On the move: new Jisc Inform highlights the European dimension
'Education and research are increasingly international in nature,' says Professor Wim Liebrand of the SURF Foundation in an interview in the new issue of Jisc Inform published today. Professor Liebrand is the Chief Executive of SURF, the body responsible for supporting the Dutch higher education and research community in the use of ICT.
With the European Union recently doubling its research budget and looking increasingly to national bodies to work together, and the development and implementation of technical and other standards increasingly depending on international agreement, Wim Liebrand says that there is a growing need for organisations such as SURF, Jisc and others to cooperate across a wide range of activities. 'We need to reflect and engage with all of these realities,' he says of the many factors which are bringing such organisations together. Moreover, he continues, the benefits are considerable as the fruits of collaborative activities start to become apparent.
One example of this growing cooperation, also reported in the new issue of Inform, is the Knowledge Exchange, a new forum set up by SURF, Jisc and similar bodies in Germany and Denmark. The new body, to be based in Copenhagen for the first three years, aims to develop closer working relationships in order to increase the return on investment in ICT and to improve the quality of learning, teaching and research.
Other articles to be found in the new Inform include features on the Jiscmail service, which has distributed some 584 million messages through more than 5,200 mailing lists used by the FE, HE and research communities since 2000, and reviews of new online resources such as ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jisc programmes, including the MLEs for Lifelong Learning programme, which has recently come to an end, and the new Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management programme, are also featured.
Read an online copy of the new issue of Jisc Inform, or to order a print copy please write to publications@jisc.ac.uk