Supporting Further and Higher Education Building the UK National Information Environment - Lessons from the Past and Pointers To the Future Norman Wiseman Head of Outreach and Institutional Support JISC

Supporting Further and Higher Education Context JISC Mission: “To provide world class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research” Vision – is one of “Ubiquitous and reliable access to an information and communication environment, so that users are able to enjoy world class technologies in support of their work and study”

Supporting Further and Higher Education History –the last 10 years 1994 Follet Report on Libraries 1995 e-Lib program –Learning by doing 1998 Distributed National Electronic Resource –Projects into services, hybrid libraries 2001 Information Environment –Standards, interoperability, joining up

Supporting Further and Higher Education Vision –the next 10 years? Mostly digital academic world –born digital? Based on individual as a member of several communities New ubiquitous access devices Many digital repositories Personalised e-world supported by tools to help sift volumes of information

Supporting Further and Higher Education Key Issues for the user “Information overload” Access to multiple communities Quality assurance

Supporting Further and Higher Education Key issues for Digital Library developments Joined up worlds (E-learning, e-Research, e- business, e- …) Resource discovery –Intelligent agents –Academic ‘Google’ Middleware Automatic metadata creation and management Semantic interoperability Curation and preservation Standards

Supporting Further and Higher Education JISC Priorities Develop common, integrated information and communications environment –Clear requirements and standards for wider public sector online content (by 2006) –Fully developed View of nature and role portals (by 2005) –Creation of learning materials repositories (by 2005) –Build middleware service (by 2008) (subject to funding)

Supporting Further and Higher Education JISC Priorities (2) Create and maintain sustainable services for online content –Establish set of agreed requirements for digital preservation (by 2005) Create Managed Learning Environments, linking Virtual Learning Environments with Management Information Systems –Develop framework to facilitate interoperability across learning, teaching & research (2006) Develop e-research infrastructure and use

Supporting Further and Higher Education JISC Activities Network Middleware Content Info Environment E-Research E-Learning Digital Libraries Management Information Outreach to colleges and universities Advice and Guidance Services

Supporting Further and Higher Education JISC Activities Network Middleware Content Info Environment E-Research E-Learning Digital Libraries Management Information Outreach to colleges and universities Advice and Guidance Services

Supporting Further and Higher Education Budget (£64 million)

Supporting Further and Higher Education Current Activity (1) Digital repositories: FAIR and X4L Organisational issues, technical issues, Tools Portals Range of remits, testing Google, Digital Preservation Coalition, Digital Curation Centre

Supporting Further and Higher Education Current Activity (2) JISC/NSF Digital Libraries in the Classroom Content & practice Middleware Shared Services, New call – inter- institutional authorisation Service Providers Publishers, central data providers

Supporting Further and Higher Education IE Architecture JISC-funded content providers institutional content providers external content providers brokersaggregatorscataloguesindexes institutional portals subject portals learning management systems media-specific portals end-user Desktop /browser presentation fusion authentication/authorisation (Athens) JISC IE service registry institutional preferences services user preferences services OpenURL resolvers metadata schema registries shared infrastructure

Supporting Further and Higher Education Shared Services/Common Services/Middleware Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) DRM Institutional profiling Terminology Authentication & Authorisation etc.

Supporting Further and Higher Education Key Lessons Global solutions Common middleware Joining up silos Interoperability and standards Sustainability Information Management expertise User focussed solutions