Information Environment (IE) & Virtual Research Environments (VRE) call for proposals: Briefing Day notes/Q & A
On 15th December a briefing day on the Information Environment and e-Research JISC Circular (12/08) was held. The event was held in order to provide an overview of the circular and to give people the opportunity to ask questions. The circular has £11m of JISC funding against it which is quite substantial. The calls in 12/08 focus on: digital repositories for learning and research, virtual research environments, use of text-mining and automatic meta-data generation and digital preservation. So in short the circular is seeking projects that are mainly about the creation, management and sharing of information that is part of the research and learning process in ways that support researchers, learners, teachers and administrators.
Here are the links to the presentations from the Briefing Day:
Policy and bid submission
Automated Metadata and Text-mining- strand A1
Digital Repositories: Start-up, rapid innovation and enhancement - strands A3- A5
Developing e-infrastructure to support research disciplines and digital preservation exemplars - strands A2 and A6
Virtual Research Environments (VRE) - strands B1-B3
Notes of the discussion and questions and answers from the briefing day:
IE and VRE Circular 12/08 15 December Briefing Day questions and answers
For some notes of the whole event as it went along see Andy Powell’s (Eduserv Foundation) live blog.
A few points of context:
JISC has funded projects and services in all of these areas previously. So what is different this time? I would say there are three general issues that underpin the projects sought in this circular:
* reflecting the maturity of digital repositories and other types of ‘e-infrastructure’ this circular is seeking further and improved alignment of these systems with user requirements. An emphasis in the calls is the need to involve/take into account end-users and a bringing together of these ‘e-infrastructure’ systems with research and learning processes.
* both the IE and the VRE strands of activity are about building on previous investment and lessons - so these are not completely new areas of activity. In the case of repository and digital preservation activity for example we’re seeking more repositories, improved repositories and policies, further integration with other systems and in areas such as digital preservation we’re looking for actual implementation of solutions that have previously been developed. However although this circular is generally about implementing areas where there has already been substantial work the projects are about improvement and so will involve new ideas and development.
* recognition that in many cases cross domain teams and skills are required to create, manage, use and develop digital systems, supporting policies and related practices within institutions.
The decision to publish the IE and VRE call strands together was partly a practical one as both funding areas were due to issue circulars at the same time, but there was more to this decision than that. Publishing them together was, I think, essential in terms of showing that information systems should not be developed independently of the requirements of the research process. I think if we’d published the calls separately there would’ve been a danger of perpetuating this often unhelpful division. In particular the projects sought under A2, Developing e-infrastructure to support research disciplines bridge both areas and seek to bring the research process and scholarly communications requirements together with underlying information systems. This particular strand in the IE calls also represents the fact that developing the Information Environment (or e-infrastructure) is not just about managing and disseminating information it is about supporting and improving research (and of course learning and teaching, although the projects called for under A2 focus on research). I think the connections that are emerging between both the IE and VRE programme areas are a good thing and are inevitable to progress.
The Information Environment (and Virtual Research Environment) Call for Proposals November 2008
The JISC is calling for proposals relating to the ‘Information Environment’ and ‘Virtual Research Environments’. This blog post relates only to those elements of the Call relating to the Information Environment, that is Strands A1-A6:
- Automated metadata generation & text mining (JISC contact: Balviar Notay b.notay@jisc.ac.uk or Amber Thomas amber.thomas@jisc.ac.uk)
- Developing e-infrastructure to support research disciplines (JISC contact: Neil Grindley n.grindley@jisc.ac.uk)
- Repositories: start-up (JISC contact: Andy McGregor a.mcgregor@jisc.ac.uk)
- Repositories: rapid innovation (JISC contact: Andy McGregor a.mcgregor@jisc.ac.uk)
- Repositories: enhancement (JISC contact: Neil Jacobs n.jacobs@jisc.ac.uk or Andy McGregor a.mcgregor@jisc.ac.uk)
- Preservation exemplars (JISC contact: Neil Grindley n.grindley@jisc.ac.uk)
There is also an accompanying briefing document which describes important background information, and outlines some requirements that are being placed on repositories that are involved in bids under these headings. The Call itself spells out the aims and intended scope of projects under these headings, so I won’t repeat it all here.
There will be a Briefing Day on 15th December 2008.
The purpose of this blog post is to be the anchor for an FAQ relating to Strands A1-A6 of the Call. If you have queries relating to these strands of the Call, you can contact the relevant JISC person as noted above and in the Call document, or you can add a comment to this blog post. Either way, if the query would be relevant to other bidders then our response will be via a further comment added to this blog post. In this way we hope to build up an FAQ that all potential bidders can access easily and quickly. We’d also welcome comments (or emails) on the use of the blog for this purpose.
“… to engage or not engage…” the choice for libraries.
A couple of weeks ago I attended the RLUK conference, their first conference and one that everyone there seemed to enjoy. Unfortunately I only made it for the last day for a slot where a panel of funders, policy bodies and service providers, including JISC, said a few words about priorities and partnership with others.
I did get to hear Lynne Brindley speak. She covered a lot of ground and most of what she said chimed with JISC priorities; albeit coming from a different set of organisational boundaries. Anyway I thought I’d just jot down what Lynne said as I think the issues she raised are well worth recounting here. I might’ve misinterpreted some things, especially since it was a while ago now but on the whole I think I’ve captured the main points.
In general she was referring to the fact that in the complex digital environment offering services that remain relevant and take advantage of what Lynne called “mass creativity” can be difficult. But she said the choice for libraries is “ to engage or not engage”. Unsurprisingly the message was to engage.
A summary of issues she raised:
• Developing digital information services does incur a cost. A lot of innovative projects have been developed but we have not yet fully tackled sustainability.
• Libraries should support innovative scholarship. We’re now in a complex world where the web is a platform of “mass creativity” but offers real opportunities for innovative scholarship. She referred to some examples where digitisation and making digital resources available have led to new knowledge.
• Libraries need to move well beyond the critical role they play in licensing and recognise that things like document supply are not as relevant as they once were.
• “life beyond the document” how should libraries respond to this?
• The research data question and the skills gap – we have data librarians but not enough of them; traditionally libraries are more orientated towards humanities.
• Masses of information of different types – blogs, email etc are all important to scholarship they are the ephemeral information of today; what are we doing about versions of works or notes and annotations? Think of authorship and how notes are kept of authors that enhance research.
• Many people use information in different ways, skim reading etc, therefore should delivery be different, does it matter that people use information differently? Information literacy does that matter? Should libraries be helping to equip people with the skills to make the right judgments?
• The researchers of the future (and quite a few researching now) come from the born digital age and will use information differently, so what is information literacy?
• Web archiving: the web is a huge resource that must be accessible into the future for research; the legal issues are a problem but hopefully legal deposit will make a difference.
• The value of the library can sometimes be summarised as: authenticity, authority and long-term use – what about authority v amateur?
• Digital preservation is very important – this has been seen as important at policy and government levels but now it is getting into the public conscience - this is when libraries start to have real success with these issues. Just tell someone that all those photos will not be accessible and they can relate to it.
• She ended on intellectual property (IP) and referred to the EU Green Paper on Copyright and how IP deserved attention and organisations, such as academic libraries, needed to take action so any risk of locking information down further was mitigated. She emphasised that without reasonable copyright exceptions there is a risk to democratic society.
A lot of these issues are being addressed by libraries and organisations like the British Library and JISC, for example we’re responding to the EU Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. But despite that all of the issues require further debate and change.
JISC is about to launch a collaborative initiative with SCONUL, RLUK, The British Library and RIN that builds on our Libraries of the Future campaign and that will seek to further understand and shape the position of libraries into the future. Watch this space…it should be announced shortly.