JISC

Delivering online content is an area where significant economies of scale can be realised through national approaches to the delivery of scholarly resources, whether through licensing or digitisation.

JISC Collections

Having pioneered the development of national licensing agreements through its collections activities over the last decade and more, JISC launched JISC Collections during the last year as a company limited by guarantee. This enables considerably greater flexibility and scope for the negotiation of agreements for access to online content in support of further and higher education. The company was established in August 2006 with the first board members directly elected by institutions taking up their positions in November.

A number of significant collections were made available during the last year. In October a new and important online resource was made available free of charge and in perpetuity to all FE and HE institutions in the UK. The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1800-1901, comprising of nearly 6,000 volumes and over 4 million pages, would have cost institutions, without the JISC agreement, around £35,000 each. Enthusiasm expressed by academics and researchers around the country during the consultation process for the agreement was unprecedented. 

Innovation is central to JISC Collection’s activities and in January a major new online resource was launched which makes available geological map data from the British Geological Survey. Geology Digimap provides insights into the earth's physical structure and substance, its history, and the processes that act on it by delivering digital geological map data of Great Britain. Based on the same platform as Digimap, which already provides access to current and historical Ordnance Survey map data, the new resource now supports users in undertaking research projects that would otherwise be arduous, time consuming or even impossible.

Other highlights of the last year include: the agreement in April to make available the Internet Archaeology Archive to all UK higher and further education institutions, allowing permanent access to ten years of rich multimedia scholarly content completely free of charge; and additional funding from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in June to make the innovative and interactive vocational resource, Hairdressing Training, free of charge to all further education institutions.

In September, a major new resource giving librarians access to a wealth of information on key academic resources was launched. The free resource, developed by JISC Collections in association with Nick Andrews Consultancy, provides quick and easy comparisons of the major bibliographic and citation databases currently in use by the academic community, including Web of Science, Scopus, ABI Inform, British Humanities Index and many more.

e-Books project

In March, a report commissioned by JISC e books working group revealed that one of the major barriers to the take-up of e-books was the lack of knowledge on the part of publishers, librarians and academics of the precise ways in which e-books can be used by students. JISC is calling on the publishers of e-books to help develop an e-book observatory which, for the first time, will gather much-needed evidence on the use of a greatly under-used but potentially enormously important resource.

Listen to the podcast about the national e-books observatory project

Digitisation

In seeking to provide resources across all disciplines that will enhance JISC’s delivery of content through stimulation of the use of e-books and the formation of the collections company, JISC has also continued its investment in a Digitisation programme. In January, JISC announced the successful bids in a further £12m investment in the Digitisation of 16 major resources of national importance.

They capture a wide variety of aspects of UK life, from Cabinet papers to First World War poetry, radio news to East End music hall, political cartoons to British borders, and in a wide range of media, including sound, film, images, journals, newspapers, maps, theses, pamphlets and cartoons. The occasion was marked for one of the projects by stars of stage Lord Rix, his wife Baroness Rix (the actress Elspet Gray) who gathered to launch the East London Theatre archive at the University of East London (UEL).   

Listen to the East London Theatre archive launch podcast

To celebrate the phase one of the programme and launch the JISC Digitisation Strategy for consultation, JISC held a major International conference in July of this year. Opened by Carwyn Jones, now Counsel General and Leader of the House in the Welsh Assembly Government, the conference attracted around 150 senior figures from around the world. At the time of this interview, Carwyn Jones was Minister for Education, Culture and the Welsh Language.

Listen to the podcast interview with Carwyn Jones

The conference attracted not only 150 senior delegates from the UK and abroad but also the attention of bloggers across the world. Organised by JISC, the conference brought together key figures from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and beyond to explore some of the key challenges facing organisations in digitising and making available key digital resources to learners, teachers and researchers and indeed to all citizens.

Listen to the podcast about why the international conference represented an important landmark

Projects from the first phase of JISCs £10 million Digitisation programme began to launch this year notably:

• British Library archival sound recordings project (September launch) which delivered up to 12,000 items totalling 3,900 hours of segmented recordings from oral history, field and location recordings of traditional and improvised music, rare or deleted classical and popular music recordings, soundscape and educational material
• Online historical population reports project (April launch) is considered a landmark resource which gives a ‘vivid and extraordinary’ picture of 19th Century Britain’s population. Cited as a major new resource which makes freely available for the first time all British census reports from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Online Historical Populations Reports projects has made almost 200,000 pages of digitised reports and data available online 
• 18th Century parliamentary papers project (March launch) applied 21st Century technology to the digitisation of rare and delicate 18th Century parliamentary papers, was launched at an event at the House of Commons. This project also won a major international award ‘Building Better Communities Awards’ to recognise libraries that have made a significant difference in their communities

Listen to the 18th Century parliamentary papers launch podcast

Strategic Content Alliance

One of the key deliverables of JISCs’ strategic aims is to work with other public sector content providers to better co-ordinate activities and strive towards a more common information environment. In support of this March 2006 saw the formation of the JISC led Strategic Content Alliance. The Alliance aims to deliver a coordinated framework of principles and best practice for the provision of online content for citizens in the United Kingdom; building a common information environment where users of publicly funded e-content can gain best value from the investment that has been made by reducing the barriers that currently inhibit access, use and re-use of online content. JISC is taking forward this work in collaboration with key public sector content providers the British Library, the BBC, Becta, UK e-Science Core programme, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the NHS National Library for Health (NeLH).

In July an International Symposium was hosted by JISC in support of the Alliance. An e-Content Policy and Strategy Symposium brought together key figures in the field of digitisation and content to discuss policy, business models, economics, technical infrastructure and collaboration and discussed ways to promote innovation in these respective areas. Both the symposium and the conference were a great success with delegates agreeing to continue to work together across international borders.  A huge amount of work was done at the conference by the delegates and this information is captured on the blog