Knowledge Exchange study: How Research Tools are of Value to Research: Use Cases and Recommendations

Research tools that are freely available and accessible via the Internet cover an emergent field in the worldwide research infrastructure. Clearly, research tools have increasing value for researchers in their research activities. Knowledge Exchange recently commissioned a project to explore use case studies to show research tools’ potential and relevance for the present research landscape. Makers of successful research tools have been asked questions such as: How are these research tools developed? What are their possibilities? How many researchers use them? What does this new phenomenon mean for the research infrastructure? Additional to the Use Cases, the authors offer observations and recommendations to contribute to effective development of a research infrastructure that can optimally benefit from research tools. the Use Cases are: •Averroes Goes Digital: Transformation, Translation, Transmission and Edition •BRIDGE: Tools for Media Studies Researchers •Multiple Researchers, Single Platform: A Virtual Tool for the 21st Century •The Fabric of Life •Games with A Purpose: How Games Are Turning Image Tagging into Child’s Play •Elmer: Modelling a Future •Molecular Modelling With SOMA2 •An Online Renaissance for Music: Making Early Modern Music Readable •Radio Recordings for Research: How A Million Hours of Danish Broadcasts Were Made Accessible •Salt Rot: A Central Space for Essential Research •Cosmos: Opening Up Social Media for Social Science A brief analysis by the authors can be found: •Some Observations Based on the Case Studies of Research Tools

A snapshot of digitisation and OCR Developments

One of the goals of Knowledge Exchange (www.knowledge-exchange.info) is to help partners to share knowledge and expertise and facilitate the build of expert networks. In the area of digitisation, including non-textual and 3-D-digitisation, a first step is to provide a snapshot of current activities and challenges in the KE partner countries. This paper is a synthesis of the information gathered in a questionnaire that was sent to 15 infrastructure institutions, e.g. libraries and also funders, within the five partner countries of Knowledge Exchange: Denmark (DK), Finland (FIN), Germany (GER), the Netherlands (NL) and the United Kingdom (UK). The paper is based on the answers provided by 6 respondents from four countries:  DK o Danish Agency of Culture (Henrik Jarl Hansen) o State and University Library (Tonny Skovgård Jensen)  GER o German research foundation, DFG (Franziska Regner)  NL o Royal Library (Hildelies Balk) o Leiden University Library (Saskia van Bergen)  UK o Jisc (Paola Marchionni, Peter Findlay) The absence of Finnish responses may be due to Finland participating in the recent Enumerate Core Survey II that also addressed digitisation. We have included some of the outcomes of this survey to present a richer picture.

Report on Knowledge Exchange workshop Cost models for keeping knowledge: economic models for digital preservation

Organised by Knowledge Exchange & the Nordbib programme 11 June 2012, 8:30-12:30, Copenhagen Adjacent to the Nordbib conference 'Structural frameworks for open, digital research' Participants in break out discussion during the workshop on cost modelsThe Knowledge Exchange and the Nordbib programme organised a workshop on cost models for the preservation and management of digital collections. The rapid growth of the digital information which a wide range of institutions must preserve emphasizes the need for robust cost modelling. Such models should enable these institutions to assess both what resources are needed to sustain their digital preservation activities and allow comparisons of different preservation solutions in order to select the most cost-efficient alternative. In order to justify the costs institutions also need to describe the expected benefits of preserving digital information. This workshop provided an overview of existing models and demonstrated the functionality of some of the current cost tools. It considered the specific economic challenges with regard to the preservation of research data and addressed the benefits of investing in the preservation of digital information. Finally, the workshop discussed international collaboration on cost models. The aim of the workshop was to facilitate understanding of the economies of data preservation and to discuss the value of developing an international benchmarking model for the costs and benefits of digital preservation. The workshop took place in the Danish Agency for Culture and was planned directly prior to the Nordbib conference 'Structural frameworks for open, digital research'