JISC

The new JISC inform is published this week and highlights an interview with Professor Drummond Bone, President of Universities UK and Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, in which he gives his strong support to JISC’s work to encourage the development of repositories across the UK.

Repositories are, he says, an issue of national economic importance, supporting attempts to increase the UK’s competitiveness in an increasingly competitive international marketplace and to maximise its considerable investment in science and innovation.  

The changing nature of research, with vast amounts of research data being exchanged remotely and with ever-greater opportunities for collaboration, means that an infrastructure is needed, says Professor Bone, to allow researchers to work together and to access resources freely.  Universities UK is therefore, he continues, ‘firmly behind the JISC repositories initiative – £3m between 2005 and this year and another £14m over the next three years…’

The new issue also features a special investigation into Web 2.0 – the collective name for the new web services which encourage the creation and availability of user-generated content – and its impact on education and research. Written by editor of Information World Review Mark Chillingworth, the article looks at the opportunities – as well as the challenges – of Web 2.0 as students in particular become more and more familiar with contributing to wikis, sharing images and videos, listening to podcasts and using other interactive technologies. 

Other articles explore records management, the UK’s research network UKLight, online conferencing and a groundbreaking initiative at the College of St Mark and St John which sees each new undergraduate at the college offered a free laptop. ‘Over a three-year period the initiative means we have a guaranteed infrastructure that can support our e-learning developments,’ says the college’s Principal, Professor David Baker. 

Inform plus+ - the web-based supplement to the printed issue – contains the full-length version of the special investigation by Mark Chillingworth on Web 2.0, as well as podcasts of interviews with Professor Drummond Bone, Peter Burnhill of EDINA on the new national repository the Depot and Steve Bailey, author of the article on records management.