April 2005: Volume 10.1
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The launch of SUNCAT as a 'pilot service' was celebrated by the JISC and a grand array of Library on 15 February at a symposium in central London. The mood was upbeat, with the number of serial records in SUNCAT topping 4 million, contributed by 22 of the UK's largest university and research libraries, the scope of SUNCAT expanded to include the British Library, National Library of Wales and National Library of Scotland and data from the CONSER database and the ISSN Register.
As the 'key online UK facility for serials', SUNCAT will assist researchers and librarians in the discovery, location and access of serial material, typically journals but including newspapers, annual reports and other 'ongoing publications'. SUNCAT will also assist libraries upgrade local records with standardised and high-quality bibliographic records.
Presiding at the symposium, Derek Law, Chair of the SUNCAT Steering Committee, stressed the significance of SUNCAT as having "the potential to lift the level of serials records of all libraries up to an unprecedented level", and Andrew Green (National Library of Wales) emphasised SUNCAT's importance for the wider definition of researcher, and for legal deposit.
The JISC have now given the go-ahead for SUNCAT Phase 2. During the calendar years 2005 and 2006, SUNCAT will move from its pilot test stage to become established as a full service, with continuously increasing coverage of other university and specialist research libraries and with increased functionality. The parallel set of development activities are geared to including information on 'open access' journals and to tackling tricky issues about standard ways to represent information on electronic subscription: with joint project work on the Electronic Rights Management Initiative (ERMI) carried out by the US Digital Library Federation and Onix for Serials by the NISO/EDItEUR Working Group. The SUNCAT Project Team is keen to make contact with library staff and projects with interests in taking this further, as the development of SUNCAT will be fully integrated with other serials-focussed activity in JISC Information Environment.
SUNCAT is very much a collaborative venture, with Associate Partners acting as guides and playing a key role in testing procedures during Phase One, and with excellent commitment and cooperation from contributing partners, including the British Library who have increased staffing to advance the assignment of ISSNs. The SUNCAT Team is now establishing comparable relationships with up to fifty more contributing libraries.
SUNCAT has been developed at the University of Edinburgh by EDINA and Edinburgh University Library in partnership with ExLibris, providing and adapting the Aleph 500 software.
EMOL free until 2007
EDINA is delighted to announce that JISC has confirmed that the Education Media OnLine (EMOL) service will be free to institutional subscribers until 31 July 2007.
The term of the EMOL sub-licence will be extended accordingly. Existing subscribers need take no action now. Details of the procedure for extending the sub-licence will be circulated in due course.
New collections
In the first three months of 2005 the first titles from two new collections were added to EMOL: Royal Mail Film Classics and Digital Himalaya.
EMOL's Royal Mail Film Classics is a selection of 16 hours of films from one of the finest UK collections of documentary, public information, animation and industrial film, covering subjects ranging across transport and communications in Britain and abroad, the Home Front during the Second World War, British industries from fishing to mining, the nation's health - and developments in the Post Office service itself. Credits for the films include some of the best-known names in the British documentary movement, including Alberto Cavalcanti and Humphrey Jennings.
Digital Himalaya in EMOL is a selection of approximately 50 hours of material from one of the best ethnographic film collections documenting Himalayan cultures, which was created by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, who lived and worked as an anthropologist throughout the Himalayas from the 1930s through to the 1980s. Digital Himalaya also includes footage from other parts of the world, such as Mexico.
Using EMOL videos in science teaching
EDINA is also currently working with subject specialists to investigate current and potential use of the films and videos in EMOL in teaching. At a recent EMOL seminar, representatives from the HE Academy Subject Centres in Physical Sciences, Engineering, Materials and Life Sciences volunteered to commission reviews of EMOL films and videos in their subject areas, in order to evaluate how the films and videos could be used in teaching.
The outcomes of this review exercise will inform the development of the EMOL service, in particular how the EMOL films and videos can be used in current teaching practice.
Teaching colleagues will be invited to a joint workshop in June 2005, to present examples of current practice of using video in teaching. In support of this, we are keen to obtain or assist the production of case studies of the use of EMOL films and videos.
If you are interested in any aspect of this work, or If you have any queries about other aspects of the EMOL service, please contact the Helpdesk or telephone 0131-650 3302.
by: Alison Bayley (EDINA)
IASSIST, the International Association of Social Science Information Service & Technology, is the international organisation for professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences. This year it holds its annual conference in the UK.
IASSIST conferences have brought together data professionals, data producers and data analysts from around the world for over thirty years. Every four years the conference meets in Europe. The last time it met in the UK was in 1993 in Edinburgh; it does so again, from 25th to 27th May 2005, hosted by Edinburgh University Data Library with assistance from EDINA.
This year's conference is held jointly with IFDO, the International Federation of Data Organisation. Its theme is Evidence & Enlightenment, and it will be of interest to staff in libraries, data archives, statistical agencies, computing services, academic departments, research centres, government departments and non-profit organisations.
The conference is the forum for discussing both new and persistent issues relating to access to data, documentation of data, and digital preservation, with special (but not exclusive) emphasis on the social sciences. There are clear overlaps with digital curation, data publishing, and e-science and cyberinfrastructure initiatives.
The conference and a preceding workshop run from 24 to 27 May in the Holyrood Hotel, the National eScience Centre, the University of Edinburgh and Dynamic Earth.
Participation from colleagues across the UK would be very welcome; for more information see http://datalib.ed.ac.uk/iassist/.
A new feature is being added to the Education Image Gallery (EIG) service hosted at EDINA that will enable individual users to create and organise their own personal collections of EIG images.
Called "My Albums" and available from anywhere within EIG, the new function is similar to the use of document folders in word-processing packages. Users can create, rename or delete their own "albums" of images, in which they can store (and delete) EIG images of their choice. EDINA believes that My Albums will prove an invaluable tool for using EIG images in learning, teaching and research.
My Albums is available only to users logging into EIG via individual Athens accounts. My Albums is unavailable to users logging into EIG via Direct (IP) access because this form of access does not identify individuals, only groups.
If you have any queries about My Albums or any aspect of the EIG service, please contact the Helpdesk or telephone 0131-650 3302.
EDINA has announced the launch of the SDSS Development Federation, which provides an infrastructure that enables institutions to investigate the use of Shibboleth technology for authentication and authorisation. This technology enables a user to access national resources by using local institutional credentials.
Membership of the federation is open to any institution, but is initially intended for use by those participating in the JISC Core Middleware Programme (including development projects and early adopters). The SDSS project (Shibboleth Development and Support Services) is itself funded under this Programme and will be operational for its duration.
The SDSS federation currently contains a number of institutional (origin) members, and a variety of EDINA-hosted and MIMAS-hosted bibliographic (target) resources.
Both MIMAS and EDINA are in the process of converting all their JISC-funded services, so over the next few months many more services will be added to those already available.
Institutions and projects can benefit from membership of the SDSS Development Federation in a number of ways:
To join, please visit the SDSS web site at http://sdss.ac.uk, where full details on membership of the federation are available.
A new version of the GetRef cross searching (federated search) tool will be released this summer.
GetRef allows users to execute a simple search across many different databases.
The new version of GetRef offers improved useability, with an entirely new mechanism for presenting the search results from multiple databases. Accessibility has been paid great attention, and this version offers full functionality with non-visual browsers. GetRef is fully compatible with Athens, including single sign on (SSO) and devolved authentication (DA) mechanisms.
The key feature of GetRef is that it has been designed specifically to help users find out about the services to which their library subscribes: the user interface displays summary results for the target databases, allowing users to compare and contrast results sets from each.
GetRef offers links direct to the "native" interface of all databases, encouraging users with more advanced requirements to utilize the specialized facilities of each database.
Participating institutions are asked to nominate the databases they would like to access via GetRef, and to supply login credentials for those which are not Athens compliant (in the same way that access would be set up for a desktop client, such as EndNote).
Institutional branding may also be added to the GetRef user interface.
Institutions with an interest in GetRef should contact edina@ed.ac.uk; a free trial can be arranged, and GetRef can be used as a service without charge until at least summer 2006.
Plans are under way to open up the JORUM in June this year. The JORUM is the JISC-funded national repository for learning and teaching materials, that will be provided as a free online service. The aim of JORUM is to promote the sharing, re-use and re-purposing of resources amongst Further and Higher Education Institutions in the UK.
This community venture needs your support. The JORUM Contributor Service begins on 1 June 2005, opening up the JORUM as a digital storage facility for any institution or project team that chooses to share its learning and teaching materials with colleagues in the UK. The initial purpose was to host materials that had been developed with public funding but this is now extended to materials developed with institutional funding. The JORUM Depositor Licence is now available. If you are interested in contributing materials to JORUM, please contact the EDINA Helpdesk. We will arrange to send you the Depositor Licence and give you further information about the Contributor Service.
The JORUM will also be opened up to allow download of the learning and teaching materials. There will be a JORUM Repository Licence, which will have to be signed by institutions that wish to allow their teaching and support staff to preview and download materials from the repository. This service will be free and access will be via Athens.
The exact date for opening up the download facilities has not yet been fixed by the JISC. Register your interest and we will let you know as soon as the JORUM Repository Licence is available for signing by your institutions and the date from which your staff can get access to the download facilities. We will be looking to Contributor Institutions to help us test the download facilities.
Further information is at http://www.jorum.ac.uk.
The Joint Board set up to oversee the development and successful launch of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland service has now entrusted EDINA with the long-term archival care and continuing provision of the service. The Editorial Board will continue, under the guidance of Dr Ann Matheson who acts as Hon. Editor, to assist the development of the service. A new version, with a major re-work of the user interface and additional features will be released later this year.
The full service will now be available to all institutions on a subscription basis, where the intention is to cover running costs of hosting. Basic access to the pages will continue free-to-web.
The subscription service offers a range of search and display features for the scanned pages and underlying text. In addition the interface contains maps, tables and other related data from the volumes.
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland are a key historic resource, and in two series illuminates Scotland at the time of the industrial revolution.
For further information about the service, or to request a trial, go to http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/access or email edina@ed.ac.uk.
The EuroGlobalMap trial service offers a seamless digital map dataset for Europe at a scale of 1:1 million.
Users can view and download for free Europe-wide data provided by EuroGeographics, an organisation representing the majority of Europe's national mapping agencies.
Its small scale means EuroGlobalMap data will be of most use for background mapping, for example as contextual data for use in remotely sensed imagery captured at regional or global scales.
EuroGlobalMap is part of a global initiative run by the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM), as a response of the global mapping community to Agenda 21, adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
A feedback form is provided on the web site, and we look forward to receiving comments from the user community on the usefulness of this data. The data will be available until September 2005 in the first instance.
Digimap Historic, a pilot service to provide online access to the valuable Landmark Historic Ordnance Survey map collection (see Newsline 9.4) will be launched at the JISC Conference on Tuesday 12 April 2005. A workshop on Digimap Historic will also be held at the conference. JISC are offering a 20% discount on a subscription in the first part year and first full year for current Digimap subscribers.
Details of the licence and subscription charges are available on the JISC Collections web site.
Until recently, special provision had to be made for Athens group accounts that wished to use the EDINA Z39.50 targets, due to a deficiency in the underlying software.
This problem has now been overcome and Athens group (access) accounts can now log on to these Z39.50 targets from any IP address that is valid for the Athens group account.
In addition to several forthcoming training courses, EDINA will be exhibiting at the following conferences, to demonstrate its services: