EDINA starts the 2002/3 academic year with a range of new services. These include:
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The National Learning Network, a service to deliver interactive learning materials, geared specifically for Further Education and run jointly with MIMAS
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UPDATE, a comprehensive bibliographic database of land-based literature, covering the countryside, tourism and the environment
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Code-Point, postcode linkage information from the Ordnance Survey, delivered as part of the Digimap service.
Also new are:
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enhancements to the Statistical Accounts of Scotland service and widening of access by subscription
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access to UKBORDERS via the new central ESRC/JISC Census Registration Service
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Athens Single Sign-On improved access to a range of EDINA services and other Athens resources.
In supporting this, we are launching a major revision to EDINA's web site, re-designed to increase usability.
The first interactive learning materials from the National Learning Network (NLN) team are now available online for colleges and universities, that is both Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE).
The materials, commissioned by the NLN team at Becta (the agency that promotes the use of ICT in education), are designed to be used within current teaching, and are produced as small chunks of learning, rather than whole courses. The NLN service is supported jointly by EDINA and MIMAS, with EDINA leading on the user support and MIMAS leading the technical implementation.
The material currently available represents phase one of the NLN programme, with topics covering horticulture, catering, art and design, business studies, science, and many others. Phase two materials are now being developed and will become available on a rolling basis over the coming academic year. These will include modules on environmental conservation, engineering and childcare.
The NLN materials can be viewed by registering online. Institutions are encouraged to download the materials to their local intranet as the materials are designed for use in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
In FE, permission and authority to download materials will be given to in-house ILT college teams via the Regional Support Centres (RSCs).
HEIs wishing to download materials must first provide a copyright statement, signed by an individual having the right to sign on behalf of the institution e.g. from the research/legal unit. Further information may be obtained from the EDINA helpdesk.
Successfully launched by EDINA on 1 August 2002, UPDATE is a bibliographic database of land-based literature whose focus is more practical than scholarly. It covers the popular trade press, in addition to indexing development reports and relevant articles from peer-reviewed journals.
UPDATE data is supplied by the University of Wales Aberystwyth with contributions from the Royal Agricultural College and Harper Adams University College.
UPDATE was introduced in the Spring 2002 issue of Newsline.
Digimap now offers Ordnance Survey's Code-Point® data, at no additional charge to subscribing institutions. Individually-registered Digimap users are able to download the data from Digimap's Advanced Services.
Code-Point provides the precise geographical location of each postcode unit in Great Britain (e.g. KY12 8UP or PO14 2RS). There are about 1.6 million units in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each containing an average of 15 addresses.
Files holding postcodes and associated data (e.g. number of domestic and non-domestic delivery points, National Grid Co-ordinate of centroid) are available as comma-separated text files. The post-code digital boundary data (polygons) are also available as ArcInfo Export (e00) files and as MID/MIF files (for MapInfo Professional). The data can be put into a database or used in GIS applications for spatial analysis. Further information about the product can be found on the Ordnance Survey web site.
The new Census Registration Service (CRS) has taken on the duty of registering users for UKBORDERS (the Census Geography Data Unit) as well as the following Census Data Support Units:
Existing users of the four census services will need to re-register with the CRS, in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998. This is a quick and painless process, however, involving a single online form.
Registration for these services is simplified, with access at the entry for each service moving to Athens Single Sign-On. This allows users to move between services without logging in more than once. All users will need to obtain a personal Athens username; they will then be able to register for and use all four services.
Based at the uk Data Archive, the CRS has been in existence since November 2001, with its first nine months being devoted to service development. The service was established in order to create a one-stop shop registration system for uk Higher and Further Education access to all the varied resources from the 1971, 1981, 1991 and, when ready, 2001 decennial censuses.
EDINA has completely revamped its web site. All the useful information and support you're used to receiving from EDINA is now available in a better looking, better organised web site.
New features:
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Home Page "web rooms", to make finding EDINA and related resources easier.
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Reorganised links on left-hand side, for easy navigation.
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A Search facility to allow users to search the EDINA web site.
Service Level Pages
We are also implementing Athens Single Sign-on, which means that once you have signed into one service with your Athens username and password, you may use any of the other Athens authenticated services to which your institution has subscribed, without the need to log in again.
On service level pages, the left-hand navigation bar has been reorganised to point to service-specific information.
Usable and Accessible
The new EDINA web site has been carefully tested both inside and outside of EDINA, and we received a good level of detailed feedback. We have designed and built the pages with accessibility in mind, to comply with new legislation, and to make EDINA as inclusive as possible.
We are aiming for compliance with Level 1 of the World-Wide Web Consortium's accessibility guidelines, with a view to moving to Level 2 compliance in due course.
EDINA announces new features for both the standard and subscription versions of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. Both versions have a new bookmark parish facility which means users can instantly locate a parish from their browser favourites without connecting to the accounts and re-running a search. Subscribers can also bookmark any particular page ("citation") of the accounts.
In addition, a drop-down list allows all users to jump to different points of the general index rather than having to scroll through all the index words.
Subscribers can now download a pdf file of an entire parish and save it to disk.
Eligibility has been widened for subscription to the service. To see if you or your institution can subscribe, and for a full explanation of the functionality of the standard and subscription services, go to the Statistical Accounts web pages at EDINA.
JISC is funding EDINA to host ten collections of film and video, being cleared and digitised through the JISC's Managing Agent and Advisory Service (MAAS).
EDINA will be providing access to what should be a total of some 1,000 film titles - about 300 hours of running time. The 'trailer' for this appeared in Media Online Focus No.7 in March 2002.
Since EDINA was selected as the national data centre to the development period, and with early access to some metadata, we have been building both database and user interface. The process of rights clearance is well underway at MAAS, as is the digital encoding of the films and the creation of the associated metadata.
We have content for two collections, Educational & Television (ETV) Films and the Films of Scotland archive, and will begin the next stage in the development plan: the field-testing of a pilot service with representatives of academic-support staff in universities and colleges.
The aim of the pilot activity is to allow library, computing and learning resource centre staff to carry out local assessment of how to support end-users of this form of digital content, and, through feedback, to enable EDINA to make adjustment to our service provision. We plan to do this over the first few months of the new academic year, and are presently recruiting volunteers for initial testing.
A particular focus will be the likely impact of the variability in the local provision of network bandwidth and desktop software provision. We wish to ensure that students and academic staff will be successful in their 'download and play' of films and film segments, and that this will not cause academic support staff problems. The films are available for download either in full or in 'segments', from five to ten minutes in length. An eight-minute segment can be over 50 megabytes in size. With broad bandwidth, the right installation of software, and a powerful desktop computer, there is no doubt that a film can be accessed satisfactorily, but downloading can take time in less well-equipped computing environments. This could cause user frustration and interact badly with other local provision (e.g. student labs).
We are also keen that each institution that takes out the no-fee sub-licence required to make use of this material will nominate a technical contact (most likely from their computing services) to ensure successful launch of the service to students and staff. It also seems sensible for local support staff to enlist the help of staff on campus who have experience in handling film and video materials.
Our provisional date for the launch of a service to end-users is January 2003, when we should have received and loaded the majority of the expected content. In addition to the ETV and Films of Scotland collections, we expect to have the Sheffield University Learning Media Unit Collection, Anglia Television Library, The Trials of Alger Hiss and the St. George's Hospital Medical School Collection.
We very much regret that JISC has informed us that licensing difficulties for the four image collections digitised as part of JIDI (JISC Image Digitisation Initiative) prevent our intended launch of access to these as online services, at least for the foreseeable future. However, funding from the JISC has enabled EDINA to develop, populate and test a cross-search facility, ImageFinder, for discovering and accessing images from multiple collections. ImageFinder will be deployed at a later date when suitable collections have been identified and licensed for delivery to the HE and FE communities. We thank all who acted as field-testers in preparation for the launch of our Image Gallery; for the present, it remains closed and is designated as 'project', not 'service'.
EDINA is delighted to announce the start of a new project, Jorum+, to be carried out jointly with MIMAS, which will provide a practical 'test-bed' investigation into a digital repository for learning materials which can provide technical infrastructure for storage, and stimulate the re-use of learning materials, for UK Further and Higher Education.
Funded by the JISC, the Jorum+ project will look at how to provide a way to deposit, re-use and share learning content. Excellent content, both static and interactive, already exists within the education community, but it is difficult to locate and use. Many learning materials cannot currently be used because no single set of standards exist that would make them easily transferable.
Experience has also shown that while colleagues may wish to use sections of someone else's work, they are unlikely to wish to re-use entire courses. Modularisation and customisation have become essential to enable the re-use of learning content and encourage staff with heavy demands on their time to use it appropriately. Similarly the move to create courses between a number of staff in departments, rather than by individuals, suggests that content which can be re-purposed and shared will become increasingly significant.
Jorum+ will provide an interim repository for the content of JISC 5/99 and Exchange for Learning (X4L) projects, and also scope the needs of the long-term repository service that will form part of the JISC's Information Environment. Support services, in collaboration with the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS), will be provided for 5/99 and X4L project staff.
Jorum+ will run from October 2002 until July 2005. EDINA and MIMAS will be collaborating closely with CETIS.
A number of EDINA services came to a close at the end of July:
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ESPMD (Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management Database)
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Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
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Social Services Abstracts
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Sociological Abstracts
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Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory
We would like to thank past subscribers to these services that were collaborative ventures with Cambridge Scientific Abstracts and Ovid, and which end, amicably, for reasons of licensing.
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Telnet BIOSIS
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Telnet SALSER
It is the logic of technology that has prompted the end of service via our Telnet gateway. BIOSIS and SALSER, among the first of our online services that were launched before the advent of the world wide web, continued to offer Telnet access until the gateway was closed in July. The very few loyal users of Telnet were assisted in their transition to the Web-based services.
Christine Rees joins EDINA as the head of Bibliographic and Multimedia Services from the University of Edinburgh Computing Services, where she led the team providing PC-based computing facilities across the university. Her background is in databases and computing support.
Richard Loup, the new services development officer (sound and pictures), will be working principally on multimedia services, with involvement in user support and the production of paper and web-based documentation. Richard has come to EDINA from The Scotsman newspaper, where he was deputy production editor of the S2 arts and features supplement. The largest part of his working life, however, has been spent in films and TV, mostly as a freelance film/video editor.
Andrew Robson started in May as a software engineer on the Crosswalk Gazetteer. He completed an MSc in Software and Systems in 1996. He worked at Glasgow University MIS for four years and has spent the last two as a freelance web developer, working primarily with a Multimedia/Games company.
Claudia Gröpl, who worked in our user support team, has left EDINA for greener pastures. Her eclectic sense of humour will be sorely missed.
We note with great sadness the death of Ian Mowat, Librarian to the University of Edinburgh. As a member of the four-person EDINA Management Board, Ian was a guiding light and good friend to us. He combined fun and wisdom in the best manner. He will be sorely missed.
Online Information 2002 Conference and Exhibition
3-5 December at Olympia, London.
Visit the EDINA stand 423 for online demonstrations and service UPDATEs. Free tickets to the exhibition are available.
EDINA, based at Edinburgh University Data Library, is a JISC-funded national datacentre. It offers the UK tertiary education and research community networked access to a library of data, information and research resources. All EDINA services are free of charge at the point of use. For information on institutional subscription fees, contact us by email.
EDINA services are:
EDINA contacts
Helpdesk: Helen McVey, Paula Cuccurullo, Stuart Macdonald, and Andrew Bevan
Helen Chisholm (EDINA User Support Manager)
Alison Bayley (Manager, EDINA National Services)
Peter Burnhill (Director of EDINA)
Tel: 0131 650 3302
Fax: 0131 650 3308
Email:
edina@ed.ac.uk
URL:
http://edina.ac.uk
EDINA subscription and registration
Most EDINA services require the completion of a licence agreement before those services can be made available to users. Free 30-day trials are available for most of these services.
For UKBORDERS™, there is no fee for academic institutions within the UK, but users must have an Athens account and register with the Census Registration Service.
SALSER and the Statistical Accounts for Scotland are completely free services, with no subscription fee. No licence or prior registration is required.
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EDINA Newsline is published four times a year by the Edinburgh University Data Library. Suggestions and comments on Newsline may be sent to
edina@ed.ac.uk.
The next issue of Newsline will appear in Winter 2002/2003.
Editor:
Paul Milne
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