Modelling the ‘library domain’: a consultative workshop on June 19
The challenge of making library resources visible and accessible in the Web 2.0 environment was a major focus of last year’s JISC/SCONUL study of Library Management Systems.
The JISC TILE (Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 and the e-Framework) project was subsequently commissioned to draft a high level ‘library domain model’ which could be used to further thinking about the functions and processes that library systems need to support in future.
We are now organising a workshop to consult on the domain model proposed, and how it might be used in the future.
Who should attend?
The workshop is intended for a mix of senior and middle library managers in a range of roles (so, not confined to colleagues with formal IT/systems management responsibilities).
Where and when is it?
Friday 19th June 2009 at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Savoy Place, central London.
What is the programme for the day?
The programme consists of a mixture of presentations and group work.
How do I register?
Due to the consultative nature of this workshop, we have a limited number of places. If you would like to attend, please register your interest by 18th May 2009, and we will contact you thereafter to confirm your place or add your name to a waiting list.
“Good APIs”
What makes a “good” API”? Can we say anything about good practice in providing or using machine interfaces to third party services on the web? UKOLN have consulted widely and suggest, among other things, that providers of APIs should make it useful, keep it simple, follow standards and use consistent naming structures. For API users there is perhaps less obvious good practice, but it’s important to choose the API carefully (they explain what this might mean), to think about risks, and respect the API terms of use.
UKOLN are now asking developers to comment on these principles; do they seem right? Is it useful to document them? For whom? How?
If you’ve got views on this then here’s where to post comments: http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/good-apis-jisc/.
Library round up: event, discussion and new domain model
This post more or less repeats some JISC news items (sorry) but I wanted to make sure readers of this blog saw some JISC library related activity that has been discussed, published and presented this week. In particular I want to draw attention to Peter Murray-Rust’s blog posts on the Library of the Future, in case anyone wants to contribute before he speaks at the JISC/Bodleian Library event on 2 April. You can register to attend the Libraries of the Future event in person or in Second Life. Related information:
Overview. Speakers. Registration. Agenda.
Event tag: LOTF09
Peter has blogged some ideas and sought feedback (you’ll need to scroll through a few pages on his blog to see all of the discussion). He has identified some people and organizations that, as a scientist he personally considers relevant to librarians / libraries of the future. He only includes a couple of librarians; the list of those identified leans towards computer scientists not information scientists. In general (my crude summary of a wide ranging discussion!) he appears to be highlighting the need for a revolutionary attitude, more experimentation and for academic librarians to be promoters of good policy and practice with regards to ownership and access to scholarship, and the need to move to the web.
“…the librarians of the future. They build vital, communal, information resources. They invite collaboration, either directly or implicitly. They overthrow conventional wisdom and entrenched systems and interests.”
The blog discussion is interesting, there have been quite a few contributions, and I think it points to the importance of communication between librarians, computers scientists, researchers, learners and university managers.
And to briefly draw your attention to some other library focused activity from JISC this week:
The TILE (Towards the Implementation of Library 2.0 and the eFramework) project report and briefing paper has been published. This includes a library domain model developed to identify what the library processes are in the networked environment in the light of changing behaviour and information provision. The work has focused in particular on two increasingly important areas in delivering relevant services, these are context/personalization and contribution. There will be further consultation on the domain model via a workshop later in the year.
Finally at the JISC Conference this week there was a session on the Future of Academic Library – this discussed issues such as shared services, the evolving library collection and introduced a collaboration between JISC, SCONUL, BL, RLUK and RIN to consult and develop positions on the way in which libraries can respond to change.
Information Environment Rapid Innovation Grants
We (Andy, Amber, Balviar, David, James) are happy to announce that we are about to issue a new Grant-Funded Call for rapid innovation projects within the Information Environment on 6 March 2009. You’ll be able to read all the text about what money is available and the conditions for using it in more detail in the Grant but to give an overview of what we are looking for:
- Innovative projects that create a ’something’ related to a user need from a named community. That something could be a new interface, a service that brings together existing services or a tool of some sort;
- The scope is quite simply something that is within the Information Environment (see: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment.aspx for definition). We are not being overly prescriptive;
- The projects should be up to six months in length and between £15,000 and £40,000;
- The documentation for everything in the Call is going to be kept lightweight so we can keep the focus on solutions to user needs rather than filling out forms. We’re just looking for five pages in the bid and the project documentation is going to be kept to blogs or wikis so we know what you’re aiming to do and how you are getting on with achieving it but you don’t spend hours telling us about it;
- The approaches should be agile or open. We’d like to see early engagement with users and for that engagement to be kept up so what is produced responds to their needs and is user-led rather than technology-led.
The drivers for this grant have come from a number of different directions:
- dev8D (http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/) proved to be very successful in getting users and developers together to create innovative solutions to user needs. We felt we should be doing more of this in the Information Environment;
- Whilst we recognise that certain big central services such as the UK federation could and should be provided by JISC, we also recognise that there needs to be funding for smaller, lighter tools, services and interfaces that help users achieve their goals;
- Whilst there is a place for bigger projects that involve senior managers, we feel that there is equally a place for projects where the bulk of the money goes to developers;
- The last few years have seen an increase in the development of lightweight solutions that respond rapidly to user needs across both the academic and commercial sectors.
We’re looking forward to seeing what bids come back. This forms the perfect opportunity for:
- Those who have bid for funding before and would like funding to try out new areas where we may not want to fund via a big project;
- Those new to JISC who would like to dip their toe in the water and try a smaller JISC project before going for something bigger;
- Developers who have good ideas that they might not have quite enough time to fully develop within their normal schedule;
- Technical managers who may want to have funding to ‘try out’ new members for their team on a student placement basis, for example.
The tag for discussion on this rapid innovation Call is jiscri. Please use this if you’re commenting on the Call via Twitter or posting on other blogs and social media about it so we can easily gather all those comments together and learn and respond as we go along. Subscribe to the JISC-ANNOUNCE list at www.jiscmail.ac.uk to get notified about this or other funding opportunities from JISC or go along to http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities.aspx on 6 March to get the call.
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.
Web tools for programme management
We recently had an internal JISC meeting where we discussed what web tools we use to help us with programme management. Lawrie Phipps and I prepared a list of the tools that we use or plan to use to help manage ourselves and our programmes. I thought it might be worth posting the list here. I’d be interested to hear of any tools that people are using that are not on this list. Apologies for the length:
Community building
Twitter http://twitter.com/ – won’t suit everyone but is very good for little snippets, observations and off the cuff chats that the web has not really replicated until now. Could be used to build communities and for lightweight communication between projects. A useful feature is the use of hash (#) tags, placing the # at the beginning of an event or project tag to aggregate comments.
Blogs – persuading projects to blog regularly is great for the programme manager, for a community of projects and for anyone interested in the project. Blogging is not natural to everyone so perhaps in some cases, blogging can be used to replace project reporting?
A Project Manager’s reflection on the issue of keeping a blog:
So is it worth it? Speaking personally and (for once) completely frankly, I’ve been quite enjoying writing, for several reasons. First, it has allowed me to do a bit of self-indulgent vanity publishing, something for which I criticise other bloggers but, hey, I’m a hypocrite! Second, the requirement to be reflective has made me think about various aspects of the project, which is no bad thing. Third, as it has turned out, I haven’t had to trouble my conscience by using buckets of whitewash to tell a positive story; the project really has been going pretty well.
Ning https://www.ning.com/ – easily build your own social network, a good place for people to get to know each other online, communities can be closed or open and communication can be public or private. Ning is also a useful tool to run before a workshop for participants to start thinking, and during the workshop for getting delegates to write up discussions/findings, this is especially useful in, for example, plenary sessions where sometimes some delegates may have a tendency to dominate.
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ – I am not your friend, I don’t want to be poked, I can not be brought and sold as a pet, I am neither a werewolf hunter nor a vampire slayer, I don’t want a virtual pizza, if I hadn’t contacted you just after I left school what makes I think to talk to you 20 years later? FaceBook? Just say no!
That being said, some project staff are using facebook to some effect, but we need to be aware of issues such as IPR.
Jiscmail http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ – tried and trusted method of community building. Even with the plethora of web 2.0 tools available to projects, the most reliable way of reaching most of our academic community is through e-mail, the JISC Mail lists are simple and effective.
Current awareness
Delicious http://delicious.com/ – the most popular social bookmarking tool. A little limited in some ways and with an unattractive interface but lots of people use it and persuading projects to share bookmarks is a very useful thing to do as it highlights overlaps of interest and promotes serendipitous discovery of information. An important element when using it to share is to encourage the use of ‘notes’ when bookmarking.
Diigo http://www.diigo.com/ – a newer social bookmarking tool, allows you to be more specific about which part of a webpage is bookmarked, it also allows annotation of webpages. It supports creation of groups and preparation of web slideshows. However, not as many people use it already so barrier to participation may be higher.
Twine http://www.twine.com/ – a new social bookmarking tool, which permits bookmarking of any document and analyses bookmarks for common people, places and organizations. Also allows for creation of private groups.
RSS readers (google reader, netvibes etc) http://lifehacker.com/390619/best-rss-newsreaders – like twitter, won’t suit everyone’s habits but if you can find a reader that suits you and can get into the habit of building rss feeds into daily routine then it is a fantastic way to keep up to date with a potentially massive amount of information
Dipity http://www.dipity.com/ - a simple timeline builder. Could be useful in giving projects or a more general community an idea of the steps that led to now and a rough outline of programme timescales.
Crowdsourcing
Ideascale http://www.ideascale.com/ - a tool to source ideas from the community and to have ideas voted for and commented on. Worked very well for the IE team to solicit discussion and ideas from the repository community (http://jiscrepository.ideascale.com/) but plenty to be aware of here, including waning of user interest and expectations attached to voting. Also Dialogr http://www.dialogr.com/
Mechanical turk https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome- take advantage of a community that are willing to work for you on small tasks for micropayments. Here is a great description of a project that used mechanical turk http://waxy.org/2008/09/girl_turk/
Topcoder http://www.topcoder.com/ - tap into a large community of developers. The IE team are talking to topcoder about using their services for the developer community strand of the new programme.
mysociety.org http://www.mysociety.org/ - not really crowdsourcing but they build websites that utilise or support democracy and have worked for the government, bbc and google. Perhaps they could offer JISC something?
Collaborating
Google docs https://docs.google.com – can be used for collaboration on documents in a team or in the community.
Confluence https://wiki.jisc.ac.uk/dashboard.action - wiki for collaboration and communication
Communicating
Skype http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/ - instant messaging, internet phone and conferencing tool
Jing http://www.jingproject.com/ - a screencasting tool. Could be used for projects to communicate developments to the community.
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ - picture sharing
Youtube http://www.youtube.com/ - video sharing
BlipTV http://blip.tv/ – video sharing
Flowgram http://www.flowgram.com/ - a way to create tours through various websites and content (an alternative to powerpoint or an introduction to a certain area)
Jiscmail – essential for large and active communities
Annotate http://a.nnotate.com/ - provide annotated documents e.g. templates
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ - great for sharing slideshows, provides nice widgets and embeddable flash players, not so great at being searched by google.
Bringing it all together
There is little point giving projects 6 different tools without some way of bringing them all together. Here are some suggestions for amalgamating content.
Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com, iGoogle http://www.google.com/ig, Pageflakes http://www.pageflakes.com/ – can amalgamate content with flexible widget based approach. If it has an rss feed it can be displayed on these pages. However it is much more flexible than just rss (see repository widget work http://www.netvibes.com/rwidgets#General, or the exemplary widgets produced by tfl http://www.tfl.gov.uk/widgets/). I have put together an example page to show some of the things it can do. http://www.netvibes.com/amcgregor#Prog_management, obviously this page is shareable so can be used by projects as well as programme managers.
Ning https://www.ning.com/ – widgets using content from other tools can be embedded in ning. This is likely to be more difficult but more flexible than the netvibes style approach.
Getting things done
Tools for managing personal information or workflow:
Zotero http://www.zotero.org/ - a free bibliographic management tool. Only suitable for personal use at the moment but social features coming soon.
Google calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/ - a calendar application which is extremely easy to use and displays calendars of other users very nicely.
Remember the milk http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ – a to do list application that can be shared and can be used in a number of different applications (twitter, google calendar, blackberries and mobile phones).
Evernote http://evernote.com/ - a note taking application, includes ability to clip content from any application. Fully searchable. Can be easily used across computers and on mobile devices.
Outlook - task list, calendar all in one place and lots of people use it. Some useful plugins such as xobni http://www.xobni.com/ which takes advantage of the hidden social network in your inbox.
RSS readers - a way to manage information overload (see above)
Location and travel
Dopplr - http://www.dopplr.com/ - a social network for regular business travelers.
Have fire eagle http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/ and related geo data tools and social networks got anything useful to offer us?
More complicated stuff
Yahoo pipes http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ – loads of cool tools including a way to set up persistent searches across a range of resources http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=1b71cfefcc9933e084970aef476518ab (a nice explanation of how to set up a persistent google search taking advantage of the new rss feature: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/8HqjuPpekeY/how_to_use_the_new_google_web_feeds.php ) and to amalgamate whole lists of blogs into one rss feed http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/2008/10/17/rsp-blog-directory-and-yahoo-pipes/.
Roll your own newsroom http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/rolling-your-own-newsroom.html – a description of how an rss reader can be used to create a webpage of information relevant to colleagues. Could be used within JISC or within project community.
Notes
Tagging. It is important to think about tags at the start of programmes and projects so that searching across a range of applications is simple and effective.
It is very unlikely that simply advising projects to use a tool will work, the programme manager will need to devote some energy to promotion and provision of quality content to ensure that the resources are useful to projects. The best way to promote the use of a tool is to effectively use the tool.
What makes a ‘good’ API?
There are more and more opportunities for universities to take advantage of services offered by third parties on the web. It isn’t hard to see where exploiting Facebook or Twitter, or more ‘academic’ services such as SherpaRoMEO, can add value to a university’s ICT offer to its staff and students. Obviously there are issues, some legal (see Web2Rights toolkit) and some technical. UKOLN are just kicking off a small piece of work to see what’s going on in the sector in the UK, and identify good practice both in terms of using third party APIs, and in the APIs themselves.
Click streams -Library Managment Systems
I’ve been meaning to do a short post about the recent library systems study that JISC commissioned with SCONUL so people know about it. So here it is. I’ve been reminded of it as I’m at the Eduserv Symposium today and Ken Chad who worked on the study asked a question related to it.
The Eduserv Symposium is focusing on disruptive technologies and what the impact might be on the organisation. So in our case universities and colleges, and as Andy Powell pointed out in his introduction there is also disruption for related service providers such as Eduserv (and for that matter JISC). So one question is how should the academic/education sector respond to the ‘disruptive’ technologies (for that read web 2.0/ service provision on the network e.g. google and amazon services). Ken Chad mentioned the opportunity that the sector has in terms of the data known about users;for example click streams. The library management systems study (that Ken worked on with Sero Consulting) sees this as an opportunity for academic libraries to make their services more relevant to users. Of course there are delicate issues surrounding the use of click streams; not in the least privacy as Larry Johnston, NMC, pointed out in response to Ken’s question at the Eduserv Symposium.
The report covers far more ground that click streams, it is a horizon scan of what is happening in the UK academic sector in terms of LMS provision and what might be the requirements in the changing context that libraries now find themselves.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/resourcediscovery/libraryms.aspx