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Let’s Free IT Support Materials!Brian Kelly

UK Web Focus

UKOLN

University of Bath

[email protected]://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

UKOLN is supported by:

Co-authors:Gareth Knight, AHDS Jo Casey, University of YorkMarieke Guy, UKOLN

AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful to JISC for funding the QA Focus project described in this paper

AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful to JISC for funding the QA Focus project described in this paper


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Contents

• Introduction• Case Study – QA Focus • Creative Commons – What Can it

Provide?• Implementation• Application Elsewhere• Conclusions• Questions

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About Me

Brian Kelly:• UK Web Focus – a Web advisory post for UK HE

and FE and cultural heritage communities• Based at UKOLN – a national centre of expertise

in digital information management• Project manager for JISC-funded QA Focus

project• Funding by JISC (Joint Information Systems

Committee) and MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council)

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About This Paper

This paper:• Describes the JISC-funded QA Focus project• Explains the reasons why it was decided to ‘give

away’ the project deliverables• Describes the Creative Commons licence and

why it was felt to be applicable• Summarises the implementation issues• Outlines other areas in which this case study can

be applied• Gives recommendations to:

• Funding bodies• Organisations

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QA Focus

QA Focus:• JISC-funded project• Developed a quality assurance framework to

support JISC’s digital library programmes• Provided by UKOLN (University of Bath) and

AHDS (King’s College London)• Funded from Jan 2002-July 2004• Successfully:

Developed a lightweight QA frameworkPublished a range of support materialsDescribed approaches in peer-reviewed

papers (EUNIS 2003, ichim03, ECDL 2004)• See <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/>

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QA Focus: Exit Strategies (1)

QA Focus:• Initially funded from Jan 2002 - Dec 2003• Extended from Jan-Jul 2004

Our challenge:• Explore options for exit strategy• Implement chosen solution

The context:• Project partners had developed v. effective

working relationships• Area of work closely linked with core missions• Partners keen to exploit expertise gained in other

areas • Desire to embed QA framework more widely

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QA Focus: Exit Strategies (2)

The main options:• Continued funding

• Discussed possibility with JISC, but no additional funding available

• Income generation options• Unlikely to generate significant income • Would be time-consuming to implement

• Give resources away• Would help to maximise impact• Could help sustainability of resources• Reflects culture of sharing (e.g. open source,

open access, …)

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Open Access Decision

QA Focus project partners:• Agreed to ‘give resources away’• Decision made for business (and not ideological)

reasons:• Maximise impact of QA framework (e.g. to

institutions hosting JISC projects and not just the projects)

• Maximise outreach to other sectors (e.g. museums, libraries & archives; international digital library community; ..)

• Potential for sustainability of resources (others maintain resources and develop new ones)

• Then had to decide how to ‘give resources away’

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Open Access Options

The main options:• Putting resources ‘in public domain’

What does this mean? Does it provide flexibility we may need?

• GNU, BSD, ... style licence Mature licences with clear licence conditions

• Creative Commons licence Under development during QA Focus life Provides rich set of licence conditions Enables machine-readable licences to be

provided

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Creative CommonsCreative Commons:

• Legal mechanism for assigning rights to others

• Can assign various (11) rights:

• Commercial/non-commercial; attribution; …

• Can describe rights in machine-readable form (RDF):

• CC-aware search engines can be used to search CC-space

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Implementation

Implementation issues we needed to address:• Scope: What resources would be covered?

Selected (70+) briefing documents and not case studies Selected briefing documents authored in-house

• Ownership : Could project members make this decision on their own? Decision agreed by UKOLN/AHDS management groups

and host institutions

• Timeliness: CC licence not ratified for UK use Discussed implications with JISC Legal service CC (then) had no legal status Chose to have clear statement alongside CC licence (Low) risk would be taken by users of CC-licensed

resources and not ourselves

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Wider Application - UCISA

Clear potential for wider use of CC licences

We made contact with UCISA TLIG (Teaching learning and Information Group) committee:

• National body whose remit includes IT Service support materials

• Has provided a document sharing archive for 15+ years

• Author was committee member in early 1990s• UCISA TLIG experiences can help inform wider

IT Services community

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UCISA-TLIG Document Archive

The UCISA-TLIG document sharing archive:

• Centralised set of links to IT Services document catalogues

• Departments can chose to join scheme (11 currently)

http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/docs/docshare.htmhttp://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/docs/docshare.htm

Note that pre-Web departments had to upload documents to central locations


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UCISA-TLIG Document ArchiveThe archive reflects spirit of sharing across the community.But the document archive has had limited effectiveness (only 11 orgs., broken searching, …) due to:

Uncertainty of legal issues: • Can I give stuff away; how do I do this; …

Uncertainty of institutional view: • Are we in competition with other institutions; are we

expected to generate income; … Centralised approach:

• Centralised maintenance, indexing, resource issues …

Things have now changed:• Benefits of open access, open source widely accepted• Legal issues more clear• Distributed approaches now possible

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Benefits To Be Gained

How can IT Service departments benefit from more actively participating with a re-launched archive:

• Can help promote your institution (cf MIT’s decision to make its courseware)

• Can free staff resources for other tasks• Gain experience of issues in other (mission-

critical) areas e.g. open access for teaching & learning and research resources

• Gain experiences in technical issues e.g. managing, indexing, … RDF version of licences

Other benefits:• Avoiding duplication benefits funder, tax-payer, …

& gives ‘back-office savings’ (cf. Gershon review)

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Possible Concerns

Possible concerns:• “My stuff is being stolen”

OTOH you will benefit from stuff you use Maximises benefits of public funding You can chose to go down this route

• My competitors get my stuff for free Legitimate concern, esp. if envisage

exploitation of resources QA Focus chose ‘non-commercial use’ CC

licence to avoid use by others in bids• Deskilling staff

IT staff continually have to learn new skills Provides new opportunities for staff


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Wider Potential

Benefits of Creative Commons licences can be obtained in other areas:

• Maximise impact of national initiatives (e.g. JISC-funded development programmes, …)

• Staff development initiatives (e.g. …)

And can provide unexpected benefits:• Clarification of legal issues for long-term

archiving of project deliverables (current work requires project holders to sign form that rights issues have been clarified)

• Avoidance of vexatious rights owners• More general clarification of ownership issues


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• OPML file listing RSS files, allowing them to be imported by RSS readers

Complementing Approaches

Additional technologies have been used to help maximise impact resources:

• RSS feeds of QA Focus documents:

• Allows metadata to be embedded by third parties

• Use of (X)HTML and CSS – allowing others to apply own CSS


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Conclusions

To conclude:• Projects can maximise impact by 'giving'

resources away (with appropriate licence)• Creative Commons can provide variety of licence

conditions and searching mechanisms• These experiences (and benefits) are also

applicable to IT services • Such decisions can be made based on sound

business reasons• Do it!

QA Focus briefing document are available (under CC licence) from <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/briefings/>(including "An Introduction To Creative Commons" )

QA Focus briefing document are available (under CC licence) from <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/briefings/>(including "An Introduction To Creative Commons" )


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Questions

Any questions?

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