JISC

A series of forums aimed at developing a better understanding of the regional issues that face government, libraries, museums and business partners around digital content are held every four months by the Strategic Content Alliance.

These forums are held in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales with the most recent taking place during May and June, 2008.

“There is not going to be a one size solution that fits all. We’re looking to see how we can get the technology to fit the people rather than the people to fit the technology.”The Strategic Content Alliance’s (SCA) aim is to develop a content framework across a number of strategic partners to look at how to best share and improve access to digital content.

The SCA Home Nations Forum in Cardiff brought together experts in their field to discuss the challenges surrounding intellectual property rights, standards and licensing which will all contribute to the creation of a new content framework.

Guest speaker Dr Rhidian Griffiths, Director of Public Services from the National Library of Wales welcomed delegates to the session before Chris Bate a SCA consultant spoke about the ‘rich and complex landscape’ of understanding audience and ‘getting them involved’ in the design of future services.

Chris Batt shared the background to the ‘Audience Analysis and Modelling Report’ that looked at the SCA members understanding of their audiences. He raised questions around ‘what intelligence already exists to understand audiences and the existing users’ behaviour?’ as well as looking for ‘common approaches and common languages’ and explained that there is a ‘need to build easy ways for people to feel comfortable in this new arena’. A second Invitation to Tender on Audience Analysis and Modelling has been released.

The speakers moved onto the challenges that are created by orphan works, licensing and how people share information with consent, such as through ‘creative commons’. Anna Vernon from JISC Collections, raised the question ‘what steps can the public sector take to maximise sustainable long term access to content?’.

Naomi Korn IPR Consultant

One possible answer to this question was to look at business and community engagement and how ‘licensing models would need to reflect demand from non-traditional user groups’ – for example extending usage rights to staff not directly employed by a higher education institution but who teach part of the curriculum or retired members of staff.
 
Naomi Korn, the SCA Intellectual Property Consultant picked up the theme of access to information and spoke about the ‘pragmatic approach to risk’. Naomi explained that legislation can be a ‘blocker’ as well as an ‘enabler’ to the sharing of information and referred to ‘pockets of excellence’ where appropriate risk management has enabled the sharing of content. You can listen to the podcast interview with Naomi where she talks in more detail about these success stories.

The SCA is also involved in talking to the Intellectual Property Office about legislation surrounding this area of work and in particular the SCA’s feedback to the Gower Review.  A quantitative study of the extent of the orphan works problem will be launched shortly.

It was clear from the speakers and the delegates taking part in the Welsh Home Nations Forum, especially from the afternoon discussion groups on business models and standardisation -  that there is a desire not to ‘reinvent the wheel’ but to develop guidelines which look at ways to work collaborately. There is a need to address the challenges of a vast range of organisations, with different governance structures, with different funding arrangements, using different business models, with different terminology, varying approaches to access and with a range of staff and non-staff.

As Naomi explained, “There is not going to be a one size solution that fits all. We’re looking to see how we can get the technology to fit the people rather than the people to fit the technology.”

 SCA’s blog page