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JISC Integrated Information Environment committee brochure
The JISC Integrated Information Environment committee is responsible for developing common technical infrastructure to facilitate interoperability across learning, teaching and research, digital libraries and their supporting systems, and for developing mechanisms to support the retrieval and delivery of online resources of all types.
Membership and remit
JISC Integrated Information Environment committee comprises representatives from the further and higher education sectors. In addition, observers are invited from the e-Science Core Programme, Museums Libraries and Archives Council, the British Library and the National Electronic Library for Health.
The JISC Integrated Information Environment committee is responsible for developing common technical infrastructure to facilitate interoperability across learning, teaching and research, digital libraries and their supporting systems, and for developing mechanisms to support the retrieval and delivery of online resources of all types.
Integrating Environments
Technology is becoming increasingly embedded in the systems and processes of our educational institutions. Although technology has the potential to extend and improve educational activities, this potential can only be fully realised if the activities are built upon a stable and coherent technical infrastructure.
The Integrating Environments programme area is to scope and facilitate the necessary interoperability to allow sharing of services and resources across communities of practice, sectors and national boundaries whilst sufficiently recognising the distinct needs of all stakeholders.
The development of common standards and frameworks and a clear understanding of common or shared services is essential to ensure that the systems can interoperate fully with each other at local, regional, national and international level.
JISC is investigating what common services it is beneficial to have across e-learning, e-research and their supporting environments. Authentication is a service common to these communities and ATHENS and its successor services are an example of where JISC has implemented a common approach. JISC will look at other potential services to see how far this model can be furthered, in order to ensure common solutions are adopted, wherever appropriate.
Common Information Environment
Organisations in different sectors are making significant amounts of online content available to their respective communities in, for example, health, education, museums, archives, research and public libraries. However, the barriers between sectors mean that not all this content is accessible to all who might need it or want it. Too much remains hidden amongst the low-quality information that clutters the web, and behind technical, commercial and administrative barriers.
Overcoming these barriers will require concerted action on the part of all organisations in the field. The JISC is working with key public sector organisations to deliver a common online information environment to users. As part of this collaboration work is underway to ascertain an overarching set of interoperability standards and principles by which the Common Information Environment members and others can abide.
Knowledge Exchange
Significant collaborative work both in the UK and internationally is required to take JISC work forward. To co-ordinate this development work more effectively with partners outside the UK, JISC is helping to develop the concept of a Knowledge Exchange.
This initiative is in its early stages but aims to maximise investment of learning and research by sharing policy, strategy and programme outputs more effectively with some key European organisations who also have responsibility for Information and Communication Technology development in learning and research.
This is part of a broader spectrum of partnership activities including; The Common Information Environment in the UK, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US, Department for Education, Science and Training in Australia and SURF Foundation in the Netherlands.
Middleware and Shared Services
Middleware is a term used to describe applications that control access to, and usage of, resources such as online information, high-performance computers, computer programmes, virtual laboratories and so on. Shared middleware services are key to achieving seamless access to distributed resources.
JISC is developing a next generation National Middleware Service for the UK further and higher education communities based on technology called Shibboleth developed by Internet 2 in the USA. A national support service is being funded to support institutions in this area.
It is essential for JISC to work with other national communities, as the fundamental standards to which core middleware will be built in the future should be open and internationally agreed. The UK is playing a central role in developing these standards and creating a stable and sustainable platform on which future environments will be built.
Resource Discovery
Portals and Presentation
Portals are seen as the layer of information that is presented to users. Portals integrate content from different sources and represent it in ways that respond to the needs of different users and user communities. They support the community in the management and discovery of online resources.
The Portals and Presentation programmes are involved in developing the use of portals in further and higher education and demonstrating how they can best serve institutions in making information resources available. A series of demonstrator portals have been created across a range of different subject areas, for images and moving pictures and sound resources, and for learning and teaching resources. Studies are being funded to consider the broader embedding and sustainability issues.
Searching Content and Repositories
JISC is developing new resource discovery programmes and has initiated discussions with Google in order to investigate making JISC content more accessible through Google scholar and other search engines. There has also been work to explore how search engines such as Google can prioritise quality content from UK institutional repositories.
Working with Publishers
Applying appropriate metadata to describe resources is essential if a range of high quality content, including that from commercial publishers is to be identified, retrieved and preserved appropriately. JISC has work underway with the publishing community to explore the appropriate use of metadata to encourage interoperability.
Digital Repositories
JISC is developing mechanisms and supporting services to allow all types of learning and research content held in a range of repositories to be managed and stored effectively and where possible shared with the broader community. This year the Digital Repositories programme has been established to focus on building strategy that can unite the interests of the learning, research and digital library communities. In addition to this work there are a number of other programmes working in this area including:
Institutional repositories are being piloted and implemented by a number of institutions for managing a range of learning and research assets. There are likely to be a range of different types of repositories, from subject-based to regional and national repositories. JISC’s role is to ensure that these repositories can share information so that users can easily access content held in different repositories.
Digital Preservation and Records Management
All further and higher education institutions face problems related to long-term management and preservation of information in digital form. Digital preservation issues are seen as a major inhibitor in the future growth of electronic resources. The Digital Preservation and Records Management programme is addressing the challenge of archiving electronic documents and publications.
Project funding is being targeted at developing appropriate policies, procedures, assessment tools and services to support digital collections and records in the longer term, and at providing advice and guidance to further and higher education institutions. A ‘one stop shop’ records management toolkit has also been developed to provide impartial advice on implementing a records management information system.
JISC supports, and has been involved with the work of the Digital Preservation Coalition, which serves to foster international collaboration action on digital preservation.
Development Services
In addition to the development programmes described, the JISC Integrated Information Environment committee also funds two development services.
UKOLN is a national focus for expertise in digital information management. It is co-funded by JISC and the Museums Libraries and Archives Council and provides services to its funders and the library, information and cultural heritage communities.
OSS Watch provides UK further and higher education institutions with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software, and about related open standards.