Norman Wiseman Head of Outreach and Institutional Support JISC n.wiseman@jisc.ac.uk

1. Building the UK National Information Environment - Lessons from the Past and Pointers To the Future Norman Wiseman Head of Outreach and Institutional Support JISC n.wiseman@jisc.ac.uk

2. Context • JISC Mission: “To provide world class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research” • Vision – is one of “Ubiquitous and reliable access to an information and communication environment, so that users are able to enjoy world class technologies in support of their work and study”

3. History –the last 10 years • 1994 Follet Report on Libraries • 1995 e-Lib program • Learning by doing • 1998 Distributed National Electronic Resource • Projects into services, hybrid libraries • 2001 Information Environment • Standards, interoperability, joining up

4. Vision –the next 10 years? • Mostly digital academic world • born digital? • Based on individual as a member of several communities • New ubiquitous access devices • Many digital repositories • Personalised e-world supported by tools to help sift volumes of information

5. Key Issues for the user • “Information overload” • Access to multiple communities • Quality assurance

6. Key issues for Digital Library developments • Joined up worlds (E-learning, e-Research, e-business, e- …) • Resource discovery • Intelligent agents • Academic ‘Google’ • Middleware • Automatic metadata creation and management • Semantic interoperability • Curation and preservation • Standards

7. JISC Priorities • Develop common, integrated information and communications environment • Clear requirements and standards for wider public sector online content (by 2006) • Fully developed View of nature and role portals (by 2005) • Creation of learning materials repositories (by 2005) • Build middleware service (by 2008) (subject to funding)

8. JISC Priorities (2) • Create and maintain sustainable services for online content • Establish set of agreed requirements for digital preservation (by 2005) • Create Managed Learning Environments, linking Virtual Learning Environments with Management Information Systems • Develop framework to facilitate interoperability across learning, teaching & research (2006) • Develop e-research infrastructure and use

9. JISC Activities Advice and Guidance Services E-Research E-Learning Digital Libraries Management Information Outreach to colleges and universities Info Environment Content Middleware Network

10. JISC Activities Advice and Guidance Services E-Research E-Learning Digital Libraries Management Information Outreach to colleges and universities Info Environment Content Middleware Network

11. Budget (£64 million)

12. Current Activity (1) • Digital repositories: FAIR and X4L Organisational issues, technical issues, Tools • Portals Range of remits, testing Google, • Digital Preservation Coalition, Digital Curation Centre

13. Current Activity (2) • JISC/NSF Digital Libraries in the Classroom Content & practice • Middleware Shared Services, New call – inter- institutional authorisation • Service Providers Publishers, central data providers

14. IEArchitecture external content providers JISC-funded content providers institutional content providers authentication/authorisation (Athens) JISC IE service registry user preferences services brokers aggregators catalogues indexes metadata schema registries OpenURL resolvers institutional preferences services media-specific portals institutional portals subject portals fusion learning management systems presentation end-user Desktop /browser shared infrastructure

15. Shared Services/Common Services/Middleware • Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) • DRM • Institutional profiling • Terminology • Authentication & Authorisation etc.

16. Key Lessons • Global solutions • Common middleware • Joining up silos • Interoperability and standards • Sustainability • Information Management expertise • User focussed solutions