Pushing Open The Jorum: A national repository for learning materials

Editor's Notes

1. As things have turned out, I should just have submitted our prize-winning poster from 2001 !!!
2. As many of you will know, JISC is the Joint Systems Committee of the UK funding bodies for higher and furtjher education. It has a number of sub-committees which help inform policy and also watch over programmes of funding and the operation of services, such as those provided by the two National Data Centres. It has also set up a company, JISC Collections as a legal body to broker licences.
3. It is a national academic data centre, established in 1995 following the success of the University of Edinburgh putting forward its Data Library in an open competition to set up three datacentres capable of hosting and providing access to bibliographic datasets and numeric research data. The other two were BIDS, which subsequently moved into the private sector as Ingenta, and MIDAS, the data centre at the University of Manchester - its now renamed as Mimas. The mission of EDINA, which incidentally is the older poetic name for Edinburgh, is to enhance productivity of research, learning and teaching in the UK. It used to host a range of key A&T databaes like BIOSIS ~Previews, Compendex, Inspec, Art Abstracts etc, but now the services on journal ….
4. This screenshot is the Jorum website, with URL <click>, now featuring JorumOpen <click> I will say more about JorumOpen <next slide>
5. Jorum is a social word, it’s a cup and its contents – to be shared and enjoyed. It is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible, so it has provenance …
6. Jorum has some pre-history, at least from the perspective of Open Educational Resources It began as a keep-safe for output from JISC-funded projects, having had its origins in two different projects funded under the JISC 5/99 Call (1999 that is) It was a support service for the X4L Programme
7. It all seemed quite busy then too. IntraLibrary was chosen through open procurement as the repository software for Jorum
8. This simple diagram summarises how Jorum works. Jorum Contributor allows institutions to submit resources, Jorum User gives institutions access to these resources. An R&D strand runs in parallel with the service where we explore issues relevant to our work.
9. Two years ago, this was what Jorum was for – meeting needs of learning technologists and the enthusiasts – and quite a few teachers too!
10. Jorum supports a range of object types, from single file resources to more complex content packages. Jorum can also store records for resources held elsewhere which can be pointed to upon previewing the object. This is useful for contributors who still wish to host their own resources but want to increase its use.
11. I don’t want to trespass too much into what Malcom Read may say in his plenary on Friday, but let be give you a flavour of how we saw what was happening.
12. The OER pilot programme
13. This was a pilot but a major pilot intended to be a game changer
14. Open Repositories, web 2.0, release for easy discovery
15. This screenshot is the Jorum website, now featuring JorumOpen which was launched on 19 th January 2010.
16. This is from the Jorum website
17. There are 2 user interfaces to Dspace - XML (Manakin) or JSP (Java Servlet Pages). Jorum chose the Manakin route as it was felt at that time, that the XML route would offer greater flexibility in changing the user interface and would allow the Jorum team to make significant changes to the interface more easily. It was also felt that basing the user interface on XML would mean that the interface could be transformed using XSLT for various devices e.g. mobile. Hindsight has shown that the Manakin interface is very complex and requires significant work in the XSL stylesheets - it may have been quicker and easier to use the JSP interface.
18. This screenshot shows the initial front page of the JorumOpen collection (based on the Manakin XML interface).
19. This screenshot shows the JorumOpen entry in ROAR - shows that the OAI-PMH target is available now.
20. The screenshot shows a Google site search as this limits the results just to one site (namely open.jorum.ac.uk). We produce Google sitemaps nightly which lists every resource in JorumOpen.Google then crawls these links and any subsequent links it finds on those pages (hence you can see in the screenshot it found a video called “Lennox Castle Hospital” which was found on the preview page of a content package). You do not have to perform a site search in Google to find results in JorumOpen - you can search as normal. A site search just makes the search more specific and targets it at a certain website.
21. Depositor can add additional DC metadata to a deposited resource
22. As the screenshot shows, we now present the 6 UK Eng & Wales v2.0 CC licences to the depositor at the same time to let them choose. This was felt to be a better approach than the existing Dspace chooser (which led the user off to the CC website, went through their wizard and then navigated back to DSpace). This approach makes the deposit process more streamlined, maintains look and feel and allows the depositor to more efficiently choose a licence if they know which one they want.
23. The blue button “Download Original Content Package” when clicked will initiate a download of the original content package archive the depositor submitted to Jorum (the licence in the manifest however may have been altered to match the CC licence chosen on deposit). The orange button “Export Resource” when clicke will initiate download of a file in the Dspace Simple Archive Format. This is essentially a Zip file containing all the files in the resource, a single file containing the DC metadata and licence files. This format will contain the most up to date metadata for the item. From the DSpace manual: “ The basic concept behind the DSpace's simple archive format is to create an archive, which is directory full of items, with a subdirectory per item. Each item directory contains a file for the item's descriptive metadata, and the files that make up the item.”
24. Screenshot which shows the file listing in a content package I.e. it shows the individual package components View links (or clicking on the thumbnails) will show the content in the browser. Download links will force the browser to save the file to their local machine.
25. This screenshot shows the HTM preview of an IMS content package. Notice the tree view on the left showing the package components. Clicking on a component on the left will render this on the right hand side.
26. DIM stands for “DSpace Intermediate Metadata”. DIM is the XML notation for DSpace's internal Item metadata, that is, the metadata fields stored in the database for each Item. It is used by the metadata crosswalking component. . It is called the Intermediate format because it is intended solely as an intermediate stage in XML-translation-based crosswalks.
27. JorumOpen - learning and teaching resources whose creators/owners have made available for sharing under Creative Commons (CC) licences. JorumUK - learning and teaching resources deposited in Jorum prior to January 2010 that creators/owners made available for sharing through an institutional licence . The JorumUK collection contains resources that their creators and owners prefer to share only within UK Higher and Further Education. This collection contains all resources deposited in Jorum before 2010 which were licensed under the institutional-based licence. At present, JorumUK still requires an institutional subscription to deposit, search, browse and download resources. Depositing resources into JorumUK, requires institutions to subscribe as a JorumUK Depositor , and for individual staff members to be nominated as depositors. You will then receive a JorumUK Depositor account and will be able to deposit resources in JorumUK, authenticating via the UK Access Management Federation. Further developments in 2010 will extend JorumUK to enable sharing across all UK Further and Higher Education institutions, without the need for an institutional subscription, through the introduction of the JorumEducationUK licence . Further enhancements in 2010 Spring: a unified search – enabling users to search across all resources held within both JorumOpen and JorumUK collections – one simple search! Summer: a central deposit tool – a single point for depositors to contribute resources automatically under either JorumOpen or JorumUK