BiblioSight project recommended for funding

We’ve just learned that we’ve been successful in our most recent funding bid to JISC’s Rapid Innovation call.

Outline project description:

“The project will aim to exploit the Web of Science Web Services API that uses standard transport protocols, such as HTTP, and message formats, such as SOAP and XML, to facilitate the exchange of data between Web of Knowledge and a custom application. It will build on work undertaken by the JISC funded SUE project, Implementing an Institutional Repository for Leeds Metropolitan University to integrate bibliographic information from Web of Science into the Leeds Met Open Access repository of research; this will facilitate automatic update when a published article appears in Web of Science. The aim is to integrate the technology into an efficient workflow to populate the repository with citation information / full text; we will also build on work undertaken by the JISC funded PERSoNA project and aim to develop a ‘widget’ that can easily be added to a personal environment like iGoogle or personal/communal environment like netvibes and that will extract bibliographic information – and potentially also bibliometrics – for authenticated Leeds Met staff in line with Web of Science licensing.”

A new era

In my last post I suggested that Repository News would be mothballed now that the final report has been submitted (still not published but soon!). However, our JISC funding was for a start-up project and we are still very much nurturing our neonate repository which, like a human infant, still has a lot of growing up to do.  I enjoy blogging and it seems rather artificial to start again so, like an infuriating parent sending a round-robin at Christmas, here is my first update of the new era.

All in all the little fella is doing very well though we were very disappointed to miss out on enhancement funding from uncle JISC – bid feedback was positive and stressed just how competitive the call had been. All is not lost, however, and we’ve just learned of institutional success in the recent JISC call for the Open Educational Resources programme; Unicycle will be underway very soon and will necessarily use our intraLibrary repository which should put us in a very good position with respect to JORUM – also based on intraLibrary of course – and I’ve already implemented the JORUM metadata template (with permission). The repository will also be an integral component of the PC3 project funded under the e-Learning Capital programme which is already underway.  In addition,  we intend to submit a bid for the rapid innovation call – the #jiscri projects are relatively small scale timetabled for just 6 months, but it would be very nice to get one; the deadline is Wednesday so it’s fingers crossed (again!).  Finally, there may also be a project in the pipeline with the NHS looking at deposit into multiple repositories using SWORD.

The difficulty is knowing where to start!  In terms of OA research the search interface still needs a lot of work to integrate advanced search; we also need to ensure that we are properly indexed by Google and I’m ashamed to say that I am yet to register with the Open Archives Initiative. Then there is the small matter of advocacy and full text content.  We also need to integrate with SFX, our URL resolver.

I want to look at using the repository for the CLA digitisation service emulating what Keele are doing with intraLibrary and a functioning PowerLink to the VLE would be nice, something like MrCute2 and more work around the conceptual PERSoNA outputs.

We have a meeting next week to discuss priorities and project management activities over the coming months which promises to be a headache inducing affair.