Today I’m in Edinburgh for the JISC Conference. I’ve already done a brief post on a demonstration of the SWORD API for depositing material into digital repositories, but now the opening session with an introduction by Malcolm Reid (Executive Secretary JISC), and address by Tim O’Shea (Chair of JISC).

Malcolm Reid starts by reflecting on some of the issues raised yesterday at the ‘pre-conference’ sessions held yesterday, which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend. This is a bit of a mixed bag – I think I might recommend looking out blog posts from yesterday instead of trying to summarise here.

Now Tim O’Shea talking about what JISC has been, is, and will be doing:

• Research Excellence
  • Virtual Research Environments
  • Re-use of Research Materials in E-learning environments
• Institutional Drivers
  • Open Access Learning Materials
  • Knowledge Transfers – engagement with commercial environment
• Making Savings and Working Smarter
  • Access Management – UK Federation now the largest Access Management Federation in the world!
  • JISC Collections
    • Saviing money on license agreements
    • Giving access to more resources
  • Institutional Repositories
  • Green ICT – huge numbers of computers in UK HE – cost to sector over £100million in ICT electricity bills (I’d be suprised if this was anything like an accurate figure to be honest – instinctively feels low, don’t ask me to justify that)
• Next 12 months
  • New strategy for JISC for 2010-12
  • Focus on Value for Money
  • Looking at Enterprise-wide Systems
  • Looking at Knowledge Transfer and Wealth Creation

Highlights for Tim over the day:

• Launch of Box of Broadcasts (BoB) by BUFVC
• New/updated services from Edina and Mimas (Geocode crosswalk, Archives Hub and COPAC)