June 2006: Volume 11.2
> All stories on one page
In this issue:
From the start of the next academic year, 2006/2007, the Education Media OnLine service (EMOL) will have a new name: Film & Sound Online.
EDINA is not only updating the look-and-feel of the user interface for Film & Sound Online but is also adding important functionality. The key improvement is that users of Film & Sound Online will be able to browse by subject, as all the service content is being classified through the UNESCO thesaurus.
Other new features will include a "Lucky Dip", which will offer users a random selection of the service content.
EDINA will also explore other ways of improving Film & Sound Online, such as a forum, where Film & Sound Online users can exchange ideas and information about their experience of the service and its content - watch this space for further announcements!
Film & Sound Online will be available under the current EMOL licensing terms, ie free of charge to licensed institutions until 31 July 2007.
For further information, contact the EDINA Helpdesk.
EDINA is currently commissioning authors to create case studies and film trails using EMOL/Film & Sound Online materials. The case studies are for use in Higher Education but the thematic film trails, which do not have to be directly related to the curriculum, are intended for a more general audience - first-year undergraduate level. A fee of £500 is offered for each completed case study or film trail.
The Culverhouse Classical Music Collection has been added to Education Media OnLine ( soon to be Film & Sound Online). This is a new collection of music and scores to support media studies, media production, music, the performing arts and creative industries.
The Culverhouse Classical Music Collection comprises over 50 hours of downloadable, copyright-free classical music, and some associated scores, from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including works by famous composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Handel, Haydn, Liszt and Mozart, as well as less-celebrated pieces by composers such as Granados, Litolff and Warlock. For ease of use, the pieces are downloadable in smaller sections, such as movements.
"The launch of the Culverhouse collection marks a very important step in provision for music and the creative arts," says Celia Duffy, Head of Research, National Centre for Research in the Performing Arts, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. & #34;For the first time, students, teachers, and researchers can not only play recordings, but can work directly with them without anxieties about rights. I look forward to some really innovative applications - this opens great possibilities for both on and off-line creativity."
As with existing EMOL collections, users are permitted to extract sections of the Culverhouse material for delivery in VLEs or on disc, relieving pressure on hard-pressed libraries, allowing staff and students to download and burn customised CDs, while librarians will be able to replace any that go missing.
The unique feature within EMOL of this collection, however, is that manipulation and editing of downloaded music and scores is permitted. In addition to EMOL's usual Windows Media Player and QuickTime formats, the music is available as WAV and MP3 files. Users are permitted to repurpose the files, including stretching or compressing the music, looping user-defined sections, and altering the pitch as well as using any future software developments.
The files can also be used to accompany film clips, although permission should be obtained from the film-owners beforehand.
The collection is licensed from the renowned producer Brian Culverhouse, who, after 20 years at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios, has worked independently for 30 years with many famous performers. The British Universities Film & Video Council created the encodings and metadata for this collection.
Full details of the collection:
A new document has been added to the SDSS (Shibboleth Development and Support Services) document register. It contains proposals covering technical, policy and organisational issues which have been developed within the SDSS project and are recommended for the UK Access Management Federation.
Institutions, publishers, service providers and other interested parties are invited to attend the UK Access Management Federation Showcase in London on 18 July 2006. The event will showcase national and international development work and give all attendees a clear idea of the requirements and benefits of adopting federated access management.
Lead with a vision statement, they said: imagine the contents of the JISC Information Environment (JISC IE) accessible via a virtual globe. Zoom to your area of interest. Typing in a search term, together with a post code, county or a country, you are 'flown' to that area on the globe and with a click, you can access pictures, movies, journal articles, historical maps, and teaching and learning materials.
No, this is not an advert for Google Earth, although Google deserves credit for popularising geographic access to so much that is spatial. The purpose here is to alert representatives of the JISC user community and other JISC service providers to two things.
First, much of the metadata describing information available through JISC services and projects contains references to location in one way or another. This applies to nearly all services, and to much that is being digitised and held in digital repositories. That became very apparent when EDINA assisted the British Library in geo-tagging digital objects in their Sense of Place project. Second, JISC has been funding the development of GeoCrossWalk as a shared service to help JISC service providers make use of the hidden geography in the data and metadata to which they provide access: enabling services to be geo-smart and geo-enabling the JISC IE.
At the heart of GeoCrossWalk is a database of geographical features, like towns, rivers, roads, administrative areas. It stores the name of the feature (e.g. 'Morpeth'), the type of feature (e.g. 'town') making sure that there is a standard geographical location for that feature - both a Grid Reference and its entire footprint on the Earth, the latter helping to define the spatial relationship between features.
The benefits of adding 'geographic intelligence' and geo-enabling services are high, and require a relatively small amount of effort:
Jorum is a free online repository for discovering and sharing learning and teaching materials for UK FE and HE institutions.
Following the launch of the free Jorum User Service at the end of January 2006, over 160 institutions have signed up, and over 350 registered users now have access to the resources held in Jorum.
Over 40 institutions have registered for the Contributor Service, allowing them to deposit resources.
A series of training sessions have been organised around the country. The events are targeted at intermediary staff related to the Jorum service who work in e-learning, online services and learning resources. The aim is to enable attendees to be more effective in promoting Jorum within their own institution.
Twelve sessions are being held during 2006 in all major regions throughout the UK. The six events held in May/June 2006 (Wolverhampton, Manchester, London, Glasgow, Belfast and Swansea) have proved very popular. A further six events will be held before the end of the year (potentially in Newcastle, Leeds, Brighton, Loughborough, Cambridge and Bath, depending on venue availability) - so watch this space to get in early on the next round of training.
A new JORUM-UPDATE Mailing List was launched alongside the User Service. It keeps subscribers up to date with news, announcements, events and new resources. It has attracted over 360 subscribers in under three months, with more joining daily.
SUNCAT is scheduled to become a full service from 1 August 2006. In preparation for this, the number of libraries contributing information on serials holdings has increased in recent months and the holdings of over 40 libraries are now listed in the database. The target is to have the contributions from 50-60 libraries available by the end of December 2006. Libraries added recently include a number of specialist libraries with unique serials holdings.
The JISC funded a collaborative project between EDINA and Serials Solutions, under the PALS Metadata and Interoperability Projects II. Automating Ingest of Metadata on Serials Subscription (AIMSS) was concerned with the supply of serials holdings information using the ONIX for Serials (Serials Online Holdings) format. Data for two Serials Solutions customers was supplied to EDINA for the updating of holdings records held in SUNCAT. This eight-month project is due to be completed in mid-June and project reports will be published on the SUNCAT web site in due course.
JISC has commissioned a strategic review of the JISC Resource Discovery Services, including the SUNCAT service provided by EDINA. As part of this review, a web-based questionnaire has been created and is linked from the SUNCAT service page. We hope as many SUNCAT users as possible will complete the short questionnaire.
EDINA is pleased to announce new pricing for the coming academic year for two related services - CAB Abstracts and Land, Life & Leisure.
In addition, EDINA has made significant functional improvements to the services - Land, Life & Leisure has further extensive links to publishers' web sites, and CAB Abstracts has more flexible searching.
We invite existing sites to re-subscribe as well as welcoming new subscriptions. Thirty-day institutional trials are available for each service by contacting us
Digimap's Ordnance Survey Data Collection now includes OS Boundary Line data. This can be accessed under the Boundary Download tool and includes GB administrative boundaries in shape, mid/MIF and NTF file formats. GB grid outlines and national boundaries are also available here.
A new version of Carto, released recently to all registered users,now offers a fresh interface providing the full range of mapping datasets, including Land-Form PROFILE, 1:10,000 scale raster and 1:25,000 scale colour raster. The print interface has also been simplified and improved.
Both new and old versions of Carto will run in parallel until the end of June 2006. This should allow time for local documentation to be updated. Help pages are available now, and further help documents will be developed over the coming weeks. In particular please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions, which may answer many of the issues raised by first-time users of the new interface.
Feedback is welcome. We hope you find the new interface a useful improvement to the service.
agcensus, the EDINA service delivering grid square agricultural census data, is shortly due to receive an update of small area data for 2005 for England, Scotland, and Wales from the respective government departments.
On receipt, data processing and conversion will commence, with a view to having the grid square estimates available by the end of Summer 2006.
The Geospatial Repository for Academic Deposit and Extraction (GRADE) demonstrator interface has been re-designed in response to tester feedback over the last few months, making the interface easier to navigate and use.
Further functional improvements to the repository design will go ahead in the next few months. To view and register to use the new demonstrator please visit the GRADE Project web site (see web address below).
The GRADE project has also been investigating informal methods of geospatial data-sharing within the academic community. The GRADE team have created a questionnaire to assess how researchers share geospatial research data among themselves. The informal questionnaire was successfully piloted at the Nottingham GISRUK event and at Kingston University, with positive feedback and some really interesting results. The GRADE team are now seeking a wider audience. If you wish to participate and share your views, the questionnaire is now available to submit online from the GRADE home page.
EDINA is pleased to announce that UKBORDERS has successfully secured funding from ESRC for continuation of the service over the period 2006-2011. Significant service enhancements are planned, including training and outreach activities and greater Census Programme integration via a new Census Portal.
More details of planned developments will appear in the next issue of Newsline.
For the latest information:
Barnfield College, Luton
Thursday 22 June 2006
University of Portsmouth
Thursday, 29 June 2006
EDINA Exchange - a Briefing and Consultation Day
21 June 2006, University of Leeds, Parkinson Building
RSC East Midlands e-fair
22 June 2006, University of Derby
CILIPS e-content showcase
23 June 2006, London
RSC Northwest Annual Conference
4 July 2006, Kendal, Cumbria
HE Academy - 2nd annual conference
3-5 July, Nottingham
ARCLIB (Architecture Librarians' Group)
12-14 July, University of Bath
ALLCU (Association of Librarians in Land-Based Colleges and Universities)
12-14th July, Warwickshire College