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'

Building digital capability: Employability lens on the Six Elements of Digital Capability

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, developed to support student-facing sta working in Careers and Employability roles and curriculum sta working to embed employability issues into the curriculum. It draws on the work of the Jisc Developing Student Employability project e.g. on the model of the ‘employable student’ produced by Peter Chatterton for that project.

Digital ‘lens’ on the UK PSF: supporting the digital capabilities of teaching staff in UK HE

This resource can also be used by professional staff who are seeking accreditation via the UK PSF for relevant aspects of their role, e.g. staff who support the use of technologies for learning and/or support the development of digital literacies.

DADAISM Project Plan

The DADAISM project brings together researchers from the diverse fields of archaeology, human computer interaction, image processing, image search and retrieval, and text mining to create a rich interactive system to address the problems of researchers finding images relevant to their research. In the age of digital photography, thousands of images are taken of archaeological artefacts. These images could help archaeologists enormously in their tasks of classification and identification if they could be related to one another effectively. They would yield many new insights on a range of archaeological problems. However, these images are currently greatly underutilized for two key reasons. Firstly, the current paradigm for interaction with image collections is basic keyword search or, at best, simple faceted search. Secondly, even if these interactions are possible, the metadata related to the majority of images of archaeological artefacts is scarce in information relating to the content of the image and the nature of the artefact, and is time intensive to enter manually. DADAISM will transform the way in which archaeologists interact with online image collections. It will deploy user-centred design methodologies to create an interactive system that goes well beyond current systems for working with images, and will support archaeologists’ tasks of finding, organising, relating and labelling images as well as other relevant sources of information such as grey literature documents.

Digging into signs: Developing standard annotation practices for cross-linguistic, quantitative analysis of sign language data. Final Report.

For sign languages used by deaf communities, linguistic corpora have until recently been unavailable, due to the lack of a writing system and a written culture in these communities, and the very recent advent of digital video. Recent improvements in video and computer technology have now made larger sign language datasets possible; however, large sign language datasets that are fully machine-readable are still elusive. This is due to two challenges. 1. Inconsistencies that arise when signs are annotated by means of spoken/written language. 2. The fact that many parts of signed interaction are not necessarily fully composed of lexical signs (equivalent of words), instead consisting of constructions that are less conventionalised. As sign language corpus building progresses, the potential for some standards in annotation is beginning to emerge. But before this project, there were no attempts to standardise these practices across corpora, which is required to be able to compare data crosslinguistically. This project thus had the following aims: 1. To develop annotation standards for glosses (lexical/word level) 2. To test their reliability and validity 3. To improve current software tools that facilitate a reliable workflow Overall the project aimed not only to set a standard for the whole field of sign language studies throughout the world but also to make significant advances toward two of the world’s largest machine-readable datasets for sign languages – specifically the BSL Corpus (British Sign Language, http://bslcorpusproject.org) and the Corpus NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands, http://www.ru.nl/corpusngt).

Building digital capability: Being an effective digital leader

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically to support Jisc’s members in the area of Digital Leadership. It is one example of the base model being used in a particular context and is not meant to be definitive.

Building digital capability: Example learner profile

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically for learners. It is an update on the earlier ‘7 elements of digital literacy’ model (2009) and has many continuities with this framework. This version was produced in response to feedback that the base model alone does not provide enough detail to support embedding into practice. However, it is an example of how the base model could be used to define the digital capabilities of learners and is meant to be adapted to suit specific settings.

Building digital capability: Leading and managing an effective digital organisation (team, service, department)

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically to support Jisc’s members in the area of Digital Leadership. It is one example of the base model being used in a particular context and is not meant to be definitive.

Building digital capability: Example researcher profile

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically for research students and research sta . It is an update on the earlier ‘7 elements of digital literacy’ model (2009) and has many continuities with this framework. It is one example of how the base model is being used.

Building digital capability: Example teacher profile

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically for teaching sta or for academic sta in their teaching role. It is an update on the earlier ‘7 elements of digital literacy’ model (2009) and has many continuities with this framework. This version was produced in response to feedback that the base model alone does not provide enough detail to support embedding into practice. However, it is an example of how the base model could be used to define the digital capabilities of teaching sta and is meant to be adapted to suit specific settings.