Thanks Greg, that is very helpful. I had looked at the websites of British College Sport (only 7 Scottish colleges listed, not much data in evidence):

  <http://www.britishcollegessport.org/Regions/Scotland/Regionalmap.aspx>

and there is not much on the Colleges Sport section of Scottish Universities Sport:

  <http://www.susport.org.uk/collegesport.asp>

Digging deeper into these sites shows that there are in fact databases of fixtures, results and tables, and HTML/JavaScript snippets to embed selections on your own websites. I did not come across any syndicated sports results in the institutional websites I checked out, but now I know what to search on:

  <http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3A*.ac.uk%20fixtures%20live>

I can see there's quite a few.

The ownership (and re-syndication rights) of the data seems to be problematic if commercial interests are involved. Data feeds would be more flexible than widgets in repurposing for web and other formats.

Possibly I expected everything to be web-based, rather than using installed software (maybe with a self-hosted database install option).

Interoperability (or unity) between information systems handling formal, inter-institution competitions and informal, recreational competitions (perhaps with a create-your-own competition for users) would be a goal.

As you say, there is also the question of integration of sports facility booking and events management to consider.

I was thinking of user-generated supplementary content, like match reports (submitted by mobile phone, say) and the like, which could be a learning activity with a social networking slant (including player biographies). Perhaps this kind of thing is available today or in the pipeline.


Tavis


-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory Sheridan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 25 January 2012 11:41
To: Tavis Reddick; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Shared web applications: institutional sports

Tavis,

Overall sports applications are already handled by the sport governing bodies. British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) provided Fixtures Live to all participating Universities up till last year where they then moved to a purpose built solution. Any college or University participating in BUCS should be using their league software.

In Scotland, Scottish Student Sport (SSS, formerly SUS) handle fixtures and also plug into the BUCS software for BUCS leagues administered in Scotland by SSS. The publishing of information for sport is entirely dependent upon the makeup of fixture based sports for the institution and the publishing rights supplied by the vendor. Fixtures Live provided publishing rights of their information to institutions paying a subscription fee to obtain it. BUCS moved away from FixturesLive to a custom system because ownership concerns of the data with FL.

Within a University a inter faculty or college league may be controlled by software purchased for the University but entirely dependent upon needs, and there are a lot of packages out there. We operate several recreational leagues but nothing which requires large expensive software packages when there is free software easy to find and the larger leagues are handled by governing bodies. Our facility bookings are handled by a industry standard leisure management system but does not track leagues, but again is not required to.

Best regards
-Greg

Gregory Sheridan BA MLitt MCMI MInstLM
Customer Services and Information Manager

Direct Line: +44 (0)141 330 4732
Email: [log in to unmask]

Sport and Recreation Service
University of Glasgow
Oakfield Avenue
G12 8LT
www.glasgow.ac.uk/sport

The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401


-----Original Message-----
...
How are Scottish institutions publishing/syndicating sports content on/from their websites at the moment, or planning to?

Tavis Reddick
Web Content and Architecture Developer
Adam Smith College
...


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