Newsline: News You Can Use

Tessa Jowell, new Culture Secretary

Tessa Jowell has recently been appointed Minister for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) replacing Chris Smith. Tessa has been a minister since Labour won its first landslide four years ago.

As minister for public health, Ms Jowell was embroiled in the Bernie Ecclestone affair, when the government gave Formula One motor racing an exemption from the ban on tobacco advertising after its boss, Mr Ecclestone, gave an anonymous £1m donation to the Labour Party.

The MP for Dulwich and West Norwood was moved after two years at the ministry of health to take over responsibility for implementing the New Deal jobs programme as minister of state for employment.

Ms Jowell, who has written articles on social policy, was given the extra task of heading up the government’s women’s unit alongside Baroness Jay.
[BBC Online, June 2001]

Exploring the charging models for digital cultural heritage

To explore the charging models for digital content of cultural institutions in the UK and Europe the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant to the Higher Education Digitisation Service (HEDS). HEDS will:

• study how pricing structures are determined for delivering digital versions of rare or unique items in libraries, museums, archives and similar public institutions
• investigate how these digital pricing structures compare to those used for the delivery of the same or similar resources in analogue form.
• explore the thresholds that determine the point at which an organization charges for the sale of content and other rights to their digital holdings and the reasons given for such charges.

To discover the underlying motivation driving charging and rights policies, HEDS will use relative and comparative cost modeling with a framework of opinion-based research.

This work will help the community to compare and assess costs for delivering digital content against a realistic model.

HEDS provides consultancy and production services for digitisation and digital library development to all sectors of education, libraries, museums and other non-profit organizations.

Further information about HEDS can be found at http://heds.herts.ac.uk
[HEDS is a service of the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils based at the University of Hertfordshire]

Education where and when?

The NISS Campus web site provides a range of information of interest to the education community. Our Education Editor reports here on two recent additions.

Distance Learning

NISS has added a new resource to the “Colleges and Universities” area of NISS Campus: a page about Open and Distance Learning opportunities. In keeping with our aims it provides a starting point for those wishing to find out about this area, by giving general information and then linking to the major sources of information about courses and their accreditation.

You will find the new page at www.niss.ac.uk/sites/open&distance.html

Enquiries about NISS services should be made to niss@niss.ac.uk

NISS is a division of EduServ. Unless otherwise indicated, information and services mentioned above can be accessed via the NISS WWW server at the URL: http://www.niss.ac.uk/

NISS Advisor is distributed to the niss-news, lis-link, ucisa-tlig-newsletter and admin-news (all@jiscmail.ac.uk) mailing lists.

All editions of NISS Advisor can also be found at http://www.niss.ac.uk/about-niss/advisor/

Forty-Five Years of 20th Century Design On-line

For the first time, the Design Council Slide Collection is available online via the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS). The collection includes nearly 3000 unique images of tableware, furniture, lighting, toys, domestic appliances, textiles, wallpapers, office equipment and engineering components. It also features other areas of design from the last half of the 20th century such as architecture, town planning, interior design, graphic design and corporate identity.

Many of the images in the collection illustrate the aesthetic and technological developments of the period, and reflect the design history of various kinds of objects and new product types making it an invaluable on-line resource. A large number of original images dedicated to the Design Council’s own activities are also included such as its annual design award scheme and various exhibition and events it organised or contributed to in the UK and abroad.

The Design Council Slide Collection is searchable online at http://vads.ahds.ac.uk. VADS provides more than 9,500 visual arts images for use in research, learning and teaching. VADS current on-line collections include Design Council Archive, London College of Fashion: College Archive, The Imperial War Museum Concise Art Collection and the Halliwell and Basic Design Collections.

The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) provides an on-line catalogue and archive of high quality digital resources for research, learning and teaching in the visual arts. VADS also advises the visual arts community on good practice for the creation and management of digital resources.

e-Government Metadata Framework

The e-Government Metadata Framework has been officially launched.

It is available at http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/egif/home.html under ‘metadata’.

Dublin Core is now the official, mandated standard for metadata for government information, and work is underway to develop the standard further. The development of a Pan-Government Thesaurus has also been mandated.
[Maewyn Cumming, e-Envoy e-Government, May 2001]

Collection Description Focus

RSLP, JISC and the British Library are jointly funding the new Collection Description Focus, which will provide authoritative advice and guidance on collection description implementation to the UK library, information, archive, cultural heritage, government and learning communities.

The service will be located at UKOLN at the University of Bath, UK, and can be accessed from Monday 11th June via an advisory service email address: cd-focus@ukoln.ac.uk, or by telephone on 01225 323619.

Further information relating to Focus staff, documentation and events will be made available shortly. The top level of the Collection Description Focus pages is at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/

New Director of Operations and Services at the British Library

The British Library has appointed Natalie Ceeney to the newly created post of Director of Operations and Services.

Natalie Ceeney will lead British Library services in support of the corporate sector and for science and industry. The new directorate will bring together the Library’s remote document supply service and its STM (Scientific, Technical and Medical) research, creating new opportunities for innovation.
[Extract from British Library Press Release, May 2001]