Lirolem: A virtual studio/Institutional Repository for the University of Lincoln

Gives an account of the Lirolem project at the University of Lincoln which was to build a repository capable of handling multimedia material as well as providing a repository for the University's research output

Digital Repositories and Open Access: Information Without Limits

For many libraries, the Digital Repository has become the main storage center for materials created by the community they serve. Such materials can include important historical records, local newspapers, community newsletters, as well as articles, presentations, data sets, images, videos and other multimedia items. In this way, the repository takes on a central role in placing free, open access materials into the hands of the public. While many repositories are currently managed by universities, their benefits reach beyond the walls of academia to include K-12 students as well as the public at large. Thus, all librarians are encouraged to utilize the materials housed in repositories during their educational programming. Doing so has the advantage of providing reliable information at no cost to their patrons while at the same time creating ties between the university and the local community. Furthermore, the use of open access materials during instruction sessions and reference interactions presents the librarian with many opportunities to discuss the increased importance of fair use and intellectual property issues

Exposing the Intellectual Assets of a University Department

Works for designing and deploying a university department repository are presented. General considerations about policies and functional requirements are outlined with respect to the institution context. Technical and system issues are briefly discussed. Finally the benefits and usability of the repository are summarized

Reinforcing Students’ Research Abilities via Digital Repositories

Computer science graduates are requested to possess complex professional abilities including research skills. In this paper we justify the development of a departmental repository to assist all non-auditorium activities and summarize its benefits. We are convinced that this is the way students and teachers to form interim learning societies

Quality assurance for digital learning object repositories: issues for the metadata creation process

Metadata enables users to find the resources they require, therefore it is an important component of any digital learning object repository. Much work has already been done within the learning technology community to assure metadata quality, focused on the development of metadata standards, specifications and vocabularies and their implementation within repositories. The metadata creation process has thus far been largely overlooked. There has been an assumption that metadata creation will be straightforward and that where machines cannot generate metadata effectively, authors of learning materials will be the most appropriate metadata creators. However, repositories are reporting difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, and it is becoming apparent that the issue of metadata creation warrants attention. This paper surveys the growing body of evidence, including three UK-based case studies, scopes the issues surrounding human-generated metadata creation and identifies questions for further investigation. Collaborative creation of metadata by resource authors and metadata specialists, and the design of tools and processes, are emerging as key areas for deeper research. Research is also needed into how end users will search learning object repositories

Working for a Research-Friendly IPR Framework in the UK

Research institutions and individual researchers in many countries are facing intellectual property issues which are changing the way in which the results of research are disseminated, how those results are used and by whom, and how current research feeds into future research. Some of the key questions which will be determined in part at least by intellectual property issues are: access: will the text and data in research papers be accessible and under what licensing conditions? publication: how will text and data be published, in journals or held in personal or institutional repositories? ownership: will authors, employers, funders or publishers claim ownership of text and/or data? re-use: will owners restrict re-use, even for academic purposes? management: how will text and data silos be managed and by whom? preservation: how will text and data be preserved and by whom? These are key questions both for the current generation of researchers and also for future generations whose work may be helped or hindered – even prevented – by decisions being made now. The benefits flowing from today’s biomedical research would be impossible to achieve without the strong action taken by the research community a few years ago in opening the Human Genome Database for use without restriction. The commercial forces which almost locked away the genome data could lock away equally valuable research results in the future if the academic community does not ensure that appropriate intellectual property rights remain within the academic community. When commercial interests control rights in content generated within the academic sector, it is sometimes due to academic neglect of IPR issues. The work described in this chapter is informing the UK academic community of possibilities for the good management of research text and data

DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report

The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students

Evaluating a regional support network for technology-based entrepreneurship: The case of Connect Scotland

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