"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC, the European Union and The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based. More details on UKOLN activities can be found on at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/activities/. UKOLN aims to inform practice and influence policy in the areas of: digital libraries, metadata and resource discovery, distributed library and information systems, bibliographic management, and web technologies. It provides network information services, including the Ariadne magazine, and runs workshops and conferences.

Achievement Highlights

A selection of our significant achievements over the last year include:

• UKOLN is now a JISC Innovation Support Centre, and received a significant increase in its funding from JISC from 2009
• In addition to Core funding, from the JISC and MLA, funding has been secured for new projects and extensions including the JISC-funded EASTER, writeslike.us and FixRep Projects, hosting of the e-Framework/Information Environment Web Site, and supporting developer community innovation. We also have secured continuing funding for the Digital Curation Centre, in which UKOLN is a partner.
• UKOLN staff have been invited to make presentations and have had papers accepted at key international conferences and events, including the ARL Forum in Washington DC, Bridging Worlds 2008 conference held in Singapore, the US Association of Research Libraries/Coalition for Networked Information Forum in Washington DC, and the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC) 2008 conference.
• The Director is now a member of ESRC Research Resources Board
• Dealing with Data, the report published in 2007, continues to be widely referenced, including in the US Government Interagency Working Group on Digital Data has recently published a report in January 2009 to the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council entitled Harnessing the power of digital data for science and society, The Houghton Report, on benefits from curation and open sharing of research data and the Government of Canada published a strategy paper in October 2008 on the Stewardship of Research Data in Canada: a Gap Analysis citing the Report.
• UKOLN have participated developing the MLA Visions & Values Statement and actions.
• Work on delivering ’amplified conferences’ has been advanced. The 2009 Institutional Web Managers Workshop had large numbers of remote participants viewing the streaming video of talks and participating in the event back channel.
• The Director participated in the US National Science Foundation Office of Cyber-Infrastructure Strategic Advisory Board and was invited to speak at the National Research Council Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information 2009 Conference on Managing Data for Science, in Ottawa.
• UKOLN were commissioned by JISC to lead a SIS Landscape study on the UK HE sector use of content, communication and social networking services developed outside the sector by global enterprise.
• Several issues of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Digital Curation have been published.
• A Handbook on Preservation of Web Resources was published which offers valuable advice for those embarking on a Web resource preservation strategy or interested in issues related to improving long-term access to Web resources. The handbook includes case studies, scenarios and a glossary.
• UKOLN organized the 6th International Digital Curation Conference, in Chicago, USA.
• Marieke Guy has established a Remote Worker’s blog which discusses best practices for remote workers within UKOLN and more widely and won the Remote Worker 2009 award from the Remote Employment Web site in association with BT Business.
• A number of blogs have now been established to enhance our two-way communications with our user communities. Blogs published include: Cultural Heritage Blog, Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, Paul Walk’s weblog, IE Demonstrator Blog, Digital Curation Blog, Marieke Guy, Ramblings of a Remote Worker and Good APIs Project.
• Ariadne Web Magazine continued to offer a broad range of content, publishing a further four issues. Subjects as diverse as findings from a UKRDS survey of researchers, views on preservation of research data, the impact of overlay and data journals in the meteorological sciences, and the National Library of Norway’s digitisation strategy have recently appeared.
• A two-day, Rapid Innovation in Development event was held, for an invited audience for developers. This was a highly interactive event, aimed at promoting collaboration and creativity across different areas of research. Participants were given the opportunity to explore ways in which to sell and market their projects/ideas more effectively to wider audiences in order to get more people interested in using their software / or listening and understanding their ideas better.
• UKOLN Update launched - a monthly newsletter about UKOLN activities.

Organisational structure

UKOLN staff are organised into four teams: Community & Outreach (including Events Management), Research and Development, Software and Systems, and Resources and Administration although there is considerable cross group working. A small number of staff currently work remotely and UKOLN supports flexible and home working where appropriate.

Community & Outreach

The Community & Outreach team has an outwards-facing remit. Team members seek to disseminate advice and support to our user communities on best practices in the development and use of digital library services.

The areas addressed within the team include cross-domain and semantic interoperability issues, the development and deployment of social networks and ICT service frameworks and access technologies. In addition to these broad areas team members also provide support in more specialist areas including:

• The UK Web Focus advises UK higher and further education, museums, libraries and archives about emerging Web technologies and acts as the JISC representative to the World Wide Web Consortium. A range of support activities and materials are produced. UKOLN's own information services are being used as a test bed for innovative developments and good practice
• Bibliographic Management. This activity is concerned with the standards used to create bibliographic records; the formats in which bibliographic data are stored, exchanged and retrieved and the quality of bibliographic records in terms of currency, accuracy, consistency and functionality.
• Publication of The Good Practice Guide: This guidebook provides advice on standards and best practices to organisations involved in the development of cultural heritage Web services
• As part of the UK affiliation of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), UKOLN acts as adviser on the implementation and technical development of the standard in the UK.
• Information services: UKOLN is a leading international site for information about digital library research. It provides the web magazine Ariadne. In addition to descriptions of our own work, our web site includes pages, which complement our research and awareness interests: on metadata, on digital library technologies and on interoperability. Ariadne has been published since January 1996. Initially funded by the eLib programme, it continues to provide a valuable dissemination function within the UK HE community primarily.
• Events Management: UKOLN is experienced in arranging conferences, workshops and other events in support of its own work and on behalf of its funders, particularly the JISC. These include the annual CNI/JISC conferences, the International Digital Curation Conferences, various JISC special events, and project related events.

Research & Development

Our chief funders in this area of activity are the JISC and the European Community.

• JISC IE Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR) - to provide authoritative information on metadata vocabularies and application profiles used for resource description in the UK learning, teaching and research communities. UKOLN is partnered in the project by the Institute for Learning & Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol. Contributing associate partners are the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS) and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta).
• Digital Curation Centre - to lead research and development into key areas of data curation and preservation and to pilot the development of generic support services for maintaining digital data and research results over their entire life-cycle for current and future users. The project partners are the University of Edinburgh (Informatics, Law, Information Services and leading research institutes), University of Glasgow (HATII and Information Services) and The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC).
• Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (DRIVER) The project is a joint collaboration between ten international partners with the intention to create a knowledge base of European research. Several user services, including search, data collection, profiling and recommendation, will be implemented in the test-bed. DRIVER will demonstrate the potential of a future pan-European Digital Repository service to researchers, research-funding agencies and institutions.
• The EASTER project aims to test and evaluate existing tools for automated subject metadata generation; gain a better understand what is possible and what the limitations of current solutions are; and, make subsequent recommendations for services employing subject metadata in the JISC community.
• IMPACT is a European project that aims to speed up the process and enhance the quality of mass digitisation in Europe. The IMPACT research programme will significantly improve digital access to historical printed text through the development and use of innovative Optical Character Recognition software and linguistic technologies.
• The JISC-funded SWORD initiative (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) is a lightweight protocol for deposit intended to 'low the barriers to deposit', principally deposit into repositories, but potentially deposit into any system which wants to receive content from remote sources.

Software Development & Systems

The Software & Systems Team supports UKOLN activities by building innovative systems and services based on emerging technologies as well as ensuring high quality technical support to all members of UKOLN staff. Innovative systems and services inform the policy and advice that UKOLN gives to the community and grounds our more theoretical research and development activities in practical implementations.

UKOLN provides advisory services to the JISC concerning the development of the e-Framework and the JISC Information Environment, the latter focusing on the relationships between the technologies specified in the technical architecture and emerging Web services, mechanisms to support the deposit of material into the information environment, and the integration of the information environment with managed learning environments.

Staff Development

UKOLN's most valued resource is its staff. We are committed to investing in the skills and resources of our staff. Training and development of staff, both to maximise the benefits to the organisation and to enable individuals to reach their full potential is facilitated in the following ways:

• Induction programmes are designed for all new staff, which introduces them to their line manager, the administrative support team and other UKOLN and University staff.
• Appraisals are conducted on an annual basis.
• The UKOLN Seminar Series aims to facilitate discussion of "hot topics" within UKOLN, to develop staff interaction and to broaden staff knowledge and understanding of wider issues.
• Staff are encouraged to attend relevant University of Bath and external training events.
• Other development activities that may be undertaken include membership of a specific UKOLN working group, mentoring and job secondments, job sharing and job exchanges.