Catherine Grout Programme Director JISC Development Group

1. A common Information Environment: New challenges for the UK education community “We are drowning in information and starved for knowledge.”(anon) Catherine GroutProgramme Director JISC Development Group

2. Summary • What is the JISC Information Environment vision • What has been achieved, 1996 – 2001 • What are the new challenges, 2002 + • Changing institutional environment • Converging national environments

3. The JISC • The JISC is an agency of the further and higher education funding councils • It has 54 staff and employs more than 500 staff on services and projects • It has an annual budget of about 65 million • This is composed of top sliced money allocated to the JISC by the FE and HE funding councils • Today I am not going to talk about • The academic network (Super Janet) • Collections Policies and Priorities • Digital Preservation • Institutional Information Strategies • JISC Services (resource delivery, discovery, advice, support and advocacy)

4. What is the Information Environment? • Key aspect of JISC 5 Year Strategy“tobuild an on-line information environment providing secure and convenient access to a comprehensive collection of scholarly and educational material". • How does the IE relate to JISC content and services? • We have a rich distributed network of diverse educational digital content • The Information Environment is needed to enable students and staff to access and use those resources in ways meaningful to them and to take away barriers • This is articulated in the Information Environment Strategy:http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/development/IEstrategy.html

5. What are the key characteristics of an evolved Information Environment? • Fit to serve all kinds of digital content • Fully supporting the submission and sharing of research and learning objects • Providing a range of meaningful, rich and innovative methods of accessing electronic materials • A collaborative landscape of online service providers working together to provide seamless access for users • Underpinned by a common standards framework (both technical and semantic)

6. Current information architecture Content (local and remote) Web Web Web Web Authentication Authorisation End-user needs to join services together manually - as well as learning multiple user interfaces End-user

7. Use Identify learning or research aim Access Discovery Web Web Web Web Web IE what the user is doing Content (local and remote) End-user MLE/VLE

8. The future Content Authentication Authorisation Collection Description End-user is “automatically” presented with relevant resources through relevant channels Portals Service Desc. Thesauri User Profiles End-user

9. Technical Model of the Information Environment New ways of getting “communitycontent” in & out lots of diverse content here New ways of getting “communitycontent” in & out Modest experience here Modest experience here lots of diverse views provided of content here

10. How? IE Development Programmes, FACTS and FIGURES • 10 programme areas (currently overseen by group) • Approximately 150-170 projects and other activities • Some are CFP’s, some work is commissioned, some work augments existing services • About 8 to 10 mill per year of public investment • Significant changes within 5 years, fundamental changes within 10 years • Predecessors - Elib Programme, JTAP • This is to “build an environment” not experimentation orientated

11. How? 2001-2005: IE Development Programmes • There are 5 main “new” programme areas to actively *build* the Information Environment while still doing “research” 1. Content Submission/Disclosure Programme (FAIR and X4L) 2. Portals and Fusion Programme 3. Shared Services Programme 4. Presentation Programme 5. Service Provider Development Programme • More work to develop the technical architecture underway in collaboration with UKOLN to underpin this • There are 3 existing programme areas (DNER Development) • Infrastructure (feeds into 2,3,5,) • Learning and Teaching (feeds into 1,4,5) • NSF/DLI (*new NSF, DL and Classroom)

12. What was established 1996 - 2001 • Standards based interoperability has to be a good thing • Experiments in searching across distributed content were largely successful • People want relevant and mediated services, hence portals • Learning and research behaviour does not keep pace with technological advancement and opportunity • A large scale centrally funded programme(s) is needed to really advance the idea of a seamless environment • Any time, any place, any where is a mantra (any channel?)

13. What’s new 2002 +? • Meeting the challenge of the changing institutional agenda and environment • Accommodating the likely pace of change of learning and research behaviour • “really” coping with a diversity of audience needs • Taking advantage of the convergence between different public initiatives

14. Challenge 1 – the role of the institutional asset and repository • What should be national and what local, what can be shared and exchanged? • What are the place of local assets in national provision and vice versa? • What is the best place for this activity to take place and be maintained? • National libraries? • National archives? • Institutional libraries? • Other institutional structures?

15. Facilitating the disclosure of “institutional” assets • Facilitating the role of the University or College as “publisher” and custodian of scholarly assets (FAIR and X4L) • About 3 million initial outlay (2002-2005) • To see how well sharing of assets works • To understand the challenges and see if its sustainable • Support for development of e-print archives, e-theses, better access to museum and archival collections, re-usable learning objects

16. Facilitating the disclosure of “institutional” assets (FAIR) • 13 projects looking at deposit of institutional resources and disclosure of metadata • Developing OAI repositories and services • Looking at how you manage institutional collections with JISC collections in a portal • Looking at how sustainable a voluntary deposit mechansism is for growing collections • Understanding the balance between local and national management and archiving of resources • Making the hidden more visible

17. Facilitating the re-purposing and exchange of learning objects (X4L) • 20 + projects looking at how to re-purpose publically funded learning and research collections for learning and teaching (JISC, TLTP, FDTL, NLN, LT Scotland, LTSN etc.) • Looking at how to integrate these in a VLE • How to identify sustainable re-usable learning objects, developing the underpinning pedagogical models • Settting in place a development bay to test out sharing results with the wider community • Migrating suitable outcomes available in a national learning materials repository • Providing support for standards compliance and toolkits to support this process

18. Challenge 2 – the changing institutional digital environment • Keeping quality resources at the centre of the student experience • Providing national tools that are fit for local integration • We cannot necessarily expect students to leave the library or local portal, or VLE when searching Local environment OPAC JISC OTHER

19. Problems with terminology locally as well as nationally • Institutions are developing • Digital library systems • Digital repositories • Enterprise portals • VLE’s • MLE’s • Some are cross institution, some may belong to a particular group, faculty, admin unit etc. • Functionality is not consistent between these terms • Terms are not consistently applied

20. Problems with terminology locally as well as nationally – a hypothesis Digital Library Enterprise portal MLE VLE Web resources Local management systems Local digital resources Local learning systems The challenge is to understand what is going on locally and help consistency to emerge. Things were much easier when institutions just had WEBSITES!

21. The new environments in FE and HE My Pocklington College My course materials My Web My Library They may not even see much of this in future when they approach resources Embedded in here, could be access to JISC portals and other services, resources provided by publishers etc.

22. Integrating new environments in FE and HE On-line Information Environment Institutional portal or VLE The challenge is to understand and enable information flow between these entities to support learning and research

23. Alternate view of the same problem Web resources “JISC” content & services VLE Portals & Presentation Services Authentication & Authorisation The challenge is to understand and enable information flow between these entities to support learning and research

24. A national tool kit for portals and VLE’s VLE toolkit VLE setup area Registry of course materials Search on curriculum area Information Environment Institutional portal or VLE M M Include collection or service Add relevant learning content M Include tutors help Add help pages M The challenge is to provide good enough metadata in the IE to make this possible locally (Curriculum tag, subject tag, level tag, resource type tag?)

25. RE-examining the action verbs VLE (local) IE (national) DISCOVER Identity learning aim DISCOVER LOCATE Identity research aim LOCATE REQUEST ACCESS REQUEST USE ACCESS Digital Repository DISCLOSE ARCHIVE

26. Very new programmes – advancing understanding about integration • JISC/NSF Digital Libraries and the Classroom (proposals to be assessed on Friday) • VLE’s and Digital Libraries (pre-announcement issued) • Real change must be shared by institutions, otherwise national leverage will have limited effect • Are we at the put up or shut up phase??

27. Challenge 3 – taking advantage of a welcome convergence

28. The bigger picture: the common Information Environment • The concept of the IE is a vision of interest to a number of communities • Health Service, National Libraries, Museums and Archives, Research Community and others (cross govt. department) • Collaboration is ongoing to define a common IE in the UK for access to digital resources for life long learning • Small group has been taking forward some trial work • (JISC, BL, Resource, NHS, Research Grid) • Practical things: • Demonstrators (My neigbourhood, genealogy, astronomy, health) • Working out how real services & content can integrate • Using common standards.. feeding in detail to the e-GIF

29. The “Common” IE • Strategic things • Manifesto for a Common Information Environment • Contributing to a National Information/Content Policy? • An approach to testing out the viability/utility of this joined up approach • This is not exclusive to this group and we recognise that there are many other players • e.g. recognises the UK context and the e-GIF framework • recognises the EU context • recognises the International importance of this area of work

30. Why it’s worth it • Networked spaces offer us the opportunity to be more joined up • We can add value to our resources by cross-sectoral contextualisation • We can start to address the issues of under use, getting users to the door (or portal) is important • Users don’t need to know where it has come from • We can develop economies of scale in service provision/infrastructure • We can create our content so that it is interoperable to underpin the idea of life long learning (standards!) • Collectively we can influence commercially provided systems/software so that they are standards based and interoperable • Good for Information providers, (one route or method in, many out) • We cannot fail to NOT do these things (apologies for double negative!) • No-one agency, govt. or otherwise can ever colonise the information space, however good your acronym is!

31. The Information Environment “You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyse your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back?” (Clement Stone) • catherine.grout@kcl.ac.uk