13. International Work

As a 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 continued 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.

IASSIST

For many years EDINA and Data Library staff have been active members of the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST), an international organisation of professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences. Its 300 members work in a variety of settings, including data archives, statistical agencies, research centres, libraries, academic departments, government departments, and non-profit organisations. Annual Conferences are held in Canada, Europe and the United States according to a rotating schedule. Robin Rice serves on the Administrative Committee as an elected European Member and appointed Web Editor; Stuart Macdonald holds an appointment as Assistant Treasurer; Peter Burnhill is a Past President.

Staff presented papers at the 2008 conference in Stanford, California:

• Robin Rice presented on DISC-UK DataShare in a panel session entitled Moving Research Data Into and Out of Institutional Repositories
• Stuart Macdonald presented Web 2.0 Data Visualisation Tools

Geospatial Activities

The Geo-services team continues to be involved in international activities on a number of fronts, especially in respect of the development and use of open interoperability standards. For example:

• As a partner in the EU e-ContentPlus EuroGeoNames project (see the project section of this annual report)
• Continued engagement in the role of broker between the Open Geospatial Consortium and the Open Grid Forum
• The head of the Geo-services team, David Medyckyj-Scott, was elected onto the Council of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe
• A member of the Geo-services team, Chris Higgins, co-chairs the Open Geospatial Consortium University Working Group

In July 2008, EDINA secured a substantial role within the EU e-ContentPlus funded European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) project. This project starts in September 2008, and gives EDINA added means to ensure academic sector interests are represented as the European Spatial Data Infrastructure is rolled out using the mechanism of the EU INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) directive. ESDIN also provides the means for EDINA to engage with national mapping agencies within Europe, something begun during the EuroGeoNames project, but also with global initiatives such as GlobalMap – EDINA gave a presentation at the Global Mapping Forum 2008 in Tokyo.

In the spring of 2008, JISC invited EDINA to undertake some work as part of the e-Framework Programme, mapping geospatial standards to the e-Framework. As part of this work EDINA was encouraged to engage with the international partners involved in e-Framework. This led to a workshop in Canberra in July 2008 where there was an exchange of ideas and discussions on the possibility of further work with e-Framework partners in Australia and New Zealand.

The academic European persistent geospatial testbed being developed by AGILE, EuroSDR (effectively the research arms of the National Mapping and Charting Agencies represented at a European level) and OGC will continue to be a focus of activity for EDINA.

One activity leads to another and it is reasonable to expect that further opportunities for useful, funded international activity will arise. This is particularly with respect with the INSPIRE Directive, where EDINA’s experience of developing and running standards-based geospatial web services is in demand.

SUNCAT

Active participation in the ISSN Network continued. There was also productive contact with national union catalogues of serials, especially across Europe. Contact and discussions took place with OCLC with regard to common areas of interest with regard to management and use of bibliographic data.

Open Access

EDINA has been actively participating in international activity in the open access arena including:

Meetings

• ECDL - Repository Junction and Beyond at the EDINA (UK) National Data Centre presented by Robin Rice, Budapest (September 2007)
• CLOCKSS , New York October 2007 and April 2008

Shibboleth

This initiative, described in more detail in sections 9 and 12 in this report, was necessarily international. Members of the SDSS team worked closely with colleagues in the Internet2 MACE-Shibboleth project, and contributed to the Shibboleth code base. In addition, the team was involved in standards activities and contributed to the development of a new WAYF protocol.