What is this website and who is it for?

This website is an overview of the JISC projects currently taking place in the #jiscEXPO programme. "jiscEXPO" represents two things: (1) the "Joint Information Systems Committee" (JISC) which is the funding organisation behind this set of projects, and (2) "EXPOsing" of content as linked data. Please see the sidebar links for the history and context for these set of projects.

DISCLAIMER: This site is NOT an official JISC site but rather the notebook-wiki for the jiscEXPO Programme Manager (David) to keep track of the various projects taking place within this programme. As this is a notebook it is only intended to make sense to its author and should be read with the proviso that it is in notes and therefore incomplete. Please contact d.flanders@jisc.ac.uk to get context for the various notes.

For the official JISC website of this programme please see: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/jiscEXPO

jiscEXPO projects: "exposing digital content for education and research"

The jiscEXPO projects were funded in June of 2010 (they will run for up to one year, until July 2011). These projects represent the first organised cross-sector effort in UK Higher Education Universities to apply linkeddata to a variety of University specific issues. The projects were tasked to take on the following tasks in exposing linkeddata (please see each of the project blogs to see how these generic issues were addressed):

• (i) Make a collection of resources available on the Web as linked data, where a case can be made that it would benefit teaching, learning, research or knowledge transfer in UK higher education.
• (ii) Develop a visionary prototype with instructional step-by-step demonstration and documentation to show how the linked data can be used by 3rd party tools and services.
• (iii) Explore and report on the opportunities and barriers in making content structured and exposed on the Web for discovery and use. Such opportunities and barriers may coalesce around licensing implications, trust, provenance, sustainability and usability.

Projects will do their uptmost to engage the wider UK higher education community so that the work will enable other institutions to take advantage of the outputs and experiences. Each project has a blog where they report their finding to the community, try searching for their unique tag on google to find out what they have been doing.

The projects funded represent a balanced portfolio of work across a diversity of subject areas and applications.

List of Projects funded as part of the #jiscEXPO programme

The following is a list of all the projects in the jiscEXPO programme, each of the below links go through to the wiki page on this site which are just the high level project description information including links to the project's various resources, please see the project's blog for up to date information on the project. And please do tweet and blog about the projects yourself using their hash "#" tag. 1. The #jiscopenbib (Open Bibliography) project hosted at Cambridge University in partnership with the Open Knowledge Foundation and International Union of Crystallography. 1. The #jiscopencite (Open Citations) project hosted at the University of Oxford is declaring a vocabulary for what kinds of citations scholars use when citing resources, e.g. "refutes", "agrees", "supplements", etc. 1. The #locah (Linked Open Copac Archives Hub) project hosted at the University of Bath (UKOLN) in partnership with Mimas, Eduserv, Talis and OCLC is declaring a set of URIs for the EAD (Encoded Archival Description) vocabulary. 1. The #docsworkstexts (Linking Documents, Works and Texts) project at Birmingham University is working with classifying historical manuscripts. 1. The #luceroproject (Linking University Content for Education, Research and Administration data online) project hosted at the The Open University is exposing core institutional data that can be reused so as to increase data sharing across the enterprise. 1. The #sailsproject (Shipping Archives and Integrated Logbooks of Ships) hosted at King’s College London in partnership with the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies, Met Office ACRE initiative and the The National Archives is declaring URIs for the TEI (Text Encoded Vocabulary) specifically for Naval Ship Logs. 1. The #linkedbrainz (Linking Music Metadata) project hosted by Queen Mary University of London in partnership with the The Metabrainz Foundation is exposing music metadata utilising various music vocabulary URIs. 1. The #musicnet project hosted at the University of Southampton in partnership with Durham University, Royal Holloway, Grove Music Online, the British Library and RISM is exposing URIs for composers. 1. The #chaliced (Connecting Historical Authorities with Linked Data, Contexts and Entities) project hosted at Edinburgh University in partnership with Kings College London and Queens University Belfast is exposing URIs for Historical place name lists. 1. The #fishdlish project hosted at the Univeristy of Manchester in partnership with the Fish Base Information and Research Group Inc is making biological fish data available as linkeddata URIs.

Browsable Cross-cutting Project Themes

The jiscEXPO projects can be sliced in multiple ways for browsing by various common themes:

Themed according to what kinds of data the projects are working with: * Project working with library data * Projects working with humanities data * Projects working with music data * Projects working with geography data * Projects working with science data

Themed according to what kinds of end users the projects are working with: * Projects working with researchers * Projects working with teachers * Projects working with students * Project working with librarians * Projects working with central administrators

Themed according to type of project product they are producing for reuse by other Universities: * TBC

Themed according to the skills and lessons learned during the course of the project: * TBC

jiscEXPO project blog planet

What is going on with these projects RIGHT NOW? - Below is an aggregated list of jiscEXPO project blog posts and other commentary from around the Web. (Please subscribe to the RSS Feed here). <wiki:gadget url="http://jiscexpo.googlecode.com/files/pipeGadgetFeed-jiscEXPO.xml" width="800" height="600" /> * You can use delicious or twitter to post any links into this feed by tagging items with "jiscEXPO"

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions. These set of questions and answers help define how the jiscEXPO collection of projects (funded under JISC #INF11 Programme funding cycle of work) are defined and more widely disseminated. To see quarterly executive updates (written as high level overviews of the themes emerging from these projects), please see the ChangeLog.

• Q1. How are the jiscEXPO projects (as a collective) changing the sector?

  • A: "jiscEXPO" is a collection of 10 projects jointly attempting to change the way that University data is organised and represented on the open Web so that it will be structured for reuse by anyone. Each project is exposing their collections of data as a structured dataset using Linkeddata principles. In addition, to exposing this data they will also create a prototype demonstrator on how the data can be utilised by the end user in novel and more efficient ways, ideally these prototype will be visionary so as to inspire managers to further invest in the capabilities of linkeddata. These ten projects will be the first to do the following things in the sector and thus help lead the sector to change as a whole:
  • Expose existing data as structured "linked data" that can be reused openly on the Web by anyone.
  • Development of new technical skills for how data can be reused utilising linkeddata technologies
  • Experience of working with the different processes required for working with linkeddata, thereby establishing new policies that other institutions can use to help initiate good practice in other institutions.
  • Encourage the long term management strategy of websites over years so that the data published now will be valuable and related to the content published in decades (if not centuries).
  • Understanding for potential opportunities by the Academic sector to work with the public sector in their opening up and exposing of data.
  • Discovery of new business models and advantages for working with open and structured (linked) content.

• Q2. If the jiscEXPO projects are going to change the sector, how will we notice when change occurs?

  • A: The primary day-to-day change within projects will be observed via the project blogs that each project are required to use to record their progress. These project blog posts are watched over by the Programme Manager and the Synthesis Liaison who attempt to draw out the themes across the projects and to provide overviews of the programme via the programme manager SiteVisit reports and ChangeLog sythesis liaison reports.
  • A: The secondary mechanism by which change is observed is through the community efforts that the projects are involved within. Generally, projects are encouraged to participate in the devCSI developer community events and training. The programme will work with several other communities (see stakeholder below) to put on an event that will increase the awareness by content providers, developers and citizens for how data can be more easily reused on the open Web.
  • A: Projects will also naturally (by working in a Webscale linked environment) will form connections with government organisations (i.e. data.gov.uk), companies (e.g. Talis) and other public sector organisations (e.g. BBC). Further evidence and imformation on these relationships will be be available via the StrandUpdates page which will be written bi-annually by the Programme Manager.

• Q3. Who will read the things produced by jiscEXPO projects and help explain them to the powers that be?

  • The role of the Synthesis Liason (as defined by the ChangeLog) is a significant one as it provides an overview of what is going on in the day to day tasks of projects.
  • The Programme Manager also attempts to do a SiteVisit with each project to gain a clear understanding of the projects outputs and what changes they feel are occurring across the organisation and sector.
  • From the observations of the Synthesis Liaison and the Programme Manager there are two pieces of work created to help explain the programme to the identified stakeholders, the two outputs are a 'communication output' giving an overview of what the projects have produced as their final products and an 'evaluation output' which is delivered to an Evaluation Consultant who can help provide a wider view of all projects ongoing in the INF11 Programme (+100 projects).

• Q4. Who are the most significant stakeholders (audiences) who will be affected by the change that comes out of the jiscEXPO projects as a collective?

  • End users: Researchers, Lecturers, .ac.uk Web Managers, Content Providers (Libraries, Museums, Archives)
  • Related communities: OKFN, UKOLN, CETIS, OSSWatch, data.gov.uk,
  • Political organisations:

• Q5. How will JISC gather information from the projects to help promote them and advertise them to the wider world?

  • The Sythesis Liaison will write quarterly newsletters to update the wider sector in the significant changes the projects are discovering.
  • All project will post a 'final product post' which will provide a simple 'argos' (aka 'Sears') like description of the product that the project has produced, see ProjectDocumentationInstructions for which tags this post will be listed under.
  • A final summary report will be provided by the Synthesis Liaison giving an overview of the common lessons learned by the projects as well as the significant achievements of the programme on the whole.

Generic Timeline for all jiscEXPO projects

(reverse chronological) * 31st July 2011 - End of Projects, Final Budgets and Final Survey administered. * 15th July 2011 - Product Review Panel, where each project's products are evaluated for re-usability plausibility. * 14th July 2011 - End of Programme Meeting: Sharing Good Practice and Lesson Learnt by each project. * August 2010 - January 2011: Programme Manager does a SiteVisit with each project * 7th June 2010 (Mon) - Funded bids notified * 4th June 2010 (Fri) - Selected bids approved by marking panel * 21st May 2010 - Marking panel meeting and recommendations agreed by panel. * 4th May 2010 - Marks on bids from marking panel due. * 20th April 2010 - Bids (Proposals for Project Funding) due by Noon.