11. Changes to Services

Multimedia services

Film & Sound Online (formerly Education Media OnLine)

A discussion forum was implemented within the service as planned, allowing users to comment directly on media records.

A new Film Trails area was launched, which currently contains three film trails created by individual external contributors, with playable clips and associated commentaries. The Film Trails demonstrate how a single theme can be pursued across a number of the different collections in Film & Sound Online, such as:

• British Social History
• The Cold War
• Social Space

For cross-referencing purposes, comments were added to the films within the service that feature in the trails.

In the View/Create Learning Materials area, six additional case studies were added, commissioned from different academics, bringing the total to ten, and eight additional reviews bringing the total to 48. The reviews are grouped by broad subject areas:

• Arts & Humanities (9)
• Health & Life Sciences (22)
• Science, Engineering & Technology (14)
• Social Sciences (3)

Liaison with the Wellcome Digitisation Project Manager continued through 2007/2008 to agree a delivery timetable and the procedures for ingestion of content and metadata for the new WellcomeFilm collection of about 100 hours.

The Open University Worldwide Collection was withdrawn from service in March 2008 after JISC Collections decided not to renew the licence.

Proposals for service enhancements for 2008/2009 were submitted to JISC in spring 2008.

Education Image Gallery

The annual internal review of the service was conducted, taking into account any suggestions from users, and a refreshed user interface was designed for implementation in 2008/2009.

In a new development, JISC Collections commissioned EDINA to include EIG in a Becta-funded programme to offer JISC Collections resources to schools. EDINA implemented a service for schools separate from the main EIG service for FE and HE, with its own login page and second-line Helpdesk support for subscribing organisations. EIG for Schools was available for free trials from the 1 April 08 and subsequently for subscription from 31 July 08. In July 08 the West Midlands Regional Broadband Consortium was the first organisation to subscribe.

NewsFilm Online

For the first part of 2007/2008, EDINA continued to work with the BUFVC to ingest the data and metadata, and with mSpace, at Southampton University, commissioned by JISC to design the user interface for the future service.

There was also continuing liaison with other related projects; one based at Hull producing exemplars and other materials designed to assist take-up, and the multi-institution HEA project led by Glasgow University tasked with producing exemplars of the use of NewsFilm Online content in a number of different subject areas in HE.

Testing of the mSpace user interface took place in autumn 2007. In early 2008 JISC commissioned EDINA to design an alternative user interface and subsequently decided that this would be the user interface for the service to be piloted to Film & Sound Online subscribers on 1 August and then fully launched on 3 October 2008.

Bibliographic Services

SUNCAT

Since becoming a full service in August 2006, the number of Contributing Libraries has reached 66. Concentration however was on improving the currency of the data held in SUNCAT rather than increasing the number of Contributing Libraries. By the end of the period, 59 of the 66 Contributing Libraries were in the updating cycle. The reasons the remaining libraries are not in the cycle are largely to do with moving to new library management systems or local internal difficulties inhibiting carrying out the required extractions. Most of the Contributing Libraries in the cycle are sending update files on a monthly basis.

Efforts to improve data quality continued during the period. The supplier of the software used in SUNCAT, Ex Libris, delivered a number of developments to allow maximum benefit to be obtained from the use of the existing matching algorithm. Testing started during the reporting period but will extend into the next period. One development which has been successfully implemented is a revised screen display. The search results screen now displays library locations as well as serial title, author and year of publication and this is proving to be of great assistance to users. Previously users were required to click on a search result to find out which libraries held particular titles.

The research work investigating use of a string distance-based algorithm was completed. This indicated that matching of incoming titles could be improved using such an algorithm but only at a price of increasing the number of mismatches. It is hoped that this approach can be incorporated into a future SUNCAT system.

In December 2007 a facility to allow staff in Contributing Libraries to download MARC records for incorporation into local OPACs was introduced. Initially the records available for download are from the Conser database.

A map showing Contributing Libraries is now available on the SUNCAT website and provides details on how to connect to, contact and find libraries linked to Google directions.

In order to keep abreast of external developments and improve facilities for users, a number of developments have been introduced. A ‘Find a copy’ facility leads users to their institutional OpenURL resolver and hence to options for full text access or to Inter-library loan services. Additionally, a SUNCAT search application has been implemented on Facebook allowing users of that service to search for journals using a few keywords. Finally a SUNCAT Blog has been created and provides rapid dissemination of formal and informal news about SUNCAT.

The opportunity provided by the EDINA website redevelopment was taken to make changes to the SUNCAT website. The most significant change has been the creation of a page that provides details about the date of the last update for each library.

During the reporting period, EDINA staff entered into discussions with staff in Mimas about putting forward a project proposal for funding to the JISC. Two aspects of the project plan will relate directly to the SUNCAT service. These are concerned with the development of personalisation functionality allowing users to tailor search requests to match current and ongoing requirements, and linking from journal titles to Tables of Contents for issues of a journal. The proposal was accepted and work commenced on the project entitled "Discovery to Delivery at EDINA and Mimas" on 1 August 2008.

Open URL Router

The OpenURL Router addressed 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.

The OpenURL Router provided a central registry detailing OpenURL resolvers, the institutions to which they belonged, and certain details (Athens and UK federation identifiers, IP addresses and domain names) that helped in identifying members of that institution. This allowed referring bibliographic services to address OpenURL links to the correct resolver for each end user, without any prior knowledge of the user or their institution. GetCopy provided a default service for users who are directed to the OpenURL Router, but whose institutions did not have a registered OpenURL resolver.

The OpenURL Router registry was extended for to permit the use of UK federation identifiers (“scope”), ready for the withdrawal of support for the Athens authentication from 1 August 2008. For backward compatibility with existing linking mechanisms, Athens identifiers already registered will continue to be used, but no new Athens identifiers will be added to institutions' entries in the registry.

The OpenURL Router showed continued strong growth in usage over 2007/2008. Usage figures for each year from 2005 to 2007 and 2008 (first 6 months only) are shown in the tables below.

Table 1: Total number of requests received by the service.

This includes OpenURL requests directed to openurl.ac.uk, which are to be redirected to the users’ local resolvers; registry queries (‘lookups’) from service providers; requests for button images; and requests resulting from directing users via an Athens authentication point. There were also a small number of invalid requests, largely originating from search engines.

	Number of requests
2005	2580464
2006	5874645
2007	12262482
2008	7579375

Table 2: Redirections of an end user’s browser with a positive outcome.

	Total number of appropriate resolvers identified	Proportion of requests for a redirection (percentage)
2005	796101	98.7
2006	2151859	99.7
2007	2368620	97.8
2008	1513099	99.3

Table 3: Positive responses to registry queries, where details of an appropriate resolver were supplied as a total number, and as proportion of all queries (per cent).

	Total number of positive responses to registry queries	Positive responses as a percentage of all queries
Q1	105360	50.4
Q2	240794	23.4
Q3	434806	37.0
Q4	262911	37.0

The comparatively low rate of positive responses for lookup requests is to be expected. That mechanism is provided to enable referring service providers to determine whether the OpenURL Router can provide an end user with an onward link to an institutional resolver, prior to presenting them with a link in the user interface. This is most useful in circumstances where a significant proportion of end users are not from institutions registered with the OpenURL Router (for instance, a service with many end users from outside of the UK). In these cases positive responses should not be prevalent.

During the year, the number of institutions registered with the OpenURL Router rose from 67 to 83.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland

Having been a JISC-sponsored service (in that JISC funded both the initial digitisation project and assisted in the set-up to service), the Statistical Accounts of Scotland became a subscription service in 2005 that had to generate its own income, in addition to providing a free-to-web browsing option to the pages of the Accounts. The subscription service has many value-added features, e.g. access to the transcribed text, a transcription of the questions asked of ministers by Sir John Sinclair, digitised images, an annotated transcript of the ‘Stow manuscript’, and the original correspondence received by Sir John Sinclair regarding the parish of Stow.

The Specimens of Statistical Reports pamphlet (1793), The Analysis of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1826) and an index to the 1801 census return for the Parish of Stow were added in 2007/2008.

Land Life Leisure

An enhanced interface was released in February 2008 offering additional links to related pages for the service and elsewhere. These included an editor’s blog and a direct link to the set-up user alerts.

The subscription base to the service was consolidated at around 40 separate, university, college and non-academic organisations including a new consortium of public libraries in West Wales.

Index to The Times, 1790-1980

A consultation took place on the future of the service and a decision was made to withdraw Index to The Times at the end of the academic year 2007/2008. Preparations were made to remove access to the service, including the visible links on the EDINA website.

Inspec

The five year CHEST agreement, under which the EDINA service was offered with Ovid, came to an end in August 2008. The new arrangement for the successor agreement was finalised in the Spring and Summer of 2008, with the service being offered directly by Ovid. EDINA Inspec site-representatives were informed and given the details of the changes. Preparations were also made to remove access to the service, including the visible links on the EDINA website.

Geospatial Services

Digimap

Procurement

A major activity during the last year was the procurement of a replacement map production system for Digimap. EDINA procured the LaserScan (now 1Spatial) GIS software in 1999 to provide its mapping services, and subsequently built applications on top of the LaserScan software to provide a range of web-map browsing and large-format hardcopy-plotting services.

There were a number of reasons why EDINA needed to procure a new GIS platform. These included the facts that 1Spatial have discontinued development of their mapping software suite, and its age has been causing serious operational problems for EDINA. Users have also encountered a less than ideal quality of service because the software has not been able to scale to cope with the level of use Digimap now gets.

The selection process was completed in June 2008 and CadCorp Ltd, a UK company, was awarded the contract. The re-engineering of the OS Collection began in July 2008.

Access Management Changes

In February 2008 JISC announced that all JISC-funded services would be accessible via the UK Access Management Federation (also known as the UK federation) by 1 August 2008. While Digimap was already available using the UK federation at the time of this announcement, there were still a significant number of policy and technical issues to be ironed out. There was also the fact that all 37,000-odd users would be required to re-register for any Digimap Collection using their new UK federation access credentials. While it may be a relatively minor inconvenience for a single user to re-register, it is a mammoth task for EDINA’s helpdesk to approve all applications as they are submitted. In order to mitigate the effect of this, EDINA implemented a process that would allow users to link their existing registration with their new registration, without EDINA’s helpdesk having to approve the new registration. This involved considerable coordination between software engineering and user support, and then effort to encourage users to undertake this process. Given the duration required to engineer the mechanism and the fact that there was only six months between JISC’s announcement and the switch entirely to the UK federation, only around 2,500 users managed to make use of this facility.

On 1 August 2008, Digimap successfully switched to access via the UK federation only.

Digimap: Ordnance Survey Data Collection

Use of Digimap continued to grow considerably in 2007/2008, with some 36,000 active registered users from 151 universities and colleges using the service. This included a significant number of FE colleges, many of which had taken advantage of the ‘free year’ offer for 2005/2006, and have continued to find a subscription worthwhile. Although the number of sessions fell slightly from the previous year to an average of 20,000 sessions per month, the creation of maps for printing continues to increase to 130,000 in the 2007/8 academic session. Users have also downloaded more than half a million data files of Ordnance Survey products (this figure excludes the OS MasterMap data). Since OS MasterMap is a seamless dataset and is not tiled, data retrievals are measured in square kilometres. Since the launch of MasterMap Download in September 2007, users have downloaded nearly 425,000 km2 of OS MasterMap Topography data, and more than 16 million km2 of OS MasterMap ITN data.

Late in 2007, EDINA uncovered a significant problem with the re-use of persistent user identifiers. The identifiers associated with Athens accounts were being recycled between users, thus rendering them invalid as persistent identifiers. This left several institutions in breach of their licence agreements for various datasets. Considerable effort was expended by EDINA in rectifying this problem by identifying institutions concerned and liaising directly with them to ensure that the reuse was stopped. To a large extent the switch from Athens authentication to UK federated access management has ensured that the reuse of identifiers no longer affects access to EDINA services. However, concerns still exist about the practice of institutions when it comes to administering their access management systems.

Further interest in Digimap’s web services has been expressed by several members of Digimap’s user community. The trial has continued but usage has been relatively low. It is still the intention to widen the trial to include vector data as well as raster maps although there are concerns that this will affect the performance of the main service.

MasterMap

Following the launch of the MasterMap Download facility in September 2007, EDINA has been encouraged by the uptake of the new OS MasterMap data, given its additional complexity over its predecessor, Land-Line.Plus. This older dataset was withdrawn by Ordnance Survey at the end of September 2008, and was no longer offered through Digimap at the beginning of that month.

EDINA has spent considerable time encouraging users to make the transition from Land-Line.Plus to OS MasterMap Topography Layer. While OS MasterMap is more voluminous, more complex and fundamentally different from the Land-Line product it is replacing, it offers significant benefits. With the right tools it is also easier to use. New tools are now available with which to convert the data from its native GML format to proprietary GIS formats such as Shapefiles (SHP), drawing exchange files (DXF) and MapInfo interchange files (MID/MIF). One company, Dotted Eyes, based in the West Midlands, has developed a version of their InterpOSe translator that will work only with OS MasterMap data from Digimap. This software is free to registered Digimap users, and can be downloaded from the Dotted Eyes website.

Unlike Land-Line.Plus, which is tile-based, OS MasterMap is a seamless database of over 400 million objects where each object has a rich set of attributes associated with it. One of these attributes is a unique identifier (TOID) which allows objects to have a life cycle. Using the TOID, the creation, modification and eventual deletion of individual objects are modelled and represented within the database. In addition, closed polygons rather than simple unstructured points and lines represent area objects such as buildings. The Integrated Transport Network (ITN) Layer for MasterMap provides an overview of the transport infrastructure of Great Britain. The ITN Layer has great potential for the academic community but is not a traditional mapping dataset.

In March 2008 EDINA issued the first of a twice-yearly release of Change-only Update data for OS MasterMap. It is now possible for users to download a dataset for their area of interest that contains only the changes to the objects in that area, rather than having to download the complete dataset again. While this functionality may seem of limited use over very short time periods, it can be invaluable for longitudinal studies, and for those interested in the speed and nature of changes to a particular area over time.

During the 2007/2008 academic year, users have had access to both OS MasterMap and Land-Line data. EDINA anticipates that forcing users to migrate to the new data by removing the old data will inevitably cause some consternation among a few users. While user support effort has been increased to cope with the demand, it remains to be seen whether this is sufficient.

Support for spatial data and the use of GIS within institutions is significantly lacking across the academic sector. With the arrival of OS MasterMap and the more complex types of data in the other Collections offered through Digimap, demand for support in using both the data and GI software will inevitably increase. EDINA is trying to respond and now offer courses aimed at end users and not just site representatives. However, the lack of local support remains a concern.

Historic Digimap

Historic maps continue to prove popular with a total of 67 institutions subscribing. Usage rose for yet another year with just under 50,000 sessions throughout the year.

JISC have agreed to funding for further development of this service during 2008/2009. Improvements include the provision of additional datasets and an upgrade to the interface to provide “slippy” maps (akin to those available through freely available services such Google Maps).

Geology Digimap

By the end of July 2008, 39 institutions subscribed to Geology Digimap. There were more than 13,500 registered users (a five-fold increase in just one year), who undertook nearly 17,000 logins.

During 2007/2008, the Lexicon of Named Rock Units was updated to the latest version. An upgrade to the mapping facility was released in July 2008. This new version improved the speed of map rendering, and included the use of new shading techniques, which made a significant difference to the cartographic representation on the maps. Given the different layers of geology that the data represent, producing a two-dimensional map that portrays the three-dimensional nature of the information included in it is a significant challenge.

Marine Digimap

Marine Digimap, which provides marine and coastal zone mapping and data from SeaZone Solutions Ltd., was launched in January 2008.

The new service provides raster marine maps of various scales and detail (derived from Admiralty Charts), which are ideal for backdrop mapping in the UK coastal zone. Furthermore, users are able to download SeaZone’s Hydrospatial data – a feature-rich vector GIS dataset, containing ‘topic’ layers such as ‘Bathymetry and Elevation’, ‘Structures and Obstructions’ and ‘Conservation and Environmental Protection’ amongst others.

In just seven months, more than a thousand users registered from 11 subscribing institutions. The immediate appeal of Marine Digimap will be to those directly studying or researching the UK marine and coastal zone environment. Its wider appeal will grow over time, and EDINA will continue to focus on promotion of this young service. This includes offering training in the use of the service.

Forthcoming Work

In February 2008, EDINA submitted to JISC, and had accepted, a proposal for service improvements that include various changes to the operational aspects of Digimap. As well as improvements to Digimap Historic, funding has been agreed for an investigation into the delivery of maps to mobile devices. This will be undertaken in the coming year. This work compliments project activity in the area of grid services. Generally, EDINA is looking at alternative routes for accessing the data it hosts.

Over the past year EDINA has had significant involvement in the negotiations for new data content for Digimap. This includes soils data, digital map data for Northern Ireland and Eire, as well as additional maps in the form of historical town plans, to be added to Historic Digimap, and the geological data available for the marine environment. This last is to be delivered through Marine Digimap. These data should appear within the Digimap Service during the 2008/2009 reporting period.