Integration of Information Services into University Infrastructures
7th Frankfurt Scientific Symposium: 12.10.2007 - 13.10.2007
Abstracts:
Integra TUM : Information services and university IT governance
Arndt Bode, Vice President Technische Universität München
Abstract:
Universities of the 21st century heavily depend on an efficient IT infrastructure for teaching, research and administration.
E-Learning environments, blended learning and all sorts of multimedia and cooperative environments are important requirements for teaching at universities and for further education. Many of the organizational structures such as continuous examinations, interdisciplinary studies, ECTS system and many more require efficient examination administration systems as well as room and personnel management.
Research is based on Internet inquiries, eScience, eLibrary and other IT supported media. Research results must be documented and archived in a digital way and results must be distributed and marketed through the Internet.
The efficient administration of all kinds of resources of the university must be planned using management support systems. Decisions of university heads must be prepared from well documented statistics and analysis software.
In the past, many of the applications named above for teaching, research and administration have been performed by separate software applications and run in distributed environments of universities. Powerful server structures and networking features as well as new software technology like service-oriented architectures make it necessary to recentralize the IT services of the university after a long period of decentralization. Based on metadirectories and unified access procedures, all of the software components must be integrated into a seamless IT infrastructure. To guarantee consistency, data must not be stored in a redundant way.
Project IntegraTUM of Technische Universität München started in 2003 and is an umbrella project to define such a seamless IT infrastructure for a university with 22.000 students and approximately 10.000 staff. The talk describes the project, which besides the definition of new technology is based on a fundamental process analysis of the university and many changes in the organizational structure.
Copyright and information supply within academic institutions
Ruth Maria Bousonville, Advocate, Lovells, Frankfurt a.M., Germany
Abstract:
Information supply is the genuine task of academic institutions as well as of publishers. Publishers profit from copyright provisions which give them exclusive rights in their products. The same copyright provisions are often the limiting factor when academic institutions try to improve their service to the academic community. This is the case in particular when it comes to digital access to information. In a so-called "Second Basket", the German copyright act has just been revised, introducing explicit legal exemptions for document deliveries and on the spot consultation of works contained in public libraries' collections. At the same time, unresolved issues remain with respect to existing legal exemptions as well as the new ones. What will the legal parameters look like for academic institutions once the "Second basket" has been put into force? How can libraries work with these provisions in practice?
Collaboration is the secret of success: strategies
for integrating information services with learning, teaching and research
Graham Bulpitt, Director of Information Services at Kingston University, London
Abstract:
Working closely with teaching and research staff is critical to the success of libraries and information services. Indeed, the degree of integration with a University's academic work is one of the factors that distinguish a successful service from a poor one.
This paper will consider the relationship between information services and how universities operate. Using the challenges facing institutions as a starting point - including the move towards a single European higher education market - the impact of information provision on institutional strategies will be explored.
Information resources underpin all learning, teaching and research activities and the presentation will consider the professional practice which ensures that libraries and computing services are fully exploited. The focus on the experience of students is leading some institutions to integrate information services with a wide range of other activities and the paper will consider the opportunities and challenges which this brings, including the need to build working relationships with a broader range of professional groups.
Open-access at the Tipping Point
Kenneth Frazier, Library Systems, Madison, Wisconsin
Abstract:
In several academic fields (most notably: physics, mathematics, economics, astronomy, and computer science), most current research papers are freely accessible on the Internet in both pre- and post-publication formats. For these disciplines, open-access dissemination of publications and data has created a robust and useful information environment that is highly valued by researchers. While the acceptance of open-access dissemination has been disruptive to traditional scholarly publishing, the status and economic value of the elite journals has remained largely intact. Indeed, publication in the most prestigious journals (e.g., Science, Nature, Cell, BMJ, etc.) may have more influence than ever in determining the advancement of academic careers. Traditional publishing and open access will continue to coexist uncomfortably for years to come, but the next wave of digital publishing systems (empowered social networking applications) will establish open access repositories as indispensable infrastructure for the sciences and social sciences.
The Library as Strategic Asset in the Information Chain
Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian, McKnight Presidential Professor, University of Minnesota
Abstract:
Trends for distributed, open, and increasingly collaborative models of information delivery challenge the library's classic roles. In addition, trends within the research community for more interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship create an opportunity for more enabling information infrastructure. In an age of Amazon, Google, and "social" tools, how should the library respond? My presentation will focus on strategies for bringing the library's "assets" into the flow of researchers' work. How can the library integrate its resources into the scholar's workflow? What are the emerging challenges of this integration?
Information supply in the era of Google Print/Google Book search
Ronald Milne, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library, London
Abstract:
Information Supply in the era of mass digitization
Drawing on his experience at the Bodleian Library and now at the British Library, Ronald Milne will share his first-hand impressions of 'boutique' and mass digitization programmes, such as those being undertaken by Google and Microsoft, and their effect on information supply. Collections define libraries. What does this mean in the 21st Century? Will all libraries become equal as the digital revolution progresses? What might the digitization and indexing of millions of works mean for university researchers and the intellectually curious more generally? What are the benefits and what are the strategic issues that we are bound to consider?
Identity management in a university environment, respecting central and faculty needs and providing the identity to shibboleth
Gerhard Schneider, Director of the IT Centre of Freiburg University
Abstract:
Rather than introducing a new system for global identity management, the University of Freiburg decided to continue with the existing software systems (esp. from HIS), to identify the leading system for each set of data and to mirror the data between the various systems. A clearly defined workflow ensures that changes to data are made only on the relevant "leading" system and then propagated to the other systems. User authentication for systems managed by the computer center is done via LDAP. Consequently, while access rights are granted by the LDAP system, the decision of whether or not the person is a member of the University is left to the administration.
As a consequence the implementation of a portal called mylogin to get the necessary tickets for shibboleth is a straightforward process as it only remains to check the data against LDAP before issueing the corresponding tickets.
University 2.0
John Unsworth, Assistant Dean for Publications and Communications, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois
Abstract:
The major challenge facing universities in the next decade is to reinvent themselves as information organizations. Universities are, at their core, organizations that cultivate knowledge, seeking both to create new knowledge and to preserve and convey existing knowledge, but they are remarkably inefficient and therefore ineffective in the way that they leverage their own information resources to advance that core activity. This talk will explore ways that the university could learn from what is now widely called "Web 2.0" -- a term that is meant to identify a shift in emphasis from the computer as platform to the network as platform, from hardware to data, from the wisdom of the expert to the wisdom of crowds, and from fixity to remixability.
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