Stuart Dempster, SCA
The SCA is funded by the BBC, Becta (the schools ICT agency), EPSRC, JISC, BL, MLA and the NHS (in particular, the national electronic library for health). The rationale for the SCA is about seamless access and the issue of lifelong leraning. The sponsors have recognised the benefits of working together in terms of expertise and funding. The analogy of the ‘marathon’ is useful when examining an individual’s changing and expanding access to e-content throughout their lives. A lot of public agencies provide different levels of access, and the SCA want to reduce the barriers that exist to access.
Continue reading ‘JISC conference - Strategic Content Alliance: building bridges to e-content’
I’d like to open today’s conference by welcoming delegates, including sponsors OCLC, visiting international delegates, the opening keynote speaker Lord Puttnam, and closing speaker Angela Beesley.
This is my final conference before my retirement - again - and I’d like to speculate on what the future holds. The theme of the conference this year is Enabling Innovation, but before you enable it, you must spot trends and deliver strategy.
The staggering features of the electronic revolution have been the rate of change and the eternal problem keeping up.
Continue reading ‘JISC conference introduction: Sir Ron Cooke’
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate will be opening the JISC conference 2008 in Birmingham with a keynote speech. Follow the highlights live here from 10.15am.
“It is a genuine privilege to be invited to speak here. It’s only a year ago that I was formally installed as chancellor of the Open University and I still feel a huge sens eof pride of being associated with the institution. In the past 50 years I’ve had distinct areas of interest but there has always been a distinct thread - the acquisition of knowledge and experience. Everything I have learnt has only reinforced my view that the future really is a race between education and catastrophe. I decided to throw my lot in with education. Previously I was at Sunderland which rejoiced in technology.
This morning I’d like to reflect on the impact of technology. The OU has stayed ahead of the curve. We pioneered e-learning yet despite this pioneering work can any of us really claim to be doing everything possible to transform standards of achievement? At the best, nothing like enough. Students today are facing a future more complex than anything we can prepare them for.
When I joined the film industry in 1971, 72 the vast majority of the workforce were permanent and only 10% were freelance. Now, that percentage has reversed in the film industry and it’s not dissimilar to what we are seeing in the workforce as a whole. The idea of a permanent job could be seen as a rarity and that’s the world into which we’re educating a new generation.
It is no good trying to solve problems with the same thinking that caused them. Yet much of the form and content of formal education remains unchanged – more in tune with the immediate past than the immediate future. We’re under-achieving in terms of our imagination about what the future of education might look like.
Continue reading ‘JISC conference keynote speech: Lord Puttnam’
Business models and sustainability in the digital age: a peer reviewing workshop is currently taking place at the Wellcome Trust in London, led by Kevin Guthrie of Ithaka. Under discussion is the Ithaka-produced report on sustainability and business models.
Read on for a report of the first session: Continue reading ‘SCA/Ithaka Workshop: sustainability in the digital age’
A peer-reviewing workshop is being held today at the Wellcome Trust, London to share reactions to the initial report on sustainability and business models for online academic resources produced by Ithaka. A further event will be held in New York later this month. Read reports of events here in London on the blog throughout the day and download the full report:
Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources: draft report by Kevin Guthrie, Rebecca Griffiths, Nancy Maron
On Monday the SCA submitted a Joint Declaration to the Gowers Copyright Consultation on behalf of four of the seven UK public sector organisations – the British Library, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the National Health Service National Institute for Innovation and Learning and the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) - that sponsor the Strategic Content Alliance.
The Joint Declaration is signed by the Senior and Chief Executives Officers namely Dame Lynne Bindley, Roy Clare CBE, Dr Malcolm Read and Julian Denny in recognition that the issues raised in the Joint Declaration are of national significance.
Read the Joint Declaration in full here:
Gowers Copyright Consultation Joint Declaration
Earlier this year Chris Batt attended the International Conference on the EDL project in Frankfurt-am-Main and wrote detailed session reports, an excerpt from which was featured in the March 2008 SCA newsletter. Read on for a reminder of his concluding thoughts on the meeting, and to download the full report.
Continue reading ‘Session report from the International Conference on the EDL project’
In the March edition of the SCA newsletter, find out about forthcoming events, SCA news, newly available reports in brief, the IPR consultancy update, seminar reports, plus Chris Blatt provides session notes from the International Conference on the EDL project. Click through below to access the newsletter in pdf format.
SCA newsletter March 2008