At a time of unprecedented budget cuts, what role do digital technologies play in securing a future for research? That was the key question posed by JISC’s ‘Future of research?’ held at the Congress Centre in London last month. The headline answer to emerge was: by facilitating collaborations and by enabling more efficient and effective research.
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Is the physical experience of holding a book or other paper-based object really the most valued aspect of library provision these days? And are researchers only able to cope with the world of information if their access to resources is limited to what the library can afford to provide? In a THES-sponsored debate held at the British Library last week, as part of their ‘Growing Knowledge’ exhibition, Mary Beard give a highly entertaining and deliberately controversial perspective on what she values in the academic library – and although she acknowledged the value of the digital resource, her personal view was that the paper artifact and the pre-selection process of library collections’ policies are both crucial to the future academic environment. Read more
Since Google embarked on its scanning of major world book libraries, there has been the assumption that there is little more to do in the field of digitisation.
Yet this is far from the truth. Opinions vary, but it is probably fair to say that more than 95% of the world books, magazines, newspapers, videos, films, documents still lay hidden in archives and libraries, inaccessible in digital form.
And there are numerous benefits to continue with the work of digitising all this content – it’s more than making it convenient for the learner to access something from the comfort of their own home or office.
So, for example, research is radically changed by the availability of millions of new documents, as shown by resources like the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, which is changing the face of the study of history of London.
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Today, another round of UCAS applications gets underway with the first of the application deadlines. Meanwhile, new students are settling into universities up and down the country. But how many of them will have embarked upon the right course?
Lord Browne’s recommendations this week remind us that the majority of students (or their parents) will be stumping up an increasing amount for a place at university. It is no surprise then that they want to be 100% sure that their education will be worth the money.
Those of us in the business of delivering and supporting higher education want to enrol students who are well prepared – if students know what they are letting themselves in for they’re more likely to flourish and stay the course.
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I have only been something approximating a regular blogger for about three years now and so I rather casually thought that blogging must be, oh, perhaps six or seven years old. But the term ‘weblog’ seems to have been coined by Jorn Barger at the end of 1997 and the noun and verb ‘blog’ surfaced in 1999 by Peter Merholz. So blogs in something like their current form have been around for well over ten years.
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New politics, fragile economy, ageing student market, a society rapidly absorbing new technologies. Any one of these presents challenges to our sector, but together these form the complex reality of our working lives.
So what? How can we respond to these pressures? What’s going to help us cope? Better still, how can we succeed?
At JISC we’re thinking about big, but already we know we need to do more with less and we want to help the sector to become agile. It’s a challenging time in education, but it’s also a tremendously energising period.
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It’s amazing how our collective memory of many events has been shaped by images taken by ordinary people – like mobile phone footage of political protests in oppressive regimes or tragic pictures of national disasters.
The exponential rise of social media has created a new landscape of interaction and collaboration where the boundaries between professional practice, citizen journalism, the subject and the audience are blurring.
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Welcome to the new JISC blog!
Every week JISC’s people will be sharing their thoughts on a range of topics on technology, education, strategy and the issues that affect our sector – but that’s only half the conversation, so we ask for your voice to join the debate.
This area on the JISC Involve blog is a test area before the blog goes live on the JISC homepage early in the new term, so please do share your feedback on your first impressions.