JISC

The winter issue of JISC inform is published this week and contains an exclusive interview with new CEO of HEFCE Professor David Eastwood. Speaking about how investment in infrastructure, people, ideas – and ICT – is crucial to the future of English HE, Professor Eastwood says that while figures show that investment in research and innovation in this country is relatively modest by international standards, nevertheless, thanks to the cutting edge work in innovation undertaken by universities, the country remains second only to the USA according to most indicators.

‘It's the investment that goes in through the public sector that enables us to compete,’ he says. ‘That’s why our universities are so important if we are to have ideas and innovation which are able to be made commercial.’ 

Going on to talk of the importance of ICT to the future of higher education, Professor Eastwood issues a warning that the ubiquity of ICT could be seen by some as indicaThis web issue sees specially commissioned full-length articles by well-known education journalists Olga Wojtas and Harriet Swain ting that all knowledge is equally valid. Calling this the ‘Google danger’, Professor Eastwood says: ‘You get to a point where it looks as if all information is equally valid and all knowledge is of equal status. One of the things that universities have traditionally done through a variety of means is to create a hierarchy within the resource of a library.’

Praising JISC’s work to meet this challenge, he goes on to say: ‘Imagine the world without JISC. We simply wouldn’t be able to compete, we wouldn’t have the structure, the platform. We wouldn’t have made the headway, in digitisation, in freeing up access… And we wouldn’t have the edge which having JISC means we have.’ 

The new issue of Inform also sees the launch of inform plus a web-based supplement to the printed issue which will in time feature longer articles, extra images, sound recordings and other web-based materials. This web issue sees the inclusion of specially commissioned full-length articles by well-known education journalists Olga Wojtas and Harriet Swain who write about, respectively, a new digitisation project, the World War I Poetry Archive, and an established digitisation project, Histpop - the Online Historical Population Reports - launched earlier this month.

Other articles in the newly-printed issue include features on JANET and its services, how virtual research environments are helping researchers develop online collaborative communities, the UK Access Management Federation, improvements to the National Grid Service, and much more.  

Copies of inform are being distributed to colleges and universities this week. To access the web version, including inform plus, please go to: Inform