Transcript providing national online services for the UK education and research community EDINA and the DNER Peter Burnhill, Director, EDINA Head, Edinburgh University Data Library.

providing national online services
for the UK education
and research community
EDINA and the DNER
Peter Burnhill,
Director, EDINA
Head, Edinburgh University Data Library
EDINA’s Mission Statement
As a JISC–designated national datacentre,
EDINA seeks to enhance the productivity of
research, learning and teaching in UK Higher &
Further Education, delivering specialist data
services.
EDINA
• Edinburgh Data and INformation Access
–
poetic term in Burns’ Address to Edinburgh
• JISC-designated national datacentre
– based at the Data Library, University of Edinburgh
• Range of specialist bibliographic & geo-data services
• Free at the point of use
– usually requires institutional subscription & end-user
registration
• colleagues to say more about services later in the
day
The JISC
• The Joint Information Systems Committee
• Reports to the UK Higher and Further Education
funding bodies
• Works in partnership with the Research Councils
• JISC has several policy committees:
– Committee on Electronic Information (JCEI), JCAS,
– JCALT, JCN
• As JISC National Datacentres, EDINA, MIMAS & BIDS
report to JCEI • EDINA receives JISC funding for many of its services
The JISC
Mission
“To help Higher and Further Education Institutions and the
research community realise their ambitions in exploiting the
opportunities of Information and Communication
Technologies, by exercising vision and leadership,
encouraging collaboration and co-operation, and by funding
and managing national development programmes and services
of the highest quality.”
[Source: Draft JISC Strategy, 2001-2005, available at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/curriss/general/strat_01_05/draft_strat.html]
Strategic objectives for 2000
to develop the DNER
to enhance JISC services, for learning and teaching
The DNER
The Distributed National Electronic Resource is a
concept, soon to be re-named, and envisaged as:
“A managed environment for accessing quality
assured information resources on the Internet
which are available from many sources.
...resources include scholarly journals,
monographs, textbooks, abstracts, manuscripts,
maps, music scores, still images, geospatial images
and other kinds of vector and numeric data, as
well as moving picture and sound collections.”
[Source: DNER Vision document, available at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub99/dner_vision.html]
The DNER Vision
3 key objectives:
• To provide high quality digital content to staff and
students, at any time, and from anywhere
• To be the lead innovator in UK education in digital
information provision
–
and to take an influential role in developing the UK’s
lifelong learning agenda
• To stimulate development of technological advance
and to encourage educational institutions to place
their content within the DNER
– UK and international dimension
[Source: draft JISC Communications Strategy]
EDINA and the DNER
• EDINA services form part of the DNER
– Providing staff and students with access to key information
resources, as part of the DNER, is one of EDINA’s aims
• Keywords governing development of EDINA services
are regarded as key to success of DNER:
•
•
•
•
Accessibility
Outreach
Inter-working
Inter-operability
• EDINA project work helping
– to build for the DNER
• several infrastructure projects recently funded
– to serve learning and teaching
• EDINA enhancing existing service