Malcolm Read, UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), m.read@jisc.ac.uk
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As the Executive Secretary of the UK Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC)1 my expertise
is from the government funding perspective. As such we see
digital libraries as an important component of the wider ICT
infrastructure needs of education and research:
- National research and education networks
- National online content resources
- Resource discovery tools
- Access management systems (authentication, authorisation
etc)
- Research infrastructure (including e-science/ Grid)
- Learning management systems (or virtual learning environments)
To support and centrally (nationally) manage such an infrastructure
for universities, colleges and research institutes requires
clear policies at the institutional, national and international
level. Policies of relevance to digital libraries include:
- Agreed technical standards e.g. for access and metadata
- IPR and digital rights management (DRM)
- Open access and open standards
- Content acquisition and use
- Subscription and charging- for economic sustainability
(long term business models)
- Institutional repositories
- Curation and preservation
Digital libraries are typically national in scale and can,
therefore, provide expertise and leadership to research, education
and cultural heritage communities through identifying and specifying
national policy guidance. It is this policy leadership role
the JISC, through its expert committees, provides in the UK.
By providing such advice it is possible to increase the integration
of online resources across the country (e.g. between libraries,
museums, universities), across the different education sectors,
and across different media (e.g. text, sound, still and moving
images).
What follows is a brief summary of the policy issues we have
attempted to address in the UK; but many of these issues are
international in scope and context, and indeed can only be
sensibly tackled in collaboration with other countries. References
are given to relevant UK work to supplement the contributions
from other participants.
Common Technical Standards
Although
JISC’s work is focussed on the higher education
sector this is shared, and often done collaboratively, with
the other public sector organisations such as the British Library,
Museums Libraries and Archive Council, National Archives, National
Health Service, schools etc. These bodies meet regularly to
define a Common Information Environment 2 to
enable member organisations to describe and manage their publicly
available on-line resources to common standards to facilitate
the sharing of resources. This work is being progressed on
a broader scale to define a national framework for digital
libraries. An ambitious international collaboration is underway
to define an e-framework that identifies all the activities
within a university that need to be linked together to exploit
the potential for on-line information across digital libraries,
research outputs and data, e-learning and management information
systems. 3
IPR and Digital Rights Management
These
issues are important as universities are both users and producers
of online resources and wish to protect their rights but
maximise availability to researchers, lecturers and students.
These issues have become particularly important in the context
of “libraries” of learning objects 4.
Advice to universities on ownership of IPR has been provided
by the funding councils 5 and
a useful report was commissioned from a consultancy called
Intrallect on digital rights management 6.
Open Access and Open Standards
All digital
library, increasingly referred to as digital repositories,
programmes in the UK must conform to open standards. Our
work in this area is obviously done internationally and is
led by two organisations: UKOLN 7 and
CETIS 8. The former concentrates
primarily on library standards and the latter on e-learning
standards, but these activities are increasingly being integrated.
The open access debate on sharing scholarly communications
is wide ranging and passionate. Other participates are well
qualified to provide briefing in this area. There was a useful
international colloquium hosted in London last year that produced
a commonly agreed position statement 9.
Open access is less controversial (so far), in respect of
sharing learning objects where MIT took the lead some years
ago with their Open Courseware Initiative. Similar initiatives
are being taken by some UK universities. These resources need
to be linked with more conventional digital libraries.
Content Acquisition, Use and Business Models
Many
on-line resources (e.g. journals, research databases) are procured
nationally 10 for
use by all UK universities and colleges either for free or,
via subscription, on a cost recovery basis 11.
Wherever possible this is done through a model license with
the content owner against an agreed usage policy 12.
In order to ensure these procurements are handled cost effectively
and against a long term sustainable business model we are creating
a not for profit company 13.
Institutional Repositories
Many universities
and learned societies are creating their own digital repositories
of scholarly resources and many universities are building their
own institutional repositories. It is important that these
repositories are integrated with national repositories and
with similar activity in other countries. In this way an international “content
layer” of scholarly and
academic resources can be built up. There is a new development
programme in the UK aimed at universities and colleges 14 and
a recent international conference in Amsterdam jointly funded
by JISC, SURF (a similar funding agency in the Netherlands)
and CNI 15.
Digital Curation and Preservation
Paradoxically
as more information is born digital less information is managed
and preserved for future generations. To help address this
problem many organisations interested in digital library resources
founded the Digital Preservation Coalition 16 to
share expertise and foster informed debate and strategy.
A Digital Curation Centre 17 has
been funded to support UK universities and colleges to manage
and preserve their research outputs in digital form.
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