Newsline from EDINA
July 2004: Volume 9, Issue 2
by John MacColl
EDINA held its first general information event for the HE and FE communities on Tuesday 11 May. EDINA Exchange took place in the National E-Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh.
After an introduction by EDINA Director Peter Burnhill, the morning session began with presentations on the various subject and resource type clusters in which EDINA is active.
Christine Rees, Team Manager for Bibliographic and Multimedia Services, explained that EDINA bibliographic services are primarily based around abstract and index (A&I) databases. Coverage at EDINA is strong in several areas. In health, agricultural and life sciences there are BIOSIS Previews, Update and CAB Abstracts. In the arts, humanities and social sciences EDINA offers Index to the Times, EconLit, PAIS and MLA. INSPEC covers engineering, informatics and physical sciences.
Two significant bibliographic infrastructure projects have been Xgrain and ZBLSA, both funded by JISC to provide services based upon new digital library technologies at the national level to support institutional-level use. These two projects have produced two products for deployment in the JISC IE, GetRef and GetCopy respectively. GetRef searches across a range of A&I databases - both free and commercial - as well as the British Library s ZETOC table of contents service, and can be deployed either via an EDINA-hosted interface, or as a local portlet. GetCopy takes users from citations to full-text by acting as an OpenURL resolver. EDINA calls it a 'lightweight broker', since there is no institutional installation required. GetCopy will tell users about services to which they have rights of access.
Rick Loup, Multimedia Services Development Officer, gave a presentation on the Education Image Gallery and Education Media Online.
David Medyckyj-Scott, Team Manager for Geographic Data and Research Services, gave the next presentation on what EDINA currently offers for its well-known geospatial data services.
UKBORDERS acts as the primary platform for census boundary data in the UK. Recent developments include the Easy Download service for pre-built datasets, and a new boundary selector facility is currently in testing.
The latest developments for Digimap can be found in this edition of Newsline.
Other services in development will deliver data for Great Britain from the British Geological Survey, and from the UK Hydrographic Office. EDINA is also looking to expand into global and regional map data, looking for the first time beyond Great Britain. (See the Web Map Viewer article in this edition for a look at EDINA's new Web Map Viewer service.)
Stuart MacDonald, Assistant Data Librarian, gave a presentation on agcensus, the Agricultural Census service. EDINA staff have developed algorithms to convert the census data into grid square estimates. The new service offers both data downloads, suitable for use with GIS packages, and data visualisation.
Geospatial projects include the Go-Geo! geo-data portal, and geoXwalk, a digital gazetteer service.
Geospatial teaching materials in a number of subjects are now available through the E-MapScholar project. These have been developed by academics across the UK for use in real teaching contexts. Learning and Teaching Projects Co-ordinator Moira Massey described how St Helen's College is producing case studies using E-MapScholar.
Moving into the realm of historic data, Helen Chisholm, User Support Team Manager, described the Statistical Accounts of Scotland, which comprises contemporary of accounts representing an early exercise in population survey and record in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Teaching modules based on the Accounts are planned for delivery, and indexes to the tables are in preparation.
Data Librarian Robin Rice described EDINA's contribution to the newly-established Digital Curation Centre (DCC). 'Digital curation' represents an approach to data management which embraces both digital preservation and data curation. A national centre has been established because it is considered that the challenges involved are too great to leave to institutional solutions alone. Digital data curation embraces the needs of both the static documentary world and the new world of massive and dynamic data generated by eScience.
See the DCC web site for more information.
The intention is to launch the Centre in early November 2004.
Moira Massey described EDINA's work in supporting learning and teaching. EDINA is a partner in the National Learning Network delivery service, along with MIMAS, JISC and Becta. The JISC Online Repository for Learning and Teaching Materials (JORUM) will become a service from August 2005. This is designed to meet JISC's need for a repository for the learning materials it has commissioned in the past, and those it will commission in the future. It will provide a library of learning resources, and the upload and publication of academics own learning materials will be strongly encouraged.
IT Team Manager Alan Ferguson described the Shibboleth project on which EDINA has just embarked as part of JISC's Core Middleware programme. Shibboleth is an authorisation and authentication framework for access to web resources which is currently gaining international momentum.
In the afternoon, delegates divided into groups to discuss a range of issues relevant to EDINA services and projects, and came up with a number of salient points and questions. Many of the questions pushed on boundaries and spheres of influence between various institutions and services, at both local and national levels: where should the boundary lie between JISC and EDINA when it comes to promoting EDINA services? And similarly, where does it lie between EDINA and local institutions?
The relationship between local and national solutions to particular problems is a relatively new one when it comes to learning objects and discovery tools - although a well-known one in respect of bibliographic and other data-hosting services. EDINA has been at the forefront of the solution to the data hosting needs of the community for many years. The EDINA Exchange event highlighted the new challenges which lie ahead as EDINA moves towards its 10th birthday in 2005.
Presentations and notes from the sessions, in addition to a link to a web survey form which will help us to plan future events can be found at the EDINA Exchange web page. Newsline readers' input into the process is encouraged.