JISC

HE institutions, education and research organisations, and research groups in the UK have created and provide access to a wide range of electronic content for use in learning, teaching and research. Access to this content is provided through a number of different routes including web accessible digital archives, open access repositories, and web-based collections. These repositories and archives are hosted by departments, institutions, consortia, and national bodies such as research councils, learned societies and other publicly funded organisations. Some registries and services aggregate these sources of content, but there is currently no single place where these sources are listed.

Phase 1 and Phase 2 of this project are now complete and a final report that covers both of these phases can be found at the bottom of this page.

Aims and Objectives

The project will aim to identify every repository of digital content that is free to UK HE institutions and hosted within the UK. This will include archives and repositories that require registration, but not those requiring subscription. The inventory will also exclude institutional VLEs that are not open access, personal Websites, Websites with little or no structured classification of content. The project will endeavour to provide additional information on individually catalogued collections within repositories in a 'parent/child' relationship. The classification model and cataloguing activity will include information to facilitate understanding of the preservation environment of the repositories.

Project Methodology

The catalogue will be designed in liaison with JISC, performed by AHDS and DPE.

Collation of information will be achieved through a detailed review of previous research done in this area and by aggregating resources referenced by online portals such as Opendoar, Intute, AHDS, IESR, and the Higher Education Academy subject networks and reviews such as the AHDS Performing Arts scoping study [PDF]. This work will be done by full-time data aggregators.

Project QA, reports, and conclusions will be performed by AHDS. 

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

A comprehensive XML catalogue of the digital content freely available in the UKand its preservation environment.

Full project documentation to explicate the decisions involved in populating the catalogue and facilitate repeating the work in the future.

A project report, analysing the findings, considering the nature of access to free digital content in the UK, and making recommendations for long-term preservation of these resources.

Technology / Standards used

XML

Compatibility with the JISC IESR where appropriate.

Lead institution

• HATII University of Glasgow

Project partners

• AHDS Performing Arts
• Digital Preservation Europe