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Lorraine Estelle, JISC Collections CEO on how EDINA and JISC Collections work together.

I thought I’d start of with a bit of a background. You’ve all heard Peter talking about the history of Digimap, the emails from JISC and its predecessor, and things have changed quite a lot, but some things really haven’t changed at all. *Laughs* So, this is a bit of background about how we really collaborate today. JISC funds the Digimap service and EDINA of course is a JISC data centre. JISC collections, once a team within JISC responsible for licensing agreements, is now also a JISC service. So collaboratively we work together, funding the service, licensing the service, and so on. And I think that very much sums up a lot about Digimap. It really is a very collaborative service, EDINA of course, but working with colleagues in JISC with our geospatial working group of which Chris Rusbridge chaired for a number of years, and of course with our licensing colleagues.

JISC collections role, I guess is a bit of the oily rag. We get to all the boring things. We negotiate the license agreements. And Nick Groom and I were just saying outside when we were having our coffee, that this is a life long project and we never really finish licensing negotiations. But very much, that is JISC collections primary role, to licence those agreements for the data sets which EDINA provide to the community. And also collections building, and collections building is very much again a collaborative operation, working with colleagues in EDINA who are the experts after all in the area, and also again taking advice of our very wonderful geospatial working group about how we build up the data sets that EDINA provide. And I always should say that Mimas…*laughs*…Carrie’s looking at me rather crossly there! *laughs* Mimas also provide in the area of geospatial data.

Peter just now was also talking about this magic 36 subscribing institutions that we had to have in order to go ahead and so on. And of course sustainability is a big issue for the services just as much today as it was back then. Of course in terms of institutional take-up of Digimap we’ve gone way, way past 36, and almost every university across the UK now has a subscription to Digimap and indeed a number of FE colleges also use Digimap now, and possibly schools, and I’m sure I’ll talk about that a bit later – Emma’s nodding. But JISC collections is very much involved in the sustainability of the business and insuring that we have a subscription income that sustains us into the future. Of course Peter talked about the original Ordnance Survey licensing agreement and how difficult that was to negotiate – we finally got there. But of course, since those days we have now other services that we are providing and license agreements with the British Geological Survey with NERC for the geological data, with Landmark for the historic data and with SeaZone for the marine data. And again, if we thought the Ordnance Survey license was difficult, these have all proved testing in their time – but we have them, and of course it does mean that, as Peter said, Digimap is not only about Ordnance Survey data, it’s a whole range of services now.

So, developments and what we’re going to do, going forward, thinking about the future, or of EDINA. Some of us were at a seminar yesterday and I think at that seminar the issues around licensing for geospatial resources must have come up about fifteen times during the three hours solid of presentations that we listened to. And one of the things that we really have to do – and will continue to do – is to work on making to licenses for the data sets more effective, making them simpler, and standardising the licenses across all the data sets that EDINA provide. Now that isn’t an easy task, because we do have to protect the intellectual property of the rights owners. And I think we’ve gone a long way in making those licenses more simple, and more effective for institutional users - but still a lot to be done.

Collections building. This is still very much on the horizon, and a very important part of thinking about the future. And we were really delighted last year to add to the historic data with the historical town plans which we licensed from Landmark, and they became part of the service last year. And the current economic climate of course sustaining the business model and this becomes even more important. And, we can only reach sustainability with the full buy-in of our academic community. And, we spent December talking on the telephone to every single university that uses Digimap and talking to them about subscription model, pricing model, the licensing model for the future. And we’ve got an enormous amount of feedback from that consultation – pages, and pages, and pages. In a way I think that really demonstrates the communities engagement with Digimap. The fact that when we went out there and asked the questions about the business model, we got such engagement and such good feedback. So, all I would say on that score, is we are working through all that and we will keep everybody informed. And of course we will be working with EDINA in thinking about how that might work.

So, I think when I was asked to come here and speak today, I was asked about – to address – JISC collections ongoing commitment to EDINA. Well, I can say that we do have very much an ongoing commitment. I attend quite a lot of international consortia conferences and I meet people in a similar position in countries all over the world and invariably they are just amazed at what we have achieved in this country and really wish that they had their own EDINA and their own supply of geospatial information. So, I wouldn’t be able to boast about that unless I kept up my ongoing commitment to EDINA and of course collaboration with our colleagues at EDINA.

Funding opportunities of course are all a bit uncertain at the moment, but when opportunities arise to acquire new data sets that is still very much part of our agenda and our plans for the future. And of course to work with the IPR owners, with Ordnance Survey, British Geological Society, SeaZone, and Landmark, to develop our licenses, to standardise them, to make them simpler and more effective. And I must say here, we have worked very collaboratively on achieving a lot so far, and I’m sure we’re going to go a bit further still. *Waves* Just waving to them all there. And of course, we will continue as always to consult with the users of Digimap about how we sustain it into the future. So I think that just leaves me to say before I hand over to my colleague Rachel Bruce from JISC, to my EDINA colleagues- happy and well deserved 10th anniversary. And of course, it would be delightful as well, if you could pass those wishes onto David who is in New Zealand and of course I include him. So thank you very much.