JISC Content, a new website from JISC & JISC Collections, provides information about a whole range of digital collections freely available to the educational community. The website includes an interactive mindmap, allowing the exploration of resources by subject area, and a timeline which highlights how the various collections relate to historical events.
The E-books for FE project has made approximately 3,000 e-book titles freely available to FE colleges across the UK, via the Ebrary platform. JISC Collections have recently announced the availability of an additional collection of titles available for purchase, allowing colleges to supplement their existing e-books provision. The titles in the e-Select Top 100 Collection have been selected according to their relevance to FE and provide demonstrable discounts for colleges.
A new website from JISC Collections has made it easier for learning resources and other staff to discover JISC Collections negotiated e-resources and manage subscriptions online. An enhanced resources catalogue and online ordering service are just a couple of the new features that are available through the site.
A recent JISC-funded report has highlighted the importance of having clearly stated preservation policies to guarantee the future of digital resources. Key findings from the ‘Digitisation Programme Digital Preservation Study’ include:
- External examination … or audit … can change practice for the better merely by asking the right questions.
- Without a written preservation policy, the long-term usability, authenticity, discoverability and accessibility of the digital collection is at risk.
- Without defined collection and content management procedures, particularly where metadata is dissociated from content or is held in multiple locations, the long-term usability, authenticity and discoverability of the digital collection is at risk.
- Without maintaining digital collections on a suitable digital preservation infrastructure, the long-term usability and accessibility of the digital collection is at risk.
- Without a plan for sustainability, the long-term usability and accessibility of the digital collection is at risk.
The full report includes recommended approaches to analyse preservation including links to existing resources to assist institutions in this area.
A JISC Collections-sponsored digital prize has been awarded to Electronic Enlightenment, a website that reconstructs the vital web of 18th century correspondence that marked the start of the modern world.
The resource holds the most wide-ranging online collection of correspondence of the early modern period, including over 55,000 letters in a network of interconnected documents, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid 19th century.
Sharing business information more effectively, particularly through colleges, universities and major reference libraries, could help recession-hit companies out of crisis and stimulate innovation, according to a JISC report undertaken by the British Library Research Service.
Libraries may not be an obvious source for all start-ups and small businesses but the business information they hold can help organisations plan their growth and development, make funding applications, get hold of up-to-date statistics and legal advice, as well as research new developments – essentially key information to help them thrive.
Now JISC and the British Library are calling for an integrated service model with universities, colleges and public libraries working in partnership to help businesses obtain the information and knowledge they need. Click here for full information.
JISC is to fund demonstrator projects exploring how universities can help facilitate the flow of information and knowledge resources to a much wider community, under a new call on access to resources.
JISC and Oxford University are marking this year’s Armistice by launching the first ever online collection of the manuscripts of Siegfried Sassoon, focusing on his war poetry.This is the first time these have gone online and they present a comprehensive collection of his war poetry, reassembled from collections across the world.
The work, which will be freely accessible online, will be part of Oxford University’s First World War poetry digital archive, which is funded by JISC. This enables online users to view over 12,000 previously unseen materials such as poetry manuscripts, letters, and original diary entries from some of the conflict’s most important poets including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Vera Brittain.
The latest extension to the archive will add to the Edmund Blunden collection, which was launched to great acclaim a few months ago. The launch will also mark the first anniversary of the Archive, which began on Armistice Day last year in conjunction with the Great War archive and has been a phenomenal success. Click here to visit the Sassoon collection.
With JISC support, an online collection of four thousand images from the Design Council slide collection were launched this month, providing a unique insight into the history of British design and its promotion by the UK government from the 1940s to the early 1990s.
The project is part of JISC’s digitisation programme which has invested just under £2 million to develop the range and quality of digital resources available to students and researchers in colleges and universities.
For a year, 26 e-course texts across four subject areas (Medicine, Business, Engineering and Media Studies) were made available to 127 UK universities who took part in a National e-books observatory project funded by JISC and carried out by JISC Collections. The largest study of its kind, it has seen the behaviours of over 50,000 participants and observed to see how they use a selection of academic electronic textbooks. In this podcast (Duration 13:03)Rebecca O’Brien is joined by Caren Milloy, the project’s manager at JISC Collections, and her co-author of the National e-books Observatory Project report, Ian Rowlands from CIBER who carried out the study.
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A number of resources capturing the memories of people living in post-war Edinburgh have recently been added to SCRAN. Using photographs from the Scotsman newspaper and audio recordings from individuals, SCRAN has created a series of montages covering topics such as home and family life, childhood games, food and rationing , slum clearance and solutions to post-war housing problems.
The clips can be accessed from the Lifelong Learning section of SCRAN (under Learning Sectors). Note: an institutional subscription is required to access this resource. Contact your library/learning resources centre for further information.