EDINA, being a JISC-designated national datacentre, seeks to enhance the productivity of research, learning and teaching in UK higher education through the delivery of specialist data services.
To sustain and develop a healthy and well-found datacentre, by
To sustain an effective blend of service orientation and development capability, by
To develop and maintain an exceptional IT capability, by
EDINA aims to offer a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week service. Information on planned breaks of service is broadcast to users in advance.
The EDINA Helpdesk is staffed during normal office hours, Monday to Friday. Times during which the Helpdesk is not staffed, such as public holidays, are advertised in advance. It is staffed in a rota system, by the EDINA User Support Team, although duty officers are also drawn from a wider pool within EDINA specifically trained for that purpose. This ensures contingency backup.
The national services included as part of EDINA are funded from several sources, including the University of Edinburgh, and by subscription from UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). A list of subscribing institutions is set out in Appendix 2.
The provision of services for EDINA BIOSIS, EDINA PCI, EDINA Palmer's, EDINA Art Abstracts and EDINA Compendex is funded by JISC; UKBORDERS is funded jointly by ESRC and JISC; SALSER has been funded by contributions from the participating SCURL libraries, following set-up funding from the Scottish Library and Information Committee and the Carnegie Trust. OS Strategi® and CSA ESPMD, INSPEC and CAB Abstracts are funded by direct subscription. These online services are available free at the point of use for UK academic purposes.
All national services supported by EDINA have been grouped within the scope of the Data Library structure of management and operation. The functions necessary for operating the data services offered through EDINA are divided into four: User Support, Service Delivery, Technical Infrastructure and Specialist Support .
The User Support Team is responsible for outreach and promotion, provision of Helpdesk, training and other User Support activities. It provides support to users with enquiries, through effective liaison with academic support staff (mainly librarians) in the HEIs, through documentation and training, and through an online Helpdesk. It also provides a bridge between end-users, their representatives and Data Vendors and provides feedback to the Service Delivery Team. Together with staff from the other national datacentres, they provide a 'public face' to the UK electronic library.
The Service Delivery Team is responsible for ensuring that reliable and user-friendly access is provided to the datasets. This includes the design and implementation of database schema and user interfaces, and updating policy and practice. This Team works closely with the Infrastructure Team, which is responsible for ensuring that the underlying software and hardware platforms work well, ensuring effective liaison with the Facilities Management Division, and also providing specialist programming support as required.
The Facilities Management Division of EUCS provide EDINA with support in the installation, operation and maintenance of the hardware and operating system components of pentlands.ed and pentlands2.ed , the UNIX computing platforms used to host the service, and the connection to the Internet. EUCS manages and operates the largest University-based computing service in the UK and has supported national and regional services since the late 1960s. Edinburgh continues to be a centre of computing and networking excellence, with connections to all major academic networks, including SuperJANET.
EDINA services cover a range of academic disciplines resulting in a heterogeneous userbase and target audiences with different user requirements. Each service is assigned a Service Co-ordinator, charged with ensuring the 'long term health' of that service and carrying out a monitoring role on service performance. However, EDINA cannot always have staff with specialist knowledge in all subjects covered by its databases: such specialist support is therefore sought from appropriate experts, such as the data vendors, relevant University departments and such as the subject-based Information Gateways (e.g. Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL), Organising Medical Networked Information (OMNI). During the past two years we have established good working relationships with the subject-based data organisations, such as the Arts & Humanities Data Service (AHDS), and with other non-JISC organisations in the electronic library, such as the Computing in Teaching Initiatives (CTIs).
EDINA bibliographic and research data services and associated Data Library activities are organised into subject-based 'faculties':
In order to aid navigation of resources, the EDINA services are also categorised by type:
It is also part EDINA's strategy to provide alternative views of the Information Landscape, for example, the data of special relevance to Scotland.
The EDINA national services funded by JISC are delivered by two Sun Enterprise UltraSPARC 4000 servers, named pentlands.ed and pentlands2.ed . These machines are modular and upgradable to system maxima of 14 CPUs, 14 Gb memory and 6Tb of disk. Currently, pentlands is configured with 8 x 167 MHz CPUs and pentlands2 with 4 x 336 MHz CPUs. A number of SUN SPARCstorage arrays, the majority now using newer fibre-channel technology, are dual-attached to both machines. These arrays contain 837Gb of disk. The majority of service databases are protected by RAID technology. Each machine currently has 1Gb of memory.
The principal software used for service delivery are commercially-proven products: BASIS, OCLC SiteSearch, OVID Web Gateway, 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 and was also used to implement a user registration database; OCLC SiteSearch is particularly suited for use within the distributed environment, supporting WWW desktop browser access and Z39.50 v3 interoperability. The OVID software similarly provides web and Z access to bibliographic databases. ARC/INFO is used for geographic information systems (GIS) applications. Ingres is a relational database management system.
Software from Laser-Scan LTD has been purchased to provide the forthcoming Digimap service.
Apache is used as the World Wide Web Server, Perl is used extensively for data processing and in user interfaces, and there is increasing use of Java.
EDINA's policy on provision of documentation and help facilities are outlined in the EDINA's Service Level Definition, which is available from the JISC's Monitoring and Advisory Unit (MAU).
At the end of the previous year, in July 1998, the EDINA Website underwent a major revision, with a view to improving accessibility: specifically, to help users with visual impairments, and to help all users to navigate the site and to identify the services of particular relevance to them. In addition it was our aim to offer attractive Web pages without excluding those with relatively low-tech equipment.
We have thus completed the first full year of the redesigned EDINA Website. Numerous detailed changes and additions have been made, but the basic structure has been found to be satisfactory and has been well received within the academic community.
On the Web pages, EDINA services are organised into subject-based 'faculties' and data types. Links to other information services in the UK Electronic Library are also offered, which alert users to the existence of other services and facilities of relevance.
During the year the following services were announced or launched:
In all these cases, publicity material in the form of the well-established EDINA A5 flyers and A3 posters were produced and distributed. As with our existing services, new services launched during the year were documented by means of A4 fan-folded 'Quick Reference Guides', and with support material on the EDINA Website.
In the previous year online tutorials for a number of EDINA services were published on the Web in HTML format, and as PowerPoint files which can be downloaded and used as training aids by site representatives and other local User Support staff. Since then tutorials have been produced, in the same formats, for the other main EDINA services (to be released in time for the academic session 1999/2000).
All the changes described here were announced in EDINA's quarterly newsletter, Newsline , which continues to play a major role in keeping academic support staff and others with an interest in our services abreast of developments at EDINA. During this year we have started to include articles from individuals in UK academia, to gain a wider perspective on trends in the community and EDINA's role within it.
EDINA operates a helpdesk that acts as the primary point of contact for all enquiries concerning EDINA services and responds to enquiries from both end users and support staff. Helpdesk staff are trained to categorise queries, and to refer them to 'experts' inside and outside EDINA as appropriate. Helpdesk enquiries also form an intrinsic part of our user feedback system for the purpose of future developments.
During the reporting period, EDINA offered a large variety of workshops and seminars covering its bibliographic and geospatial services at various levels. Details are given in Appendix 6.
Three series of training sessions were held, to coincide with releases of new services or upgrades to services. In December 1998 a series of meetings on the 'DNER for Engineering' was timed to coincide with the release of the EDINA Compendex service, and shortly after the launch of the EDINA INSPEC service. In February 1999, a series of BIOSIS workshops was held, shortly after the new 'relational indexing' facilities were added to the EDINA BIOSIS interface. And in June 1999 a further series of engineering workshops was held around the country to introduce users to the latest EDINA Compendex facilities prior to the ending of the parallel running of the BIDS Compendex service.
The workshops held in 1999 were based on the EDINA subject faculties. (This was continued beyond the end of the reporting period, but before the start of the 1999/2000 academic year, with Arts & Humanities and Agriculture & Environment workshops.)
In the previous year EDINA offered free site visits during the summer term, the events being open to local User Support staff or end-users, depending on the site representative's preferences. It should be noted that this offer is still available to all sites making use of EDINA services.
As well as the dedicated EDINA workshops, EDINA presentations and hands-on sessions were included as part of training events organised by other organisations in the UK electronic library, e.g. CADE 99 (Computers in Art Design & Education) in April 1999. Such collaborative seminars fit well into EDINA's policy of taking a more subject based approach to training and of reaching end-users in departments (and are consistent with the ideas developed in EDINA's recent Learning & Teaching "Partners for Change" proposal). EDINA continued to respond positively to invitations from conference and seminar organisers throughout the year.
The UKBORDERS training programme continued with the remit to develop understanding of the uses to which digitised boundary data may be put by users. We presented two workshops jointly with MIDAS, in London (October 1998) and Manchester (November 1998).
We continued to work with the JIBS User Group as an appropriate forum for input from users of EDINA bibliographic services. The Group's mailbase list 'lis-jibs-users' was used in addition to EDINA's own list 'edina-all' to keep users informed of service news. During 1998/99, EDINA staff attended every meeting of the JIBS User Group, and presented reports when invited to do so.
UKBORDERS users received information via the 'edina-ukb' mailbase list and continued to be represented through the ESRC Census Advisory Committee that comprises a broad cross-section of relevant groups within the academic community. In addition, UKBORDERS is represented on the management committee of the ESRC-funded Historical GIS Project at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.
During the year EDINA consulted with User Support staff and other representatives of the user community on issues of development of a Web interface for UKBORDERS (released in September 1998), for the new EDINA Compendex service, and for a major upgrade of the EDINA BIOSIS Telnet interface. In all cases we were successful in including a significant number of end-users in the external field-testing process prior to the release of the service. In particular, for the new EDINA Compendex service a number of active users contributed significantly to the service design, and to its continuing evolution.
Following the marketing and promotional efforts of our first three years as a JISC national datacentre, EDINA is now seen as an established and reliable online service provider among decision makers in the university library community.
We continued our efforts to market our data services to the academic staff and students in the 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. We also continued our co-operation with the data vendors in promoting our services.
Specific challenges during 1998/99 were the promotion of the new EDINA Ei Compendex service and the forthcoming EDINA Digimap service (see also section 6.1). EDINA Ei Compendex is aimed at a sophisticated target audience, with in general considerable experience and expertise in the use of computer technology. The EDINA Digimap service will be of interest to a very wide range of users - geographers are expected to form a small minority. This has implications both for the dissemination of information from EDINA and the nature of local support required. A number of documents publicising the service and addressing these issues have been produced and circulated within the community; this work will continue and develop in the next reporting period.
During the year EDINA identified a number of relevant specialist conferences, and had a presence there (e.g. ARCLIB 99, CADE 99). If this proves to be a worthwhile initiative, it will be pursued.
In addition to the co-operative events described earlier, highlights in EDINA's calendar included:
(A list of conference presentations and exhibitions is given in Appendix 6.)
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 bibliographic services have been fully ATHENS3-compliant for individual level registration and authentication since 1997.
EDINA continues to advocate the use of personal ATHENS user accounts to allow us to offer profiling options. However, EDINA offered access to Ei Compendex from individual and group accounts for a limited period following the its move from BIDS to EDINA. This proved popular with those users who did not require the increased functionality offered through personal accounts. It has since been agreed that access from group accounts would be extended to other bibliographic services, where the vendor permits, but we would hope to encourage and educate users to register individually.
The numbers of institutions subscribing to each service in 1998/99 were:
| Art Abstracts | 31 |
| BIOSIS Previews | 41 |
| EiCompendex | 70 |
| INSPEC | 21 |
| Palmer's Index | 61 |
| PCI | 64 |
| UKBORDERS | 114 |
Log-in statistics are given in Appendix 3.
During 1998/99 the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) has become the centrepiece of the JISC's collections policy. The overall aim of the DNER has been described thus: "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 has striven to develop services to comply with the DNER policy.
In accordance with our policy for acquisitions, and as part of our contribution to building the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), EDINA bibliographic and research data services and associated Data Library activities are organised on the EDINA Web site (http://edina.ed.ac.uk) into subject-based faculty groups:
The purpose of the faculty representation is to allow the end user (staff or student) to view the EDINA services within the perspective of a larger 'information landscape'. Rather than a 'one shop, stop' approach, this alerts the (actual or prospective) user of the EDINA national services, through hot-link pointers, to the existence of other services and facilities of relevance. These include JISC-sponsored services and the subject-based resource discovery facilities, as well as related services.
The third faculty group was introduced to accommodate the two new services, Ei Compendex and INSPEC, acquired by EDINA early in the period covered by this report.
INSPEC, produced by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, is the leading English-language bibliographic information service for international scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology (http://www.iee.org.uk/publish/inspec/).
The CHEST deal for INSPEC followed a new pattern: two subscriptions are required, one to CHEST for the data, and one to a data service provider (DSP). Also, instead of one DSP winning the contract to provide the service to the UK academic community in a competitive tendering exercise, several DSPs were encouraged to fulfil certain criteria in order to qualify to host INSPEC and thereby qualify as JISC Authorised INSPEC Service Providers (JAISPs). The timescale for mounting the service was limited, and the JAISPs were encouraged to seek collaboration with commercial service providers.
EDINA negotiated an agreement with OVID to become a JAISP, and the joint proposal was successful. This guaranteed the timely launch of the new service by combining OVID's tried and tested interface with EDINA's experience in serving UK HEIs. The fact that OVID, like EDINA, relies on the Z39.50 protocol for interoperability offers the opportunity to integrate the EDINA OVID INSPEC service firmly in the DNER.
Ei Compendex®, published by Engineering Information Inc. (Ei), is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering database in the world (http://www.ei.org/eihome/services/cpx/cpx_fact.htm).
Ei Compendex® together with Ei Page One, hosted for the previous five years by BIDS, was subject to a new deal between CHEST and Ei for the next subscription period. Following competitive tendering, the contract to run the Ei Compendex® and Page One service was awarded to EDINA, who put in a joint bid with the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL), hosted by the Heriot Watt University. EDINA intended to launch the service in December 1998. However, by then only a sample of the Ei Compendex® data and no Page One data had been received. The service was officially launched in January 1999. Due to the difficulty for HEI's of introducing a new version of the Ei Compendex service mid-way through the academic year, it was agreed that the BIDS service continue until the end of the academic year.
BIOSIS Inc., who create and supply us with the data for the EDINA BIOSIS service, have made improvements to their data format. The Universal Electronic Format (UEF) includes more detail within each record and some changes in the way the information is presented. The new information includes, for example
Updates for the EDINA BIOSIS service are now all in UEF format.
While we had hoped to provide for searching of old and new format BIOSIS databases at the same time, this was not feasible. Now at the start of a BIOSIS session the user is asked to choose between the old format (1985--1998) or the new format (1993 onwards).
EDINA was formally launched on 25th January 1996. In celebration of our third birthday and because it coincided with a meeting of the EDINA Steering Group, a Burns Supper was arranged for 25th January 1999. This successful event was held in the Edinburgh City Chambers. The Toast to the Haggis was delivered by Derek Law, (Librarian & Director of Information Strategy, University of Strathclyde), Chairman of the EDINA Steering Group and the Immortal Memory was given by Ian Mowat, Librarian of the University of Edinburgh. Other toasts and entertainment preceded a ceilidh, enjoyed by all.
In March, the JISC and Ordnance Survey agreed that EDINA should transform the Digimap eLib Project into a national online mapping service for staff and students throughout UK higher education.
The 'demonstrator' version of Digimap, a system that provides Internet access to Ordnance Survey mapping and digital map data, which was developed at the Data Library as part of the JISC eLib Programme with trial sites at the Universities of Reading, Oxford, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The librarians and other support staff at those universities have done much to make the project a success.
The Digimap Project included a number of accompanying evaluation studies that monitored the experiences of 400 users during the first full academic session, 1997/8. These record the wide variety of purposes to which maps of Great Britain are put in academic research and teaching: perhaps the most surprising fact to emerge is that over 80% of the users in 1997/8 were not geographers. The principal use by staff and students has been to generate maps to view on screen or to send to the user's local printer, although about 20% of the use has been to download digital map data into desktop geographical information systems.
The origins of the Digimap Project lie in initial discussions in 1992 at the British Cartographic Society (BCS) Map Curators' Group, on the problems and opportunities facing university map libraries, as Ordnance Survey large-scale maps became regarded as expensive or were available as digital map data only. We presented follow-up papers in 1994 and 1996. In 1994 we reported on a feasibility study and proposed a solution based on the online data library model, comparable to that offered by the UKBORDERS service. By 1996 we had embarked on the Digimap Project and were able to place the problem within the wider 'post-Follett' context of the challenges and opportunities posed by the electronic library, and the demand for direct access by end-users to networked electronic resources.
In parallel, the JISC and the Ordnance Survey had begun another round of negotiations for UK-wide academic access to the Ordnance Survey digital map data. The results from our evaluation studies, and our experience in handling the Ordnance Survey map data, helped give a focus to those negotiations. In November 1998, the JISC put out Circular 12/98 (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub98/c12_98.html), the response to which indicated sufficient support for a national agreement and progress to the next stage - planning for a national online service over the next five years.
JISC accepted our proposal, recommended by the Committee on Electronic Information (CEI), to transform the Digimap 'demonstrator' into a system capable of sustaining a national service. The proposal calls for the launch of an online service early in 2000. The online service for staff and students in all subscribing HEIs will be preceded by a set-up period in 1999. This will be used for preparation by those providing the national service and for a programme of training and awareness for support staff in the universities which have indicated that they wish to subscribe.
Ordnance Survey datasets provided under the national service are:
A list is given in Appendix 6.
The Data Library is a partner, as manager of SALSER, in CASA (Co-operative Action on Serials and Articles), a three-year two-phase EU Telematics and Libraries Programme project led by the University of Bologna. This project began in January 1997; it is based around the World Register of Serials maintained by the ISSN International Centre in Paris. CASA is designed to provide the users of libraries and information professionals with access to better information about journals and other periodicals. The Data Library's role has been to identify appropriate standards and routing, such as the use of Z39.50 to allow distributed access, and to allow article-level bibliographic descriptions to be linked with information on 'who holds what'.
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 currently IASSIST President, and was previously its Vice President and European Secretary, Alison Bayley is the Assistant Treasurer. IASSIST holds an annual conference in the USA or Canada for 3 years out of 4 and in Europe in the 4th year. The Data Library hosted the conference in Edinburgh in 1993. The 1999 conference was held at Toronto, Canada. The 2000 conference will be held at North West University, Chicago, U.S.A.
There was only one meeting of the EDINA Steering Committee during the year: it was held in Edinburgh on 25th January 1999 under the new chairmanship of Mr Derek Law, Librarian and Director of Information Strategy at Strathclyde University. (The former Chairman, Professor John Darby, demitted office following the previous meeting of the Committee on 16th March 1998.) The Committee includes representation from the JISC, MAU, UKOLN, JIBS User group, and Edinburgh University, as well as individual members of the UK academic community. At the January 1999 meeting a review of EDINA's progress in the previous year was presented. This detailed service revisions, new services, and service development plans.
The EDINA Management Group meets several times a year under the chairmanship of Richard Field, Vice Principal, Academic Services & Information Strategy, to consult and advise the Director about the general direction and strategy for EDINA. After guidance from the MAU, the role of the EDINA Management Board has become more active.
Accounts information is not available from this online document
In planning for the future, EDINA has a number of challenges and opportunities consistent with its mission and strategic aims.
The first is associated with services in the 'traditional' area of the 'digital library'. For this, EDINA will seek to add to its portfolio of specialist bibliographic datasets, going beyond this to establish its role with respect to services which help users locate, request and access services on the full text of articles. This requires active discussions about the relation between EDINA and NESLI, the National Electronic Site Licensing Initiative.
A second major challenge for EDINA is to expand its research data and geographic data services - 'to put data into the digital library'. This has been a continuing challenge for EDINA and the Data Library, reflecting international concerns on how best to provide researchers with access to research data. It has particular significance given the launch in January 2000 of EDINA Digimap, the national service providing access to on-line mapping based on Ordnance Survey data.
Being based in the Data Library, EDINA has an extensive understanding of the needs and support requirements of users with regard to research data. However, the experience of the eLib Digimap Project is that these resources can be made accessible to a much wider constituency, motivating widespread IT literacy as well as the adoption of 'information skills'. A good working relationship has been developed between EDINA/Data Library and a variety of research data providers, and we plan to build on this.
The EDINA Digimap National Service Version 1 of the service will be available from January 2000 and will comprise a simple mapping capability and a separate facility for downloading Ordnance Survey data. An enhanced Java-based version will be available from September 2000.
The simple client interface will allow access to digital mapping via standard web browsers, in line with our policy of maximising accessibility. Users will be able to view maps centred on their areas of interest and print the maps directly from their browser. Maps will be available under this service at pre-determined scales (views). The Digimap project trial sites have reported that this service is very easy to use and requires very little support.
"It's perfect for students who just want an A4 map to put in their project or assignment. It's so easy to print from that they find it wonderful (and I must say I agree with them)."
-Linda Kelly, Site Representative, University of Newcastle
The facility for downloading Ordnance Survey data files will also be available from January 2000. Strategi®, Meridian™ and Land-Form PANORAMA™ will be available in Neutral Transfer Format (NTF) and Digital Exchange Format (DXF). Land-Line.Plus® will be available in NTF format only. As users of the Digimap trial sites have encountered some problems importing the NTF data into application packages, we will seek ways to resolve these. Digimap will provide information and links to tools to assist with the conversion of NTF data so that it can be loaded into standard geographical information systems (GIS) application packages.
The Java-based advanced service, Digimap Pro, will be available to all subscribing sites from September 2000. The advanced service meets the needs of more expert users, as it delivers greater functionality to the desktop and allows the production of high quality customised cartographic products. Again, users will be able to save the maps and print them locally.
In the EDINA strategy document for 1999/2000, we indicated a longer term challenge, namely that we wished to make our services inter-operate with other research data services in the HE community, as well as with the other electronic library resources making up the DNER. We stand by our statement that "Distributed access is the key. Data should stay with the owner/holder and be accessed remotely, processed and integrated for use by the user via distributed DBMS". The decision by CEI to designate funding to begin to realise the DNER is welcomed, and EDINA expects to rise to the challenge and help fulfil the goal. This will enhance usability, recognising that staff and students wish to move along the (MODELS) discover® locate® request® access chain, using references found within discovery facilities to link to services on the information objects described: full text of journal articles, images, research datasets, etc. By building on experience with SALSER and project work on identifiers (with CASA, and the ISSN International Centre), we seek a strategic national role in the provision of search and locate services for serials and articles. This has applicability to other 'information objects', such as images and sound files.
We intend to integrate bibliographic information and research datasets within a coherent framework of structured metadata and technical interoperability. However, because the database technology adopted by, for example, GIS vendors - OO, and RDBMS such as Oracle - is different from that being used within the DNER, interoperability between electronic library resources and research data services will be restricted. A technological framework needs to be developed to access and integrate information from all the available sources in a timely and useful fashion. There are related issues concerning the applicability of competing and emerging protocols and standards, e.g. XML/RDF.
Particular attention is to be paid to how EDINA's services can enhance productivity in learning and teaching. Currently the focus is on serving the needs of UK higher education. However, as a national datacentre EDINA is willing to respond to the challenge of providing services that meet the needs of further education and the demands of life-long learning, as well continuing to meet the requirements of scholarship and the wider world of research.
A further challenge, and opportunity, is that posed by the emergence and importance of sub-UK and regional focuses of activity. The development of most relevance to EDINA is clearly that of the Scottish Parliament, following on that of the creation and policy operation of SHEFC. EDINA is increasingly being approached to act as the Scottish Datacentre, as it has the requisite range of resources and experience in providing on-line data services, and has some guarantee of continued existence.
The overriding challenge is that of collaborative inter-working with our partners to deliver cost-effective and salient services to our principal 'market': staff and students in UK higher education. This includes working with other datacentres, with the RDN faculty hubs and, most notably, with other academic support staff.
| Bibliographic data | |
| EDINA Art Abstracts | On-line access to the Art Abstracts database, which contains bibliographic references and abstracts of articles from 280 periodicals - journals, yearbooks and museum bulletins - published in English and other major languages, from 1984 to the present. Art Abstracts is published by H.W. Wilson. |
| EDINA BIOSIS | On-line access to the BIOSIS Previews database covering data from 1985 onwards. BIOSIS Previews is the 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. |
| EDINA Ei Compendex and Ei Page One | Ei Compendex®, produced by Engineering Information Inc. (Ei) is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering information database in the world, with over 3 million summaries of journal articles and conference proceedings, and 220,000 new additions every year. Ei Page One gives the user access to tables of contents in world engineering literature. EDINA provides online access to Ei Compendex® for higher education institutions throughout the UK and Ireland. |
| EDINA INSPEC | INSPEC is produced by the Institution of Electrical Engineers and is 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 |
| EDINA Palmer's Index to The Times | On-line access to the Palmer's Index to the Times, the only index to articles in the Times for every issue from October 1790 to December 1905 (After which the indexing of the Times was continued as The Official Index of the Times). Palmer's is published by Chadwyck-Healey |
| EDINA PCI | On-line access to the Periodicals Contents Index (PCI) for the periodical literature in their academic disciplines. It contains information from the tables of contents of thousands of English and other European language journals, from their date of issue to 1990. PCI is published by Chadwyck-Healey. |
| EDINA SALSER | On-line access to the 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. The purpose of SALSER is to facilitate access to information on serials and thereby ensure their fuller and more effective use by students and researchers in Scotland. |
| CAB Abstracts | CAB Abstracts is a bibliographic database compiled by CAB International. It 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. |
| ESPMD | On-line access to the Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management Database, which provides abstracts and references to the literature covering all areas of air, land, water, and noise pollution as well as bacteriology, ecology, toxicology, risk assessment, environmental engineering, environmental biotechnology, waste management, and water resources. ESPMD is published by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. |
| Geographical information systems | |
| EDINA UKBORDERS | UKBORDERS, the UK Boundary Outline and Reference Database for Education and Research Study, offers the UK higher education community access to the most comprehensive database of UK digitised boundaries available. The boundary data on offer include coverages relating to population census, administrative, electoral and postal areas. Census areas include, for 1981, Ward (England & Wales) and Postcode Sector (Scotland); while, for 1991, access is provided to boundaries measured at a finer resolution: about 150,000 Census EDs/OAs, over 130,000 unit postcodes (Scotland) and a variety of higher-order boundaries constructed from these basic units, including Wards (England & Wales) and Postcode Sectors (Scotland). UKBORDERS also hosts a large and growing number of historical boundary data relating to the 19th and 20th centuries, including Registration Districts (England & Wales) and Civil Parishes (Scotland) and the higher order boundaries for which these can be used as building blocks. |
| OS Strategi® | Off-line access to OS Strategi® , the digital representation of the Ordnance Survey‚s Travelmaster® map series. It is a geometrically structured 1:250 000 scale vector database that defines real world geographic entities (objects) as point and line features. |
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| Academic Services Information | Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Anglia Polytechnic University | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| Aston University | UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Bath College of Higher Education | UKBorders | |
| Bath Spa University College | Art Abstracts | |
| Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) | BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Babraham Institute | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Horticulture Research International | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Animal Health, Compton | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Animal Health, Pirbright | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Animal Health, Neuropathogenesis Unit | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Arable Crops Research | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Arable Crops Research, Rothamsted | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Food Research, Norwich | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Food Research, Reading | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| John Innes Centre | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Roslin Institute | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Silsoe Research Institute | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Bournemouth University | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Bradford and Ilkley Community College | Art Abstracts | |
| Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education | Compendex | |
| Brunel, The University of West London | UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Canterbury Christ Church College | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| Central Science Laboratory | BIOSIS | |
| Charing Cross & Westminster Medical School | UKBorders | |
| Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| Chester College of Higher Education | PCI, Palmer's | |
| City University | UKBorders | |
| Cranfield University | UKBorders | |
| De Montfort University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| Derby University | UKBorders | |
| Dundee University | UKBorders | |
| Edge Hill University College | PCI, Palmer's | |
| Edinburgh College of Art | UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| Falmouth College of Arts | Art Abstracts | |
| Friends of the Earth | UKBorders | |
| Glasgow Caledonian University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Glasgow School of Art | Art Abstracts | |
| Goldsmiths College | Art Abstracts | |
| Heriot-Watt University | BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Imperial Cancer Research Fund | UKBorders | |
| Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine | UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Institute of Education | UKBorders | |
| Institute of Historical Research | UKBorders | |
| Keele University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorderso | |
| Kent Institute of Art and Design | Art Abstracts | |
| King Alfred's College | PCI, Palmer's | |
| Kings College London | Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| Kingston University | UKBorders | |
| Lancaster University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Liverpool John Moores University | PCI, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| London Guildhall University | UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| The London Institute | Art Abstracts | |
| London Research Centre | UKBorders | |
| London School of Economics & Political Science | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | UKBorders | |
| Loughborough University | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Manchester Metropolitan University | BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Middlesex University Higher Education Corporation | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Napier University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| National Foundation for Educational Research | UKBorders | |
| Natural Environment Research Council | BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Institute of Freshwater Ecology | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| British Antarctic Survey | BIOSIS | |
| British Geological Survey | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory | BIOSIS | |
| Institute of Hydrology | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| Institute of Terrestrial Ecology | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| Plymouth Marine Laboratory | BIOSIS | |
| Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory | BIOSIS | |
| Southampton Oceanography Centre | BIOSIS | |
| Nene College | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| North East Wales Institute | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| Nottingham Trent University | BIOSIS, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Oxford Brookes University | UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Plymouth University | UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| Queen Mary & Westfield College | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Queens University Belfast | BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication | Art Abstracts | |
| Robert Gordon University | Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Royal Holloway, University of London | PCI, Palmer's | |
| School of Oriental and African Studies | Ukborders | |
| Sheffield Hallam University | Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Sheffield University | Palmer's, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London | Ukborders | |
| Southbank University | Ukborders | |
| Southampton University | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Staffordshire University | UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Surrey Institute of Art and Design | Art Abstracts | |
| Swansea Institute of Higher Education | PCI, Palmer's | |
| The Open University | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| Thomas Danby College | Ukborders | |
| Trinity College, Dublin | INSPEC | |
| Trinity & All Saints University College | PCI, Palmer's | |
| United Medical & Dental Schools of Guy's & St Thomas's Hospitals | Ukborders | |
| University of Abertay Dundee | Ukborders | |
| University of Aberdeen | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Bath | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| University of Birmingham | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Bradford | PCI, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Brighton | PCI, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Bristol | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| University of Cambridge | PCI, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| University of Central England | BIOSIS | |
| University of Central Lancashire | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| University College, Chichester | Art Abstracts | |
| University College, Cork | Compendex | |
| University College London | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Birkbeck College | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University College of Ripon and York St John | PCI | |
| University of Durham | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of East Anglia | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of East London | Palmer's, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Edinburgh | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex, INSPEC | |
| Bush Agriculture Library & Information Centre | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Hannah Research Institute | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Macaulay Land Use Research Institute | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| Moredun Research Institute | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Rowett Research Institute | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Scottish Crop Research Institute | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, Compendex | |
| Universities and Colleges Admissions Service | Ukborders | |
| University of Essex | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| University of Exeter | Palmer's, BIOSIS, Art Abstracts | |
| University of Glamorgan | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Glasgow | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Greenwich | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Compendex | |
| University of Hertfordshire | UKBorders, Art Abstracts, Compendex | |
| University of Hull | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Huddersfield | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Kent at Canterbury | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Leeds | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Lincolnshire and Humberside | Ukborders | |
| University of Liverpool | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of London Computer Centre | PCI, Palmer's | |
| University of Luton | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Manchester & UMIST | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders, Art Abstracts | |
| University of Newcastle | Ukborders | |
| University of Nottingham | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Oxford | PCI, UKBorders | |
| University of Paisley | Ukborders | |
| University of Portsmouth | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Reading | PCI, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Salford | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of St Andrews | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Stirling | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Strathclyde | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Sunderland | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS | |
| University of Surrey | Ukborders | |
| University of Sussex | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Teesside | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of the West of England | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Ulster | BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Wales, Aberystwyth | PCI, Palmer's, Ukborders | |
| University of Wales, Bangor | PCI, Palmer's, BIOSIS, UKBorders | |
| University of Wales, Cardiff | Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Wales, Lampeter | Ukborders | |
| University of Wales, Newport | Art Abstracts | |
| University of Wales, Swansea | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Warwick | PCI, Palmer's, UKBorders | |
| University of Westminster | BIOSIS | |
| University of Wolverhampton | Ukborders | |
| Worcester College of Higher Education | Ukborders | |
| Writtle Agricultural School | Ukborders | |
| University of York | PCI, BIOSIS, UKBorders |
Digital Resources for the Humanities, Glasgow University
British Cartographic Society Conference, Keele University
GEOCOMP, Bristol University
CHART conference: ADAM launch, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Society of Cartographers, Edinburgh University
ESRC Census Advisory Committee, Manchester University
Social Science History Association Annual Conference, Chicago
Census Output Working Group, London
Information for Scotland, Glasgow
International Online 98, London
Libtech Exhibition, London
UKSG conference, UMIST, Manchester
BURISA, Birmingham
GISRUK 99, Southampton
IASSIST, Ottawa, Canada
Library and Information Show, Birmingham
UKOLUG meeting for Engineering, Edinburgh
ARCLIB 99, Strathclyde University
UKOLUG meeting - information sources for Biomedicine, London
Copy right Clearance for Print, Broadcast and Multimedia Production, BUFVC, London
SUN Java Programming Course, Glasgow
Scottish Devolution Meeting, Edinburgh
Site Licensing and Consortia Seminar
Library Resources Sharing and Discovery BL conference Centre, London
New approaches to Info Skills with C&IT, Edinburgh
Beyond 2000, Burisa conference, Birmingham
EDULIB/SALCTG workshop
SUN Java programming course, Glasgow
UKUUG linux event, Birmingham
UKOLUG Bibliographic software Day, Birmingham
Explore 99 -CTILIS conference, Loughborough
1881 Census Workshop, Essex
Mailbase list owners workshop, Newcastle University
Accessing and Visualising Census Data, Manchester University
DNER for Engineering at Imperial College, Nottingham Trent University and Edinburgh University
Introducing INSPEC, workshop in Edinburgh for Napier, Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities, Edinburgh University
BIOSIS workshop's at Edinburgh University, King's College London, University of Manchester.
UKOLUG, Oxford University
CADE99, Teesside University
Engineering resources, Loughborough University
Engineering workshops, Strathclyde University, Imperial College, Nottingham Trent University