"FAIR in practice" - Jisc report now available

To provide a better understanding of current practice with regard to the use of FAIR principles in the UK and the potential these have to enhance research operations and output, Jisc assigned work to Robert Allen and David Hartland of Hapsis Innovation Ltd. They worked in close collaboration with esteemed experts in the UK such as Simon Coles, Susanna Sansone and Melissa Terras and investigated practices and views in various research disciplines.

The results have now been published in the report ‘FAIR in practice - Jisc report on the Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reuseable Data Principles’, that can be found using DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1245567

A blog on the report, titled ‘Open science is all very well but how do you make it FAIR in practice?’ by Rachel Bruce and Bas Cordewener, is available here.

JISC Guide: Making your digital collections easier to discover

Making your digital collections easier to discover

Developing techniques to increase reach of your digital collections, optimise them for discovery and evaluate their usage and impact. 

Available HERE

Contains the following sub sections: 

• Make Google searches work for you
  Using social media to promote your digital collections
• Use aggregators to boost your collection
• Make your collection available for learning and teaching
• Using popular websites to reach broader audiences
• Improve the user experience of your digital collection
• Ensuring your digital collections reach academic researchers
• Create champions for your digital collections
• Ensure your digital collections integrate with your organisation’s systems

Does my data look good in this? Exploring research data management in the creative arts

On January 18th there was a Jisc-funded workshop on ‘Does my data look good in this? Exploring research data management in the creative arts.’

For everyone who may be interested in this area, there is a ‘virtual goody bag’ at the following link: https://vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/projects/datalookgood/bag.html

This includes: presentations, handouts/activities, video clips of arts researchers, and links to the Jisc projects mentioned.

The UK Medical Heritage Library: uniting digitised collections

The Wellcome Library and Jisc are delighted to announce our nine UK research library partners to the UK Medical Heritage Library project. These libraries will be making their historic collections available for digitisation alongside the Wellcome Library’s own 19th century works. They make up the bulk of the 15 million page goal made possible by funding from the Higher Education and Funding Council for England and Jisc.

The nine partners include:

6 university libraries:

       UCL (University College London)
       University of Leeds
       University of Glasgow
       London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
       King’s College London
       University of Bristol

3 Royal College libraries:
       Royal College of Physicians of London
       Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
       Royal College of Surgeons of England

Relevant works will be selected by the partner libraries from their historic book and pamphlet collections, representing a broad selection of works from across medicine, health, and related subjects. The Internet Archive will carry out all the digitisation work in a brand new scanning centre here at the Wellcome Library that will accommodate well over 2,000 items per month at peak times.

From October, these will start to become available online as part of the Medical Heritage Library  collection on the Internet Archive website and via the Wellcome Library catalogue.

More details on the project and the library partners can be found here:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2014/WTP056966.htm