All,
I manage a project that is looking at ways in which external resources
of various kinds (BBC news feeds, digital library resources, careers
info, etc) can most effectively be matched up to students and staff
within UK universities and colleges. At the moment, we and others are
taking a serious look at the possibility of using the JACS codes to
help out here, and I'd appreciate any input that members of this list
can give, on how *they* code with JACS at present, difficulties they've
encountered, etc.
A recent document, available for download from
www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/WP9.html, describes where our thinking has
reached with respect to the JACS codes and the learndirect
classification system, which might better address needs in FE.
Our project is funded under the FAIR Programme of the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC), and is called Presenting natiOnal Resources
To Audiences Locally (PORTAL - www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/).
Specifically, we are looking at the ways in which content can be
personalised and made visible through an institutional portal, such as
those under development at Hull, Nottingham, Bristol, Edinburgh,
Oxford, and elsewhere. The problems of associating externally provided
content with individuals or groups within an institution apply more
broadly, though.
External resources from a national service such as the Resource
Discovery Network (RDN - www.rdn.ac.uk/), for example, tend to be
described according to library-originated terminologies, or with
reference to broad and generic 'faculty' groupings which rarely exist
on the ground in real institutions.
There appears to be some mileage in mapping both the members of an
institution and these external resources to a single common set of
descriptions. Given the breadth of the JACS scheme, and the fact that
all universities are already using it both in admissions and in their
HESA returns, this seems worth exploring further. From our perspective,
there do seem to be some problems, as the codes only *have* to be
applied to taught courses, and the manner in which codes can be
combined might actually result in such a generic statement of 'subject'
that you're effectively back to something as unspecific as the
'faculty'...
As such, we would very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with
staff from a number of institutions in order to examine how you
actually apply the codes at present, and the scope for expanding upon
this, were there a value to your institution in doing so.
If possible, we would very much like to gather examples of the codes
applied in several institutions, to see what scope there is for a
national service (such as the RDN) applying those codes to their
resources *once* in a way that has comparable value and meaning to a
wide range of universities.
If anyone has information that they would be willing to share in this
way, I would be grateful if they could get in touch,
Many thanks,
Paul
The Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally (PORTAL) Project
is funded under the FAIR Programme of the Joint Information Systems
Committee, and is a collaboration between the e-Services Integration
Group at the University of Hull and UKOLN at the University of Bath.
-- dr. paul miller --------------------------- [log in to unmask] --
project manager, portal project www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/
interoperability focus, ukoln www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/
------------------------------------------- tel: +44 (0)1482 466890 --
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