convening meetings that were suitable for both JISC representatives and the other members to attend, with some cancellation having occurred at late notice. The role, composition and chairmanship of the EDINA Steering Committee require attention.
This is the body, under the chairmanship of University's Vice Principal, to which the Director of EDINA is responsible for the strategic direction, conduct and success of EDINA. At the start of the reporting period it comprised of four persons: Vice Principal Helen Hayes (Chair), Peter Burnhill (Director of EDINA), Brian Gilmore (Director of Computing) and Ian Mowat (University Librarian).
The tragic death of Ian Mowat and the retiral of the Vice Principal for Information Strategy triggered University re-organisation, such that, following international search, the University appointed a Vice Principal for Knowledge Management and Librarian to the University. It was also decided that EDINA and the Data Library would become a planning unit within the Information Services Group. The Directors of Computing, of Libraries, of Media and Learning Technology and of Lifelong Learning form part of that ISG reporting structure. The function of the EDINA Management Group is now exercised by the ISG Directors' Group, which is convened by the new Vice Principal, Helen Hayes, who took up her position in September 2003.
We plan on firm evidence that there is a growing role for EDINA as JISC-designated National Data Centre, but this growth brings challenge as well as opportunity which we intend to meet through deepening partnership and inter-working. Our recent re-design of the EDINA web site this past year illustrates well both challenge and opportunity, presenting the activities of EDINA through a number of 'web-rooms' each intended to demonstrate its relevance to the communities which we seek to serve and with which we wish to engage.
Within the main 'service' web-rooms there has been much change, and promise of more. In the 'Sound and Picture Studio', we expect to see further growth in the uptake and usage of the documentary films delivered as part of the Education Media OnLine (EMOL) service. Our objective is to embed such new 'evidence' in research activity, in programmes of teaching, and in the life of students throughout the UK. We intend to make best use of the partnerships we have fostered throughout further and higher education, and especially with the BUFVC/OU, the AHDS and the HE Academy. In parallel, we intend to build on our progress in hosting and delivering the Education Image Gallery service, which offers users at subscribing institutions online access to a major part of the Getty Images collection of images for educational use. Images, whether moving or still, are now showing at EDINA; we plan on the basis that more is 'Coming Soon'.
In the Reading and Reference Room, experience continues to be mixed and we must discern what this may mean for the future. On the one hand, we see success in building user communities for some databases dashed by circumstances not easily within our control, as was the case with Art Abstracts and Ei Compendex. On the other hand SUNCAT, the UK national union catalogue of serials is set to become the most significant serial-level online facility in the UK, with launch of pilot service in 2005. Outcome of funded projects at the article-level, clustered together as JOIN-UP by the JISC 5/99 Programme, have significance. For EDINA, both Xgrain and the ZBLSA projects have resulted in service-quality products (now branded GetRef and GetCopy) that await green light as JISC services, with GetRef geared to discovery of references and GetCopy to location of services for the found reference. There is also now in place the national OpenURL router, which passes on article requests to the 'appropriate' OpenURL resolver, GetCopy capable of playing a catch-all OpenURL resolver role. The challenge for JISC and its service providers is to really 'join-up' and to develop suitable interaction with portals and to attract a viable user community.
EDINA's engagement with Shibboleth development and support services (SDSS), as part of the JISC Core Middleware: Technology Development Programme offers related authentication and authorisation opportunity and challenge for the UK digital library. Our focus s to implement key components of the infrastructure required to provide a national UK Federation., and to investigate the wider question of inter-federation interoperability.
In the Map and Data Place area, the welcome increase in recognition of the significance of geospatial referencing and facilities both nationally and internationally provides opportunity. The use of Digimap continues to grow and it is now viewed as an important, and to some a vital, part of the UK information landscape, the uncertainty of the renewal process behind us. However, it does have the technical challenge to make best use of the innovation of MasterMap, an object/feature-based format that promises much for future use, requiring investment in terms of design, re-engineering and storage. delivery. Related project work, geo-Xwalk and Go-Geo! represent key infrastructure for the UK community, of international standing, confirmed by the contract awarded to EDINA to host the GI-Gateway for the UK GI Industry. Over the coming year EDINA aims to assist the JISC and the UK e-Science and heritage communities extract best value through geo-referencing.
The activities reported in the Learning and Teaching Centre are amongst the most challenging that EDINA is engaged upon. EDINA has responded actively to the call from the JISC to engage in support for e-Learning and the use of national services in Learning and Teaching. This extends throughout FE and HE. EDINA is sought out as partners by the leading players in this field, and in turn has worked in partnership with MIMAS, especially in support of the policy-important National Learning Network, and the pioneering work of the JORUM project. It will be interesting to see what becomes of both. EDINA expects to continue to play a significant role as digital repository of learning materials, and will increase the usability of its service for Learning and Teaching purposes. What we must resolve is the engagement we should have in the creation and delivery of e-learning materials.
Our presentation of services represents the role EDINA has to play as a data centre for Scotland. This too is full of opportunity over the coming year, especially with the wider regional agenda for the UK.
What we had earlier highlighted as of significance for a nation data centre, digital preservation, now has future through participation in the Digital Curation Centre, with its pioneering engagement with both e-Science and the document tradition.
Indexes and abstracts more than 550 international economic journals. Source material includes journal articles, essays, research papers, books, dissertations, book reviews, and working papers. Contains more than 350,000 records and covers subjects from accounting, consumer economics, monetary policy, labour, marketing, demographics, modelling, economic theory, planning, and more. Produced by the American Economic Association.
Indexes critical scholarship on literature, language, linguistics and folklore. Coverage includes journal articles, series, monographs, dissertations, bibliographies, proceedings and other materials. Includes all records indexed from 1963 to the present, approximately 1,400,000 records, and is updated ten times a year. Produced by the Modern Language Association of America.
Bibliographic index with abstracts covering the full range of political, social, and public policy issues. Topics covered include economic, political, and social issues, business, finance, law, international trade and relations, public administration, government, political science, and any topics that are or might become the subject of legislation. Covers selected journal articles, books, statistics, yearbooks, directories, conference proceedings, pamphlets, reports, government documents, and microfiche. Produced by the Public Affairs Information Services, Inc.
Online version of the two accounts of all Scottish parishes conducted in the 1790s and 1830s and published as the First and New Statistical Accounts of Scotland. Together they provide an invaluable record of all aspects of life in Scotland at the time. Run on behalf of a consortium set up by SCURL, the Scottish Confederate of University and Research Libraries.
The Index to The Times, 1790-1980 is an EDINA web service which comprises Palmer's Index to The Times (covering the years 1790 to 1905), and the Official Index to The Times (covering the years 1906-1980). This service is a valuable reference for historians of all areas of British life and international affairs.
Extensive database of over 85,000 article titles or abstracts from the agricultural press, compiled since 1971 by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC). The database is longer being updated by SAC (from April 2004), although EDINA will continue to offer access to current subscribers for a further year.
Electronic version of Biological Abstracts (BA), the largest printed reference publication for life sciences information; and Biological Abstracts/RRM (Reports, Reviews, Meetings), the companion printed reference to books, meetings and research reviews. BIOSIS Previews database covers data from 1985 onwards.
Bibliographic database compiled by CAB International. Covers the significant research and development literature in the fields of agriculture, forestry, aspects of human health, human nutrition, animal health and the management and conservation of natural resources. EDINA offers access to CAB Abstracts via the Ovid platform and an EDINA developed interface.
EDINA UPDATE is a bibliographic database of land-based literature whose focus is more practical than scholarly. There are several ways of scanning the database: via standard and advanced search pages; a wordlist index and browse lists or index terms. Results from searches can be emailed, printed, or saved to a file.
Regarded as the premier database for access to the world's leading scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing and information technology. Produced by the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
Scottish Academic Libraries Serials, SALSER, a World Wide Web-based virtual union catalogue of the serials holdings of all 13 Scottish universities, the municipal research libraries of Edinburgh and Glasgow, numerous smaller Scottish research libraries and the National Library of Scotland. Facilitates access to information on serials and thereby ensure their fuller and more effective use by students and researchers in Scotland.
Delivers Ordnance Survey maps and map data to UK Higher and Further Education.
Digimap Classic: provides simple, customisable maps for users to view or print. Maps are available of any location in Great Britain at a series of predefined scales.
Digimap Carto: an advanced cartographic tool, allowing the user to specify scale, area and combinations of datasets on a single map. Locations are identified using coordinate systems, location maps and a detailed gazetteer. Large format printing up to A0 is also possible.
Digimap Download: a data download facility providing raw Ordnance Survey data in raster and vector formats for use with appropriate desktop application software such as GIS or CAD.
Digimap also provides a range of tools which perform gazetteer functions on place names and postcode areas, including attribute look up and location mapping.
UK Boundary Outline and Reference Database for Education and Research Study, offers access to database of UK digitised boundaries. Includes coverages relating to population census, administrative, electoral and postal areas. Web-based Interface provides digitised boundary datasets in many GIS formats (MapInfo MIF/MID, ArcView Shapefile, Arc/Info Export and several others) for users to download. Also hosts historical boundary data relating to the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary and historical postcode directories.
Education Media OnLine is a JISC-funded set of ten collections of film and video, hosted by EDINA and cleared and digitised through the JISC's Managing Agent and Advisory Service (MAAS), who are also producing associated metadata. That work is ongoing, and should eventually result in about 300 hours of material becoming available. The films are of high quality, and are fully downloadable, either in full or as segments, and can be used freely in learning, teaching and research.
The Education Image Gallery is a JISC-funded service that provides access to a collection of 50,000 images (40,000 images were available at the time of launch in early 2004; the remaining 10,000 images will be selected in response to user feedback during the coming three years of service). The images are drawn from the vast resources of the Hulton Archive, Photodisc and the Getty Images® News Service (current events and sport) and they cover key events and multiple subject areas including history, entertainment, sport, science, fashion, politics, music, conflict, film, art, leisure and women's studies.
| Institution | Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accrington & Rossendale College | X | |||||
| Anglia Polytechnic University | X | X | ||||
| Angus College | X | X | ||||
| Arts Institute at Bournemouth | X | |||||
| Askham Bryan Collge | X | |||||
| Aston University | X | |||||
| Barnfield College | X | |||||
| Barony College | X | |||||
| Bath Spa University College | X | X | ||||
| BBSRC | X | X | X | |||
| Bedford College | X | |||||
| Bilborough College | X | X | ||||
| Birkbeck College, University of London | X | |||||
| Bishop Auckland College | X | |||||
| Bishop Burton College | X | X | ||||
| Blackpool and Fylde College | X | |||||
| Boston College | X | |||||
| Bournemouth and Poole College | X | |||||
| Bournemouth University | X | X | X | X | ||
| Braintree College | X | |||||
| Bridgend College | X | |||||
| Brighton and Sussex Medical School | X | |||||
| Bromley College | X | |||||
| Brooksby Melton College | X | |||||
| Brunel University | X | |||||
| Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College | X | |||||
| Burnley College | X | |||||
| Bury College | X | |||||
| Cadbury Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| Calderdale College | X | X | ||||
| Cambridge University | X | X | X | |||
| Cannington College | X | |||||
| Canterbury Christ Church University College | X | X | X | |||
| Cardiff University | X | X | X | |||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| Cardonald College | X | |||||
| Chichester College | X | |||||
| City College Manchester | X | X | ||||
| City College Norwich | X | |||||
| City of Stoke on Trent Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| City University | X | X | ||||
| Colchester Institute | X | X | ||||
| Coleg Glan Hafren | X | |||||
| Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor | X | |||||
| Coleg Sir Gar | X | |||||
| College of Richard Collyer | X | |||||
| College of St Mark and St John | X | |||||
| Cornwall College | X | |||||
| Coventry University | X | X | ||||
| Cranfield University | X | X | X | |||
| Croydon College | X | |||||
| Cumbria Institute of the Arts | X | |||||
| De Montfort University | X | X | X | |||
| Derby College | X | |||||
| Derwentside College | X | |||||
| Dublin Institute of Technology | X | |||||
| Dudley College of Technology | X | |||||
| Dumfries and Galloway College | X | |||||
| Dundee College | X | |||||
| Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College | X | X | ||||
| East Mailing Research | X | X | ||||
| East Norfolk Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| East Surrey College | X | |||||
| Easton College | X | |||||
| Edge Hill College | X | X | X | |||
| Edinburgh College of Art | X | X | ||||
| Edinburgh's Telford College | X | X | ||||
| Exeter College | X | X | ||||
| Falkirk College of Further & Higher Education | X | |||||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| Falmouth College of Arts | X | |||||
| Farnborough College of Technology | X | |||||
| Filton College | X | |||||
| Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology | X | |||||
| Gateshead College | X | |||||
| Glasgow Caledonian University | X | X | X | X | ||
| Glasgow College of Building & Printing | X | X | ||||
| Glasgow School of Art | X | X | ||||
| Gloscat | X | |||||
| Greenwich Community College | X | |||||
| Hadlow College | X | |||||
| Harper Adams University College | X | X | ||||
| Hartlepool College of Further Education | X | X | ||||
| Henley College, Coventry | X | |||||
| Hereward College | X | |||||
| Heriot-Watt University | X | X | ||||
| Hopwood Hall College | X | |||||
| Hull College | X | X | ||||
| Imperial College | X | X | X | X | ||
| Institute of Education, University of London | X | |||||
| John Innes Centre | X | |||||
| Keele University | X | X | X | |||
| Kent Institute of Art and Design | X | |||||
| King's College, London | X | |||||
| Kingston College | X | |||||
| Kingston Maurward College | X | |||||
| Kingston University | X | X | ||||
| Lancaster University | X | X | X | |||
| Langside College | X | |||||
| Lauder College | X | X | ||||
| Leeds Metropolitan University | X | X | ||||
| Leek College | X | |||||
| Liverpool Hope University | X | |||||
| Liverpool John Moores University | X | X | ||||
| London Metropolitan University | X | X | ||||
| London School of Economics and Political Science | X | X | X | |||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| Long Road Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| Loughborough University | X | |||||
| Macauley Land Use Research Institute | X | |||||
| Macclesfield College | X | |||||
| Manchester Metropolitan University | X | X | X | |||
| Merrist Wood College | X | |||||
| Metro, Anniesland College | X | |||||
| Mid Cheshire College | X | |||||
| Middlesborough College of FE | X | |||||
| Middlesex University Higher Education Corporation | X | X | X | |||
| Moulton College | X | |||||
| Napier University | X | X | X | |||
| National University of Ireland, Galway | X | |||||
| New College Nottingham | X | X | ||||
| Newbattle Abbey College | X | |||||
| Newcastle College | X | X | ||||
| North East Surrey College of Technology | X | |||||
| North Hertfordshire College | X | |||||
| Northern College | X | |||||
| Northumberland College | X | |||||
| Norwich School of Art and Design | X | X | ||||
| Nottingham Trent University | X | X | X | X | ||
| Oaklands College | X | |||||
| Oldham Sixth Form College | X | X | ||||
| Orpington College | X | |||||
| Oxford Brookes University | X | X | X | X | ||
| Palmer's College | X | |||||
| Pershore Group of Colleges | X | |||||
| Preston College | X | |||||
| Queen Margaret University College | X | |||||
| Queen Mary University London | X | X | ||||
| Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication | X | |||||
| Reid Kerr College | X | |||||
| Robert Gordon University | X | X | X | |||
| Rodbaston College | X | |||||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| Rose Bruford College | X | |||||
| Royal Agricultural College | X | |||||
| Royal College of Physicians | X | |||||
| Royal Free and University College Medical School | X | |||||
| Royal Holloway, University of London | X | |||||
| Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama | X | |||||
| Sandwell College | X | |||||
| Scottish Agricultural College | X | |||||
| Sheffield Hallam University | X | X | X | |||
| Silsoe Research Institute | X | X | X | |||
| Solihull College | X | |||||
| Solihull Sixth Form College | X | X | ||||
| South Bank University | X | |||||
| South East Derbyshire College | X | X | ||||
| South East Sussex College | X | |||||
| South Trafford College | X | X | ||||
| Southampton Institute of Higher Education | X | |||||
| Sparsholt College Hampshire | X | |||||
| St Brendan's Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London | X | |||||
| St Helens College | X | X | X | |||
| St Martin's College | X | |||||
| St Mary's College, Blackburn | X | |||||
| Staffordshire University | X | X | X | |||
| Stevenson College, Edinburgh | X | |||||
| Stockton Riverside College | X | |||||
| Stockton Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| Suffolk College | X | X | ||||
| Surrey Institute of Art and Design | X | X | ||||
| Sussex Downs College | X | |||||
| Sutton Coldfield College | X | X | ||||
| Swansea College | X | |||||
| Swansea Insitute of Higher Education | X | |||||
| Thames Valley University | X | |||||
| The City Library Insitute | X | |||||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| The Open University | X | X | X | X | ||
| The Queen's University of Belfast | X | |||||
| The Royal National College for the Blind | X | |||||
| The Sixth Form College, Colchester | X | |||||
| The Sixth Form College, Farnborough | X | X | ||||
| The Wellcome Trust | X | |||||
| Thomas Danby College | X | X | ||||
| Trinity and All Saints College | X | |||||
| Trinity College, Carmarthen | X | |||||
| Truro College | X | |||||
| Tynemouth College | X | |||||
| UHI Millenium Institute | X | |||||
| UMIST | X | |||||
| University College Chester | X | X | ||||
| University College Cork | X | |||||
| University College Dublin | X | X | ||||
| University College London | X | X | ||||
| University College Northampton | X | X | ||||
| University College Winchester | X | X | ||||
| University College Worcester | X | X | ||||
| University of Aberdeen | X | X | ||||
| University of Abertay Dundee | X | |||||
| University of Bath | X | X | X | |||
| University of Birmingham | X | X | X | |||
| University of Bradford | X | X | ||||
| University of Brighton | X | X | X | |||
| University of Bristol | X | X | X | |||
| University of Central England | X | |||||
| University of Central Lancashire | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Derby | X | |||||
| University of Dundee | X | |||||
| University of Durham | X | X | X | |||
| University of East Anglia | X | X | X | |||
| University of East London | X | X | ||||
| University of Edinburgh | X | X | X | |||
| University of Exeter | X | X | X | |||
| University of Glamorgan | X | X | X | |||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| University of Glasgow | X | X | X | |||
| University of Gloucestershire | X | X | ||||
| University of Greenwich | X | X | X | |||
| University of Hertfordshire | X | X | ||||
| University of Huddersfield | X | X | X | X | X | |
| University of Hull | X | X | X | |||
| University of Leeds | X | X | X | |||
| University of Leicester | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Limerick | X | |||||
| University of Lincoln | X | X | ||||
| University of Liverpool | X | X | X | |||
| University of Luton | X | |||||
| University of Manchester | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Newcastle upon Tyne | X | X | X | |||
| University of North London | X | |||||
| University of Northumbria at Newcastle | X | X | X | |||
| University of Nottingham | X | X | X | |||
| University of Oxford | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Paisley | X | X | X | |||
| University of Plymouth | X | X | X | X | X | |
| University of Portsmouth | X | X | ||||
| University of Reading | X | X | ||||
| University of Salford | X | X | X | |||
| University of Sheffield | X | X | X | |||
| University of Southampton | X | X | X | |||
| University of St Andrews | X | |||||
| University of Stirling | X | X | ||||
| University of Strathclyde | X | X | ||||
| University of Sunderland | X | X | ||||
| University of Surrey | X | X | ||||
| University of Surrey Roehampton | X | X | ||||
| University of Sussex | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Teesside | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of the Arts London | X | X | X | |||
| University of the West of England | X | X | X | X | ||
| University of Ulster | X | X | X | |||
| University of Wales, Aberystwyth | X | X | X | X | ||
| Compendex | Digimap | EIG | EMOL | Index to the Times | UPDATE | |
| University of Wales Institute, Cardiff | X | X | ||||
| University of Wales, Newport | X | X | ||||
| University of Wales, Swansea | X | X | ||||
| University of Warwick | X | X | ||||
| University of Westminster | X | X | X | |||
| University of Wolverhampton | X | |||||
| University of York | X | X | ||||
| Wakefield College | X | |||||
| Walford and North Shropshire College | X | |||||
| Warwickshire College | X | X | X | |||
| West Lothian College | X | |||||
| West Thames College | X | |||||
| Widnes and Runcorn Sixth Form College | X | |||||
| Wiltshire College | X | |||||
| Worcester College of Technology | X | |||||
| Yeovil College | X | |||||
| York St John College | X | X |
Compendex service only offered through EDINA to 31 December 2003
This information is not available on the on-line version.
(Not all staff are funded by JISC)